Author Topic: Planet number 9 and how it could affect the Btech Sol system.  (Read 8704 times)

marauder648

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Well it seems that NASA thinks there's a 9th planet out there somewhere, possibly a 'super-earth'

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On October 4, 2017, NASA issued a press release claiming that a massive, invisible planet best explains gravitational and orbital anomalies in the outer solar system. Planets don’t emit their own light, and because Planet Nine is so far away, it’s too dark to view directly. “There are now five different lines of observational evidence pointing to the existence of Planet Nine,” said Caltech planetary astrophysicist Konstantin Batygin, who along with Caltech astronomer Mike Brown, co-authored a 2016 study of Kuiper Belt objects. The Kuiper Belt contains trillions of leftover objects from the formation of our solar system, such as comets and dwarf planets like Pluto and Sedna (which are also known as “trans-Neptunian” objects). It’s shaped like a disc and lies beyond the orbit of Neptune.

https://secondnexus.com/science/nasa-9th-planet-super-earth/?utm_content=inf_10_1164_2&tse_id=INF_4fa8a610c58e11e7b926579f881108d6

This of course got my lil brain a churning.  I would assume that by the time of the Terran Hegemony that the Sol system would be pretty well mapped out and that  any asteroids that might be an impactor have either been long deflected or stopped and strip mined.  But the area beyond Neptune where Planet 9, a super-earth with somewhere around 10 x the mass of Terra is assumed to be (and No 9 is presumed to be somewhere around 100 billion miles from Sol herself).  That is a LOT of space to explore and catalogue, but I would assume that in that time, the planet would have been found during the Hegemony era, either by Hegemony scouts or Belter prospecters.

Of course this planet is going to be uninhabitable, the gravity is going to be very high, crushingly so for humans and its going to be a extremely cold, airless rock.  But still this is the Hegemony we're talking about.  If people can't live there, but scans indicate useful deposits of ores etc, what about automated facilities/equipment to mine it.  Use a mass driver to fire payloads into space for collection as you'd not be able to land a ship there. 

After the Amaris Civil War and ComStar's control of the Sol system, what do folks think this world could be, would it just be forgotten, maybe its got an orbital facility as a hidden base or something.  There's a lot you could do, even if you can't land there.
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Nightlord01

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Re: Planet number 9 and how it could affect the Btech Sol system.
« Reply #1 on: 16 November 2017, 06:29:45 »
Best to keep in mind two things:

Battletech is not the future it's 1985's future.

In the BTU there is no Planet 9, or if there is, it's Pluto. Aside from that even the BTU has a nodding acquaintance with the laws of physics, trying to fire off anything with a base G load of 10 is doomed to fail.

I'd guess that there may be some satellites for surveillance out there, but that would be about it. You'd have the barest of solar radiation, and would be entirely dependent on more inhabited planets for your food and supplies. Yes, it may possess untold riches, but let's face it, there's so much already floating around in the belt and on other planets that a hard to reach planet is not that tempting.

Frabby

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Re: Planet number 9 and how it could affect the Btech Sol system.
« Reply #2 on: 16 November 2017, 07:46:18 »
I'm willing to assume the planet exists in the BTU if it exists in the real-world solar system.

However, given its location and supposed mass, it will be a wholly uninteresting, dull place, commercially speaking. Uranus and Neptune aren't much mentioned in BT either, primarily because there's simply nothing there.

And then there's the fact that humanity, even during the Terran Hegemony and early Star League era, spread out hundreds of light-years from Terra, discovering, exploring and settling scores if not hundreds of new systems.
There simply is no reason to go back to planet 9 (or Planet X, as it was previously referred to) if those ores can be obtained elsewhere. Not to mention the effort of prospecting a 10g world for ores in the first place.
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marauder648

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Re: Planet number 9 and how it could affect the Btech Sol system.
« Reply #3 on: 16 November 2017, 08:17:16 »
So at first possibly a scientific curiosity and then basically forgotten, makes sense :)
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Re: Planet number 9 and how it could affect the Btech Sol system.
« Reply #4 on: 16 November 2017, 09:04:05 »
This sounds like a job for...

