R.D.D. Nickel Atlas of the Universe

Tom Kalbfus · 2015-01-11 10:33:58

Has anyone seen this website?
http://rddnickel.com/atlas.html
Mars%20World%20Map1.jpg

JohnX · 2017-03-11 09:51:00

A beautiful concept, kinda steampunk. But also very 2-D.

SpaceNut · 2017-03-11 21:52:06

Sort of topical graphical in representation....

Tom Kalbfus · 2017-03-12 23:11:24

He likes to draw maps and write stories about them, his timeline does not assume any Faster than Light Drive, and there is a lot of terraforming starting with Mars and Venus. Though I have to add, if we can terraform Mars and Venus, we don't have to live with global warming on Earth, that is a trivial problem to solve for a civilization that can make Mars and Venus habitable for humans! If we really learn to terraform Mars, the Global Warming map of Earth he has drawn need not come to pass.
Earth%20Future%20World%20Map%201.gif

Last edited by Tom Kalbfus (2017-03-12 23:12:31)

RDDNickel · 2017-04-07 18:11:27

Hi Tom, I've noticed that you've been commenting on my work and I appreciate your interest. To answer your query here, the majority of the sea level rise seen in this map here happened due to lingering CO2 left in the atmosphere during the Post-Apocalypse (c.2118-2800 A.D.) while the terraformation of Mars and Venus would not occur until sometime around 3100 A.D. Well after civilisation on Earth was rebuilt.
Seeing as Mankind would have adapted to the new post-global warming world and new cities would have already been built on the new coastlines, purposely altering the Earth to it's pre-global warming state, although technically possible with New Civilisation's technology, would be completely unnecessary and undesirable to the people living at that time, even as they were terraforming other worlds.

Last edited by RDDNickel (2017-04-07 18:17:09)

Tom Kalbfus · 2017-04-07 22:35:17

I have to say RDDNickel, those were great maps you drew. Judging by how long it takes to get to each extrasolar planet, it seems to me that you are assuming no FTL drives, at least none that are easily achieved. I was wondering how you plan on using them. Do you plan to write a novel or have someone write a novel about them? Maybe they could be used in a role playing game such as Traveller for instance. That was a lot of work, it would be nice to see it put to some use. You got any plans?

RDDNickel · 2017-04-30 19:24:46

Thanks, Tom, I appreciate it. And you're right, there are no FTL drives (at least not for several hundred thousand years when the first wormhole portals are created). The idea behind my work is, to the best of my estimation, draw a picture of what the future of Mankind might actually look like and being true to the Laws of Science as we know them. So, therefore there are no true FTL drives in my work and no technological aliens either (at least none anywhere near the Milky Way). Just human beings and their descendants slowly colonizing the Galaxy, all the while being subject to the forces of History.
As far as my plans, I plan on writing novels. I have many stories in mind, most of which are touched down upon in my Timeline, and I'm currently working on my first book: "The Space-Truckin' Adventures of James Starkey", the first chapter of which is on my website.

I've been working on it for a while and I have no idea when I'll be finished. Writing is hard.

Last edited by RDDNickel (2017-04-30 19:25:43)

Tom Kalbfus · 2017-04-30 21:02:11

I can imagine. What era of your timeline does James Starkey live in? I assume it would be an era within a few centuries of our own, If I go by just the name of the character, just a guess. Lots of interesting adventures on that Alpha Centauri Planet Phaethon I believe it was called if memory serves.

JohnX · 2017-05-01 20:24:59

Tom Kalbfus wrote:

Maybe they could be used in a role playing game such as Traveller for instance.

Hey Tom, I used to play Traveller. Does it still exist? This was about 30+ years ago! I loved the open-ended adventure, exploration aspect of it. Sadly v few of my friends could see that... they were DnD fanatics!

JohnX · 2017-05-01 20:28:28

RDDNickel wrote:

Writing is hard.

I'll second that! One main hardship for me is just to find the time. I've started writing so many stories in my life that I never finished because real life got too busy and by the time I got back to the writing, I'd lost interest or forgotten what motivated me to write it.

So I've adopted a cunning plan: instead of writing 'chapters' I am calling them 'short stories'. I have an overall game plan for the whole story and main characters, and getting one short story finished feels pretty good.

I hope your novel writing goes better than my short-story writing! I will look up your website and have a read.

