Tuesday, October 30, 2018

Ishee's done! (Traveller Tuesday #19)

The extremes of temperature on Ishee range from 224.21º C (435.578º F) at the equator during the height of a summer which happens to include the end of the day to -19.3º C (-2.74º F) in the depths of winter if it includes midnight. Remember that the Isheean day is 19 Earth-days long and each season (assuming the year is evenly divided among the four) is almost 13 Earth-days long. I found a page on LiveScience that says humans can survive indefinitely between 4º C (40º F) and 35º C (95º F; this number is at 50% relative humidity, lower humidity increases it), while Wikipedia says that the coldest temperature recorded on Earth is −89.2 °C (−128.6 °F) in Soviet Antarctica and the hottest is 54° C (129° F). Let's call the habitable range the average of these two, so -42.6° C (-44.68° F) to 44.5° C (112.1° F).

Looking at the four extreme points of the possible Isheean year (depths of winter at deepest night, depths of winter at peak of day, heights of summer at deepest night, and heights of summer at peak of day), we can come to some image of unprotected life on Ishee. The summer/day and winter/night options are in that chart from last week. There, we can see that a daytime summer is completely impossible for humans to survive, even at the poles ~ I imagine that for that whole time, the Isheeans retreat to underground redoubts, subterranean reflections of the cities above. On the other hand, a nighttime winter is well within human tolerances, all the way to the equator, which likely has a low enough humidity to be longterm inhabitable at the time. In a daytime winter, the planet is just as uninhabitable as a nighttime winter, while nighttime summers also reach full habitability. OK, so all of that determines that the time of day matters more than season.

One last comment on Isheean temperature: we can try to figure out a rough timeline of temperature shifts if we start at an imaginary 0 point and estimate day/season length. We can call night and day 9.5 Earth-days long and each season 12.75 Earth-days long.

***Let's start at a coincidental sunset and onset of winter. That nighttime winter (and widespread survivability across the surface) lasts 9.5 Earth-days.
***A late-winter sunrise initiates 3.25 Earth-days of daytime winter, during which Isheeans retreat to the poles and underground.
***This is then followed by 6.25 Earth-days of daytime spring.
***So now we have 6.5 Earth-days of nighttime spring.
***That's followed by 3 Earth-days of daytime summer.
***Then a full 9.5 Earth-day-long nighttime summer.
***An extremely short 6-hour (approximately) daytime autumn follows,
***quickly giving way to a 9.25-Earth-day-long daytime autumn and 3.5 Earth days of nighttime autumn.
***And that's a possible year in the life of Ishee. With 13 Earth-days left in the day at the end of this year (both having started at 0), we can tell that any individual year recurs (or years within a certain small margin of difference) quite rarely.

We can also figure out some more details about Ishee's surface water, modifying its base hydrographic coverage of 10% by 2d6-7%. We roll 9, so 12% of Ishee's surface is covered by water (when it's not boiled into the atmosphere, which happens every Isheean day ~ every Earth-week and a half or so). I wonder what Ishee's general population density is? Just a quick population divided by the difference between the surface area and the 12% of that area covered by water. A 3040-km diameter results in an approximate surface area of 29,000,000 square kilometers, only 25,520,000 of which are land-surface. That gives us a population density of 0.628 people per square kilometer or 1.593 sq. km per person. That's a little more crowded than Alaska, a comment which makes me wonder about putting a Northern Exposure expy on its map.

We figured out the seismic stress Ishee is facing a long while back, but how many tectonic plates does it have? The answer there is based on its Size and Atmosphere, giving Ishee 3-2d6 plates, which is always going to come up with but a single plate, A roll of 5 on 2d6+3 scatters small lakes across Ishee's surface to account for its 12% surface water. Considering Ishee's range of temperatures, they likely move around over the course of the Isheean day as they boil away and re-condense. We have to roll 1d6 times (the result is 6) to determine how many volcanoes there are on Ishee. Each roll results in 2d6-3 volcanoes, so I suppose we can just multiply that through and roll 12d6-36. Looking at our rolls, that results in lower numbers cuz 2d6-3 just comes out 0 when it wold come out negative if we were smashing it all together. I roll 6, 7, 2, 0, 4, and 3, for a total of 22 volcanoes on Ishee's surface.

And those are the last details! We have created a world, in all its parts! And it only took 17,300 words or so. I enjoy relatively crowded star systems in my Traveller world (a bit of a transhuman element to my sci-fi), so next time, well get started on Ishee's first moon!

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