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I think I should wait until I can get home before I comment on anymore scientific facts. I wrote all of this out of my head from research I did years ago and I should probably look up a few things (ESPECIALLY Celsius/Kelvin temperatures) before I add anything about carbonates and such. By the way, I'm sure you're aware that one other satellite besides Titan has an atmosphere: Neptune's Triton. I'll see if I can remember to say something about it later.
As for your more easily answerable questions:
Oddly, I'm not THAT big of a science fiction fan and spend more time reading non-fiction than fiction. So, no, haven't read any Robinson (although I oughta before tossing out my screenplay, less I get sued for plagiarism!) and no Dick, either. (Ha-ha! Remember "Ghostbusters"?)
Previously there was a discussion about the possibility of the earth's overpopulation (inspired by grundle, I think), and I would have to agree with scientists who say that can almost never happen, especially at our current birthrate, so I think that's a non-issue. Turning the Sahara into livable environment is ALWAYS going to be a much simpler task than turning an extraterrestial body into a habitat, primarily because the Sahara's already got the proper air pressure and composition.
However, if we had to choose... like I said earlier, I see no point in stopping at the moon unless it truly did make a trip to Mars easier. On the other hand, I don't think a trip to Mars is going to take less than 6 months anytime in the near future, while the moon was less than 3 days away using 60s technology. Finding people who are willing to travel 6 months through deadly space only to land on a cold, barren red desert (with blue sunsets!) may not be such a simple task. Although Mars has an abundance of mineral wealth (I suspect Olympus Mons is chock full of diamonds), the cost of transporting it through space back to earth is probably prohibitive. The only real crisis I could see sending us to Mars (otherwise its just for funsies) is when urnanium runs out on earth. If earth is highly reliant on nuclear power by the time that happens, it might be worth the cost...
Still, though, I'm fairly sure the moon has uranium too. The question is, did it have enough geological activity to push a significant amount of the heavier elements from the core to near the surface after the creation? Mars I'm sure did, I don't know about the moon.
The game fell apart for economic reasons. Not MY personal economics, but the economics within the game. It took me 3 months of research to get the physics/astronomy portion about 90% accurate. As it turns out, I'll probably never get 100 % accurate-- what really had me stuck for weeks was trying to find a formula that relates atmospheric pressure to boiling and freezing points. Turns out that equation is not only not linear (which is about as far I go in mathematics), but not exponential either (calculus gave me hell but I could have sloshed through that), but it was such a shape (kind of snake-like) that the formula involved WAY too many variables and blew my mind. So finally I cheated on that part.
See, what that subroutine of the game was supposed to do (and it was so huge I eventually had to make it a seperate program called up by the original program) was create a universe of planets, satellites and large asteroids at the beginning of the game, each of which would evolve according to characteristics like distance from sun, chemical composition, size, etc. Most would never get life, MAYBE 1 or 2 a game would make it to advanced life. I finally got that part working bug-free, although probably slightly inaccurately. This was, by the way, before the introduction of "Master of Orion 2," which kinda did the same thing, although I think they cheated much more than I did-- I think that program isn't evolutionary, but just sort of randomly tosses planetary scenarios at you. Customers probably can't tell the difference, which is one reason why I stopped working on the game when "MO2" came out-- I'd just be accused of being a copycat.
Where I really gave up was the economic part, and I had one hell of a time trying to explain this to the economics professor I asked to help me, so you probably won't get it either. If you've ever played "M.U.L.E." (which is really where my inspiration came from), you've probably noticed that the prices of food, energy and metals all affect one another. My theory about both MULE and the real earth is that the price of energy determines all other prices, even more so than general supply and demand. Without some level of energy, nothing happens, no matter how much food, land, labor, raw materials, etc. you may have lying around. Even if you are given a piece of land with a fully ripened apple orchard, and your only plan is to sell raw apples, you still have to pick the apples and transport them to market-- or expend some type of energy to bring the market to you. Where I lost my mind was trying to figure out how much a unit of energy is worth, and then making that price work reasonably with all other prices. As simple as MULE was, it was a stroke of genius that may never be repeated-- that economic model was something to behold. I could never get my start up prices to balance out reasonably-- something was always just way out of wack. So for all of the decent graphics and great ideas, it was still primarily useless because of flawed economic reasoning. Looking back I think I was trying to be a little bit too realistic. I mean, MULE was just a game, not a simulation. Even the Sim Cities use unrealistic start-up figures (how many nuclear power plants have you ever bought for 10 grand?). Accuracy actually destroyed me. I finally got disgusted and started concentrating more on college and work and eventually forgot about the thing.
The screenplay took one single faucet of the game and ran with it. Can't tell you what the faucet was, can't even tell you the name of the game or screenplay (which will change because that faucet of the game was not what the game was named for and so now the screenplay appears stupidly named). I will say that unlike the game, the screenplay concentrates not on the entire universe but the colonization and exploitation of one planet-- Mars, of course. (At least the first one does. The second sequel [I've written part of its story, but not any part of the screenplay] gets weird and involves Titan and Europa.)
The catalyst that leads to Martian exploration and colonization is what seperates my screenplay from all of the others out there. And it's NOT uranium-- that would be semi-realistic. The catalyst is almost unbelievable, yet completely scientifically possible, and in fact, could happen, and in fact, to my shock, it was ALMOST previously discussed by some people in Crankyland. They never quite made it there, so my secret is safe. And that's all I have to say about my messy, incomplete screenplay at the moment. I'm sure if it makes it onto the big screen, it will severely flamed by everyone who hated "Deep Impact" and "Armageddon." I have much better screenplays, not to mention cheaper as far as production costs, so I don't know if I'm even going to try to sell this idea until I get some clout. This is the only sci-fi flick I've written-- I'm actually a dramatist.
By the way, I couldn't become an astronomist. I'm only slightly above average at math and hate physics. Figure that one out from my previous posts. I'm just really smart in general-- I can't become too specific with any subject.
The Creep, The Freak & The Loser
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