THE DEPARTMENT OF MEGA ENGINEERING!!!  (DoME)

Seriously, those guys loved a challenge.  They'd try to terraform a gas giant if you gave them a large enough budget.  I can see them using planetbusters to break Planet X into a drifting rubble field, reducing the gravity of each individual chunk to habitable levels, then letting the Belters have at it.
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Re: Planet number 9 and how it could affect the Btech Sol system.
« Reply #5 on: 16 November 2017, 09:13:12 »
It´s 100 billion miles out there. 1,000 AU. That is *very* far away. Call it three months or so at 1g burn, each way. Plus it´s uninhabitable, probably barely above 0K surface temperature. It´ll be extremely hard to find, being barely warmer and brighter than the background and a comparably small chunk of somewhere along an orbital path well over 300 billion miles long.

That place just isn´t going to be high on anybody´s list of priorities. In BT, campaigns take place in places that are important enough to defend, which I don´t really think this place can be considered. It may well be there in the BT universe, but ignore on the military level BT games and fiction are concerned with, much like nearly all the rest of nearly all known star systems.

On the plus side, this would be an excellent place for someone to put a super-secret facility that you don´t want anybody to stumble across by accident. If any of the "Hidden Five" are still unaccounted for, I´d say a planet like this would be a prime candidate.
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Re: Planet number 9 and how it could affect the Btech Sol system.
« Reply #6 on: 16 November 2017, 11:18:31 »
Poor choice for the "Hidden Five", since it would require regular shipments of food and supplies, which might be raise a few unwanted questions ("Where does that strange jumpship go every three weeks?  It never shows up in any of the inhabited systems within range.")

A massive disc-shaped planet is one possibility, or a binary pair orbiting each other fairly closely would produce the same gravitational effect.  That could mean two sizable bodies with 5g gravitational fields (very awkward, but not "impossible"), rather than one more powerful field which would appear to be the same at a significant distance.

It still doesn't make a reasonable candidate for a secret facility, because you really can't live on it.  It might be possible to mine using automated equipment (nuclear power could supply sufficient heat to prevent freeze-ups), if there's anything of extreme value.

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Re: Planet number 9 and how it could affect the Btech Sol system.
« Reply #7 on: 16 November 2017, 11:29:15 »
Poor choice for the "Hidden Five", since it would require regular shipments of food and supplies, which might be raise a few unwanted questions ("Where does that strange jumpship go every three weeks?  It never shows up in any of the inhabited systems within range.")

In 300 years, though, nobody ever asked that question in the Odessa system, where Gabriel was located.
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SteelRaven

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Re: Planet number 9 and how it could affect the Btech Sol system.
« Reply #8 on: 16 November 2017, 14:04:10 »
Pluto exist in the BTU, just doesn't come up that often. The 9th planet has existed in other sci-fi but always treated as a 'secret base' due to it's distance from earth and other more planets. Unless we find something exceptional on 9, would be easy to say that the planet simple glossed over much like the other planets that don't come up often.   
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Tai Dai Cultist

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Re: Planet number 9 and how it could affect the Btech Sol system.
« Reply #9 on: 16 November 2017, 16:11:27 »
I agree with and will reiterate the notion that it's difficult to conceive of a planet 9 having resources that aren't vastly easier to access elsewhere among the thousands of inhabited star systems.

Edit:  Oh  yeah and also this:
Battletech is not the future it's 1985's future.

