May/June Lite Challenge Entry: UNC 201.F

[jtougas]

Dieter Warthburg was walking back to his quaters, the communiqe from HQ foremost on his mind. He had to find a good planet to mine and soon if he was to keep his job, not to mention his life. Interworld had just scored a major succes in sector 124 B and the Hannover-Rossik share was still way behind after the corruption scandal last fall. He sighed as he put his hand on the scanner. As the door opened he saw the screen flicking on - a message blinking - a private message. He knew who it was before he even reached the screen and he had no interest in talking to him now, listening to the threats, to how high his debts were by now. He sighed, sat down and poured himself a drink. Slowly sipping it letting it roll around his tongue... savoring the taste he leaned back... that Carol had given him some expensive tastes, but damn this was good whiskey. He wondered were she were now - probably gotten out while she was ahead. She hated the job, she told him on more than one occasion - in confidence of course - and drunk. Well they both were drunk, who wouldn't be with jobs like theirs. The glass was empty - already. He put it down on the desk and was just about to open the message getting ready to beg for his life when his com sounded.
"Captain - we got a promising planet only 2 jumps away." the ensign said.
Dieter smiled.

Carol Mayer was exhausted. She hadn't slept in days. She had been far too busy staring at the view-screen at the small ship. She sat in her ready room with a glass of whiskey. She looked at the bottle that to her dismay was nearly empty. "This was really good stuff" She said to herself. She fumbled for a minute trying to remember where it had came from and then it came to her. Dieter Warthburg. That poor S.O.B from Hannover-Rossik Mining. They were Interworld's European Union competition. Every bit as ruthless as IW just not quite as lucky. Her mind wandered back to those nights she had spent with Dieter. He was just as miserable about his job as she was about hers. She had, (in a drunken vulnerable moment) told him about her farm and her dreams of leaving Interworld and it's genocidal lust for energy far behind. He had also voiced the same goal. She wondered if he had made good on it. Dieter had confided in her that he owed a great sum of money to the company and was in danger of not only losing his job but in fact his life. Mayer sighed loudly at the irony of life. Two people both miserable and suffering trapped in a cycle of destruction that neither of them could change. She hoped for his sake that Dieter had figured out a way to escape. She downed the last of her whiskey in a great gulp and poured another voicing a silent toast to her lost companion.....

Thanks everyone for the kind words

This story is so much fun that I just had to do something to this map so that I could keep it going. I added a small "moon" in orbit around UNC 201.F (And of course it has no mineral value whatsoever)

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[tilt]

yeah ... I hope she gets out

[jtougas]

I added a bit of a shadow to the moon. Sorry no story I have the WORST headache.

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[jtougas]

Carol Mayer had nearly had to take herself off of the bridge of the Nebraska. The "Black Team" had arrived and had reported to her ship. Professor David Hunter was even more unassuming in person. As was his team. Made up of 5 scholarly looking younger people they introduced themselves and went about their business. The IWSO had contacted her and given her orders that the team was to use her ready room for all their activity. Of course this also meant that Mayer or her crew would have no idea what was going on. As amusing as she found David Hunter and his team she sincerely hoped that they knew what they were doing and would have the courtesy to inform her before the shooting started....

More story. more map I added a reticule around UNC 201.G (the moon) and changed the color of the grid text to denote..well..Something

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[Diamond]

You're gonna kill me for saying this, but... I feel like the moon was a bad idea. It looks too flat compared to the planet. Is there a way you can apply a Spherize filter to it (if Gimp has such a thing)?

[jtougas]

You're gonna kill me for saying this, but... I feel like the moon was a bad idea. It looks too flat compared to the planet. Is there a way you can apply a Spherize filter to it (if Gimp has such a thing)?

Not at all. I enjoy the feedback. A lot of times I spend so much time looking at these things that I don't always see ways I could make it better, or in this case ways that I actually made it worse. I made the moon the same way I made the planet minus the "atmosphere" which I think is probably why it looks so flat. I'll try to map the texture onto a globe and see if that makes any difference.

[jtougas]

Well that moon turned out to be more of a problem than I originally thought. After many "blurs" and shadows I think I might have gotten something a bit more "spherical"

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[Omnigeek6]

Well that moon turned out to be more of a problem than I originally thought. After many "blurs" and shadows I think I might have gotten something a bit more "spherical"

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Given your published diameter and a viewfield angle of 60 degrees, the camera is at an altitude of 9000 km.

It has a mass of 0.97 earths and a diameter of 11567.6 km, so its roche limit is at about 20,000 km.

Given its angular size (200 pixels, 1/6th the size of the planet) your moon would have the smallest diameter if it orbited at the roche limit. Assuming that the planet and moon have an angular separation of 15 degrees, using the law of cosines, we find that the minimum possible separation between the camera and the moon is about 28,800 km. Therefore, given the moon's angular diameter of 8.57 degrees (The viewfield is assumed to be 60 degrees, the moon is 200 pixels wide, and the image is 1400 pixels wide).

Therefore, I calculate that the moon is 4300 km in diameter, so if it has the same density as Earth's moon, it has a mass of 1.89 moons. Since tidal force varies with the cube of distance, and your moon is also about 20X closer to its parent than Earth's moon is to Earth, tidal forces on this planet will be over 15000 times stronger than on Earth. Therefore, the planet will almost certainly be tidally locked to its moon.

Your moon should have an orbit 7.69 hours long, and with tidal locking that should also be the planet's rotational period. However, your planet's rotational period is 25.12 hours.



In short, that moon looks a bit big. You might wanna scale it down. For comparison, our moon would be 12 pixels in diameter.

[tilt]

nerd!... lol... but damn cool calculations, couldn't even begin to do something like that

[Aval Penworth]

You've come a long way since I was last here J.T.

Tre' cool.