What Are Some Interesting Planet Concepts from Sci-fi?

[Bill Phil]

And Trantor was just for Administration. A whole planet, just for administration. Really strange.

[Tommygun]

And Trantor was just for Administration. A whole planet, just for administration. Really strange.

Well Trantor did rule over a Galactic Empire made up of millions of inhabited worlds with 500,000,000,000,000,000 residents.

That's a lot of bureaucracy.

[m_robber]

The Prime home planet in Peter Hamilton's Pandora's Star. Not that the planet itself was all that interesting, more the description of the evolution of the Primes. Did anyone read that? Awesome books, if a bit long.

[sndrtj]

The Prime home planet in Peter Hamilton's Pandora's Star. Not that the planet itself was all that interesting, more the description of the evolution of the Primes. Did anyone read that? Awesome books, if a bit long.

If you liked the evolution of the Primes, I'd encourage you to read Existence by David Brin. The fomites therein are evolutionary compelling. The guy obviously did his research on evolution.

[m_robber]

Thanks man - I'll look it up!

[Soda Popinski]

Makes me think of Trantor, Isaac Asimov's capital planet of the Galactic Empire. The land surface of the planet was entirely enclosed in arcology-like domes and housed forty-five billion people, and it was fed by twenty agricultural planets with food shipments delivered by an armada of freighters.

That scale of incoming mass in the form of food would require the freighters also haul out gigatons of "biowaste" (in the Elite: Dangerous parlance).

[Tommygun]

That scale of incoming mass in the form of food would require the freighters also haul out gigatons of "biowaste" (in the Elite: Dangerous parlance).

Burn it in plasma trash furnaces or recycle it back into food.

[Bill Phil]

That scale of incoming mass in the form of food would require the freighters also haul out gigatons of "biowaste" (in the Elite: Dangerous parlance).

They did have to so that. The reliance on that as well as food being shipped in contributed to the fall of the Galactic Empire.

Oh, and Terminus. It has little metals, if any at all.

Arth in Starflight is interesting, as well as the Crystal Planet.

[NERVAfan]

Feeding 45 billion people wouldn't require imports for a civilization with interstellar-level tech. We could probably get Earth's food production level up to that in less than 50 years (maybe quite a bit less) if we wanted, assuming we didn't care about preserving natural environments and were willing to stop being irrationally afraid of GMO crops.

[Red Iron Crown]

Feeding 45 billion people wouldn't require imports for a civilization with interstellar-level tech. We could probably get Earth's food production level up to that in less than 50 years (maybe quite a bit less) if we wanted, assuming we didn't care about preserving natural environments and were willing to stop being irrationally afraid of GMO crops.

The book was written in the the 1950s when the world population was under three billion and there were still people starving (though of course that's more of a distribution problem than a supply problem). I'm not sure Asimov anticipated the advances in food production that were to come.

[magnemoe]

The book was written in the the 1950s when the world population was under three billion and there were still people starving (though of course that's more of a distribution problem than a supply problem). I'm not sure Asimov anticipated the advances in food production that were to come.

Yes, however 45 billions would not take up so much space. yes you would get lots of very huge cities but only 15 times larger than in 1950.

Agree about the food situation. Its way better today even if population is more than doubled.

[problemecium]

I did come up with one myself once, but lately I've started to think it wouldn't actually work.

Could it be possible to have a hollow, bubble-like planet that has a solid outer crust and an essentially empty interior (filled with gas maybe)? The idea was to make a planet with a huge surface area but not too much gravity. The concern is that there'd be nothing holding the higher latitudes in place.

[sndrtj]

I did come up with one myself once, but lately I've started to think it wouldn't actually work.

Could it be possible to have a hollow, bubble-like planet that has a solid outer crust and an essentially empty interior (filled with gas maybe)? The idea was to make a planet with a huge surface area but not too much gravity. The concern is that there'd be nothing holding the higher latitudes in place.

You could strut it?

Or use unobtanium ;-)

[NERVAfan]

The book was written in the the 1950s when the world population was under three billion and there were still people starving (though of course that's more of a distribution problem than a supply problem). I'm not sure Asimov anticipated the advances in food production that were to come.

Yeah, the Green Revolution in agriculture seems to have taken pretty much everybody by surprise.

And I don't think many people realize how high the theoretical limits are. Cellulose is made of sugar - it has tons of energy - we just can't digest it. If we commercialized a way to break down cellulose into sugars - and people are working on this for biofuel purposes - then all the corn/wheat/rice stalks become a potential calorie source, massively multiplying the calorie output of most of the world's farming regions.

More speculatively... photosynthesis only converts a couple percent of incoming solar energy to chemical energy. This might be significantly improvable by advanced-enough genetic engineering.

And then there's the possibility of de-desertifying the Earth's deserts (the Sahara was apparently mostly grassland up to ~7000 years ago...)

[Soda Popinski]

Burn it in plasma trash furnaces or recycle it back into food.

Wouldn't solve the increasing mass problem. If it stays on planet, the net mass will continue to increase, while decreasing on the food production planets. There was a planet in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where a very popular tourism planet had the opposite problem. People gained too much weight eating decadently, and were slowing "eroding" the mass of the planet. The solution was you had to leave with the same weight you came in with. If you were over, the excess mass was removed surgically.

[cantab]

I did come up with one myself once, but lately I've started to think it wouldn't actually work.

Could it be possible to have a hollow, bubble-like planet that has a solid outer crust and an essentially empty interior (filled with gas maybe)? The idea was to make a planet with a huge surface area but not too much gravity. The concern is that there'd be nothing holding the higher latitudes in place.

If the gas was at sufficient pressure it would support the crust. Of course by that point it would be less a gas and more a supercritical fluid. If it was rich in hydrogen the density would be relatively low.

The problem is how does the crust stay on the top when it's denser than the underlying gasmantle? It's never going to be intact, cracks will happen, and they'll allow the gas to come upwards to cover the crust. On Earth the oceanic crust is denser than the underlying mantle, but the crust is made from that very mantle, allowing it to be replenished. I'm not sure this could happen with a reasonable-composition gasmantle.

[magnemoe]

If the gas was at sufficient pressure it would support the crust. Of course by that point it would be less a gas and more a supercritical fluid. If it was rich in hydrogen the density would be relatively low.

The problem is how does the crust stay on the top when it's denser than the underlying gasmantle? It's never going to be intact, cracks will happen, and they'll allow the gas to come upwards to cover the crust. On Earth the oceanic crust is denser than the underlying mantle, but the crust is made from that very mantle, allowing it to be replenished. I'm not sure this could happen with a reasonable-composition gasmantle.

Why not do it simple, huge planet, make it pretty light with an small iron core (can still be earth sized because of the overall mass)

Now make the days short and the spin will reduce the effect of gravity.

http://www.worlddreambank.org/L/LYR.HTM

is a good beginning, probably make it a bit smaller, you can probably not cut density much.

Less water to give more land and you have a big planet.

Why do you need an giant planet anyway, earth is pretty big if you want to walk everywhere and even Lyr look small a million kilometers away.