Is this alternate solar system possible?

[Bill Phil]

6 hours ago, ChrisSpace said:

 

 

It is based roughly on this: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/115752-a-world-building-guide-to-steampunk-space-travel-please-add-your-thoughts/

And trust me, the life on these new worlds is going to be far from boring. (Also I didn't have much of a choice as its the only way the solar system can be colonized)

Not really. You can colonize the solar system with artificial habitats. Huge ones kilometers in size. But that is a bit beyond their technology.

[fredinno]

Binary systems are also tidally locked. This might cause the winds on Earth (and Luna) to be very high, as one side is facing the sun, and the atmosphere will try to stabilise the temperatures everywhere.

It would also cause all fluids to concentrate at the poles, leaving only small amounts of either planet habitable (in the area between the water and low-atmospheric area. This is also a problem for tidally locked Laythe. To see this effect in action, look at Titan. The seas on concentrated on the poles, and the equilateral regions are a dry desert.

 

Therefore, the best, and closest location for a habitable planet is probably to put it in stable Lagrange Points 3 or 4 (Theia?) while leaving the Moon where it is (as this also heavily influenced the formation of life on Earth, and formed by a different "Theia"). Also, Minnmus/Auoura is problematic, as the Moon's gravity might sling it out. Try putting in a highly inclined elliptical orbit in a resonance with the Moon's orbit, maybe then they won't impact each other.

[Mister Dilsby]

All things are possible when you throw n-body physics out the window  Hoping someone builds this in Kopernicus, would be a fun system to play around in.

[fredinno]

5 minutes ago, Kuzzter said:

All things are possible when you throw n-body physics out the window  Hoping someone builds this in Kopernicus, would be a fun system to play around in.

I think I might try it in Universe Sandbox first, just to test it out.

[Hannu2]

It you are interested in physical possibility, your system have probably many problems. Celestial bodies affect to each other and many configurations are unstable. For example, there are no other stable orbits (in geological timescales) around Earth than Moon's. Probably also Ike would destroy small Mars' moons and maybe other moon systems would be unstable too. As far as I know there can not be large body in asteroid belt. Jupiter would have prevented its formation. It is very difficult to predict stability of N-body systems during billions of years. Your system is very interesting for gaming and entertaining purposes. If it were possible and real, it would be scientifically more interesting than our real system. However, then we would be used to it.

[fredinno]

6 minutes ago, Hannu2 said:

6 minutes ago, Hannu2 said:

It you are interested in physical possibility, your system have probably many problems. Celestial bodies affect to each other and many configurations are unstable. For example, there are no other stable orbits (in geological timescales) around Earth than Moon's. Probably also Ike would destroy small Mars' moons and maybe other moon systems would be unstable too. As far as I know there can not be large body in asteroid belt. Jupiter would have prevented its formation. It is very difficult to predict stability of N-body systems during billions of years. Your system is very interesting for gaming and entertaining purposes. If it were possible and real, it would be scientifically more interesting than our real system. However, then we would be used to it.

It you are interested in physical possibility, your system have probably many problems. Celestial bodies affect to each other and many configurations are unstable. For example, there are no other stable orbits (in geological timescales) around Earth than Moon's. Probably also Ike would destroy small Mars' moons and maybe other moon systems would be unstable too. As far as I know there can not be large body in asteroid belt. Jupiter would have prevented its formation. It is very difficult to predict stability of N-body systems during billions of years. Your system is very interesting for gaming and entertaining purposes. If it were possible and real, it would be scientifically more interesting than our real system. However, then we would be used to it.

Maybe we could put Minnmus in Luna/Moon-Earth L3 and Phobos and Deimos in Ike-Mars L4 or something.

I wonder if Ike-Mars would be binary.

[MircoMars]

6 hours ago, ChrisSpace said:

Well for this project I need something to be habitable at about one moon-distance from Earth, so what do you think I can do?

what about caves and tunnels? either the moon can have (some) natural atmo underground or they could close the tunnels up and pressurize them.

[Chakat Firepaw]

15 hours ago, ChrisSpace said:

Venus is the third planet from the sun, with an atmosphere, magnetic field and surface very different from OTL. The air is breathable and the temperatures are only 10-20 degrees higher than Earth’s. Venus is also home to the most advanced ecosystems outside of Earth. It is also one of two places outside Earth that has intelligent life, which is currently limited to stone-age technology.

