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Rogue planets

#1
What would be nice is the concept of rogue planets. Planets that escaped from a normal orbit in a star system and roam the universe. I imagine some of these will hold artifacts or other hard to get supplies or maybe nothing. Maybe some have been take over by pirates. Since they arent part of a normal star system anymore these planets should be really really hard to find but reward people that explore and stumble upon them.
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Re: Rogue planets

#2
Natural Cow wrote:What would be nice is the concept of rogue planets. Planets that escaped from a normal orbit in a star system and roam the universe. I imagine some of these will hold artifacts or other hard to get supplies or maybe nothing. Maybe some have been take over by pirates. Since they arent part of a normal star system anymore these planets should be really really hard to find but reward people that explore and stumble upon them.
Sounds intriguing.
Wouldn't they be huge asteroids without a sun (or many), though?
Not that I'd mind huge roaming dead rocks covered in ruins, mind you. :mrgreen:
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Re: Rogue planets

#4
Natural Cow wrote:Basicly yes it could be asteroids but that all depends on the size of the thing. I dont know if gasious giants are able to go rogue, i guess when they do they will loose alot of the gas and the inner planet is revealed
I'd personally be more interested in seeing a habitable planet go rogue (maybe taken out of its orbit by a cataclysm or a surprise wormhole) so that we would see the remnants of whatever lived on it when the mean temperature wasn't 3°K :mrgreen:
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Re: Rogue planets

#6
would be an interesting project. turning a rogue lifeless (or passable not so lifeless....) planet into a base of operations. i can see it now my own personal mobile death star XD.
If I've rambled and gone off topic im sorry but i tend to be long winded as you might notice if you stumble across my other post XD. thanks for reading.
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Re: Rogue planets

#7
Without any outside forces acting on the planet (solar radiation, extra-planetary gravity, extraterrestrial impacts) the thing would become a giant dark lump of frozen material. Devoid of any possibility of life... unless you want to go with the possibility that life exists near underwater volcanic eruptions.

Either way, it seems to me that the only thing it would be good for is salvage.

« Colonization? Imagine the resources needed to try to heat the damn thing to livable temperatures.

« Base? As per OP "escape normal orbit in a star system and roam the universe" Sans the fact that, as per this post and this topic, playable space will be limited to inter-solar system areas as it seems that after hitting a designated range you'll have to select whether or not you want to jump to star: X, Z, W, A, or stay in current system. So then it would be "impossible" to find a planet just drifting

« Gas-giants? As I recall from some science classes the only reason the gas is still "covering" the planet/ rock-iron core is because of the MASSIVE amount of gravity. That being the only reason why solar winds don't just blow the atmospheres away. So if a gas-giant went rogue it would be safe to say that it would still be covered in gas, and the crushing pressure of 10,000 Earth atmospheres would still be relevant to any base/colonization efforts.
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Re: Rogue planets

#8
Rogue planet + space elevator = huge industrial capacity.
Who cares everything is dead, that just means you don't have to care what you're doing to the atmosphere. :)

Though, in LT, a rogue planet could exist. I just don't think you'd be able to exploit it. But perhaps you can do business with the people who are?
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
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Re: Rogue planets

