(C&C) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

[Salmoneus]

I think there are problems, but making a climate map is time-consuming, particularly when there's no lines of latitude to go by! Also, it's been years since I did it, and I would have to remind myself of some things before giving even casual advice, for fear of adding to confusion.

[Creyeditor]

@WeepingElf: Thanks
@Sal: Fully understandable. And thanks for the advice on latitudes

[Salmoneus]

I recently produced my first climate map of Fredauon. I am not at all sure if I'm doing this right, though. I was mainly following the Climate Cookbook, but I think I might've misunderstood some stuff, especially when it comes to non-coastal climates. Is there anything that you notice that is completely off when you look at the following map?

Spoiler:

A
Af (Tropical Rainforest) purple-red
Aw (Savannah) orange-y red
B
BWh (Hot desert) reddish orange
BSh (Hot steppe) brown-ish orange
BWk (Cold desert) yellow-ish orange
BSk (Cold steppe) yellow
C
Cfb, Cfc (Maritime west coast) light green
Csa, Csb (Mediterranean) green
Cwa,Cwb (Temperate monsoon) dark green
D
Dfa,Dfb (Laurentian) dark greenish blue
Dfc, Dfd (Subarctic) dark blue
Dwc, Dwd (Subarctic east) light blue
E
ET (Tundra) dark grey
EF (Icecap) light grey


grey sparkles = mountains

OK, so, sorry for not having engaged earlier, but here are some thoughts at a first (well, second) glance...

First: you seem to have more colours than listed in your key? I'm not sure, because I don't think your definition of colours (or your computer screen?) matches mine, but you seem to have four "blues" but only three in your key (although maybe the lightest blue is what you call a green? in which case, too many greens!).


Having said that, just looking a the succession of climates I think there are problems.

On the west coast, I suspect the rainforest is going to extend further south and east because those mountains may deflect it there. But the bigger problem is: where's the desert?

On earth, if you start in the Congo and go north, there's a lot of rainforest/savanna, there's a narrow band of sahel, and then there's a massive, massive block of sahara desert. Then there's a narrow band of mediterranean. Likewise if you go south (the Kalahari). Likewise if you go south from Singapore (Australia). Likewise if you go south from Ecuador (the Atacama), although that's a little complicated by how close the Andes come to the sea. It's even true eventually when you go north from Ecuador (the Sonoran, etc), although that's complicated both by the narrowness of mesoamerica and by the tendency of rainstorms to get deflected up that angled south american coast (i.e. the desert band is smaller and further north than it probably 'should' be normally).

Fundamentally, this is because you've got two great atmospheric bands in the mid latitude where air is constantly falling and diverging, making rainfall difficult. This extends all the way to the west coast because the currents there drag cold water in from the poles, cooling the air (colder air = less rain). East coasts can be wetter because they have hot water pushed up from the equator - plus, they get hurricanes thrown at them!

So you'd expect big bands of desert. Instead, you have huge bands of west-coast mediterranean. In an earthlike climate, this won't happen. The mediterranean climate occurs mostly due to seasonal variation bringing the edges of the polar front down and resulting in some mild summer rain; but this won't happen equatorward of a certain point. The bit - to simplify a lot! - between where the ICTZ goes north to in summer and where the PF goes south to in winter is where we get the Sahara. [you could greatly reduce this coastal desert by increasing the axial tilt, but I've assumed this has a tilt similar to earth]

Mediterranean climates on earth are extemely rare; they're only even worth naming because Earth happens to have the west-east mediterranean ocean fall exactly in that climate band. [it also doesn't really happen on oceanic islands, incidentally; these have their own climate characterised by laurisilvan vegetation. If Earth were slightly moister, all the mediterranean climate would be laurisilva, as indeed it once was]

I'm not sure why there's a vertical band of tundra across the peninsula, unless that's an altitude thing?

-----

On the east coast, I'd expect a bit of rainforest, perhaps a lot of rainforest.