I'm going to give you a different problem:  With those conditions, large swaths of Venus are going to be lethally hot for humans.  Humans can only survive up to a wet-bulb temperature of 36^oC, above that we can no longer cool ourselves and will quickly succumb to heat stroke.[1]

Now, this can make for some interesting worldbuilding:  The human colonists have to live at higher latitudes and/or elevations, (and even then it's like the tropics here), and the natives have large regions where human activity is highly restricted.  If there is ongoing conflict, the colonists are going to have a hard time bringing the natives to heel through punitive expeditions.

 

[1] To put this in perspective, there are areas on Earth that cross this line at less than an 1^oC increase in the planetary average temperature, (compared to current conditions).

[fredinno]

4 hours ago, MircoMars said:

what about caves and tunnels? either the moon can have (some) natural atmo underground or they could close the tunnels up and pressurize them.

No, there are places like that on Earth, but there is really no way there would be a significant number of these caverns on the Moon, if at all- probably the caves would collapse due to a structural failure or leak. But that's speculative.

[magnemoe]

18 hours ago, ChrisSpace said:

Having places that are already habitable was my solution to the problem of running space colonies with 19th-century technology. It also makes colonization much cheaper and more tempting.

 

So, swap the positions of Europa and Pandora, and swap the biospheres of Venus and Pandora? Well, I wanted Pandora's biosphere to live on a world slightly warmer than Earth, so that makes one thing easier. Also, couldn't a powerful magnetic field around Pandora negate the 'excessive radiation levels'?

True, you would still need technology capable of taking us to Mars, establish bases after doing some probes for biosphere comparability would be easy. 
Yes you will need good technology to get up again but that is the next step, it would be an serious push to go out fast.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Sky-People-S-M-Stirling/dp/B001G7RESW/ref=pd_sim_sbs_14_1?ie=UTF8&dpID=41GhRoDkh8L&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR105%2C160_&refRID=02XZG4NFHCRJ2W431HDT

http://www.amazon.com/Courts-Crimson-Kings-S-M-Stirling/dp/0765314894/ref=pd_sim_14_1?ie=UTF8&dpID=41Whx-Z%2B%2B3L&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR105%2C160_&refRID=0G7YTT7QEPS21CVM1QDJ

Is an setting with an Mars and Venus has life, they also has humans because of aliens having fun. 
Result is no cold war as we know it as all resources go into space colonization. 
---
Agree about dropping Pandora, that require an gas giant in the habitable zone, no issue about it but it will not work in our solar system.

[silversliver]

19 hours ago, ChrisSpace said:

It also is the homeworld of the most advanced species in the solar system – according to members of said species.

First thing first, this made me laugh a lot.

Then the rest:

As it's been pointed before I don't like the fact that there are so many life-friendly worlds.

I like the challenges that arise when you have to live on a body without bodies of liquids (not necessary water), without atmosphere, magnetosphere and so on.

You said that this is the only way that colonization can happen, but you may do so: you have planets with atmospheres and magnetospheres but each one as an hostile trait.

For example on a world there may be a magnetic field and an atmosphere with normal pressure, but which contains a toxic element for humans.

Also in this way you can have (intelligent) life forms that adapted to this conditions and maybe for them Earth's atmosphere is toxic; IMHO this would make wars more interesting.

 

[fredinno]

3 hours ago, Chakat Firepaw said:

I'm going to give you a different problem:  With those conditions, large swaths of Venus are going to be lethally hot for humans.  Humans can only survive up to a wet-bulb temperature of 36^oC, above that we can no longer cool ourselves and will quickly succumb to heat stroke.[1]

Now, this can make for some interesting worldbuilding:  The human colonists have to live at higher latitudes and/or elevations, (and even then it's like the tropics here), and the natives have large regions where human activity is highly restricted.  If there is ongoing conflict, the colonists are going to have a hard time bringing the natives to heel through punitive expeditions.

 

[1] To put this in perspective, there are areas on Earth that cross this line at less than an 1^oC increase in the planetary average temperature, (compared to current conditions).

Only problem is that a Venus capable of supporting life like this would also have high sea levels (no ice, hotter water expands), meaning there is even less land available- worse, Venus' plates are relatively thin. Maybe having proper plate tectonics, water, and not being a hellhole would make this problem less of a deal, but Venus, is, unfortunately, very flat (don't tell her that though, she's ashamed of it). Here is what Venus' surface looks like (terrain): http://laps.noaa.gov/albers/sos/features/combined_venus_shaded_relief_lon_180_center.png

Good luck for any humans trying to build base there.

Would a "Cooling Suit" be possible in the time period given? (Actually, yes, they would need to develop this to make proper spacesuits anyways.)

