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Whom To Send to Proxima Centauri



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Sat Sep 10, 2016 12:53 pm
Mea says...



So! I'm currently planning a murder mystery set on the first ever manned ship outside of the solar system. Specifically, it's going to Proxima Centauri, because, as luck would have it, I started researching the nearest planet that's likely to have life and it turns out there's a planet in the Goldilocks zone around Proxima Centauri, which was actually discovered just a couple weeks ago. Pretty cool stuff.

Anyway, so the year is around 2035. May adjust that. It's a privately funded mission, but they're sending people there both kind of as a publicity thing and also because there's a high chance life is there and they want to study it.

So, the thing is, I need a cast, and I've started developing a few characters. But I'm not really sure how many/what kind of people a private company would send on a spaceflight like this. The way I have it, they'll be making the journey in 3.6 years from the spaceship's POV and 5.2 years from Earth's POV. (These aren't random numbers - they'll be accelerating at 1G the whole time, flipping around and decelerating at halfway. Solves the problem of gravity and brings them up to relativistic speeds) They'll want to keep costs as low as possible, because fuel is expensive. I also don't want too large of a cast, if possible.

Right now, I have seven people. The captain, two astrophysicists, two biologists, an engineer/pilot, and a medic. One of the other astrophysicists has some training as an engineer. What other roles would they logically need? Would they take anyone else, and who would it be, keeping in mind the need for as few people as possible?
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Sat Sep 10, 2016 5:51 pm
Rosendorn says...



How long is the stay on the planet supposed to be?
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Sat Sep 10, 2016 10:54 pm
Mea says...



@Rosendorn - I'm thinking the max they'll stay is 5 years, but they can pick up and leave earlier than that if they need to.
We're all stories in the end.

I think of you as a fairy with a green dress and a flower crown and stuff.
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Sun Sep 11, 2016 4:32 am
Rosendorn says...



My gut instinct is you're missing a few... unsung workers, here? Namely farmers, mechanics, and "makers".

Somebody has to make sure there's enough food to sustain people, and there should probably be somebody who knows how to cook that food (that can be a double duty— some people are brilliant cooks without an ounce of education on it), and there should be somebody who can physically know how to repair everything, which, again, can be double duty with the engineers. And, of course, basically everybody pitching in to help.

But think of life beyond ivory towers and study— who does the gritty work? Are the people themselves not expecting to have to do so much gritty work? Biologists might be plant biologists, but that doesn't mean they know how to grow food and keep a system sustained.

And what about those who make medicine? A medic is limited without the medicine, and again, a biologist can help with this, but it has to be their specialty (every biologist I know runs into multiple areas where they go "I am so not a [type of] biologist"). Or those who make parts, make new gadgets, make replacements? They're important— and they're often thought of as factory workers.

All in all, just at a glance, it seems to me you have a lot of "stars"— the ones who will do the actual glory-filled stuff, like tagging and saving lives and making sure the calculations are correct— but not a lot of "mundane." It could be an interesting dynamic depending on how your "stars" handle the fact there are these average people with very necessary roles, but roles that are often undervalued because they lack that star quality.
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo

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Sun Sep 11, 2016 7:56 am
Mea says...



@Rosendorn - I probably didn't make that clear in my opening post, but the engineer is basically supposed to be the mechanic, so yeah, double duty. Same with the cooking, if there is any to be done beyond rehydrating food.

As for farmers... I hadn't really thought about that. I'll have to decide whether or not they're going to try to grow food, or just rely on dehydrated packaged stuff for the better part of 15 years. I'm guessing they'd rather try to grow food, at least while they're on the planet. Maybe I want one more biologist that does specialize in growing food, etc? Or just have one of the current two be fairly knowledgeable about that.

But yeah, I'm basically trying to push double duty as much as possible. Think 2001: A Space Odyssey in terms of the size of the mission and such, though with a few more people and no AI, just normal computer systems. I'm mostly trying to figure out if I'm completely missing some important job/field of study that they'd likely need to have someone with a lot of expertise in.