Tom Kalbfus · 2017-05-02 03:43:08

JohnX wrote:

Tom Kalbfus wrote:
Maybe they could be used in a role playing game such as Traveller for instance.
Hey Tom, I used to play Traveller. Does it still exist? This was about 30+ years ago! I loved the open-ended adventure, exploration aspect of it. Sadly v few of my friends could see that... they were DnD fanatics!

Yes, there are a number of different versions of it, they all involve different ways of scoring a hit and taking damage, the most common versions use 6-sided dice only, there is one published by Mongoose, there is the out of print T20 Traveller which is more compatible with Dungeons & Dragons and the different dice used in it. Typically Traveller characters don't have levels, but T20 characters do, though T20 has a system to counter the mounting hit points with increasing level. Unlike D&D characters, Traveller characters don't become more powerful with experience, they gain new skills, but are just as hard to kill as they were before. Most power comes from all the things and wealth a character accumulates, rather than the new abilities he has, with D&D its all about the abilities and hit points, thouh wealth accumulation is possible too. In D&D rulers tend to be high level characters that are very formidable in combat, they often don't need security guards to protect them, in Traveller Emperor Stephon is just an ordinary bloke in a high position of power, he needs that security detail, and if you want to get to him, you have to get past those guards first, that is the hardest part!

JohnX · 2017-05-02 10:19:00

Yes Tom that's a succinct overview of the differences as far as I remember. It's fantasy vs fiction. That's also how I aim to write science fiction (at least the short stories on settling Mars) - somewhat realistic, not the heroic, epic approach, but still hopefully enough plot twists and surprises to make a good story.

I started reading Ryley Nickel's story and it's somewhere further towards the epic, space opera style, although there's plenty of realism. An enjoyable read.

Last edited by JohnX (2017-05-02 10:27:02)

Tom Kalbfus · 2017-05-02 11:52:40

The Martian is a fairly realistic book and movie about Mars. Most near future books about Mars are about astronauts getting in trouble, as was the case in The Martian. Mars is pretty much a blank slate except for what we know isn't there, there is no breathable atmosphere for one. We can speculate about what might be there that we don't know about.
mars-curiosity-rover-gale-crater-beauty-shot-pia19839-fi.jpg
We get an idea about what used to be on Mars. Both the Moon and Mars have ancient surfaces, but Mars has an ancient surface where there used to be water and perhaps life. Mars is kind of a monument, it is a giant headstone attracting our attention. This is primarily because Mars shares some features in common with Earth. Venus has a similar size, but Mars has a similar rotation and axial tilt, it is the one major body in the Solar System with a rotation rate that comes within an hour of the Earth's. Isn't it curious that we have seen no evidence so far of any extraterrestrial civilizations, the Fermi Paradox in other words? What if what we think is the universe is nothing more than a gigantic computer simulation? Such a simulation must have a purpose. A simulation can do all sorts of things, but the simulation we are in seems to simulate nothing but real world physics, what if that stops once we land people on Mars. No human has ever set foot on the planet, and a computer would know the difference between a human astronaut and a robot probe. Maybe the real universe is actually crowded with advanced technological civilizations and they built this simulation of us alone in a lonely universe? What if there is a trigger or a key on Mars which changes the parameters of that simulation? Mars is like a giant billboard, maybe there is something there that we were meant to find once we were deemed ready. A simulation of an entire world is very expensive, and is bound to get even more expensive as we expand into space within that simulation, at some point things have got to change.

RDDNickel · 2017-05-03 11:28:09

Interesting speculation. But how would this be different than a religious perspective on the Universe in which God created everything just for us. How is a simulated universe fundamentally different from a created universe? I mean, in either case, everything we see would be "simulated" by some sort of outside intelligence for some sort of mysterious purpose.

But to answer your question from earlier, Tom. The "James Starkey" story starts out in 5928 A.D. on Phaethon. The name is familiar because Phaethon happens to retain much of the language and culture from pre-apocalypse Earth. Of course, they don't call their year "5928" as our Gregorian Calendar is no longer used anymore.

Tom Kalbfus · 2017-05-03 22:18:55

Actually a simulated universe is a created universe, but if we're going to simulate just the Earth, we don't have to simulate the entire universe, we can simulate the images of stars we see through telescopes, we could simulate the Solar System, and there is a device which could possibly simulate all of this, the Mastrioshka Brain.

