Our grasp on ideas of solar systems

Tim

Creative Writer
BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | Farewell Pluto?

Not just the announcement of the possible "10th planet" in our solar system but the additional education presented to us from the few people who have a care for this sort of thing, that there are many other large objects that could possible be called planets or moons in far orbits around our sun.

It might be true that astrologists, teachers and schoolchildren are the only people on earth that will come across this data, let alone think about it. But also scifi writers should think about this now.

For example, with the size of these objects, is it safe for an interstellar craft to judge it's course by the largest objects cricling a sun? have they the agility or shielding to manouvre/deal with smaller, less watched objects?

Can a stories "pirates" have a base on one of the smaller objects, hidden from normal sight? Mining installations to use up these objects could find them with difficulty, but to great profit.

Previous to this information, even I thought that the major planets in a solar system would have, sun included, sucked in the smaller objects over the millions and billions of years since individual solar systems had been created. As our moon shows, a lot of objects have hit it throughout it's life and i kind of assumed that small objects in our solar system would have been drawn to the large bodies, "clearing up" space. These scientific facts can give new thought to our ideas and definitely more scope.

For instance, scifi stories about our solar system usually cover stations on Mars and moons of Jupiter, with mining of individual asteroids or the main asteroid belt, with floating habitats in orbit around specific large masses. Now we have the option to include multiple objects for mining and bases, resupply for orbitals and stations on hard rock become more viable, given a jump in insystem craft technology. A leap in the number of objects in our solar system gives us a longer period to play with our own solar system before the jump to instellar travel is made.

We see our possible source of resources is not as limited as we thought!
 
Back
Top