On 18 Oct 2016 at 12:47, C. Berry wrote:

> Worlds in volatile-poor inner systems are likely to be backwaters
> (pardon the pun) due to the difficulties of both life support and
> ship fueling. If a volatile-poor inner system is very valuable for
> some reason (strategic or economic),

Well, one reason for being volatile poor wopuld be if the system is a
supernova remnant. In that case, there will be a lot of interesting
things on the remaing planets. Watch out for the pulsar and accretion
disc though.

Another is if the star is a binary that goes nova every so often. The
planets won't be as "boiled down" as for a supernova, but they'll
stil have been baked pretty well.

This might result in interesting ores.

> a long(ish) term strategy would be to push distant icy bodies into
> orbits closer to the inner system for more convenient resource
> retrieval. Traveller tech is easily up to this task; the only real
> limit is how much stress the body will take before breaking up (or
> before your drive just burrows into the surface), which limits how
> much acceleration you can apply to the task. But even a steady 0.01g
> will let you reshape orbits radically over periods of a few decades.

Solar sails might be a though for comets and the like.

Though for nova systems and supernova remnants, there isn't going to
be much "ice" until you get a *long* ways from the system.

For power, fission reactors might be a good choice given the
likelihood of heavy metal "concentration" in the remaining
planets/planetoids.

You'll still need hydrogen and other volatiles for life support and
other things.

--
Leonard Erickson (aka shadow)
shadow at shadowgard dot com