Now imagine a galaxy that is just full of civilizations, there is one elder civilization, the first one to arise in the Galaxy, it has witnessed the destruction that occurs when two civilizations, one of which is vastly technologically superior to the other, happens to meet, and what usually results is that the less advanced society gets destroyed, whether the advanced society wishes for that outcome or not. After this happens a number of times, (think of the Europeans first contact with the Native Americans in the New World) the elder civilization decides to do something to preserve all these intelligent species they come in contact with.

The first thing the elders do, which from hence we shall call the preservers, is to dispatch a number of Von Neuman probes, these probes travel to star systems, explore them, and use the local resources to build copies of themselves, over the course of about 3 million years, they have explored and catalogued every star system in the Galaxy, if an intelligent tool using species is discovered. the probes do one other thing, using local resources they make a number of copies of themselves, and they begin taking apart planets to build a Dyson Sphere, this takes the form of a swarm of solar collectors, each one in an independent orbit around the star. The probes then disassemble the life found, up to and including the entire ecosystem and the structure of the planet itself, uploading all the creatures including the intelligent ones into a computer simulation run by the Mastroika Brain that the Von Neumans created the simulation is of the entire star system that was disassembled prior to the disassembly done by the Von Neumans. The creatures that were on the planet wake up in the simulation and find that nothing has changed. When a civilization develops on the simulated planet, their astronomers see stars and galaxies in the night sky but no sign of extraterrestrial civilization, they can explore their star system, and maybe even send starships to other nearly simulated stars, but everywhere they look, they find no evidence of intelligent life, this is a deliberate setup by the Preservers, as they wish no contact between this civilization and others in the Galaxy including themselves, they simulate the laws of physics faithfully up until some point where the believe the nascent civilization can survive contact with other species. Prior to that the set up a little test involving contact between two different civilizations, in this example it is the civilizations of Earth and Mars.

One can do a number of things with this idea in a story.

Last edited by Tom Kalbfus (2017-05-03 22:51:40)

Tom Kalbfus · 2017-05-03 22:47:39

RDDNickel wrote:

Interesting speculation. But how would this be different than a religious perspective on the Universe in which God created everything just for us. How is a simulated universe fundamentally different from a created universe? I mean, in either case, everything we see would be "simulated" by some sort of outside intelligence for some sort of mysterious purpose.
But to answer your question from earlier, Tom. The "James Starkey" story starts out in 5928 A.D. on Phaethon. The name is familiar because Phaethon happens to retain much of the language and culture from pre-apocalypse Earth. Of course, they don't call their year "5928" as our Gregorian Calendar is no longer used anymore.

So according to your timeline James Starkey is 18 years old at this time, since he was born in 5910 AD.

RDDNickel · 2017-05-07 17:55:04

That's an intriguing story idea, Tom. Kind of along the lines of what astrobiologists call the "Zoo Theory". Question is: how do Human Beings stack up in their test of first contact? Are they violent or do they manage to pass the test? What is the criteria for passing?

As far James Starkey goes, you're right. He is 18 in Earth years at the start of the story (or 9 in Phaethian years). In fact we see him graduate from High School in the first chapter. My story is a little bit more down to earth (or down to Phaethon, whatever). Despite it's taking place thousands of years in the future on another planet, it's really just a story of a young man leaving his home and setting out in the world on his own.

Tom Kalbfus · 2017-05-08 08:44:19

RDDNickel wrote:

That's an intriguing story idea, Tom. Kind of along the lines of what astrobiologists call the "Zoo Theory". Question is: how do Human Beings stack up in their test of first contact? Are they violent or do they manage to pass the test? What is the criteria for passing?

The thing is that with simulations, you can do just about anything and still called it hard science fiction, so long as whatever it is remains within the simulation. So lets say the story is about a manned mission to Mars, lets say there are 6 astronauts, they are following a hard science mission, everything is laid out pretty much along the lines of NASA plans, the crew takes a number of months to travel from Earth to Mars, and they are all set to land their crew capsule or Mars hab. The Crew Ascent Vehicle is already positioned, it has made enough fuel for the return journey to Earth and everything checks out. Mission Control gives the crew the go ahead to land the hab on the surface of Mars. Little does the crew or anyone else know, that everything the experience is only a simulation. The program they are a part of, has a built in trigger. The trigger condition is that when a manned spacecraft reaches a certain altitude above the surface of Mars, the old Mars is swapped out for another Mars, this Mars has canals, an indigenous population consisting of a type of humans, and a breathable atmosphere. The capsule is entering the atmosphere, its heat shield is glowing, they've slow down enough so they can deploy their landing parachutes, and suddenly Bam! That atmosphere around them suddenly and expectantly gets thicker the crew gets pressed down on their acceleration couches as the wind outside suddenly wails, to make it more interesting, lets say suddenly they are in a rain storm with thunder and lightning, rain is pelting their windows and its making quite a racket. the parachutes are deployed. Mission Control is unaware of what happened because of the time delay between Mars and Earth, but an amateur astronomer looking through his telescope suddenly sees this Mars