 

Also, I think Venus's orbit is this world might be highly inclined and more eccentric, due to gravitational interactions from being so close to Earth. Mars' orbit would also have to be less eccentric and slightly closer to be in the Habitable Zone: http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Ast161/Unit7/Images/HabitableZone.jpg

Earth is already on the inner edge of the Habitable Zone, though.

Maybe Venus could be on a Earth-Sun L4 or L5?

[Findthepin1]

If you took all the atmosphere off, Venus would be about 30 degrees Celsius. Earth without atmosphere would be -18 Celsius AFAIK. So, 48 degrees warmer. No sea ice, then, and assuming an Earthlike atmosphere, average temperature at the 1 bar level or ground level would be 63 Celsius if I am right. So, poles and mountaintops habitable to humans, and the rest for thermophiles.

[ChrisSpace]

Well, to be fair a Mars-sized, habitable body at Moons distance would turn all the other colonisable bodies OP wants in his system redundant. Such "companion" would take centuries if not longer to become saturated with humans to the point of turning rest of the system desirable for colonisation again.

Now why is it exactly that we want an orbiting celestial with the surface properties of earth that has 1/20th the surface area (guessin) when 90% of the earth remains largely unoccupied?

Trust me, there are a lot of reasons I can think of as to why they'd want to expand as far as possible.

Hence my proposition of making this system blatantly artificial. Such setting would allow for Moon-sized body with breathable atmosphere, strong magnetic field and even 24-hour long day - just place hiperadvanced gravity generators at the core. They even could be powered by artificial singularity

I cansolve the problem, replace the moons iron silicate core with lead, this will raise the specific gravity. in the center you can have high atomic number metalics in an iron core that generates a magnetic field, lead being fairly soft will melt. Are we fairly far from reality land yet, the moon of course would be cooler, so we just spray paint it black and then add water. done, problem fixed.

Okay, I have decided to make the moon's habitability one of the few scientific inaccuracies that I will keep for the sake of the storyline.

Regarding the planetary "alignments": Give pictures of some sort, that's quite hard to be imagined.

Ask and you shall receive. I will post pictures soon-ish.

For planet sizes vs surface gravity : Have you noticed that density of a body is fairly related to it's size ? I'll find some figures (or calculations) of smallest body size possible where one g can be achieved (probably pushing the trend a bit).

Oh, gravity isn't a problem. I'm fine with having most of my worlds with lower gravity than Earth's.

No, Io is too close. Laythe would be in between Io and Europa IRL.

Okay, sure.

Not really. You can colonize the solar system with artificial habitats. Huge ones kilometers in size. But that is a bit beyond their technology.

I'm not thinking they would go with massive space habitats because it is far more expensive and requires better technology.

Also, Minnmus/Auoura is problematic, as the Moon's gravity might sling it out. Try putting in a highly inclined elliptical orbit in a resonance with the Moon's orbit, maybe then they won't impact each other.

You mean like with the orbits of Neptune and Pluto in OTL? Okay, sure.

All things are possible when you throw n-body physics out the window  Hoping someone builds this in Kopernicus, would be a fun system to play around in.

Well, once the design for this system is finalized i'm going to try to teach myself Kopernicus.

For example, there are no other stable orbits (in geological timescales) around Earth than Moon's. Probably also Ike would destroy small Mars' moons and maybe other moon systems would be unstable too.

I only need everything to be stable for a few centuries.

As far as I know there can not be large body in asteroid belt. Jupiter would have prevented its formation.

Did I ever say it formed there?

I'm going to give you a different problem:  With those conditions, large swaths of Venus are going to be lethally hot for humans.  Humans can only survive up to a wet-bulb temperature of 36^oC, above that we can no longer cool ourselves and will quickly succumb to heat stroke.

Now, this can make for some interesting worldbuilding:  The human colonists have to live at higher latitudes and/or elevations, (and even then it's like the tropics here), and the natives have large regions where human activity is highly restricted.  If there is ongoing conflict, the colonists are going to have a hard time bringing the natives to heel through punitive expeditions.

That was my plan all along.

For example on a world there may be a magnetic field and an atmosphere with normal pressure, but which contains a toxic element for humans.

Also in this way you can have (intelligent) life forms that adapted to this conditions and maybe for them Earth's atmosphere is toxic; IMHO this would make wars more interesting.

I'm thinking of adding something like that.

