I find it unlikely that there would be 5 planet with the habitable zone, unless several of them shared Langrangian Points
in a single orbit).
The plot is passable, although you'd have to explain why the space-elevator aliens on planet A are significantly more powerful and advanced than their non-elevator neighbours, and yet have failed to take them over, or even apparently notice their neighbour's hostility.
edited 1st Oct '10 9:40:41 AM by MattII
Wait, why have they forgotten how their technology works? That warrants some storytelling :)
For now, the story isn't set in stone. There are a few things I want to keep, like the lost ship, the space elevator being the only way anyone knows to get into space, and one nation rising up by knocking an elevator out.
To be terraformed, a planet doesn't necessarily need to be in its star's habitable zone. I've been reading the Mars trilogy to get a better grasp of terraforming, but I'm only on Green Mars and I know that Blue Mars is the one that explores bodies that aren't Mars.
What I do know is that Venus and Mars are just outside of our star's habitable zone, and I'm pretty sure it's possible for a planet to have a stable orbit closer to Earth and within the habitable zone if it's in a good orbital resonance pattern. Neptune and Pluto are in a 3:2 resonance pattern, where Neptune completes 3 orbits to Pluto's 2. Jupiter's moons Io, Europa, and Ganymede have a 1:2:4 resonance pattern, and Saturn's moons Epimetheus and Janus have a resonance pattern such that they actually switch orbits every few years.
Now, I don't know if it would be possible for a planet in such a pattern to have a moon like ours if they're close enough to the host star to support life. Moons aren't really necessary, but I can see a night sky being pretty lonely without one.
I've been trying to figure out how 5 planets can be in stable, terraformable orbits, but it's not easy. I might cut it down to 3 or 4, but I definitely want it to be more than the 2. I've found that 2 planets can have a 2:3 orbital resonance pattern while also being in a star's habitable zone, and that it should be possible for a third planet just outside of the habitable zone to be close enough to be terraformed.
With all this said, I think I'm spending too much time on the celestial mechanics and not enough on the actual plot.
I guess Nation B doesn't really need to forget how their technology works, since it's a little more believable for a space elevator and some spacecraft to need some routine maintenance. I mean, while it's true that you don't need to know how a car works to drive it, someone needs to know how it works for it to stay running. At the very least, the elevator car and the station at the end would need maintenance, but the cable should be designed to withstand anything short of a hydrogen bomb.
To be honest, right now I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to do the politics that lead to one of the nations rising up. I don't think I have any good ideas right now, but I'll post some as they come. All I know is that whoever does rise up is going to be really pissed off.
edited 3rd Oct '10 1:55:37 AM by Aldrasio
Ok, so tonight I came up with an idea for a far-future science fiction setting taking place in a different solar system (I haven't decided around which star, but I'm thinking possibly Epsilon Eridani). I'm trying to keep it as hard as possible, so no FTL travel or communication, no Casual Space Travel, no Single-Biome Planet, etc.
The premise goes like this:
In the future, a sect of mankind decides to try and spread to the stars. They decide to use automated embryo ships because of less fuel needed for an interstellar voyage. One of these goes to the current system (I'll call it the Epsilon Eridani system for now). In this system, there are 5 planets viable for terraforming. Once the terraforming is complete, each planet has an Earthlike rotational time and all of them have at least 2 space elevators on their equators. At first, the civilizations on these 5 planets are united under one rule, but soon the planets all fragment into mutual independence, and then into separate nations. Unfortunately, only the equatorial nations can really thrive, having access to space and its mining resources. Since the non-equatorial nations have nothing that the equatorial nations can't get from space, they fall into poverty.
Centuries later, the equatorial nations have very little knowledge of how their elevators and spacecraft work, but they know how to use them. The knowledge exists, but no one really cares to read about it. The only spacecraft left are mining ships that all use fusion drives which, while efficient, aren't able to provide enough thrust to land on a planet with earthlike gravity and take off again. The space elevators are the only bridge between a planet and space. The equatorial nations are fat, dumb, happy, and still not sharing with the other nations.
One one planet (Planet A), a group from a non-equatorial nation (I'll refer to it as Nation A for now) gets pretty sick of getting shat on by their neighboring equatorial nation (Nation B), so they start researching what could be useful in taking down Nation B. Thanks to spies learning about, among other things, rocketry and nuclear fusion, they are able to develop their own spacecraft and nuclear missiles. They use these to sever Nation B's space elevator, and with its resources cut off, Nation B is soon taken over. Nation A uses its rockets to make it into orbit and commandeer Nation B's spacecraft, and then proceed to take out the other equatorial nation (Nation C), but this time they make an effort to keep the space elevator intact. Through a combination of war and diplomacy, the entire planet becomes united under one rule. However, the war-hungry leader of Nation A, and now Planet A, wants to spread his reign, and in taking over the planet he learned of the other 4 planets in the system.
On another planet (Planet B), a group from an equatorial nation (Nation D) has learned of the embryo ship which contains millenna worth of information about the great civilizations of the past, but also that no one knows what happened to the embryo ship after the terraforming of the planets was completed. They commission a search for the ship, but it's been inactive for so long that if they looked for it in space, it wouldn't appear significantly different from a common asteroid; and if they looked on the ground, there's a one-in-five chance that it's not even there.
This is where the story would begin.
I'd like any holes or criticisms pointed out so I can fix them if possible.
edited 1st Oct '10 3:26:24 AM by Aldrasio