As for medicine - my gut instinct says that making medicine would take a lot more machinery then just packaging as much general medicine as they can take and hoping no one develops a really rare disease. But maybe there should be at least one more medic anyway, since one person really can't specialize in everything about the human body, and they'll be basically cut off from humanity the entire time.

(Not only is it a money consideration on the company's part, but I want to keep the cast small because handling large casts in a closed-system mystery setting is hard. :P )
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I think of you as a fairy with a green dress and a flower crown and stuff.
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Sun Sep 11, 2016 8:32 pm
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Vervain says...



Another thought: what about someone who fills the role of "therapist"?

For one, this space mission is going to be extremely long, in which period all of the characters will be separated from everything they called home. This can be very hard on some people, as their only human contact for years will be within the mission vessel. The company would, of course, be concerned about the mental and not just physical health of their explorers.

I'm on my phone, but I'll type up a longer reply tonight.
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Sun Sep 11, 2016 9:23 pm
Rosendorn says...



The thing about relying on freeze dried food is twofold:

1- Morale

2- Weight

You are dealing with 12+ years of food. That is 12 years of the same thing over and over and over again, one to three times a day depending on the caloric value of the meals+ how much energy they expend, and this is a lot of food. With how seeds are less weight than that+ renewable every year, just from a storage aspect there's a lot to consider.

On top of this, people can and do get bored of the same foods. It would mean no surprise meals for birthdays or special occasions. It would mean no control over food. As somebody who's had their diet limited by outside factors for extended periods of time, let me just say it's a little dehumanizing to not choose what to eat.

On medicine: herbs and plants are medicine. It's not all lab synthesized chemicals and powder. So you have food that helps pulled muscles, burns, stomach aches, period pain (if anyone on staff can have their period), sleep (Astronauts need to be drugged to sleep, since they don't have sunrise and sunset to tell days with), depression, anxiety, vomiting, fever, stuffy nose... the list goes on. Start counting up all the things you've taken over 15~ years for various problems you've had, think of how much life would be terrible without it, and maybe reevaluate the importance of some sort of medicine in an easy to supply format.

Also, biologists are not necessarily very good at being jack of all trades. At all. Farmers are not biologists, and biologists are not (necessarily) even growers. I know exactly one biologist (of four) who has growing as part of their job description, and they grow plants for cancer drugs—not food. While knowing how to farm can indeed be a double duty skill, it could be the captain who knows how to grow food the best. Biology is such a large field that you can't assume one thing or the other. It's also a very deep field, so one person tends to know one thing very well but not necessarily much of even the neighbouring field. (A cancer geneticist who knows nothing about human bodily systems, for example)

I'm seconding Lareine about a therapist. Isolation is very difficult on humans. Solitary confinement is the worst punishment for that reason, and many people experience severe mental health issues after solitary.

I'm going to add: artists. Either they have hobbies in arts, or they have a performer of some sort on staff. Whenever people try to devalue art, try to live a day without art. This means: no tv, no music, no painting, no poetry, no plays, and no stories. You will find life extraordinarily boring. If you have 15 odd years away from everything that makes humans... entertaining, and fills our free time, then you are setting yourself up for some very lonely days and nights. People can't do science all the time. People can't be leaders all the time. You need to give them something else to do other than just their careers.

So, all in all, I guess my biggest comment is you're missing humanity from this cast. You're missing the "lesser" roles— the artists, the cooks, the helpers, the producers— that make humans, well, humans. Humanity might progress in leaps and bounds from our scientists, but we wouldn't even have made any of the progress we have without helping each other, taking care of others, and generally give the scientists all the free time they need to be brilliant.

Humanity needs its caretakers and dreamers almost more than it needs its brilliant minds, and a lot of people don't realize that. So you can either adjust the mission to reflect lacking these things, or you can add these roles to make it your scientists don't go nuts from boredom, isolation, and have them all learn as a result.
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo

Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
  





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Tue Sep 13, 2016 8:35 am
Mea says...