#9
Raytheon wrote:Without any outside forces acting on the planet (solar radiation, extra-planetary gravity, extraterrestrial impacts) the thing would become a giant dark lump of frozen material. Devoid of any possibility of life... unless you want to go with the possibility that life exists near underwater volcanic eruptions.
Not so - many large bodies have their own internal sources of energy, which become thermal at some point. Think of geothermal energy here, or the fact that Jupiter emits far more energy than it absorbs. Plus, if you have moons, you may well have tidally locked orbits where the squeezing effect generates a lot of heat - Jupiter's Io is a good example.
« Colonization? Imagine the resources needed to try to heat the damn thing to livable temperatures.
If there's some economic reason to do so, then it's worth it. There will be energy available to enable exploitation of whatever's there, as well as the living needs of colonists. If we can heat spaceships in a vacuum in the 1960s, we can sure heat a colony on a rogue planet in the far future. What about a fusion reactor? Or maybe matter-antimatter annihilation, or something involving exotic matter? if FTL travel is common, providing localised power far from a star should be no problem. The energy technology would not be the problem, just the economic viability. Even on Earth we have mining towns in the high Arctic, simply because the return is worth it.
« Base? As per OP "escape normal orbit in a star system and roam the universe" Sans the fact that, as per this post and this topic, playable space will be limited to inter-solar system areas as it seems that after hitting a designated range you'll have to select whether or not you want to jump to star: X, Z, W, A, or stay in current system. So then it would be "impossible" to find a planet just drifting
it would have to have its own room, just like any other system. The only difference is that there won't be a bright star at the centre. There could be all sorts of other features, including asteroids and Oort snowballs which could be close to the centre because of the lack of solar wind. Maybe even a large debris disc, a bit like a giant version of Saturn's rings. Think of a failed star with planets, which is essentially the same as a gas giant with moons. A proto-star system that wasn't large enough to begin fusion, but still has a lot of matter in the form of planets/moons etc.
« Gas-giants? As I recall from some science classes the only reason the gas is still "covering" the planet/ rock-iron core is because of the MASSIVE amount of gravity. That being the only reason why solar winds don't just blow the atmospheres away. So if a gas-giant went rogue it would be safe to say that it would still be covered in gas, and the crushing pressure of 10,000 Earth atmospheres would still be relevant to any base/colonization efforts.
You would no more or less colonise a wandering gas giant than a captive one. However, you could sure use its rocky moons, and maybe put balloon installations in its atmosphere as has been suggested for Jupiter. Maybe all the habs will be orbital. If there's stuff there that people want and it's economically viable to get it, then they will do so. There's no reason to suppose that rogue planets would be resource poor.

LT can have a diverse range of systems, and this is just one possibility amongst many. If it's hard to find then that would make an ideal site for those who don't want to be found.
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Re: Rogue planets

#10
Forgive my... criticism? pessimism? I've spent the dominant amount of my game-play (4x, RTS, RPG, MMO, FPS, etc. ) dealing with Earthly ground-based things. I've only delved into this madness known as the final frontier after a love-hate relationship with Eve and a pretty solid love for Planet Side 2 and my favorite old time-harpy Galactic Civilization (2)
JabbleWok wrote:Not so - many large bodies have their own internal sources of energy, which ...

... don't want to be found.
OT: In relation to Jupiter's Io, that's what I meant by "extra-planetary gravitation". But that sub-planet/ moon is being stretched so radically (crust shifting +/- 300 meters for every "earth-quake") that I couldn't foresee a reason to try to do anything with the surface.

But if you're talking about a thermal planet then I would think that since the Sun is gone/ never made it past puberty then the core would have long been dry of thermals. Doesn't count out the fact that you could mine the thing for frozen water, or it's minerals with an arc-welder type of cutting drill.

« Colonization? Was still stuck in the past here. So accounting for the galactic leaps forward in technology then yeah, doing some A/C or generator work... or terraforming... ugh... would then be completely possible.Ice-planet? Glass it Covenant-style, that'll heat it up!

«Base? I was wandering the forums and came across a post by Josh... I can't find it now, but basically he said that there will be "Systems that don't have stars! Just like my asteroid videos." So I've just debunked my statement on that.
But then that makes me think: How would we find a "dark" system? Unless there's a scanning feature that could scan for heavenly bodies to the order of thousands of light-years away. I think would be OP to the nth degree. But "chancing" upon them seems like it's out of the realm of practical possibility if travel is limited to jump-gates and worm holes, in which case you're going to jump past the dark system if it's uninhabited... First-world problems...
«Gas-giants? Thank you for opening my mind. Why the hell wouldn't I want to find a massive untapped, uninhabited, uncharted source of Helium-3 and the varying moons full of resources and research opportunities? Anyone¿

Edit* Linked the wrong post.
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Re: Rogue planets

#11
Raytheon wrote:
JabbleWok wrote:Not so - many large bodies have their own internal sources of energy, which ...