We could invent interstellar FTL technology tomorrow and if so, it still wouldn't mean we have to re-jigger the BTU to follow "real life" FTL warpspeed rules.  The real world is well beyond the point of divergence from the BTU timeline... we've already missed key events that lead/led to the formation of the Western Alliance, which in turn would become the Terran Alliance, and ultimately the Terran Hegemony.
« Last Edit: 16 November 2017, 16:17:55 by Tai Dai Cultist »

Maingunnery

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Re: Planet number 9 and how it could affect the Btech Sol system.
« Reply #10 on: 16 November 2017, 19:27:55 »

It would likely make a nice location for an experimental Yard.
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Re: Planet number 9 and how it could affect the Btech Sol system.
« Reply #11 on: 16 November 2017, 19:47:59 »
Thing we are getting a little ahead of our selves; we need to find and lean more about the 9th planet before you start writing about it. I mean, why not talk about Eris? Or for something that would be a little funny, Haumea. 
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Re: Planet number 9 and how it could affect the Btech Sol system.
« Reply #12 on: 16 November 2017, 20:37:27 »
Thing we are getting a little ahead of our selves; we need to find and lean more about the 9th planet before you start writing about it. I mean, why not talk about Eris? Or for something that would be a little funny, Haumea. 
Chiron is also a good one to include, after all when it was first discovered it was thought to be a planet.

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Re: Planet number 9 and how it could affect the Btech Sol system.
« Reply #13 on: 16 November 2017, 20:42:39 »
Anything that far out would be easily accessible to hostile JumpShips/Warships, and thus indefensible...

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Re: Planet number 9 and how it could affect the Btech Sol system.
« Reply #14 on: 17 November 2017, 09:12:22 »
The last strong hold of the SLDF, which no one knew was there since everyone was jumping OUT of the Sol Star System.

Or the hidden home world of Belters since no one asked where they actually hang out. ;)

Or it's no there in the Battletech universe, since somewhere before the Succession Wars the planet simply "Jumped" out.  [blank]
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Re: Planet number 9 and how it could affect the Btech Sol system.
« Reply #15 on: 18 November 2017, 06:30:42 »
The last strong hold of the SLDF, which no one knew was there since everyone was jumping OUT of the Sol Star System.

Or the hidden home world of Belters since no one asked where they actually hang out. ;)

Or it's no there in the Battletech universe, since somewhere before the Succession Wars the planet simply "Jumped" out.  [blank]

Big issues with the first two: It's gravity is projected to be ten times that of Earth, you aren't going to be living anywhere near the surface, you're going to require constant resupply, and even mining isn't going to work much because getting things off planet will be nigh on impossible.

Option four is it's as irrelevant in the BTU as it is in RL, aside from scientific curiosity.

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Re: Planet number 9 and how it could affect the Btech Sol system.
« Reply #16 on: 18 November 2017, 21:19:19 »
What would it take get probe out there to try search for it.  If the planet is bit invisible to naked eye due to the distance it is from the sun, it will be hard the skies for it. 

I kept wishing New Horizons had enough fuel left to try attempt to scan for it. I doubt it could find it.

As joke i told someone we should called the planet , since were dying to have Rendezvous with it.  Also it's name a Hindu god Ramachandra,  so it would be interesting name.
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Re: Planet number 9 and how it could affect the Btech Sol system.
« Reply #17 on: 18 November 2017, 22:16:11 »
If it's out there... why is it out there?

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Re: Planet number 9 and how it could affect the Btech Sol system.
« Reply #18 on: 18 November 2017, 22:47:48 »
At the moment we don't even know if it has a solid surface. Is it possible that it's an undersized gas giant? That would make a surface base pretty unlikely, regardless of temperature or surface gravity.

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Re: Planet number 9 and how it could affect the Btech Sol system.
« Reply #19 on: 18 November 2017, 23:11:05 »
Pluto exist in the BTU, just doesn't come up that often. The 9th planet has existed in other sci-fi but always treated as a 'secret base' due to it's distance from earth and other more planets. Unless we find something exceptional on 9, would be easy to say that the planet simple glossed over much like the other planets that don't come up often.