If you're thinking of East Africa, nobody really knows why East Africa is so dry. The highland should actually make the east coast very wet. I've seen a suggestion that it's actually due to the fact that the highland has the really deep rift valley system running through it - that these deep valleys effectively channel/suck all the west air straight through into the congo basin. It may also be that the interference of India/Arabia and the weird compressed current systems of the northern indian ocean is significant.

In any case, your mountains seem more east-west than north-south anyway.

You seem to have very narrow bands of temperate monsoon.

Remember that when people talk about 'west coast' and 'east coast', it's not really that thes ae totally independent things. It's more that moisture is hitting one coast or the other and not making it across. You don't have to try to squeeze deserts into the middle necessarily. Likewise I don't know if you need that little dot of 'laurentian' climate in the north - wouldn't the polar front that's bringing the moisture to the oceanic zone just sweep across the whole peninsula? And how much of a temperature diffeence could there be across that distance anyway?

[Creyeditor]

Thank you so much for the detailed response, Sal. This really helps a lot. Here are some responses and further questions.

Colors: Yes, I forgot to delete at least one color. This is because not all climate zones occur on the map. Btw, is it okay to be missing a few Koeppen climates? The next map should probably have a proper legend.

Rainforest: Yes, I suspected that I should have more. I was simply unsure how a huge east-west mountain range on the equator would influence it. I will look into how deflection of moist air again and probably redo some of the winds/currents/air pressure maps. Maybe next time I should include these maps as well?

Deserts and Mediterranean: Thanks for this. I had a suspicion there was something wrong with the lack of deserts and the huge mediterraneans. I must have made some mistakes in the prevailings winds and I will try to redo them. As for inland desserts, I guess I was not sure how far moist air is carried inward by the prevailing winds. I think I might have to some further research here.

Narrow bands of tundra and temperate monsoon: I'll look into these again. Tundra might be a simple latitude mistake. As for monsoon climates that probably relates to the east coast-west coast confusion.

East coast vs west coast: This actually helps me a lot. I was kind of confused and took east coast and west coast as primitives (especially for monsoom climates). I will think more about the "sweeping across".

If this gets too detailed, we should maybe start a dedicated Map feedback thread. I would definitely love to post an updated and improved version at somd point.

[lurker]

How would the presence of a planetary ring effect the progress of spaceflight of the planet's inhabitants? From what I know, all orbits have to pass through the equatorial plane. This includes the stuff that makes up the ring. Also, would the ring prevent the building of a space elevator?

[Arayaz]

How would the presence of a planetary ring effect the progress of spaceflight of the planet's inhabitants? From what I know, all orbits have to pass through the equatorial plane. This includes the stuff that makes up the ring. Also, would the ring prevent the building of a space elevator?

Relevant.

[WeepingElf]

How would the presence of a planetary ring effect the progress of spaceflight of the planet's inhabitants? From what I know, all orbits have to pass through the equatorial plane. This includes the stuff that makes up the ring. Also, would the ring prevent the building of a space elevator?

Relevant.

Very interesting. Thank you!

[lurker]

How would the presence of a planetary ring effect the progress of spaceflight of the planet's inhabitants? From what I know, all orbits have to pass through the equatorial plane. This includes the stuff that makes up the ring. Also, would the ring prevent the building of a space elevator?

Relevant.

So it would be a potential road block, but I like the image of the inhabitants just powering through it anyway. They build heavy impact shielding into their early spacecraft, like the hull of an icebreaker, and Leroy Jenkins their way to the stars. It fits their missionary mindset. Zeal trumps practicality and economics.

[Arayaz]

How would the presence of a planetary ring effect the progress of spaceflight of the planet's inhabitants? From what I know, all orbits have to pass through the equatorial plane. This includes the stuff that makes up the ring. Also, would the ring prevent the building of a space elevator?

Relevant.

So it would be a potential road block, but I like the image of the inhabitants just powering through it anyway. They build heavy impact shielding into their early spacecraft, like the hull of an icebreaker, and Leroy Jenkins their way to the stars. It fits their missionary mindset. Zeal trumps practicality and economics.