get replaced with this Mars

It all occurs suddenly as soon as the light reaches Earth, he sees the change. Mission Control get analomous readings, the landing crafts suddenly decelerates more sharply and starts drifting with the wind more than anticipated when the parachutes are deployed. There is a blue sky above and a sandy desert below, their crew ascent vehicle is nowhere to be found, the topography is the same as in the old Mars with some erosion, their landing site I now underwater, as a river now courses through the dry river bed that their mission was originally to investigate. They report the situation to Houston, and then they separate from the parachute, and their hab drops like a rock. The Pilot has to assume manual control, to prevent the autopilot from landing the ship in a river. The Pilot slows the craft, and carefully touches down on the shore of the river instead. Lightning flashes in the distance followed by thunder as the wind thrashes the hab as it settles on the muddy ground. After a time the engine shuts off, and there is only the sound of the wind, the thrashing rain and the sound of thunder. The crew looks out the circular windows of their craft in astonishment, their instruments read an atmosphere close to 1 bar of pressure, and the presence of oxygen is detected. After a time the rain settles into a steady drizzle. Messages from Mission Control catch up with the craft, they want to know what is going on. A patch of blue appears in the sky. The astronauts seem some men approaching outside on horseback, the horses gallop in an odd way in the low gravity, the men on the horses seem to be armed with a variety of medieval weapons, it is possible they could do damage to the ship with some of these weapons. What do you suppose the astronauts would do next? I don't think they brought any weapons with them, or at least nothing that was intended to be used as a weapon, there is a rover attached to the hab. Everything they need to conduct the expected Mars Mission is in the hab, the only thing they don't have is the means to return to Orbit, their Mars Ascent vehicle was swapped out with the old Mars and is no longer there. so here is the test, what do the astronauts do now?

The "natives" of Mars were descended from colonists from a parallel history that was also run in a separate simulation until this trigger condition was met. Their technological civilization declined until the reached their current state of development. As far as they're concerned, Earth is just a legend, a light in the sky where their ancestors once came from, they terraformed the planet, because in their timeline, human civilization developed much earlier than in ours. One possibility is that in their timeline Alexander the Great lived long enough to establish a stable empire, and line of succession was established, and science flourished, their descendants got into space one thousand years before we did. The languages the natives speak sound similar but not identical to ancient Greek, they seem to have a pagan religion, monotheism has not developed the way it did in our timeline, so they still worship a pantheon of gods and goddesses related to those of the Ancient Greeks.

Mission Control becomes aware of what happened, what they don't know is how it happened, everything else in the Solar System remains the same, the crew remains in contact with Houston, their mother craft continues to orbit this different Mars. Phobos and Deimos also continue in their orbits the same as always, nothing has changed about them. The President is called up, Congress is consulted, another mission to Mars with a rescue craft could be sent to Mars, but it will take a couple of years until the next launch window, for the time being the astronauts are stranded on Mars and have to make the best of things, including with the armed men on horseback.

As far James Starkey goes, you're right. He is 18 in Earth years at the start of the story (or 9 in Phaethian years). In fact we see him graduate from High School in the first chapter. My story is a little bit more down to earth (or down to Phaethon, whatever). Despite it's taking place thousands of years in the future on another planet, it's really just a story of a young man leaving his home and setting out in the world on his own.

RDDNickel · 2017-07-02 12:45:13

Very interesting story idea, Tom. I hope you intend on writing yourself as you seem to have an active imagination and are certainly not disinclined to write long passages. If you were to apply that kind of energy to writing a book, it wouldn't take you long finish a first draft (assuming you haven't done so already, of course
Unfortunately, however, it appears as though you've been banned. It was nice chatting with you, though, and I hope we'll be able to keep an eye on each others work in the future.

P.S. Sorry for the late reply.

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