If you took all the atmosphere off, Venus would be about 30 degrees Celsius. Earth without atmosphere would be -18 Celsius AFAIK. So, 48 degrees warmer. No sea ice, then, and assuming an Earthlike atmosphere, average temperature at the 1 bar level or ground level would be 63 Celsius if I am right. So, poles and mountaintops habitable to humans, and the rest for thermophiles.

Source?

[Findthepin1]

Not counting albedo changes, because I expect the ground of Earth, Venus and Mars would have similar albedos. The effective temperature of Earth is 255 K (sorry bout that) and that of Mars is 217 K, with no air. Mars' orbital distance from Earth's is ~0.5 AU. Venus' orbital distance is ~0.28 AU from Earth's. So the temperature difference from Earth to Mars is going to be -25/14 of that between Earth and Venus. So Venus should be warmer than Earth by 21.28 degrees. Now, I know it's not a linear progression, so I am going to guess that for every two-thirds the distance to the Sun, the rate doubles. So that's 21.28 times ~1.9 (Venus is at 0.72 AU or most of the way to 0.67) is 42.432. 255 K plus 42.432 K is 297.432 K. That last number would be the effective temperature for Venus with no air. It's actually 24 Celsius, rather than the 30 Celsius I had stated earlier.

Given an Earthlike atmosphere, which adds about 33 degrees to the planet's temperature (288-255), we can do the same things for Venus, so 33 times ~1.9 is 62.7 degrees. That plus 24 degrees is 86.7 degrees, which would be the temperature of Venus with an Earthlike atmosphere. However, a high temperature like that would cause water to boil near the equator, which would give the planet a lot of high-albedo water clouds and likely cool it somewhat. Counteracted, to an unknown effect, by the added greenhouse effect caused by the excess water vapour. If I haven't shown math in one of these steps, it should be confirmable after a minute on Google. If I made a mistake, please notify me.

[ChrisSpace]

Front post edited again, taking into account new suggestions.

[fredinno]

7 hours ago, magnemoe said:

True, you would still need technology capable of taking us to Mars, establish bases after doing some probes for biosphere comparability would be easy. 
Yes you will need good technology to get up again but that is the next step, it would be an serious push to go out fast.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Sky-People-S-M-Stirling/dp/B001G7RESW/ref=pd_sim_sbs_14_1?ie=UTF8&dpID=41GhRoDkh8L&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR105%2C160_&refRID=02XZG4NFHCRJ2W431HDT

http://www.amazon.com/Courts-Crimson-Kings-S-M-Stirling/dp/0765314894/ref=pd_sim_14_1?ie=UTF8&dpID=41Whx-Z%2B%2B3L&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR105%2C160_&refRID=0G7YTT7QEPS21CVM1QDJ

Is an setting with an Mars and Venus has life, they also has humans because of aliens having fun. 
Result is no cold war as we know it as all resources go into space colonization. 
---
Agree about dropping Pandora, that require an gas giant in the habitable zone, no issue about it but it will not work in our solar system.

Cold War would still happen- Cold War was a power struggle, not a struggle for resources.

Pandora can still exist b/c tidal heating.

Humans do not have to be in all habitable planets to be habitable.

[fredinno]

Venus' average temperature would actually make parts of the water boil off on a particularly hot day, leading to a runway greenhouse effect. The best solution is probably to put it in a trailing L5. It would be relatively close (just burn retrograde to Earth's rotation and orbit until you are in escape velocity) taking 365 days for a round flyby trip, and launch windows would always be available!

 

Luna's habitability could at least be somewhat based in Science if it was part of a binary w/ Earth, or in L4 or L5.

 

I have a better version of this solar system drawn out, wait for me to get it on here. Please.

[magnemoe]

3 hours ago, fredinno said:

Cold War would still happen- Cold War was a power struggle, not a struggle for resources.

Pandora can still exist b/c tidal heating.

Humans do not have to be in all habitable planets to be habitable.

Promise of the books was still an cold war, but less wars on earth, no Vietnam and fewer of the proxy wars all over as the run to get foothold on Venus and Mars was an seen as more important so the space race did not end. Humans was an plot device both Mars and Venus was an plot device and unrealistic. 
 

[PB666]

18 hours ago, Kuzzter said:

All things are possible when you throw n-body physics out the window  Hoping someone builds this in Kopernicus, would be a fun system to play around in.

why would we do that? of course if earth was part of a binary, far away enough from the sun and the was no jupiter all of this would work.  Fredinno is fretting about the specifics of a fantasy,  make it real and his wheels wont spin quite so fast. 