The video also mentions, life may be impossible anyway...

[lurker]

How would the presence of a planetary ring effect the progress of spaceflight of the planet's inhabitants? From what I know, all orbits have to pass through the equatorial plane. This includes the stuff that makes up the ring. Also, would the ring prevent the building of a space elevator?

Relevant.

So it would be a potential road block, but I like the image of the inhabitants just powering through it anyway. They build heavy impact shielding into their early spacecraft, like the hull of an icebreaker, and Leroy Jenkins their way to the stars. It fits their missionary mindset. Zeal trumps practicality and economics.

The video also mentions, life may be impossible anyway...

May be impossible.

The climate would absolutely be different, but these guys start out at the equator where the ring wouldn't block the sun. Temperate latitudes would be the most effected, and the arctic I think would be about the same. Having brighter nights helps me handwave their circadian rhythm of 2 weeks awake and 24 hours in a sleep-like torpor.

I could perhaps have the ring be a geologically recent thing, so while it's been around for their entire written history, it hasn't influenced the path of life very much.

[Keenir]

How would the presence of a planetary ring effect the progress of spaceflight of the planet's inhabitants? From what I know, all orbits have to pass through the equatorial plane. This includes the stuff that makes up the ring. Also, would the ring prevent the building of a space elevator?

sorry this is late...you may be interested in this: https://www.planetfuraha.nl/astronomy/seasonsb.htm and https://planetfuraha.blogspot.com/2009/ ... rings.html
...all are a good look at how rings impact a planet more nonlethally than we thought they did

[eldin raigmore]

...you may be interested in this:
https://www.planetfuraha.nl/astronomy/seasonsb.htm
and
https://planetfuraha.blogspot.com/2009/ ... rings.html
https://planetfuraha.blogspot.com/2009/ ... rings.html
...all are a good look at how rings impact a planet more nonlethally than we thought they did

Thank you for those links!

[Salmoneus]

I think people overestimate the significance of rings.

In terms of the uninhabitable glacial eternal winter they bring... well, let's look at Saturn.

Saturn has really bright and wide rings. The really visible parts are divided in two by a gap, so are divisible into the brighter inner B ring and the outer, paler A ring. But the A ring is still very clear and obvious. (C and D rings not so much).

The opacity of the A ring varies, because it's not of constant density. The most opaque bits block up to 60% of the light coming through them. The less opaque bits block only around 10% of the light. The B ring has far more opaque sections, blocking nearly 100% of the light.

Blocking 100% of light would be a big deal! But, again, that's the most opaque part of the most opaque ring in the most opaque set of planetary rings in the solar system.

But even blocking 60% of the light - that's a big deal, right? Even 10%!

Yet here's the thing. During a total solar eclipse, the day only becomes noticeably less bright for about 3 minutes of totality. You would have to block, apparently, about 95% of the sun in order to create that "twilight at noon" effect. Less than 95%, and human eyes can't really tell the difference, because light levels are, as it were, logarithmic. There is is SO much light from the sun that even a tiny fraction of it is still very bright.

Which you'll have noticed if you've ever, for instance, looked at the power output of solar panels - the difference between a clear day and a cloudy day, or noon and afternoon, is night and day. Except that it's not, it's barely noticeable to the naked eyes.

Which makes sense when you think about cloudy days. A day with complete cloud cover apparently may have from about 70% up to over 90% less light than a clear day.

Nonetheless, biological life is still possible in Glasgow.

And then there's latitude and the angle of solar incidence. As a result of this, on a completely clear day in winter in Glasgow, at noon, there's just a little over 50% as much insolation as there is on an equally clear day in winter, at noon, on the equator.

Put those together, at on a winter noon on a cloudy day in Glasgow (and i'm just talking ordinary clouds, not snow clouds!), there may be 5-15% as much light as there is on a bright day in the Atacama desert.

And of course that makes a difference: the Atacama at noon is a lot hotter than Glasgow on a cloudy winter's day. A lot. And yet... Glasgow is still, in an astronomical sense, a theoretically hospitable world.

