Roland has a million inhabitants, all on one continent and half in one city, Christmas Landing, on the shore of the Boreal Ocean. 5000 live in Portolondon on the Gulf of Polaris in Arctica, past the Arctic Circle. The planet was colonized a century or more ago. Eric Sherrinford immigrated from Boewulf twelve years ago.
Surface gravity is 0.42 x 980 cm/sec (squared). I don't know what that means. Does it just mean that the gravity is 0.42 (less than half) of Terrestrial?
The sun, Charlemagne, is 40% brighter than Sol, even brighter in the ultraviolet, and emits more charged particles. Roland's orbit is eccentric so that insolation varies from more than double to slightly less than Terrestrial.
Yet another concretely realized fictional planet.
10 comments:
The demographic pattern is rather like Australia, the most recent example of colonization of a very sparsely inhabited territory of unfamiliar ecological type. Note the single big city dominating the hinterland.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
Mr. Stirling: And one of things we will find out is how the hidden native inhabitants of Roland planned to slowly take over that hinterland to dominate the city.
Paul: I had been puzzled over how exactly to understand that mention of "Beowulf." Was it yet another colonized planet or a city or town in the High America region of Rustum? Mention was made both of the latter planet and how Eric Sherrinford came from a world with a gravity exactly 1.25 greater than Earth's. And that Sherrinford could not live in the lowlands of his home world. That led me to conclude he came from Rustum.
Sean
Sean,
Sherrinford came from a planet called Beowulf.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I was not paying enough attention in that case if "Beowulf" was meant by Sherrinford to mean another PLANET, not a part of Rustum. And "To Promote The General Welfare" ends with the Rustumite colonists agreeing on the necessity of a major scientific research program for finding means to enable anybody to live comfortably on Rustum, including the lowlands. Beowulf had a similar problem caused by higher gravity but with no mention of such a research program. So it's simpler to believe Sherrinford came from another planet, not Rustum.
And that name, "Beowulf" is also intriguing! Plainly it was explored or settled by people who may have been fans of that Old English poems. And possibly the Scandinavian sagas. Were the settlers also tiresome malcontents from what used to be the UK and America that the World Federation was glad to be rid of?
Sean
Sean,
Niven, Pournelle and Barnes have a couple of novels set on the colony planet of Heorot.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I've heard of the "Heorot" books but never read them. Just one of those things I've not gotten around to reading. Pity, of course.
Sean
Sean,
Sherrinford lived in the city of Heorot on the planet Beowulf!
Paul.
Sean:
Sherrinford at one point specifically says that there are giant birds on Beowulf — and that he's read that Rustum has some, too.
Kaor, Paul and DAVID!
Paul: very BEOWULFIAN names!
David: that settles matter, Beowulf was the name of ANOTHER colonized planet.
Sean
Kaor, Paul!
Yes, standard gravity on Earth is 980 centimeters per second squared (these are units of acceleration), so gravity on Rustum is 42% of that. By the way, the actual acceleration of a falling object on Earth differs a bit from place to place, being lower on the equator than at the poles, partly because the Earth is an oblate spheroid, rather than a perfect sphere, making the poles closer to the dense core, and partly because some of the actual gravitational attraction on the equator is counteracted by the centrifugal force of the Earth’s rotation. The acceleration is centrifugal in the reference frame of someone who treats the ground beneath his feet as unmoving, although actually centripetal in a reference frame which treats the Earth as rotating.
Best Regards,
Nicholas
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