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.