And, by definition, this shadow effect can only occur in winter. Summer, growing-season temperatures would be unaffected - just winters.

And unless the ring system is very wide like Saturn's, the effect would not last all day, let alone all winter - it would only exist for a small part of the day, for a small part of the winter.

Now, it's true that the actual light loss from a ring might be higher because these opacities are talking about perpendicular light, and it's oblique light that would be relevant here. But the further you get from the equator, the more that the angle of the ring-plane will approximate perpendicularity. The effective opacity will only greatly increase as you get closer to the equator. But as you get closer to the equator, the apparent width of the rings - the width of the shadow - becomes thinner and thinner, until on the equator itself it's barely noticeable. And the closer you are to the equator, the the faster the shadow moves with the seasons.

And not all the light 'blocked' by the rings will be lost. Most will be reflected, and much of it will be at angles that still hit the atmosphere - the light will be redistributed, not lost. Remember, this is mostly just ice that we're talking about.

At the equator, on the equinox, at noon, the sun will hit the rings head-on and I'd imagine that none of it would reach the planet...

...but the rings of Saturn are between 5 and 15 metres wide. At the equator, on the equinox, at noon, you could walk 20 metres north or south and, in theory, be in full sunlight. Indeed, given atmospheric refraction, I'm not sure you'd even notice the theoretical darkness even right on the equator!


And finally, let's remember: we're talking about the rings of Saturn, a really, really, really visible ring system - even if we're only talking about the outer A ring. This is practically the extreme case.

The rings of Neptune, by contrast, would block only about 10% of sunlight - that is, similar to a passing white fluffy cloud (which is broadly what they'd look like).

So while it's true that if you want a ring system as wide and bright as the inner ring of Saturn, it might have dramatic effects on the climate, I'm sure that you can realistically posit a ring system that has an entirely manageable and survivable effect while still looking spectacular. And if you're willing to downgrade from 'spectacular' to merely 'picturesque', the climatic effects may well be minimal.

----------

As for launching rockets from "the equator", this is no problem. Again, even Saturn's rings are only a few metres thick, so easy to avoid.

In terms of orbits: the rings are only made out of ice, so contact isn't that dangerous per se. The problem is that the bits of ice are travelling very, very quickly. But here's the thing: if you're orbiting at the same distance as the ring, you're also orbiting at the same speed as the ring, more or less. So you're not going to have chunks of ice flying past you at tornado speeds... you're going to be floating around with a bunch of chunks of ice that look more or less motionless to you.

And in any case, even Saturn's rings have gaps. These gaps are unstable, but I'm not sure they're unstable on the lifespan of human satellites... maybe they'd just take a bit more energy for the stabilisers. You could also have a slightly eccentric orbit that transects the plane of the rings in one of the gaps. Or just orbit above or below the rings.

[lurker]

I think people overestimate the significance of rings.

In terms of the uninhabitable glacial eternal winter they bring... well, let's look at Saturn.

Saturn has really bright and wide rings. The really visible parts are divided in two by a gap, so are divisible into the brighter inner B ring and the outer, paler A ring. But the A ring is still very clear and obvious. (C and D rings not so much).

The opacity of the A ring varies, because it's not of constant density. The most opaque bits block up to 60% of the light coming through them. The less opaque bits block only around 10% of the light. The B ring has far more opaque sections, blocking nearly 100% of the light.

Blocking 100% of light would be a big deal! But, again, that's the most opaque part of the most opaque ring in the most opaque set of planetary rings in the solar system.

But even blocking 60% of the light - that's a big deal, right? Even 10%!

Yet here's the thing. During a total solar eclipse, the day only becomes noticeably less bright for about 3 minutes of totality. You would have to block, apparently, about 95% of the sun in order to create that "twilight at noon" effect. Less than 95%, and human eyes can't really tell the difference, because light levels are, as it were, logarithmic. There is is SO much light from the sun that even a tiny fraction of it is still very bright.

