A Constellation of Dying Stars-Hard Sci fi TV show idea

[meve12]

I had an idea for a hard scifi TV show setting a few days ago.

Google doc with notes:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YxMypvopOI8HXbXfzCRvth9ynoLbY5qxpBGWlX33Tf8/pub

The short of it:

There's a thriving, increasingly posthuman interplanetary civilization.

Then a dim neutron star blows through the Solar System and wrecks everything in it.

The last of humanity and associated species now resides in six humongous generational ships called Arks, as well as other less ambitious starships, enroute to other solar systems with exoplanets.

One of the arks develops Alcubierre drive. Several feats of espionage later, all the Arks have Alcubierre drives.

The drives, however, can't move enough mass to either move an Ark or evacuate it faster than just having the Ark arrive as planned.

What Alcubierre ships can do, however, is set up seed colonies and mining outposts around neighboring stars, or carry freight and mail. Or, in the case of the show itself, checking out and salvaging/culturally integrating/rescuing slowships-there's a lot of them, they tend to be somewhat shoddy, and not all of them weathered the slower than light exodus very well.

Would like more ideas for worldbuilding. I kicked this around on /tg as well, but it didn't get any attention worth note.

[Bill Phil]

Sounds like it would be easier if they just pulled a "Songs of Distant Earth" and sent out seed ships, followed by colony ships. Although it would be better, if you start out in space, to build in-space colonies like Gundam (the one realistic aspect of the original series).

[meve12]

I'll say several slowships are in fact seed ships of some variety. Although the evacuation wasn't exactly coordinated.

The important thing to note about the setting is that nothing in the Solar System survives when The Cannonball comes through-just being in space wouldn't save you. You need to be outside the Solar system.

Spaceborne colonies is a possibility for when the Arks arrive (They're not exactly designed to land) but even then they'd still need lots of metals, plastic feedstock and such, and they have the tech for relatively cheap surface-to-orbit travel.(Which I'm saying is laser launchers)

Edited June 22, 2016 by meve12
Forgot some words

[Xorth Tanovar]

..or the Earthlings had enough time/resources for just one Ark, a la "Phoenix Without Ashes" style. 

 

Or similar to the one-season show "Earth 2", advance party gets to the target system only to crash upon it....22 years to get everything up and running for the inbound Ark.

 

Countless storylines abound...