... don't want to be found.
Hehe! Well, not impossible to be found, but definitely stealthier! There's a gulf of difference between a planet retaining a useful amount thermal energy, and a vast ball of hydrogen undergoing fusion.
OT: In relation to Jupiter's Io, that's what I meant by "extra-planetary gravitation". But that sub-planet/ moon is being stretched so radically (crust shifting +/- 300 meters for every "earth-quake") that I couldn't foresee a reason to try to do anything with the surface.
Well, you could a) extract sulphur (and probably other stuff), and b) use motion-based generators to power the extractors, as well as charge energy storage units (batteries!) that can be used elsewhere in the system.
But if you're talking about a thermal planet then I would think that since the Sun is gone/ never made it past puberty then the core would have long been dry of thermals. Doesn't count out the fact that you could mine the thing for frozen water, or it's minerals with an arc-welder type of cutting drill.
Ah, but that energy doesn't come from the sun, it's inherent to the planet. It's partly the retained energy from formation by bombardment (which would create a molten planet whose surface cools, more or less like the Earth), as well as radioactive decay adding to that. Eventually it will cool to zero, but so will the whole universe and it will take a very long time - much longer than our current observable universe's age. If Earth were a rogue planet (or a moon of a bigger one), its internal thermal energy would be pretty much exactly the same as now. The geothermal properties would be just the same. Tectonic motion is not solar powered!
But then that makes me think: How would we find a "dark" system? Unless there's a scanning feature that could scan for heavenly bodies to the order of thousands of light-years away. I think would be OP to the nth degree. But "chancing" upon them seems like it's out of the realm of practical possibility if travel is limited to jump-gates and worm holes, in which case you're going to jump past the dark system if it's uninhabited... First-world problems...
Maybe by fine examination of the shape of spacetime. Maybe by occultation, as it blinks out a background star. Maybe it emits enough energy at certain wavelengths whereby it can be detected. If we can have starships, then we can have extremely high quality interferometry from deep space; a ship could unfurl a sensing array across thousands of km, so it could even spot duckponds on the planet. Maybe there will be properties of hyperspace (if it's in the game) that can be examined, revealing gravitational or energetic bodies. In a sci-fi setting, I'm sure we can come up with some excuse!
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Re: Rogue planets

#12
JabbleWok wrote: Hehe! Well, not impossible to be found...
... I'm sure we can come up with some excuse!
Directly related to my lack of articulation:

« I know the heat of a planets core doesn't come from a smattering of solar radiation. I'm simply talking about time scale. Stars blink out of existence over a period of billions, or 100's of billions, of years. I'm just saying that over that course of time the planet would cool down. And I don't know if you're patronizing me, I hope not, but of course tectonics aren't solar powered; it's all about that convective flow.

Take the case of Mars: that planet is geologically dead, and the core is in a process of cooling far more rapidly than ours. This is happening way before the sun has blinked out of existence (obviously), so assuming in game there is a system with a long-dead star then one could also assume that the planets have been dead for longer than the star has been.

« Until our ability to scan, options of travel, modes of exploration, etc. have been firmly established by Josh and the game engine the discovery of a dark system in all of space seems like a stretch. Maybe I just can't wrap my mind around searching for something dark, ostensibly dead and not giving off heat signatures, and small compared to the size of the galaxy.

Depending on what the end product actually allows you to do and build then get your hands on that 10km long whip and start scanning. Otherwise, exploration might just be pointing to the outfield stands and claiming that's where your home-run is going to go... but then, people do get lucky.

{ Fixed quote block : DWMagus }
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Re: Rogue planets

#13
Raytheon wrote:« I know the heat of a planets core doesn't come from a smattering of solar radiation. I'm simply talking about time scale. Stars blink out of existence over a period of billions, or 100's of billions, of years. I'm just saying that over that course of time the planet would cool down. And I don't know if you're patronizing me, I hope not, but of course tectonics aren't solar powered; it's all about that convective flow.
No, not patronising at all, I really thought you meant that intenal planet thermal energy was dependent on solar energy, from: "I would think that since the Sun is gone/ never made it past puberty then the core would have long been dry of thermals."

You're quite correct to say that an old planet will have cooled more than a young one, and the local geology is a factor. My point is that the cooling is independent of the planet being a rogue or in orbit. That's primarily about age & geology, not location. Also, that refers to internal energy, not surface temperature - an energy-rich planet would still likely have a freezing surface in a sunless system, as the outer layers act as an insulator. To colonise it you'd sure need well-heated habs, but you would have plenty of energy to do so.

So yes, LT could have old, cold planets as well as younger, warmer ones. Rogues and orbitals both.
« Until our ability to scan, options of travel, modes of exploration, etc. have been firmly established by Josh and the game engine the discovery of a dark system in all of space seems like a stretch. Maybe I just can't wrap my mind around searching for something dark, ostensibly dead and not giving off heat signatures, and small compared to the size of the galaxy.
It would certainly be harder to find than a star, but even now we're finding them 100 light years away:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20309762

FWIW there's another thread covering this here; @admins - maybe worth a join?

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