[TML] "Dies the Fire"

[Richard Aiken]

On Dec 9, 2007 11:58 PM,  <shadow at shadowgard.com> wrote:
> Nope. You "bob" the sun in the hole. So you have night, sunrise, sun
> gets yup to some point in the sky and then starts down again. I
> haven't gotten around to calculating the timing for an assumed 45
> degree above the horizon at "sun-high".

But you'd get this on both sides of the disk, right?  The sun has to
go *somewhere* for the hours of full darkness, after all.  Thus two
completely separate "worlds" on the same disk.

Hmmm.  Considering that the disk is several thousand miles thick, you
could actually have three (3) separate "worlds."  One on each side and
a third that's around the inner side of the central hole.  Give the
upper and lower edges of the hole a continuous barrier range and
you've essentially got a ringworld.  Except that it, too, can have
real earthquakes and such.  But it'd be in more or less permanent
daylight (since a ring of shading devices wouldn't work with that
constantly bobbing Sun.

> If you rotate the disk, the stars you can see at night move. At least
> the ones near the horizon. I figure on a one year rotation.
> That *will* give some Coriolis ffects, but not as strong as on Earth,
> obviously.
> On the other hand even so, if any of the seas are really big, storms
> (or even waves) that have had the wind pushing them for 50,000 miles
> or more could get kinda nasty.

Yah.

> Navigation for low tech types gets interesting too.

I'd say they'd be even less likely to let the coast out of their sight
than historical Earth sailors.  Especially if they're used to sailing
the equivalent of the Med but their equivalent of the Atlantic is one
of the megaseas.

> > Assuming the builders wanted to get anywhere quickly, what would they
> > have built for truly long distance travel?  Mag-lev railways?
> > Sub-orbital slingshots?  Teleporation networks?
>
> Good question. But who says the builders planned to live on it. It
> could be a "science project" for a god-like hogh school student...

True.  But ultimately understandable Builders makes for a more
satisfying story, I think.  At least from the point of view of the
players.  A universe you can figure out, unlike the real one.  Of
course, that would still leave you with the question of who made the
Builders . . .

> Climbing down holes several thousand miles deep ain't my idea of a
> fun time...

Ah.  But we aren't PCs.  We'd have to walk every step of the way.
When it's PCs, the GM just says, "After climbing down the Long Stairs
for a week (living off the weird plant and animal life along the
ledges as you go), you come to this huge iron door . . ."

> And aside from things like what the pressure will do (even solid rock
> flows before you get to the 100 mile mark) the heat will get pretty
> bad too.

<shrug>  The same tech that keeps the central hole stable (unmelted)
would also work for the "vent holes," wouldn't it?  As for the heat,
you could have free air exchange with both sides of the disk through
these holes, if you make them wide enough.  How wide is enough?  Ten
miles?  Fifty?  One hundred?  More?  Of course, I'm not sure how that
would affect things on the disk surfaces.  Permanent tornadoes at each
opening?

> That'd be about page 9...

Indeed.  :-)

-- 
Richard Aiken

"Never insult anyone by accident."  Robert A. Heinlein