Disney musicals aside, I got to thinking last night. My thoughts started with fen making runs back to Earth for supplies, coming down over the ocean, and then flying in to wherever at a height of a few feet to avoid detection. From there, I started wondering if a sealed vehicle that could function in space might also function underwater....
So - are there any Fen that have tried colonizing the oceans yet, instead of space? Lord knows, there's plenty of science-fiction/fantasy shows that have had an undersea focus, starting back at least as far as Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Man From Atlantis, The Abyss, Seaquest DSV - this is just off the top of my head; I'm sure there are even more out there, especially if we throw in anime and other sources as well.
Domed outposts on the ocean floor - perhaps with the help of the Senshi faction and their diamond tech? Homemade subs capable of seeing just what the Marianis Trench is REALLY like, firsthand? Hell - WETSUITS capable of seeing what the Trench is like, firsthand. I could definitely see the Verne fen uniting behind this sort of thing - not to mention lots of steampunk/retro-looking subs and old-fashioned brass-helmeted suits - though with their own air supplies. Possibilities of trade between the sea fen and the space fen could lead to all sorts of things...and of course, having a ship or sub capable of both underwater and space travel would be useful. Perhaps something for the Stingray to look into?
I don't THINK I've seen this idea mentioned before, but admittedly I'm half-asleep at the moment. I'm definitely interested in what people think of the idea, though. So - like it, hate it? Think it might be fun?
Well, it depends on what problems you're able to solve with Handwavium and what you leave to hardtech.
Life Support: Given that we've assumed this can be 'waved easily, not an issue.
Pressure Hull: This is the biggy. Even in the vacuum of space you're only talking the difference between 0 and 1 atmosphere of pressure. That is
miniscule compared to the structure needed for working at any noticeable depth. Rule of thumb is that ocean pressure goes up by 1 atmosphere every 33 feet, so by the time you hit any serious depth you're talking about literally
hundreds of times the pressure differential. Most submarines and such that go down that low have to use increased atmospheric pressure on the inside in order to help compensate and reinforce the external structure. (Jacques Cousteau's famous bathyscaphe, for example, did not use air for bouyancy, but
oil, because of its incompressibility under the immense pressures at the depths he traveled to).
And yes, I do see a large market for diamondoid construction material there - it's going to need something massively tough to take that kind of pressure without collapsing.
Humans can handle up to 3 or 4 atmospheres of pressure with moderate discomfort - beyond that you're into the realm of dives that are considered very difficult and dangerous, today.
Actually living in a domed city at the bottom of the sea... at any significant depth, you're going to have to make a choice. Either keep the city itself at normalish pressure (which requires massive investment in structural integrity and adds immense complications to any work involving going outside the dome, because you're going to need to deal with decompression) or turn it into one big saturation dive, which has its own oddball effects and makes returning to the surface for any reason a lengthy, dangerous process.
Do you know anyone who's done any serious diving? If so, talk to them. Colonizing the sea-floor is an interesting endeavor, but a
far more difficult one - even with all we can do with handwavium - than colonizing space.--
"I give you the beautiful... the talented... the tirelessly atomic-powered...
R!
DOROTHY!
WAYNERIGHT!
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make
anything explode.
Deep sea colonization has come up before, nothing concrete though.
My take on it: It can be done with handwavium, but space is easier, and the mundanes like it considerably less and it's easier for them to interfere.
See the movie godzilla as to why people are worried about biomodded wildlife. And some handwavium spills are likely with the stuff being used to colonize the seafloor.
In other words, there are a few hardy, stuborn pioneers far into international waters and ussualy in secret or so deep the mundies have trouble rooting them out. Just my take on it, your millage may vary.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."
Quote:
Pressure Hull: This is the biggy. Even in the vacuum of space you're only talking the difference between 0 and 1 atmosphere of pressure. That is miniscule compared to the structure needed for working at any noticeable depth. Rule of thumb is that ocean pressure goes up by 1 atmosphere every 33 feet, so by the time you hit any serious depth you're talking about literally hundreds of times the pressure differential. Most submarines and such that go down that low have to use increased atmospheric pressure on the inside in order to help compensate and reinforce the external structure.
This is the point where the Larry Niven Fen are going to try to introduce the General Products hulls, I'm sure...
I have to admit that the GP hull has been the pet snark out Hephaestus' way.
And you know something?
I got nuttin.
I could probably do a one-off, but man, you know as well as I, the 'wave gets pissy if you try and production-line something that is that highly-compressed-cool.Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979
Mm.
You know, Disney recently mothballed the "submarines" -- really just water-tight monorails -- from at least one of their "undersea adventure" rides. I think it was the "real world" subs from Disneyland.
