Hesperus II or I Love Wet Bulb Temperatures

[Vehrec]

The Hesperus factories are noteworthy in the 31st century as a kind of Star League Excess, a massive factory producing hundreds of mechs a year, even in ruins, with a minimal factory staff.  But in the 23rd and 25th centuries, the history of the planet makes no sense at all.  A check of the planet's history on Sarna shows that it was host to a pope, briefly, and then was the location of a early shared colony between the Lyran commonwealth and the Terran Hegemony, despite being two-jumps from the Terran border.  But Hesperus II also has an equatorial temperature of 85 degrees.  On exceptionally hot days, water standing outside boils, and even at high latitudes and altitudes, I think the air must exceed the Wet Bulb point.  Nobody in their right mind should look at this place as anything other than a resource extraction location, even with terraforming, until the temperature is brought down by a lot.

So what's the story here?  Did Hesperus II get some sort of bioweapon unleashed on it that raised it's temperature 50 degrees?  Why was the Terran Hegemony building mech factories so far outside it's own borders?  Why was there a "archiepiscopal palace" for a pope to rule from here in the 2200s?  Who were the civilians the Lyran agents slipped out by impersonating?  Does any of this early history make sense to anyone?

[AlphaMirage]

You can build at high altitude and polar latitudes, use orbital infrastructure to shade the planet, or build underground with minimal exposure to open sky. Early settlers could very well have been prisoners from the Terran Hegemony forced to hard labor in the colonies with the certainty that they would die from exposure if they escape. It also makes assaulting the planet very difficult for the invaders so that is a bonus for the defenders.

[Vehrec]

You can build at high altitude and polar latitudes, use orbital infrastructure to shade the planet, or build underground with minimal exposure to open sky. Early settlers could very well have been prisoners from the Terran Hegemony forced to hard labor in the colonies with the certainty that they would die from exposure if they escape. It also makes assaulting the planet very difficult for the invaders so that is a bonus for the defenders.

Even if you build at high-altitude and in polar regions, you need to be at like, the equivalent of Mount Everest or the antarctic plateau to find anywhere where workers don't need active cooling to remain alive.  Prisoners from the Terran Hegemony would have been simply shipped there to die of heat stroke within hours even at relatively high latitudes I feel.  Assuming the temperature drops by .7 degrees for each degree north you move, at the north pole, you are still at a balmy 22 degrees average temperature, and to reach 22 degrees C at the equator from altitude alone would take 31,500 feet of altitude above local sea-level.  Being defended against invaders is hardly the point-how do you defend against the heat invading your industrial floor in your burried factory and requiring all your workers to wear expensive self-contained AC units as PPE?

And the papal palace?  How on earth do we explain that?

[tassa_kay]

Fortunately, Hesperus doesn't have any settlements near the equator. The continent of South Whitman is in the northern latitudes, and North Whitman is (obviously) even farther up from that. These two continents are noted as being the only places on the planet where people can tolerate local conditions and still make a decent living. There's a reason that the Lyrans' most important factory world only has a few tens of thousands of people living on it.

[AlphaMirage]

Papal Palace I'm not sure about (Although Polar Papal Palace sounds badass) maybe he used the Olympus station as his base however I could explain the other things. First the 85*C is mentioned as being in the deep jungle much like Tokasha so you have that extra heat effect like the Grand Canyon. The 30*C ambient higher up is far more manageable with proper equipment and due caution.

To survive is simple, your workers don't go outside their vehicles and habitats. They operate drones or give robots commands from remote base camps, dropships, or similar mobile structures Arrakis Crawler, Ocean dredger, or Snowpiercer style that serve as the initial intake and processing nodes to concentrate the valuable minerals from ore. Self-contained habitats are kinda the norm on most places so all three of those are possibilities and ones that I expect a common on similarly unpleasant worlds.

