So I was wondering if this story really needs to take place nine hundred years in the future. I don't even remember why I picked that long anyway. To remedy this conundrum, I figured I should just make a timeline and see what I come up with. I thought it'd be easy, but I kept asking more and more questions.
My first question was how long would it take for humans to invent near light speed travel? Or want to begin terraforming and colonizing new planets? Then I wanted to know how far they'd have to travel to find around forty ish (totally random) habitable planets, but I could easily do research for that one. A few wikipedia articles later and I got a rough estimate of seventy five to a hundred light years. Traveling around ninety five percent the speed of light, the travelers would experience somewhere between thirty to thirty five years on the ship to get to the furthest planets. At least it's less than one lifetime.
Then I wondered how long my world war would set the human race back? What would their level of space technology be before it happened? When would they send terraforming crews? How would they terraform planets? How long would it take to make them habitable? How long would it take to establish colonies? How long before space trade would become common enough for space pirates? I guess that's the final question, but it conjures all these other questions.
So I think humans have maybe tried to colonize Mars before the war so they at least have a little bit of experience before they have to start sending people off planet to repopulate. Let's say I give the world one hundred years to start terraforming Mars, then the war hits and wipes out people, land, and probably puts a damper on up coming technology. During the rebuilding, Mars would slowly become habitable and would be the first place to start really rebuilding humanity. We could probably have near light speed travel become available some time in this period. And perhaps terraforming takes one hundred ish years? So now I'm two hundred years in.
Now scientists are trying to broaden our territory by sending terraforming crews, scientists, engineers, other speciality crews, and normal people to settle these other earth-like planets, the furthest being about one hundred light years away. Seem to really like the number one hundred. Anyway, that means it would take two hundred years (from Earth's perspective) to simply get a colony to touch ground on the furthest planet. Now I'm at four hundred years from now.
So how long until these colonies set up interplanetary trade? Because that's where Scarlett comes in. There would probably be some trading among the closest planets because they got terraformed first and could begin establishing themselves while the furthest planet are still being terraformed. So shall we say, ehh, another two hundred years to get into the swing of things? That would mean Scarlett is only six hundred years in the future. Seems a little more manageable, I think.
Thoughts? Contradictions? Better ideas? Other points of interest along the time line? Please let me know.
Next I want to think about the technology people in this time would have at their disposal, including weapons. :D
I don't think 900 years is too far. It would take generations to colonize Mars, the war would set humanity a lot further back if we were spread across a couple planets, and disregarding the thirty-fifty years to get to a habitable planet, it would take much longer just to find them - the galaxy has a lot more empty space than planets. Setting it almost a thousand years in the future would allow you to have distant ties to the present day and what I'll dub the Great War, but you'll be far enough removed to set your own story rather than building on modern day events. Hope that all makes sense. -Matt
ReplyDeleteI was mostly having issues with thinking about how far technology would evolve in that time, but I also wanted to make a timeline that made sense. It would take generations to colonize Mars, yeah, but they'd have the most time of any of the planets to colonize. I also think that we would utilize science to help repopulate as fast as possible. That thought just helped me figure out why Devon was created: possibly to be a better human to help repopulate and be better in most ways, haha.
DeleteHumanity would still be on Earth when the war happens, so no need to worry about that. It is what sparks the colonizing of other planets. My wiki research shows that we already know where other habitable planets reside. Granted planets are harder to find than stars, but we've already found a couple hundred so far with estimated billions in our galaxy alone. I think we'd be okay for that, but maybe I'm wrong.
Perhaps I will set it a thousand years in the future. You just better give me ideas for technology and such. :D