[TML] "Dies the Fire"

[shadow at shadowgard.com]

On 10 Dec 2007 at 15:51, Richard Aiken wrote:

> 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.

It gets really difficult to avoid gravity levels that'd make Mesklin 
(cf Hal Clement's "Mission of Gravity") look like a low gee world at 
the edges of the disk.

Plus, with my design at least, it gets unreasonably hot ion the inner 
edge.

And you forgot the outer edge. Colder than hell. But the gravity 
thing gets you again.
 
> > 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.

Storm "swells" half a mile tall, anyone?

The edges of the larger oceans are *not* gonna be prime real estate. 
In fact, that may be a reason to keep the oceans smaller.
 
> > 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.

Well, at least latitude is easy to figure (though harder to do at 
sea) given that the sun *always* follows the same path.

> > > 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 . . .

Teleportation gates are a feature of my old D&D campaign that never 
really came into play. Just as well for the peace of mind of the 
players as they cycled thru destinations on a algorithm that only 
makes sense if you are used to a very strange calendar (no, I won't 
say which one) 

But something like the sub-shuttles from Roddenberry's failed pilots 
"Genesis II" and "Planet Earth" might work. For limited areas anyway. 

Consider that at mach 25 it'd take over 3.5 *years* to circumnavigate 
the disk at the 1 AU "latitude".

Given that there *isn't* any such thing as orbital velocity (not 
until you are dozens of AU out, anyway, and that escape velocity is 
in the thousands of km/sec range, you could have some really high TL 
societies that never got to a fraction of the disk before dying out.

> > 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 . . ."

Not my idea of fun.
 
> > 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?

Given that the gravity (and thus convection forces) drop as you 
approach the midpoint, there's not going to be much driving any flow.

It'd take one hell of a pressure difference to get the flow going and 
keep it going. But if there was a pressure difference, consider that 
there's a *lot* of atmosphere, and it could flow for a long time.

For that matter, consider your ten or one hundred mile wide hole 
being at the bottom of an ocean on one side (or both)

I don't want to try figuring the pressure at midpoint.

> > That'd be about page 9...
> 
> Indeed.  :-)

Truly evil GMs could have enough more pages present for the PCs to 
figure out that they are in a different spiral arm of the galaxay, or 
even a different galaxy. 


--
Leonard Erickson (aka shadow)
shadow at shadowgard dot com