Its basically like any other uninhabitable world, moon, or modern oil rig, outside is death, you get to visit a different place every once in a while on your week of leave, and work is mostly boring. Occasionally one of the drones runs into trouble and you have to send a rover out to go retrieve it and bring it back to your climate controlled garage to work on it. The Defiance factory is built into a mountain which provides protection from warships and climate control, dropships and other transports come in with resources or empty bays and leave with new Battlemechs.

[tassa_kay]

What explanation does the papal palace even need, honestly? Sociopolitical refugees have fled to worse worlds in the BattleTech setting than Hesperus.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

The Terran Hegemony colonized Venus.  At that point, I believe the answer to why they colonized any planet less hostile than Venus is "because they could."

[Metallgewitter]

The Terran Hegemony colonized Venus.  At that point, I believe the answer to why they colonized any planet less hostile than Venus is "because they could."

Also: we use our tech to bind the colonists closer to Terra (like New Dallas)

[Natasha Kerensky]

The inhospitable nature of Hesperus II is probably what made it attractive as a host for a military factory in the first place.  The Elsies likely had little use for the planet otherwise and were happy to let the Hegemony produce weapons there in exchange for some other concession that the Elsies wanted someplace else.  And from the Hegemony point of view, the marginal habitability of Hesperus II helped ensure that the factories would be left alone as the no one would otherwise take a substantive interest in the planet.  I would also guess there were mineral resources conducive to mech manufacturing, and given the scale of the SLDF, that Hesperus II was one of many such Hegemony military plants on marginal worlds in foreign territory.  Hesperus II just happened to be the one such factory that survived the early Succession Wars.

The Papal stuff and everything else is likely just unrelated background color and has no real significance.

[Caesar Steiner for Archon]

South Whitman is apparently at a tremendous altitude, so that's part of it. Guess all those coastlines are more like the sheer cliffs of the PNW than Florida.

[Kojak]

The answers to the OP's questions are found in Jihad Turning Points: Hesperus II. There's no need for speculation, it's all laid out in there (except for the pope stuff, I have no idea where that's from and I've never heard of it before now).

[Gorgon]

Sarna names the old House Marik book as a source for the pope stuff. I don't have so I can't provide any more info on that, unfortunately

[Vehrec]

Papal Palace I'm not sure about (Although Polar Papal Palace sounds badass) maybe he used the Olympus station as his base however I could explain the other things. First the 85*C is mentioned as being in the deep jungle much like Tokasha so you have that extra heat effect like the Grand Canyon. The 30*C ambient higher up is far more manageable with proper equipment and due caution.

To survive is simple, your workers don't go outside their vehicles and habitats. They operate drones or give robots commands from remote base camps, dropships, or similar mobile structures Arrakis Crawler, Ocean dredger, or Snowpiercer style that serve as the initial intake and processing nodes to concentrate the valuable minerals from ore. Self-contained habitats are kinda the norm on most places so all three of those are possibilities and ones that I expect a common on similarly unpleasant worlds.

Its basically like any other uninhabitable world, moon, or modern oil rig, outside is death, you get to visit a different place every once in a while on your week of leave, and work is mostly boring. Occasionally one of the drones runs into trouble and you have to send a rover out to go retrieve it and bring it back to your climate controlled garage to work on it. The Defiance factory is built into a mountain which provides protection from warships and climate control, dropships and other transports come in with resources or empty bays and leave with new Battlemechs.

Centuries before the Olympus my friend, and before jump-ships with sails as well.  And no, this is the average equatorial temperature, not the high equatorial temperature, highs on Hesperus presumably involve water boiling in lakes and rivers. Jungle increases humidity, it doesn't increase the absolute temperature.

My question isn't how do workers survive, it's why are there 'civilians' in such a place rather than long term contract workers whom you can do rather urgent snap inspections on given that this is apparently an 'oil rig' setup producing military industrial equipment.  Last time I checked, you only got Krusty Burger on oil rigs on the Simpsons.