Say that to a certain experimental Texas ;)

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Re: Planet number 9 and how it could affect the Btech Sol system.
« Reply #20 on: 18 November 2017, 23:35:00 »
I was only pointing out that it wouldn't need a big ret-con. A 9th Planet matters more in the real world than in the fiction interstellar space opera known as Battletech. 
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Re: Planet number 9 and how it could affect the Btech Sol system.
« Reply #22 on: 19 November 2017, 02:18:10 »
Battletech is not the future it's 1985's future.
So? If the Planet 9 is real, it's been there since well before the 80s. So this doesn't matter in the slightest. I do concur that it wouldn't matter in the Universe unless the Erinyes is hiding out there.

Also, it's just 'the future'. 'The future of the 80s' is a retiring buzz-phrase at this point.

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Re: Planet number 9 and how it could affect the Btech Sol system.
« Reply #23 on: 20 November 2017, 04:31:45 »
So? If the Planet 9 is real, it's been there since well before the 80s. So this doesn't matter in the slightest. I do concur that it wouldn't matter in the Universe unless the Erinyes is hiding out there.

Also, it's just 'the future'. 'The future of the 80s' is a retiring buzz-phrase at this point.

Let's just say I don't agree. The fact that you don't subscribe to the notion is really no skin off my back.

At the moment we don't even know if it has a solid surface. Is it possible that it's an undersized gas giant? That would make a surface base pretty unlikely, regardless of temperature or surface gravity.


Even a small gas giant would have too much albedo to be this dim, and 10 times Earth's mass is way too small to be a gas planet, just not enough gravity to make the atmosphere dense enough.

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Re: Planet number 9 and how it could affect the Btech Sol system.
« Reply #24 on: 20 November 2017, 09:51:03 »
At the moment we don't even know if it has a solid surface. Is it possible that it's an undersized gas giant? That would make a surface base pretty unlikely, regardless of temperature or surface gravity.
Wouldn't the gasses freeze solid at those incredibly low temperatures?  The surface could be frozen methane or ammonia.

Unless there are sizable Germanium deposits there, or something else incredibly valuable in the BT universe, there would be absolutely no reason to justify the horrendous expense of doing ANYTHING there.  The gravity would be almost lethally crushing, the cold would require massive amounts of energy expenditure, and the costs of lifting anything off the surface would exceed the value of practically anything that could potentially be found there, short of technologically advanced alien artifacts.

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Re: Planet number 9 and how it could affect the Btech Sol system.
« Reply #25 on: 20 November 2017, 11:04:58 »
Wouldn't it be Planet 10/X if 1980's future would still consider Pluto a planet?

After all, if we can decide on a whim to reclassify Pluto to a dwarf planet, why can't they just reclassify it as a planet later on?
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Re: Planet number 9 and how it could affect the Btech Sol system.
« Reply #26 on: 20 November 2017, 12:06:04 »
Wouldn't it be Planet 10/X if 1980's future would still consider Pluto a planet?

After all, if we can decide on a whim to reclassify Pluto to a dwarf planet, why can't they just reclassify it as a planet later on?
One would need to redefine the term planet....
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Re: Planet number 9 and how it could affect the Btech Sol system.
« Reply #27 on: 20 November 2017, 14:35:08 »
One would need to redefine the term planet....
that is actually what they did when they decided pluto didn't qualify any more

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Re: Planet number 9 and how it could affect the Btech Sol system.
« Reply #28 on: 20 November 2017, 15:28:58 »
that is actually what they did when they decided pluto didn't qualify any more
There wasn't a proper scientific term before then, if we kept the same loose definition then we likely end up talking about planet 90.
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Re: Planet number 9 and how it could affect the Btech Sol system.
« Reply #29 on: 21 November 2017, 07:24:16 »
that is actually what they did when they decided pluto didn't qualify any more

Umm, no they didn't.

What they did was quantify the requirements to be a planet, in the process of defining not only a planet, but a dwarf planet, planetoid, proto planet etc actually were. This is one of the biggest steps in science, definitions. Without a definition, you can't be sure that every one of you is on the same page while conducting scientific research.

 

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