planetary classes

Discussion in 'Trek Tech' started by Ronald Held, Jan 30, 2013.

  1. throwback

    throwback Captain Captain

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  2. Ronald Held

    Ronald Held Vice Admiral Admiral

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    AFAIK there was no canonical language guide similar to that Marc Okrund made . I asked him decades ago, but he seemed uninterested in doing one.
     
  3. Darkwing

    Darkwing Commodore Commodore

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    This dry land thing is too wierd!
    I disagree. As I mentioned earlier, "Earth-Mars" conditions, abbreviated E-M, pronounced "em", fits quite reasonably. And he very well may have meant not Mars literally, but Mars-sized, barely habitable planets, just to allow wiggle room for worlds that weren't so Terran, such as Korby's planet, Exo III. Or he may have meant Mars, after all, as mentioned above about Spock.
    You also seem to be pretty perturbed over this subject. Why's it such a big deal?
     
  4. CorporalCaptain

    CorporalCaptain Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    I'd like to thank you, Darkwing, for pointing out the possible connection with the pronunciation of "em". I'd never noticed that before, and certainly it never occurred to me as a preteen way back in the 1970's.

    Whether that's the path that Roddenberry actually took or not, and—again—we may never know how he actually came up with it, nevertheless it's certainly one plausible idea of how one concept might have morphed into another during early development.

    My appreciation may not have been evident when I pointed out upthread that already by the pitch he had settled on just the letter "M", so I thought I'd mention it.
     
  5. lpetrich

    lpetrich Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    For our homeworld, Great Oxygenation Event - Wikipedia notes estimates of how much oxygen it had in the past, with a graph that showed a range of estimates.

    For much of the Proterozoic, about 1 - 2 billion years ago, the Earth had about 10% - 20% the present concentration of oxygen. For the Archean and earlier, over 2.5 billion years ago, less than 1% and likely essentially 0%. For back then, estimates of carbon-dioxide and methane concentration are very hand-wavy, though the early Earth very likely had much more of those gases in its atmosphere than it does today. That is because the Earth had liquid water on its surface, despite the Sun being only about 90% as bright as it is today.

    So before the early Paleozoic, the Earth was class L.

    The early Earth may qualify as being class Y, with lots of CO2 and likely lots of CH4. One can add oxygen so one can breathe, but the CO2 may have high enough concentration to be dangerous (hypercapnia, at about 5% present atmospheric pressure). In toxicity, CH4 is not much different from nitrogen or argon -- one has to breathe in more than our atmosphere's pressure of it before it becomes dangerous (nitrogen narcosis). But for at least 5% of present atmospheric pressure of CH4, it and oxygen are a fire hazard.

    Carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere - Wikipedia cites some estimates for our planet's CO2 concentration since the base of the Cambrian, where it was 7000 parts per million in volume or 0.7% of present atmospheric pressure. Not enough to cause hypercapnia.
     
  6. lpetrich

    lpetrich Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    I have found some patterns in the planetary classes. The first one is size, including both mass and radius:
    • Large: gas giants, lots of H2 and He -- J
    • Medium: Earth-sized -- most of the classes
    • Small: airless planetoids and moons -- D
    Medium-sized planets can have atmospheres, at least if they are not too close to their stars, but they cannot collect much hydrogen or helium.

    The next category is temperature. Here, it will be relative to liquid-water temperatures.
    • Hot -- N
    • Medium -- H, L, M, O, Y
    • Cold -- K, P
    Now for the water content of the surface. The medium case has liquid water, and here is how much of the surface it covers.
    • Little or no -- H
    • Partial -- L, M
    • All -- O
    Class Y may cross these boundaries. Here is the cold case's ice coverage.
    • None to partial -- K
    • All -- P
    Finally, here is the atmosphere quality for medium-sized, liquid-water, partial-ocean case.
    • Good for humanity -- M
    • Somewhat bad to somewhat good -- L
    • Very bad -- Y
     
  7. lpetrich

    lpetrich Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    I thought of working out where known exoplanets fall in these categories, but we have very little on them, mostly orbit data and their radii and/or masses. Sometimes one can get both masses and radii, and the most Earth-sized such planets with good numbers for both are those of TRAPPIST-1.

    b: O (N) ... c: O or N ... d: O (L) ... e: K or P ... f: P (K) ... g: P (K) ... h: P (K)
     
  8. Gary8

    Gary8 Ensign Newbie

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    The stellar cartography book had a nice chart
     
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  9. Kerock

    Kerock Commander Red Shirt

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    if Minshara Class means class M. Do other class of planets have vulcan names?
     
  10. Johnny7oak

    Johnny7oak Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    Class M for Mayhem ? Manhiem? Mankind like world?
     
  11. Kerock

    Kerock Commander Red Shirt

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    Class T & A
     
  12. CorporalCaptain

    CorporalCaptain Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Re-reading this thread was a trip down memory lane. Great discussion, though from over five years ago!
     
  13. Ronald Held

    Ronald Held Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Good question if the other planet classes came from Vulcan.
     
  14. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    A lot of stuff apparently came, given the ENT setup: Klingons having ships with bird-themed designations, or indeed Klingon being called Klingons, for starters.

    And Vulcan maps seemed to be a big thing back then. Earthlings could of course tell all by themselves where all the stars sit in space - but the maps would have the all-important labels.

    Classifying the complexity of nature is the human and no doubt also Vulcan thing to do. But Vulcans would have their own ideas there, just like different ilks of humans do, and eventually everybody would have to agree on one model. Today, we agree on the structure of all nature with a Swedish homebody who knew nothing about genetics. Tomorrow, we might agree with the ideas of some ancient Vulcan priest.

    Timo Saloniemi
     
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  15. Kerock

    Kerock Commander Red Shirt

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    But some of the Vulcan names would be unpronounceable. Many of the stars kept Terran names. Deneb, Rigel, Betelgeuse, Vega, Tau Ceti, Aradoni
     
  16. Tenacity

    Tenacity Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    but would anyone other than humans (or than those briefly using english) use those those names?

    why would a andorian refer to rigel as "rigel."
     
  17. Kerock

    Kerock Commander Red Shirt

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    But the people of Rigel call it Rigel. Was it colonized by Humans?
     
  18. Mytran

    Mytran Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    That's the old U.T. at work again :devil:
     
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  19. DEWLine

    DEWLine Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    And some names cropped up in multiple languages created on worlds lightyears apart from each other, but the name would mean something different in each language it appeared in. Example: Rigel. Hence the Rigel visited in "Broken Bow" being labelled "Beta Rigel" from ST: Star Charts onward. (And there was precedent with "Beta Antares" from "A Piece of the Action"...)