How common is water in YTU?

[stofsk]

I'm curious to see what you think about the abundancy of water in your traveller universe.

Having the Gateway Domain sourcebook shows a lot of water in the universe, at least in the Gateway Domain, yet I've wondered about the idea of having a barren (more or less) galaxy. I also have only a handful of sentient alien species in my game too. Of course MTU is only a sector large...

Also, how common would water be in the *real* galaxy? It's a fairly simply molecule.

 

[Jame]

There's ice in many places here in the solar system, so I figure it's at least in every system with rock planets.

 

[Father Fletch]

You may want to clarify your question to "How much free standing liquid water is there in YTU?" This then narrows it down to breathable atmosphere planets in the habitable zone of a star. Otherwise as Jame says, the place is lousy with it, especially in Jovian or Saturnian rings, Oort Clouds, Kupier Belts, cometary bodies, asteriod regions, Gas Giant trojan points, icy moons, regolith pockets, Aresian polar regions etc.

 

[stofsk]

Good point. You can find water anywhere if you look hard enough, but whether it's on planets that have a habitable biosphere is another matter, and the cut and thrust of my question.

I ask because my original setting is based on a sector sized (in Traveller terms) region of space that represents something like 800 years of having FTL.

But I'm really just curious. I mean, I'll put down what I want in the setting, because I'm the author. But it would be nice to know how common habitable water worlds like our own are, in the galactic scope of it all.

 

[Uncle Bob]

Good call. AFAIK the jury is still out. The planetary systems we have discovered tend to be on the wierd side, but only a small percentage of stars have discenable planetary systems.

Maybe systems are wierd and rare. Maybe they are wierd but common, and we just haven't spotted very many. I think the wierd ones are rare but easier to detect, and systems like ours are the norm, but that is just optimism.

So anything from 10% to 75% of K-G-F dwarves could have habitable world(s). YMMV

 

[ld80062]

IMTU, it varies considerably. Most systems have a lot of standing liquid water, but there are 'clumps' of starsystems which have little or no freestanding water.

Again IMTU, the Imperial Empty Quarter is famous for the abundance of desert worlds and the scarcity of liquid water: famous enough so that the very sector is named after Saudi Arabia's "Empty Quarter", a vast sand sea the size of European nations.

(This idea - a sector dominated by desert worlds - is NOT reflected in offical Traveller UWP's: it is only true in my Imperium. As you will discover, I built the Imperial Empty Quarter around the theme of 'scarcity' and 'hard times'.)

The lack of water has crippled development in the Imperial Empty Quarter, keeping populations and tech levels much lower than the Imperial average. Imagine a vast number of Tattonie-like systems (a.k.a impoverished criminal hives) and Arrakis-style worlds (without the Spice to bring in power and money) - sprinkled with a few precious 'oasis worlds' - and you have a basic grasp of my Imperial Empty Quarter.

This alternate Imperial Empty Quarter, the backwater of all Imperial backwaters, is populated by
* tough loners and adventurers
* despised people & hated criminals, fleeing from their enemies (real or imagined)
* species, races and tribes pushed out from more habitable reigions. They tend to be seriously xenophobic, and hostile to visitors...
* Imperial exiles from the Core, 'beached' on a desert world with low-tech primitives ("They drive cars?"), until they learn proper obedience to the Emperor
* a handful of gutsy Imperial colonists, trying to build their dreams on the dry, shifting sands...
* desperate Free Traders, scraping for the dry pickings available in the Imperial Empty Quarter
* even more desperate pirates, trying to make a score... ANY kind of score... from the tiny band of hardy traders and tough merchantmen in the Imperial Empty Quarter.
* The silent steel corpses of dead starships - pirates, traders and merchants alike. Their pathetic, stripped hulks can be spotted here and there, throught the Imperial Empty Quarter.

Interestingly, the cause of death usually isn't related to violence or a hijacking gone wrong: a more insidius and common killer is lack of maintenance, and/or attempting to get by on the substandard equipment & parts available in the Sector. Too many crews try to stretch and make do until something snaps...

