The allure of the hidden colony world
Apr. 19th, 2005 11:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
james_davis_nicollThis is what those two recent books had in common: Plucky freedom-lovers flee an oppressive government (in one case Pax, a world government and in the other a USA gone horribly Republican) to settle a world far enough away that the government probably will not be bothered to follow them. In both cases, the homeworld either never knew or forgot where the colony was. This is easier when travel takes centuries but if fast FTL is available, the colonists can try to hide somewhere in the 40 billion population one stars in the spiral arms.
This isn't an uncommon idea in SF: Anderson's STARFOG has the descendents of people who fled so effectively that their great great etc grand kids think they fled to another universe (Which as I recall the people in RAFT actually did do. This is not a recommendation to read RAFT). The later DUNE books have humans exploit new transportation technologies to spread out over a tremendous volume, far too large to be governed, turning human-space from a tightly regimented one to a collection of tightly-regimented regions (SF aint't where you look for pro-democratic fiction). The plucky would-be starfarers in one Alan Nourse novel hope to become a lost colony but will settle for dying if their example leads to reforms back home (The people in Walter Jon Williams's recent space opera -could- isolate themselves but so far nobody has felt isolation was better than the chance of being killed in the crossfire).
Hidden colonies very hard within the solar system, since even our rather puny rockets are clearly visible across the system. Some of the humans in _The Killing Star_ try to hide deep within one of the ice-giants. How successful this would have been is unclear, since the equipment they use turns out not to be up to the job. An alternative is to deliberately seek out some body that is inconvenient to get to from the bodies controlled by the oppressive government, sort of the opposite approach Hop David takes in his musings on settling the asteroids. Which body is best depends somewhat on technological assumptions but something in an inclined and retrograde orbit might be a good start. Mind you, even if you do find a place not worth following you to, heat will betray that you are there. You could hide in Jupiter: the 60 km/s escape velocity will make it hard for your kids to leave for the city and the thick atmosphere will probably protect you from attacks from above.
This isn't an uncommon idea in SF: Anderson's STARFOG has the descendents of people who fled so effectively that their great great etc grand kids think they fled to another universe (Which as I recall the people in RAFT actually did do. This is not a recommendation to read RAFT). The later DUNE books have humans exploit new transportation technologies to spread out over a tremendous volume, far too large to be governed, turning human-space from a tightly regimented one to a collection of tightly-regimented regions (SF aint't where you look for pro-democratic fiction). The plucky would-be starfarers in one Alan Nourse novel hope to become a lost colony but will settle for dying if their example leads to reforms back home (The people in Walter Jon Williams's recent space opera -could- isolate themselves but so far nobody has felt isolation was better than the chance of being killed in the crossfire).
Hidden colonies very hard within the solar system, since even our rather puny rockets are clearly visible across the system. Some of the humans in _The Killing Star_ try to hide deep within one of the ice-giants. How successful this would have been is unclear, since the equipment they use turns out not to be up to the job. An alternative is to deliberately seek out some body that is inconvenient to get to from the bodies controlled by the oppressive government, sort of the opposite approach Hop David takes in his musings on settling the asteroids. Which body is best depends somewhat on technological assumptions but something in an inclined and retrograde orbit might be a good start. Mind you, even if you do find a place not worth following you to, heat will betray that you are there. You could hide in Jupiter: the 60 km/s escape velocity will make it hard for your kids to leave for the city and the thick atmosphere will probably protect you from attacks from above.
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Date: 2005-04-19 05:55 pm (UTC)The (something) Enemy
Date: 2005-04-20 09:33 am (UTC)But as to hidden colonies in the solar system: surely there are ways. Fire some small construction robots at an appropriately obscure asteroid. They build solar panels and a big ol' laser. Load a rocket up with colonists, blast off, then turn off the rockets and stealth your ship. (Stealthing in space is much easier -- that is to say, it's possible -- when you're not accelerating.) Then use the laser to brake and match velocities. Have the laser use the whole asteroid as a heat sink.
Too baroque? Okay, purloined letter. You have a society that exploits asteroid resources. Cargo freighters carry robot machinery to asteroids to mine, build accelerators, and fire the stuff back to Earth orbit. (Or wherever.) There's no magic self-replicating machinery, so the freighters are huge.
Plucky rebels empty one of these ships and fill it with colonists in cold sleep. Shortly after the ship arrives at the asteroid, its reactor goes critical. Boom. From Earth's POV, it looks like the very expensive ship full of machinery has been utterly destroyed, a complete loss.
If it's a typical asteroid in the main Belt, the colonists have just won about a decade of peace and quiet. (Assuming tech that prefers minimum transfer orbits.) Subsequent attempts may occur, but can be dealt with. Eventually the asteroid may gain a reputation for snakebite luck (rather as Mars missions have today). Or, the colonists can fake telemetry data... in its last moments, have the first ship beam back the news that the asteroid is surrounded by a cloud of gravel from a recent impact, or some other improbable but possible hazard.
So I don't think it's impossible. Just tricky.
Doug M.
Re: The (something) Enemy
Date: 2005-04-20 12:30 pm (UTC)Re: The (something) Enemy
Date: 2005-04-20 03:30 pm (UTC)Hidden in Plain Sight could work.
It seems to me that hiding in rocks puts a serious cap on economic activity, or else the waste heat will be detected.
Re: The (something) Enemy
Date: 2005-04-20 04:15 pm (UTC)Stealing from one of the Empire books, one way to hide in plain sight is to keep some basic aspect of the community's nature from the public (The Hidden Jews come to mind as a historical model). Everyone knows where your home community is but they have no idea of the significance.
Re: The (something) Enemy
Date: 2005-04-20 04:52 pm (UTC)Radiate your waste heat on the side of the asteroid away from the Sun/the Earth. You're good until there are large colonies further out from you.
Doug M.
Re: The (something) Enemy
Date: 2005-04-20 05:04 pm (UTC)P = FC
Where P is power, F is force and C is the speed of light. Mirrors get twice as much bang for their P buck as emitters but P is still going to be large even for small values of F.
The other problem is, even if the Oppressive Central Government is too cheap to scatter sensors around the system, that mirror is going to be huge and will reflect light on the sunward side. It will probably also heat up, which should be obvious against the thermal background of the galaxy.
Re: The (something) Enemy
Date: 2005-04-21 07:05 am (UTC)Question: is there *any* way to accelerate that's relatively stealthable? Low accelerations, down to ~0.5 cm/s^2, are fine. (1/200th of a gee doesn't sound like much, but it'll give you a km/s delta vee every two and a half days. Gets you around the inner solar system with trip times comparable to transoceanic travel a few hundred years ago... Earth to the inner asteroid belt in six months or so.)
Possible?
Doug M.
Re: The (something) Enemy
Date: 2005-04-21 12:20 pm (UTC)Power = sigma * effective radiating area * (temperature ^ 4)
and
Power = 1/2 * mass * exhaust velocity * acceleration
Of course, if you're past Earth's orbit, you will want some part of your spacecraft at ~300 K anyway. And inside Earth's orbit, refrigeration becomes interesting. But the rocket is going to be the power hog.
Carlos
Re: The (something) Enemy
Date: 2005-04-21 06:50 pm (UTC)If the sunward side is black, it will suck up visible EMR and re-emit it as heat.
The stealthiest way I thought of to move stuff is vie passive flybys but there you need to go near planets so sensors near planets will pick you up. You could try rotating tethers but they tend to have at least one large dimension and will limit you to a few km/s, probably.