The reason Alpha A and B don't have many planets is because planets can't orbit too far out, as Alpha A and B can pass within Saturn's distance to Sol of each other
NASA’s real-time science encyclopedia of deep space exploration. Our scientists and hardworking robots are exploring the wild frontiers of our solar system.
Based on the photographs we took coming in, there's a big hurricane over the subsolar point (tidally locked, remember?) while the rest of the planet seems relatively calm
I would say that it doesn’t make sense to start breaking it down now, but keeping it around isn’t a bad idea. We could just decide what to do with it later.
15:06
Maybe when we decide to look at the moon more closely
It has higher concentrations of radioactives and metals than Earth, but no oil or natural gas to speak of, which is odd for a planet home to multicellular protein-in-water life.
15:17
Mars is planning a manned mission, but Jupiter is not.
It really wouldn’t cost that much more, would it?
And it’s not that odd it lacks fossil fuels, it took a very specific era in earth’s history to give us our big deposits
So we’re upgraded, which means we probably have a pretty big weapons lead on Tempest should things go south. I don’t want to fight it, but we should be careful just in case
It makes sense, it’s unknown what we’ll encounter and what the other probes might do. Plus our lasers can help deflect orbital debris, and possibly for the core of a laser boosting system for parasites
16:00
The mass driver also can get some dual purpose uses
Alright, so we need to set up a small town with plenty of growth potential, fields/greenhouses/hydroponics fit to sustain them, and probably a basic orbital lift capacity, a comms network, maybe piggyback GPS off of that, and some basic weather/orbital monitoring sats, and set up mining for industry and soil. Are they bringing any earth animals or embryos for them with them, or are they planning on living a vegan diet? Alternatively, do they want us to try to find compatible local animals for food?
They'll be bringing cows for milk, chickens for eggs, and dogs and cats as pets (all in embryo form). They're planning on a vegetarian diet, but if the local life is compatible, it would be appreciated.
So next step, assign the orbiter to go into a polar orbit to search for a good colony site, have Fahrenheit and Oppy continue learning about the biosphere and geology, and begin setting up a basic comms network?
17:33
We want to be able to talk to everything at all times, id think
Yeah, but island hopping could be in effect, and we aren’t sure how long ago they were isolated (whether by plate tectonics, the loss of a land/ice bridge, what have you)
Alright. So, mining rig for the main moon to get us rare earths, a few geo synch sats to provide the start of our comms/GPS network, and maybe start a probe for ...Asimov, I’d say. It’s probably the one people back home are most interested in.
Just to confirm, there’s no gas giants?
@Overmind can you give @KAL_9000 pinning rights in here to make trawling through for major posts easier?
Oh, and is our current laser grid good enough to serve as a viable laser launch first stage for an interplanetary probe, or would this be a good time to upgrade?
We are an exploratory probe first and foremost. We can construct probes to visit all the other planets and laser-launch them for 100 minerals, if you like.
Alright we should probably go ahead and ping Musk and ask for a summary of what they’ve found, and inform them we intend to send a probe their way soon
Musk: Roger, here's my data. I'll let you send a probe to Niven if you allow me to send one to Bradbury.
18:22
SXS Musk relationship status updated from NEUTRAL to CORDIAL!
18:23
Niven appears to be a bigger, tidally-locked version of Mars. However, it still orbits in the habitable zone, and there is a high concentration of oxygen in its thin atmosphere.
What fuel do our drives run on? Is it just high-power ion? Also, what do our powerplants require? We should probably sort out those two things before we do anything else.
I say we start work on:
1. An atmospheric reconnaissance probe to check the gas giant's atmosphere.
2. Explore the mining site to see what metals we have around there.
I seriously suggest we get a long term power system in here now. What materials do we have on hand around the mining site on Bradbury's moon? (We need to name that.)
We’ve got a solar powered airship (helium lifted) with an exploratory rover.
...we’re currently focused on exploration, and yeah we’ve got mining up and running
17:43
Like, we want to see what’s in the system before we go strip mining
Send probes to all planets and possible asteroids, and scan for anything that can possibly be used for large-scale power generation or complex industry. Specifically, heavier metals.
In the long run, I say we focus on building orbital industry around Heinlein, and should therefore increase the amount of attention probes going to that system and it's moons get.
(edited)
2