Which you'll have noticed if you've ever, for instance, looked at the power output of solar panels - the difference between a clear day and a cloudy day, or noon and afternoon, is night and day. Except that it's not, it's barely noticeable to the naked eyes.

Which makes sense when you think about cloudy days. A day with complete cloud cover apparently may have from about 70% up to over 90% less light than a clear day.

Nonetheless, biological life is still possible in Glasgow.

And then there's latitude and the angle of solar incidence. As a result of this, on a completely clear day in winter in Glasgow, at noon, there's just a little over 50% as much insolation as there is on an equally clear day in winter, at noon, on the equator.

Put those together, at on a winter noon on a cloudy day in Glasgow (and i'm just talking ordinary clouds, not snow clouds!), there may be 5-15% as much light as there is on a bright day in the Atacama desert.

And of course that makes a difference: the Atacama at noon is a lot hotter than Glasgow on a cloudy winter's day. A lot. And yet... Glasgow is still, in an astronomical sense, a theoretically hospitable world.

And, by definition, this shadow effect can only occur in winter. Summer, growing-season temperatures would be unaffected - just winters.

And unless the ring system is very wide like Saturn's, the effect would not last all day, let alone all winter - it would only exist for a small part of the day, for a small part of the winter.

Now, it's true that the actual light loss from a ring might be higher because these opacities are talking about perpendicular light, and it's oblique light that would be relevant here. But the further you get from the equator, the more that the angle of the ring-plane will approximate perpendicularity. The effective opacity will only greatly increase as you get closer to the equator. But as you get closer to the equator, the apparent width of the rings - the width of the shadow - becomes thinner and thinner, until on the equator itself it's barely noticeable. And the closer you are to the equator, the the faster the shadow moves with the seasons.

And not all the light 'blocked' by the rings will be lost. Most will be reflected, and much of it will be at angles that still hit the atmosphere - the light will be redistributed, not lost. Remember, this is mostly just ice that we're talking about.

At the equator, on the equinox, at noon, the sun will hit the rings head-on and I'd imagine that none of it would reach the planet...

...but the rings of Saturn are between 5 and 15 metres wide. At the equator, on the equinox, at noon, you could walk 20 metres north or south and, in theory, be in full sunlight. Indeed, given atmospheric refraction, I'm not sure you'd even notice the theoretical darkness even right on the equator!


And finally, let's remember: we're talking about the rings of Saturn, a really, really, really visible ring system - even if we're only talking about the outer A ring. This is practically the extreme case.

The rings of Neptune, by contrast, would block only about 10% of sunlight - that is, similar to a passing white fluffy cloud (which is broadly what they'd look like).

So while it's true that if you want a ring system as wide and bright as the inner ring of Saturn, it might have dramatic effects on the climate, I'm sure that you can realistically posit a ring system that has an entirely manageable and survivable effect while still looking spectacular. And if you're willing to downgrade from 'spectacular' to merely 'picturesque', the climatic effects may well be minimal.

----------

As for launching rockets from "the equator", this is no problem. Again, even Saturn's rings are only a few metres thick, so easy to avoid.

In terms of orbits: the rings are only made out of ice, so contact isn't that dangerous per se. The problem is that the bits of ice are travelling very, very quickly. But here's the thing: if you're orbiting at the same distance as the ring, you're also orbiting at the same speed as the ring, more or less. So you're not going to have chunks of ice flying past you at tornado speeds... you're going to be floating around with a bunch of chunks of ice that look more or less motionless to you.

And in any case, even Saturn's rings have gaps. These gaps are unstable, but I'm not sure they're unstable on the lifespan of human satellites... maybe they'd just take a bit more energy for the stabilisers. You could also have a slightly eccentric orbit that transects the plane of the rings in one of the gaps. Or just orbit above or below the rings.

Yih is only 1.3 AU away from its sun. According to the Artifexian video linked above, that would make the ring rocky rather than icy. It doesn't sound like that would change much other than how bright the ring appeared at night, but I thought it would be worth mentioning. FWIW Yih is 0.9 Earth masses and 1.01 Earth radii, giving it a surface gravity of 0.88 gees. I haven't determined the rotational period yet. Not sure if that would effect the ring in any way. I suppose it would depend on how the ring formed. If it started out as ejecta from an impact than I guess its momentum would be conserved... or something IDK.