[Streetwind]

@ChrisSpace - While the others focus on the physics, I'll weigh in a bit on a storytelling perspective. As with any alternate reality idea, your project doesn't have to be 100% realistic; it just has to be believable. In other words, errors and unrealistic elements are not necessarily bad, if they are so exotic that only a minor subsection of the viewerbase can spot them. As an example, when the Star Wars movies came out in the seventies, almost nobody in the public knew what lasers looked like, and thus, the fact that Star Wars portrayed laser blasts as "projectiles" that traveled visibly did not hurt anyone's immersion. Much rather, there were cannons, which fired things that looked like things that cannons fire, so it was all good. It was wrong, but it was believable. Therefore, always try to estimate how much suspension of disbelief you are asking of the reader, and don't be afraid of handwaving things that are easy to accept, if it helps your worldbuilding.

Another thing that's important is internal consistency. For example, you've chosen to go with the Latin names of sun and moon, instead of the English ones; therefore, it would be internally consistent to also use the Latin name for our planet, Terra, not the English one. While the various names in different languages are all officially accepted as valid by the IAU, the inhabitants of your alternate reality must have a reason for preferring Latin, and that reason would obviously apply to all celestial bodies for which multiple common names exist. Perhaps history unfolded a little differently, the Roman empire lasted longer and became even more widespread than in our world, and thus Latin in general is a far more common and alive language? If that is the case though, beware of having celestial bodies that are not named in Latin. For example, Laythe would violate the naming conventions of even our IAU, and it would probably violate the stricter naming rules of your alternate reality even more strongly. Thus, having a body named Laythe in your system, while an amusing nod to KSP, is a breach of internal consistency unless you can believably explain why exactly the name isn't breaking the established rules of your world.

[Bill Phil]

Internal consistency is a good thing, but not calling the earth it's Latin name is fine, since most people don't really know it exists.

[fredinno]

1 hour ago, PB666 said:

why would we do that? of course if earth was part of a binary, far away enough from the sun and the was no jupiter all of this would work.  Fredinno is fretting about the specifics of a fantasy,  make it real and his wheels wont spin quite so fast. 

No, the question is wether this system was possible. Currently, no, it is not.

1 hour ago, Streetwind said:

@ChrisSpace - While the others focus on the physics, I'll weigh in a bit on a storytelling perspective. As with any alternate reality idea, your project doesn't have to be 100% realistic; it just has to be believable. In other words, errors and unrealistic elements are not necessarily bad, if they are so exotic that only a minor subsection of the viewerbase can spot them. As an example, when the Star Wars movies came out in the seventies, almost nobody in the public knew what lasers looked like, and thus, the fact that Star Wars portrayed laser blasts as "projectiles" that traveled visibly did not hurt anyone's immersion. Much rather, there were cannons, which fired things that looked like things that cannons fire, so it was all good. It was wrong, but it was believable. Therefore, always try to estimate how much suspension of disbelief you are asking of the reader, and don't be afraid of handwaving things that are easy to accept, if it helps your worldbuilding.

Another thing that's important is internal consistency. For example, you've chosen to go with the Latin names of sun and moon, instead of the English ones; therefore, it would be internally consistent to also use the Latin name for our planet, Terra, not the English one. While the various names in different languages are all officially accepted as valid by the IAU, the inhabitants of your alternate reality must have a reason for preferring Latin, and that reason would obviously apply to all celestial bodies for which multiple common names exist. Perhaps history unfolded a little differently, the Roman empire lasted longer and became even more widespread than in our world, and thus Latin in general is a far more common and alive language? If that is the case though, beware of having celestial bodies that are not named in Latin. For example, Laythe would violate the naming conventions of even our IAU, and it would probably violate the stricter naming rules of your alternate reality even more strongly. Thus, having a body named Laythe in your system, while an amusing nod to KSP, is a breach of internal consistency unless you can believably explain why exactly the name isn't breaking the established rules of your world.

Just make them all English names, instead of Latin, and then Laythe will work- like how Uranus' moons are named after Shakespere characters.

[fredinno]

3 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Promise of the books was still an cold war, but less wars on earth, no Vietnam and fewer of the proxy wars all over as the run to get foothold on Venus and Mars was an seen as more important so the space race did not end. Humans was an plot device both Mars and Venus was an plot device and unrealistic. 
 

But would it though? There would have to be a major impetuous found quickly to justify the huge cost of exploration, especially so early, w/o the use of ION, and NTR is still in development. Maybe a fantastical mineral holding the secrets to effective nuclear fusion?

[Scotius]

Oh, please - enough with unobtanium MacGuffinity. That trope is definitely overused.