"You can always tell an Emptyhead trader - he's the skinny bloke with the faded, patched overalls, sandblasted face, and a haphazard collection of tools and repair gizmos on his utility belt."
"Do they usually carry a weapon?"
"Yep, always - but you got to remember, the Quarter isn't a nice place to be. If you survive long enough, you become a weapon."
"Scrawny poor guys don't seem so tough to me."
"That's because you're looking with the wrong set of eyes. Anyways, I'd avoid the Quarter if I were you - too much sun can burn the soul."

***********


No survey of the Imperial Empty Quarter is complete without mentioning the Bwaps.

Now, the Bwaps are very interesting. A notable minor race, this group of amphibian bureaucrats are commonly found in the Imperial bureaucracies everywhere. One major reason why they never established a subsector state - not even during the Long Night - is because very few worlds in the Imperial sector is suitable for Bwap colonization. The amphibian Bwaps NEED to live in a humid environment, lest they dry out and perish. They need to wear an enviroment suit when in atmospheres of less than 25% humidity.

The Bwaps thus find most of the Imperial Empty Quarter extremely hostile to settlement. And most Emptyheads have never seen a Bwap....

***********

The Problem with Ports
One of the crucial chokepoints in the Imperial Empty Quarter are the type and number of ports in the region. IMTU, there are NO high-tech (TL D-F) A-class ports, and only two high-tech B-class port (on opposite sides of the Quarter: one at the sector capital, another in an isolated but crucial, high-pop system)

There *are* three or so A-class starports in the sector (TL A-C), all of which are small ports, making only a few starships a year. Few people in the Quarter can afford a starship, so there is limited production of them within the Imperial Empty Quarter.

More to the point, there are only 4-6 B-class ports, and maybe 6 0r so C-class ports in all of Imperial Space within the Quarter: two decently-sized (on the Bwap homeworld on a pop-8 system), but the others have only limited capasity. Again, this is reflective of the poverty and lack of starship traffic within the Imperial Empty Quarter.

Factoid: there are 134 Imperial systems in the Empty Quarter, both in the OTU and IMTU.

***********
The observant reader has noticed that I am always mentioning "The Imperial Empty Quarter", not just "The Empty Quarter". That's because the Empty Quarter sector is lateally divided by a lesser rift. Rimward of the rift is Imperial Space, but Coreward lies the Julian Protectorate and the Lorean Hegemony.

These systems are quite different from those in Imperial Space, provided with a more generous amount of liquid water and better systems. Of course, they have their own problems, but they aren't related to the supply of liquid water.

 

[Golan2072]

With the amount of non-free (i.e. ice) floading around the avarage solar system, don't forget basic terraformation - even at low TLs (late TL8/early TL9 and on) comets could be diverted to collision courses with barren planets; if done in large enough quantities, this could both add a small amount of surface water AND thicken atmospheres, as long as the planetary gravities are strong enough to hold unto their atmosphere.

Read Kim Stanely Robinson's Mars Trilogy for ideas - that book is quite hard-science and is, for the most part, TL8-9 equivalent.

 

[Ran Targas]

IMTU, there is a lot of potential sources for H2O, it's just you have to want to work for it. Hydrogen is the most common element and oxygen is not that rare; advanced fusion tech would allow you to make it. Father Fletch stated most of the commone sources IMTU.

Free standing, liquid water is not so common (maybe 2-3 worlds per sub-sector). Large bodies of water that is safe to drink is very rare; most tend to be contaminated with some mineral or even lifeforms that prevent direct consumption. That doesn't mean it doesn't have uses, just that it must be treated before it is safe to drink. As I have stated before; MTU is not one where you can wander around in a t-shirt and sneakers, you need to bring your vacc suit.

 

[kafka47]

Water is very common as everyone said but free standing drinkable water might be a problem. I have also been toying with the idea of doing a couple of one off Traveller adventures where something like Oxygen would be poisonious the Characters who play aliens who look just like us. Or maybe I should be kinder and make it water.

 

[Uncle Bob]

As we currently understand planetography kt is difficult to imagine a world with an oxygen atosphere and no water. And hydrogen is 90% of everything in space, so it is difficult to imagine a desert system, never mind a sector.

