@maxthefox @sudnadja @nyrath Are you aware of Joan Vinge's "Heaven Chronicles" ?
@michael_w_busch @maxthefox @sudnadja
Joan Vinge's Heaven Chronicles are classics.
They illustrate perils of tech decline in a system with no habitable planets but lots of rich asteroids
If a planetary colony falls into barbarism, everybody reverts to a non-technological agrarian society.
If an asteroid civilization falls into barbarism, Everybody Dies.
https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/techlevel.php#decline
@nyrath @michael_w_busch @sudnadja I didn't yet but I'll probably check them out for inspiration!
But yea the thing I have with spaceborne societies (aside from the largest of habs) is that they either have strict social control (if human) or have mindsets either natural (alien) or engineered (transhuman) to be able to properly maintain small habitats and asteroid colonies over generations.
With baseline humans, asteroid mines are at least partially dependent on the in-system inhabited worlds.
@maxthefox @michael_w_busch @sudnadja
"...spaceborne societies either have strict social control or ..."
Obligatory Atomic Rockets reference:
https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacecolony.php#id--Space_Colony--Space_Colony_Problems--Society_Rules
@nyrath @maxthefox @michael_w_busch @sudnadja@vivaldi.net
Being who I am, I’m increasingly inclined to write the IES article on social failure modes of space habitats: to wit, that the meme which states they require tight social control to function basically makes them catnip for all the authoritarian personality types in the area.
@nyrath @maxthefox @michael_w_busch @sudnadja@vivaldi.net
Apart from the, ah, joyful societies authoritarian leaders usually create, of course, the *real* social failure mode is when the guy in charge of the strict social control comes up with the space version of the Four Pests Campaign or making steel in backyard furnaces and the population are unable to tell him he's full of crap before everyone's dead.
("Complaining about the smell of the air is unmutual, citizen!")
@cerebrate @nyrath @maxthefox @michael_w_busch @sudnadja Most people can't really wrap their heads around what it means for AIR to not be a taken for granted background feature of life.
I sometimes imagine that space-based civilization won't really be viable until they come up with something like an isotope-powered personal rebreather that guarantees that no matter what else you will always have oxygen.
@60sRefugee @nyrath @maxthefox @michael_w_busch @sudnadja@vivaldi.net
Once in a much earlier iteration of this topic, I opined that the problem was the assumption of single-provider life support such that any violation of strict discipline could theoretically take it out - which is not only bad social design, but really terrible *engineering* design.
@60sRefugee @nyrath @maxthefox @michael_w_busch @sudnadja@vivaldi.net
Say what you will about anarchic space cossacks, but it's really hard to screw up the air terminally in a space city with three to five commercial life support companies and dozens if not hundreds of belter rednecks with their own algae banks gurgling away.
@cerebrate @60sRefugee @nyrath @maxthefox @michael_w_busch @sudnadja
With three to five major suppliers in a market, it's far too easy for someone to combine 1 & 2, use that to force #5 out of the market, and then you're back to hydraulic despotism.
If you've got a market in life support, it needs to be proactively regulated with an iron fist.
@dashdsrdash @60sRefugee @nyrath @maxthefox @michael_w_busch @sudnadja@vivaldi.net
"So, what you're saying is that in order to avoid the risk of the market collapsing into a hydraulic despotism, we need to preemptively institute a hydraulic despotism?"
@cerebrate @60sRefugee @nyrath @maxthefox @michael_w_busch @sudnadja
It's a conundrum, isn't it.
@dashdsrdash @60sRefugee @nyrath @maxthefox @michael_w_busch @sudnadja@vivaldi.net
While I don't pretend to have a perfect general solution to the problem, I do note that we're awfully good at implementing solutions to potential risks which turn out to be pretty terrible in their own right.
So I have a fairly strong preference for not doing that.