The inhospitable nature of Hesperus II is probably what made it attractive as a host for a military factory in the first place.  The Elsies likely had little use for the planet otherwise and were happy to let the Hegemony produce weapons there in exchange for some other concession that the Elsies wanted someplace else.  And from the Hegemony point of view, the marginal habitability of Hesperus II helped ensure that the factories would be left alone as the no one would otherwise take a substantive interest in the planet.  I would also guess there were mineral resources conducive to mech manufacturing, and given the scale of the SLDF, that Hesperus II was one of many such Hegemony military plants on marginal worlds in foreign territory.  Hesperus II just happened to be the one such factory that survived the early Succession Wars.

The Papal stuff and everything else is likely just unrelated background color and has no real significance.

The problem is that this is long before the SLDF and long before the nominal start of the shared worlds program.  So either we have to move that program forwards 70 years, or Hesperus was a planet in state of active dispute with portions held by both the Lyran Commonwealth and the Terran Hegemony.  And uh, HEGEMONY is in the name.

The answers to the OP's questions are found in Jihad Turning Points: Hesperus II. There's no need for speculation, it's all laid out in there (except for the pope stuff, I have no idea where that's from and I've never heard of it before now).

Oh fun, a book I don't have, am I gonna have to pay 5 bucks for an answer that might not satisfy me and then try to return the PDF for a refund, or can you tell me?  And the pope stuff is from House Marik (The Free Worlds League).  Or so says Sarna's page.

[tassa_kay]

Oh fun, a book I don't have, am I gonna have to pay 5 bucks for an answer that might not satisfy me and then try to return the PDF for a refund, or can you tell me?

How is anyone here supposed to know what answer would or would not satisfy you? Buy it and find out... or don't.

(To be fair, though, the Hesperus PDF doesn't have any additional pertinent information beyond what people here have already given you [the papal stuff is only in the old Marik SB and isn't even mentioned in the Hesperus PDF], and you've pretty much shot all of the explanations down, so maybe you should just save your money and just put your question in Ask the Writers or something.)

[Kojak]

Yes, god forbid anyone pay the writers to read about the setting they purportedly enjoy.

[Minemech]

 I consider the old SBs to be solid acquisitions if you want to engage in roleplay style games. They are not necessarily of equal quality, nor do they necessarily contain the same sorts of information as one another so know what you are after.

[Natasha Kerensky]

The problem is that this is long before the SLDF

Sure, then it helped meet HAF needs initially.

and long before the nominal start of the shared worlds program.

Deals could have been made before/outside of that Star League effort and don’t have to involve sharing the world, just leasing the use of the world (or continent or whatever) for military production.

The earlier papal stuff and joint colony can be totally unrelated.  In the real world, there are all kinds of developments (roads, towns, businesses, factories, warehouses etc.) that coexist alongside all kinds of archeological remains (churchyards, burial mounds, runestones, standing stones) from peoples that previously inhabited the same locations decades/centuries/millennia earlier.  Same should be true of many Spheroid worlds.

[Caesar Steiner for Archon]

Sarna names the old House Marik book as a source for the pope stuff. I don't have so I can't provide any more info on that, unfortunately

It's a single sentence that just says that it's a thing that happened. There was a Church schism and the antipope set up camp on Hesperus II, no further explanation given. Given that the only Antipope running around these days is on New Avalon, we can surmise that the schism was resolved one way or another.

I put it in the article the moment I read it because it's too weird not to record.

[Gorgon]

Thanks, saves me the time to read it myself. For the rest, it's straight off to head-canon county for me

[Arkansas Warrior]

Cairo has average daily highs in the low 30s C for five months out of the year.  Phoenix, Arizona hits 38C on average for about a third of the year.  In both cases, I'm talking about average daily highs, not maximums.  When you consider that the inhabited parts of Hesperus II are at northerly latitudes and apparently fairly high altitudes, it doesn't seem that hard.  People have lived in the area of both Cairo and Phoenix for literally millenia.  If they could manage it in the Stone Age, we can make it work in the Germanium Age (or whatever they're calling it).

