[TML] Amber Zone: Wet Goods, Dry Goods

[Richard Aiken]

On Oct 29, 2007 2:17 AM, Timothy Little <tim at little-possums.net> wrote:
> Pre-built compounds will be slightly more valuable, sure.  However any
> reasonable tech level will make it pretty easy to turn raw materials
> into (at worst) water, air, and nutrients for plants.

Ah.  But GURPS Mars points out that even once we settle it, there'll
be a continuing market for human waste (which would include remains)
for a LONG time.  On a barren world -  even one with fusion technology
- it would be still be easier and cheaper to simply plow stuff into
the soil that create it from the raw materials (baking rocks?
crashing comets?) beforehand.  Using the "pre-built" stuff lets you
put your tech to work in other areas.  Having to use that tech just to
make fertile soil (which the "better" worlds got "free") just puts you
that much further behind them.

> I could see that such a world would likely have developed a culture of
> recycling their dead, and possibly regulations regarding this.  On the
> other side of the issue though, they're likely to be amenable to an
> argument that a visitor should be returned for recycling into their
> *home* ecosystem.  If one of them visited another world and died,
> would they expect their body to be returned?

Now we're talking religious practices.  If a high cultural value is
placed on recycling, the corpse willd owe "death duties" before it can
leave.  After all, while it was alive on this barren world, it was
using up scarce organics.  TANSTAFL.

-- 
Richard Aiken

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