@Lareine - Therapist, great idea. Will add that.

@Rosendorn - Yeah, the more I think about it, the more I think freeze-dried food isn't what they'll want to be eating for the whole trip. I don't think I'm going to add a specific musician/painter/artist, but I was already planning on one of them being a musician as well as a physicist, and I'll add a few other artsy hobbies. Plus, they'll have a fairly sizable digital library. It's far from ideal, but it'll help.
We're all stories in the end.

I think of you as a fairy with a green dress and a flower crown and stuff.
-EternalRain

I think you, @Deanie and I are like the Three Book Nerd Musketeers of YWS.
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Tue Sep 13, 2016 11:11 am
Lightsong says...



Well, Lareine and Rosendorn seems to have covered the issue about whom to take, so I'm going to put my two cents on how the mission as well as the cost budget.

From the first post, I can see this trip is both for publicity and a chance to explore new stuffs. I'm going to focus on the publicity thingy first; why is it needed? For a trip that goes out of our solar system, it means that the previous ones would be within the system? I'm not sure the current state of the project, whether it's the first step of the company or that it's the first risk taken. If it's the latter, then I don't think budget would be a problem.

The 'real' mission seems pretty important to me. I quote: 'a high chance life is there and they want to study it'. Well, I have a few questions to ask. What do you mean about 'high chance'? Where does the company get the sense that it's possible there's life in the planet? It must have meant the planet has been checked, just not directly. If so, then the company must've taken the proper preparation for it, and must've considered what they might find there. What I'm trying to say is that the cast they would send there would complete, since this is serious stuff.

Also, the five years is too long, for my opinion. For once, they are depending on the possibility that there is life on the planet, and that life even might have basic needs that are different from humans -- or worse, plants; if that's the case, how would you handle them growing food for themselves? It's either having their food resources enough for specific duration, or have them grow food for longer time-span.

And that is all! Hopefully this helps! :D
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Tue Sep 13, 2016 10:11 pm
Mea says...



@Lightsong - I guess I should explain more about what's going on here, because those are all very valid questions.

So: at this point, there has never been a manned spaceship outside of the solar system. They have sent people to several different planets in our solar system and have a small colony on Mars, but that's about it. That's where the publicity comes in - this isn't as big of a deal as the moon landing, but it's a pretty historic moment. And although their pockets are deep, something as monumental as a 15-year mission outside of the solar system needs pockets beyond deep. They don't have money to waste.

Funnily enough, I thought that five years was the absolute minimum they could be there and have the trip be worth it - and honestly the things they could research are endless.

As far as the planet goes, yes, they know what they're getting into. They haven't sent a probe all the way there, but they've studied what they can through very powerful telescopes, and there have been probes out of the solar system before.

What there is:
A decent amount of liquid water. Furthermore, its atmosphere somewhat resembles that of Earth back when there was only microscopic life forms, though it's a bit thicker. This is a huge deal, and in and even if there's no life at all, the possibilities for studying a planet that is this similar to a proto-earth are immense.

What there definitely isn't:
A thriving alien civilization - in fact, the life there is probably barely macroscopic, and it would all live in the oceans.

So they're not at all depending on life being on the planet - in fact, they won't and can't even step outside without spacesuits or at the very least an oxygen tank. Think of it like growing plants on Mars: it would all be inside a sealed dome with an Earth-like atmosphere and soil from Earth. In fact, this whole mission is kind of similar to the Mars mission from the Doctor Who episode Waters of Mars in terms of a small crew and a long stay.

And again, this is going to be a murder mystery - I'm okay with handwaving some of the small things, like what kind of propulsion they're using to constantly propel them at 1G, just because that's not what the story is about - it's about a murder. They're never going to reach Proxima Centauri - the murder will happen just under halfway there.

I hope that answered your questions! You raise good points.
We're all stories in the end.

I think of you as a fairy with a green dress and a flower crown and stuff.
-EternalRain

I think you, @Deanie and I are like the Three Book Nerd Musketeers of YWS.
-bluewaterlily
  








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