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

Cairo and Phoenix are both dry climates.  Hesperus II is IIRC a fairly humid planet.

[Arkansas Warrior]

That would surprise me, given its 40% surface water.  But that's fine, I have other options.  Manaus, Capital of the Brazilian state of Amazonas, population ~2.2 million, has an average daily high of about 32C, and an average relative humidity of about 83%.  Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, has a population of about 10.5 million, and an average relative humidity of 81%.  All those numbers are yearly averages, but due to their equatorial posistion they don't really have big seasonal swings.  Jakarta has been inhabited for thousands of years.  Manaus has been inhabited at least since 1499, when the Spanish built a fort there, but I'm guessing there were indigenous people there long before.

[Hellraiser]

Cairo and Phoenix are both dry climates.  Hesperus II is IIRC a fairly humid planet. 

My oven is a dry climate, I still don't want to crawl in it!  :)

As a native of Phoenix w/ relatives in FLA, I will take 90/90 any day over 115/40.

It's sticky but at least my skin doesn't feel like its cracking open.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

Dry heat is significantly easier for humans to tolerate than wet heat.  The higher the humidity gets, the less efficient sweating becomes at cooling the body and the easier it is to get heatstroke.  Try comparing 105 in Phoenix to 105 in Miami and see which one you like better.

[Hellraiser]

Dry heat is significantly easier for humans to tolerate than wet heat.  The higher the humidity gets, the less efficient sweating becomes at cooling the body and the easier it is to get heatstroke.  Try comparing 105 in Phoenix to 105 in Miami and see which one you like better. 

Well obviously :)

105 in Miami? 

That's never happened from what I can find at Weather.com & Wikipedia.

They did hit 100 in 1942.   In the last 30-ish years 98 is the highest.

[tassa_kay]

I think his point was the heat is different in different climate zones because of the difference in humidity.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

Yeah, exactly.  I'm sure there are cities that have hit 105 with high humidity, sub one of those for Miami.

[Vehrec]

Cairo has average daily highs in the low 30s C for five months out of the year.  Phoenix, Arizona hits 38C on average for about a third of the year.  In both cases, I'm talking about average daily highs, not maximums.  When you consider that the inhabited parts of Hesperus II are at northerly latitudes and apparently fairly high altitudes, it doesn't seem that hard.  People have lived in the area of both Cairo and Phoenix for literally millenia.  If they could manage it in the Stone Age, we can make it work in the Germanium Age (or whatever they're calling it).

Hey, there's a thing called 'wet bulb temperatures'.  It's the temperature you register if you wrap your thermometer in a wet cloth and blow air over it to promote evaporation.  I don't know if you've heard of it, it's in the thread title though!  Here's a quote about them though-

Even heat-adapted people cannot carry out normal outdoor activities past a wet-bulb temperature of 32 °C (90 °F), equivalent to a heat index of 55 °C (131 °F). A reading of 35 °C (95 °F) – equivalent to a heat index of 71 °C (160 °F) – is considered the theoretical human survivability limit for up to six hours of exposure.
...
It has been thought that a sustained wet-bulb temperature exceeding 35 °C (95 °F)—given the body's requirement to maintain a core temperature of about 37°C—is likely to be fatal even to fit and healthy people, unclothed in the shade next to a fan; at this temperature human bodies switch from shedding heat to the environment, to gaining heat from it.

 

[Arkansas Warrior]

    Yes, I know what a wet-bulb temperature is.  We used wet-bulb thermometers in conjunction with dry-bulb thermometers and black glove thermometers when I was in the military.  Please don’t assume I’m only disagreeing with you out of ignorance.


Do you have a counter argument to the real life locations with comparable temperatures that have been inhabited for centuries or millenia?  Or the idea that a society which can travel the voids of space can probably handle adequate cooling on the surface of a planet?