[TML] "Dies the Fire"

[Jerry W Barrington]

On 12/9/07 4:48 PM, Leonard Erickson wrote:

> Well, I'm sorely tempted to stick my old D&D game on an Alderson
> Disk. Then have a *bad* misjump bring the PC's ship out somewhere
> near the disk.
> 
> They'll be too busy trying to deal with the (obviously :-)
> malfunctioning instruments and getting down in one piece.
> 
> After that they get to try finding help on a disk 10 AU across, with
> a central hole about an AU across. And that's thousands of miles
> thick...
> 
> Do note that since gravity from a disk has *no* decrement with
> altitude until you are a significant fraction of the diameter up, the
> effective escape velocity is completely out of reach.
> 
> But they might have had brief radio contact with someone before they
> went down. All they have to do (once they figure out that the ship's
> instruments weren't lying on the way down) is figure out how to cross
> anywhere from thousands to *millions* of miles of alien "planet".

Interesting scenario.  Of course, assuming they escape, you now have an
Alderson disk in YTU.  :)

Personally, I'd say escape would be easiest from the rim.  Any pointers to
the math on the gravity?

And why 10 AU with a 1 AU hole?  Seems excessive, even for a broad
interpretation of the habitable zone.  Of course one problem with such a
disk is the perpetual twilight...

And plate tectonics sounds... Improbable.  But then, as you said, it's
magitech to make it work anyway.