[Creyeditor]

What is a good term for the boss/head of a wizard association/council? Also, what is a good term for that council?

[Keenir]

What is a good term for the boss/head of a wizard association/council?

Boss, Big Man, Ruler...would magic-users have a different word for that, than they would for someone running a nonmagical organization or community?

Also, what is a good term for that council?

Probably depends on what the council does or used to do...sending Harry Dresden to The Advisory Council probably would have a different feel from, say, the Governance By Magics council.

[lurker]

How stupid is this idea?

I call it the sea-level orbiter.

It's a long train in a vacuum tube using maglev tracks that circles the equator. It goes fast enough that centrifugal force equals the planet's gravity and allows the occupants to float. It's used both as a permanent living space and as a means of transport. There's a central track where the train is always moving, and tracks along the sides that act as "on/off ramps". The side trains accelerate to match the central train's speed, couple with the central train, and passengers embark and disembark from the central train onto the side trains. The side trains decelerate and allow the passengers to get off. This allows the people in the central train(s) to permanently stay in microgravity.

I'm no economist, so I have no idea if this would make sense, even for a Kardashev II civilization, particularly since I've already established that normal space colonies exist to fill this need. But the idea just sounds too cool to ignore.

[Imralu]

I'm no economist, so I have no idea if this would make sense, even for a Kardashev II civilization, particularly since I've already established that normal space colonies exist to fill this need. But the idea just sounds too cool to ignore.

You could justify it if your society has rampant capitalism that allows bajillionaires to just use their money for whatever random dumb thing they want to get done. Imagine your dog-binturong version of Elon Musk x10000000 who just decides "I want to live in 0g without exposing myself to cosmic radiation" and makes some return by running it as a hotel/living space for the ultra-wealthy and also allowing scientific experiments or whatever to be carried out there.

On an Earth-like planet, assuming AI did the calculations correctly for me, it would be travelling at 7,905 m/s and would take about 1.4 hours to orbit once. Whee!

[Creyeditor]

What is a good term for the boss/head of a wizard association/council?

Boss, Big Man, Ruler...would magic-users have a different word for that, than they would for someone running a nonmagical organization or community?

Also, what is a good term for that council?

Probably depends on what the council does or used to do...sending Harry Dresden to The Advisory Council probably would have a different feel from, say, the Governance By Magics council.

I would have thought that there are more common terms in high fantasy settings. Maybe something like elder?
Also, Harry Potter has the Wizengamot, which to my German-native ears sounded very specifically wizard-like.

[lurker]

I'm no economist, so I have no idea if this would make sense, even for a Kardashev II civilization, particularly since I've already established that normal space colonies exist to fill this need. But the idea just sounds too cool to ignore.[/qauote]You could justify it if your society has rampant capitalism that allows bajillionaires to just use their money for whatever random dumb thing they want to get done. Imagine your dog-binturong version of Elon Musk x10000000 who just decides "I want to live in 0g without exposing myself to cosmic radiation" and makes some return by running it as a hotel/living space for the ultra-wealthy and also allowing scientific experiments or whatever to be carried out there.

On an Earth-like planet, assuming AI did the calculations correctly for me, it would be travelling at 7,905 m/s and would take about 1.4 hours to orbit once. Whee!

I already have space tree doggo commies (the Partisans), so I suppose I'll need space tree doggo capitalists as well.

I need to figure out the economics of interplanetary travel and orbital archologies first I suppose. I know that IRL, at least for satellites, the cost isn't so much building the craft itself. You can build a cube sat for the cost of a high end gaming PC. It's actually getting it into space where you have to fork over millions of dollars. So how to make getting into orbit cheap enough that its an every day thing. Right now I'm going with the old standby of space elevators.

But then the question becomes if you can go into space as easily a we take a flight then why have this overengineered train thing?