I suppose the alternative would be in the vicinity of a supernova, where all the volitiles will be boiled off surrounding systems.

It has been awhile since I saw the calculations, but IIRC a breathable atmosphere on Luna wouldn't leak away for decades, on a planet like Mars it could last for millenia.

 

[kafka47]

A planet could also be a desert planet with a 10% or low Hydrographic figure but have all the water buried or on mountain caps or poles. Conversely, the Hydrographic figure does not have to refer to liquid water, imagine a world where that figure existed as Water moisture for the entire world.

 

[Klaus]

Oxygen is poisonous....

 

[Golan2072]

Originally posted by Uncle Bob:
It has been awhile since I saw the calculations, but IIRC a breathable atmosphere on Luna wouldn't leak away for decades, on a planet like Mars it could last for millenia.

Interesting - so it means that with enough in-system industrialization (with gravitics this will be quite painless), we could terraform Luna?

 

[epicenter00]

Originally posted by Employee 2-4601:
Interesting - so it means that with enough in-system industrialization (with gravitics this will be quite painless), we could terraform Luna?

I think once you release that horrible genie of handwavium that is runaway gravitic technology, anything is possible. You could even create Brennan's Wonderland from Protector with gravitics. You could give Luna 1G with "buried gravity pads."

But even without it, I think you could. You'd just need to find a way to replenish the atmosphere faster than it bleeds away due to the lack of gravity. With that other convienent handwavium solution to all problems in the Traveller universe - Cheap Fusion Power - that wouldn't be a problem.

 

[Uncle Bob]

Originally posted by Employee 2-4601:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Uncle Bob:
It has been awhile since I saw the calculations, but IIRC a breathable atmosphere on Luna wouldn't leak away for decades, on a planet like Mars it could last for millenia.

Interesting - so it means that with enough in-system industrialization (with gravitics this will be quite painless), we could terraform Luna? </font>[/QUOTE]Exactly that figured in a Schlock Mercenary story line some years back.

 

[ld80062]

Originally posted by Uncle Bob:
As we currently understand planetography kt is difficult to imagine a world with an oxygen atosphere and no water. And hydrogen is 90% of everything in space, so it is difficult to imagine a desert system, never mind a sector.

Yeah, that's true. My personal Empty Quarter is a pure storytelling setting, and has only tenuous links to scientifically-probable reality.

I merely fell in love with the idea....

 

[Fritz_Brown]

Originally posted by travalv2:
/HUGE SNIP!/

Dude, where have you been?! 31 posts in 3 years, and this is what you've been hiding? You need to spend more time here, man. I'm steal... errr, borrowing all of that for possible use. That is great!

Originally posted by kafka47:
Or maybe I should be kinder and make it water.

Dude, water is poisonous! Too much of it will kill you! (And, not in the way Trader Jim might be thinking.) And, if you call it dihydrogen-monoxide, you can even get some people to regulate it because of its dangers....

 

[Maladominus]

Ice is often harvested from the Belts.

In fact, if we read the description of belting (namely from the GURPS Traveller sources that I've read), we find that Belters will mine 2 most important things:

1) precious metals/crystals/gems/minerals

and

2) ice

 

[aramis]

Epicenter:
Only way is if the A/G doesn't require paired fields and the plates pull...

IMTU, since repulsers are lower TL than tractors, AG at TL 10+ is repulser based; the AG plate pushes things away from it, not towards it. Your "Normal Grav" plating is thus in the ceilings, not the floors.

It used to be a flow between two plates...

 

[ld80062]

Originally posted by Fritz88:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by travalv2:
/HUGE SNIP!/

Dude, where have you been?! 31 posts in 3 years, and this is what you've been hiding? You need to spend more time here, man. I'm steal... errr, borrowing all of that for possible use. That is great!
</font>[/QUOTE]Thanks for the pat on the back, Fritz88!

Anyways, Real Life is a very demanding master, but I hope to get more involved here on the CotI over the next while. Also, if you can, you might take a look at Stellar Reaches http://stellarreaches.nwgamers.org/ - Flynn is always looking for new writers. Some good stuff there, if you like the Empty Quarter... and I hope to publish an adventure there in the next issue or two....