On 03.05.2016 22:11, Onno Meyer wrote:
I'm envisioning a scenario roughly like this:
A space mission is going to take several decades of flight time,
subjective time, plus a lengthy stay at the destination to make it all
worthwhile. Building a generation ship was considered and rejected for
various reasons. Instead, the ship uses cryonic capsules.
At the destination, the ship computers (no true AIs) will prep the life
support; this is sufficient for a small fraction of the crew. They mine
asteroids to build a habitat. The key components like the computers are
part of the payload while crude stuff like walls or pipes is
manufactured out of local raw materials. As the habitat is expanded,
more and more crew come out of cryosleep. After some years the crew
refits their ship for the return trip. Either all of them go home or a
flight crew returns the ship while most become colonists. This might be
decided only after arrival, when the suitability of the destination is
evaluated.
Problems:
- Is the total life support going to run "idle" for several decades, or
is it going to be restarted from a total shutdown? Both are difficult.
- Is it possible to predict what trace materials for the biosphere can
be found and what needs to be carried along? Spectrographic analysis of
the destination?
- How many "imported key components" does it take to build a station
with life support and a shipyard?
Well, I think the answer is right there in your specifications; If it is
indeed possible to routinely cryopreserve and revive more complex human
subjects, cryopreserving the simpler living components of a total
lifesupport system would be even easier with more margin for failure
(any dead plants simply become more fertilizer for the living plants).
Maybe TL9+ total lifesystems could even include this option in their
stats already - If the lifesystem is not in use fully, perhaps only
select sections of it could be vitrified in ice for as long as need be.
-Pauli
_______________________________________________
GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]>
http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