What if a group of fen got hold of one and waved it -- or better yet, got a hold of one of the "Twenty Thousand Leagues" models from Disneyworld? Would the 'wave "know" that this was a watercraft and adapt accordingly?-- Bob
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One of the primary differences between the Left and the Right is their attitude toward the Future. The Radical wants the Future to have gotten here yesterday. The Reactionary wants the Future quietly shot and the corpse buried where no one can find it.
-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
Quote:
You know, Disney recently mothballed the "submarines" -- really just water-tight monorails -- from at least one of their "undersea adventure" rides. I think it was the "real world" subs from Disneyland.
They just reopened them this summer. They replaced "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" with "Finding Nemo."Ebony the Black Dragon
Senior Editor, Living Room Games
http://www.lrgames.com
Ebony the Black Dragon
http://ebony14.livejournal.com
"Good night, and may the Good Lord take a Viking to you."
I'd think you might have a few small security through obscurity settlements out on the continental shelves, but the problem with offshore stuff is that it still is in *someone's* backyard.
Back to the main topic: Really what I'd expect to see more of is floating cities. We've already got a fair amount of only moderately pie-in-the-sky stuff going on with that, often driven by the fundamentalist libertarians. Having handwavium to fill in some of the cracks would make it that much easier.
Edit: deleted "and you," - fragment of a lost thought-shard.
Quote:
Really what I'd expect to see more of is floating cities. We've already got a fair amount of only moderately pie-in-the-sky stuff going on with that, often driven by the fundamentalist libertarians.
This makes me think "live action
Bioshock," which could only end in tears and epic lulz. Not to mention lots of overtime for the Blue Blazers...---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord
interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
You'd also likely see a fair number of folks that biomodded themselves into an amphibious or aquatic form. there's all the aquatic furries, if nothing else.
Side note: I'd imagine that being biomodded while in the presence of a lot of similarly biomodded people, ad thinking "I want to turn out sorta like them" with pretty much everyone agreeing with you, and perhaps some little entrance rituals, would be an effective way to stay within group type. You'd still have individual variations, but it allows for groups of people who are, for example, more or less Klingon.
Side note sub two: I'd imagine there are a *lot* of furrymods running around Australia by this point, of people who *really* wanted to have a tail, but who didn't want to have to leave the gravity well. Things like that are going to cause some pretty bizarre demographic and social shifts dirtside.
And let's not forget the racism against catgirls amongst the furryfen. The catgirls produced by the Boskone slavers aren't furry enough, you see. Plus they self-hate too much; "they should be GLAD not to be just hairless apes, anymore."
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''
-- James Nicoll
Quote:
And let's not forget the racism against catgirls amongst the furryfen. The catgirls produced by the Boskone slavers aren't furry enough, you see. Plus they self-hate too much; "they should be GLAD not to be just hairless apes, anymore."
Which is immediately followed by a much more moderate furryfan smacking them upside the back of the head and the entire thing devolving into a nasty, backbiting argument that goes on for years and years and years, with people dragging old rivalries, angers, and slights out of the back of their emotional closets to choose sides and fling bile, until someone who has a sense of priorities and common sense that outweighs their issues and wahngst realizes that there's actually someone there who needs help and takes the original catgirl aside, says, "Look, these folks are losers. Let's go get some enchiladas.", and leaves the flamers to what they do best.
Because there's nothing more fractured and self-destructive than furry fandom.
(Yes, I like furry fiction. But I hate the fandom that's formed around it.)Ebony the Black Dragon
Senior Editor, Living Room Games
http://www.lrgames.com
Ebony the Black Dragon
http://ebony14.livejournal.com
"Good night, and may the Good Lord take a Viking to you."
wait...wait...wait...
Take a fandom oversaturated with flames and wank and horrible backbiting backstabbing ugliness...
...twist hard so that many of its members pick up the next best thing to a combat mod, become physically *awfully* attractive (to a reasonably large section of the population) and, frequently, have their hormones in overdrive, and rather off the true...
...and then notice that a number of them crave attention in a pretty big way, and a lot of them don't have much in the way of good, solid marketable skills.
WELCOME TO FURRY CAGE-MATCH CHALLENGE III!
Y'know, we could *almost* do a GP hull now with hardtech.
Carbon nanotubes, with trapped silicon molecules, assembled with a scanning tunneling electron microscope. The silicon molecules would form covalent bonds across the fibers, shaping the carbon nanotubes into hull structure. All that is needed is the 'Wave to speed up the process, and some kind of CAD/CAM unit to work on this scale.
Call it "knitting" your own custom molecules. No 'Wave in the hull at all to start with, just in the assembler.
{has mental image of tiny nanobot CAD/CAM unit muttering "knit one, purl two" over and over...}