Atmospheric pressures affecting colonists.

[falchion-gpx (OP)]

hxxp: www.  lakesidepress.  com/pulmonary/books/scuba/gaspress.  htm

I think atmospheric pressure in how it affects the unaltered human colonist needs to be readdressed.    I'm sure a normal human being could survive a 5 atmosphere planet as long as the composition and concentration of oxygen was within tolerances.    Say in this case, the total atmospheres would probably only need to be 3 percent, with noble gasses in for filler, and maybe 6 percent nitrogen thrown in for agricultural development.    The other 91 percent being helium. 

[Thiosk]

Humans could certainly survive at obnoxious pressures of helium, but does that make it a viable environment for breeding and factory work? I mean, not much would put me out of the mood faster than my wife coming on to me in a heliOx voice...

Can't one dip into the biology tech line and breed your own super pressure humans?

A bigger deal is that CO2 is a viable terraforming gas.  It isn't, as has been described elsewhere.

As it stands, the current terraforming scheme is OK with me, safe greenhouse gas for sulfur hexaflouride and anti-greenhouse gas for magical fantasy make-mercury-colder-than-pluto gas.  

I think in the future iterations, things will get a little more restrictive.  I for one wouldn't object to having to keep X workers on permanent terraforming facilities; or perhaps abstracting it as larger fractions of the population devoted to "agricultural and environment" as a function of the base temp\current temp ratio.  But moving past the current abstraction might be a little too boring.

[Sudragon2k3]

And having read the red\green\blue mars series, can we also include things like Solettas and sunshades?

And orbital elevators.

And possibly the ability to move asteroids and 'chunk' size moons and planets.

[Thiosk]

I love it in principle!

I've already decided to role-play "anti-greenhouse gas" a sunshade thats installed by terraformers, because other than stratospheric sulfur and nitrogen rich clouds lowering albedo, theres not really a such thing as "anti-greenhouse gas," at least that i'm aware of.

Achieving orbit is functionally instant already, so I conclude that civilian spaceports have space elevators to assist in loading equipment. 

As for chunk moving, I think thats great too, but it might be a tad too easy to fortify jump points, which is probably why we can't move them as is.  I'd tow rings of them around jump earth's jump points and install plasma carronade PDCs and swarms of missle launchers.  In aurora 2, if steve gets rid of (or gives alternatives to) jump point travel, we'll probably be able to tow them all over as a function of object mass.   

[Steve Walmsley]

And having read the red\green\blue mars series, can we also include things like Solettas and sunshades?

And orbital elevators.

And possibly the ability to move asteroids and 'chunk' size moons and planets.

At some point I do intend to add the ability to move small asteroids, although this may be restricted to altering their orbit inward or outward rather than maneuvering them like a ship. An orbital elevator is a possibility, although how you would shoot at it might be an issue. I guess the effect would be more efficient shipyards and better cargo handling.

Steve

[Eseraith]

I always assumed that there all developed worlds already possessed space elevators and that was how things like maintenance facilitates on the planets surface maintained ships in orbit.  After all according to National Geographic latest article space elevators are not that far out.