Venus as the Moon

[selunatic2397]

Have you checked out GURPS Steampunk's version of venus?

It has some interesting natives that since they made it a superhothouse the victorians could only survive at the poles where it was cooler.

The natives got exploited because they were primitive and kinda stupid...but at the equater where it was super hot they were smarter and had an advanced civilization.

It seemed that the venusians iq was low when it was cooler, but got higher as the temp got higher.

I think that they were kinda froglike, but I can't be sure.

How about using them in some of Venuses classical steamy rainforests and swamps? They'd make for an opponent that the earthlimg colonists would underestimate in the cooler regions but get a bad surprise in the hotlands.

Just thought I'd throw in my 2 cents worth of native critter suggestion.

 

[Sifu Blackirish]

I think the sudden appearance of Venus in our night sky at the distance I mentioned would wreck all sorts of global disasters, especially in coastal areas.

Anyone here read 'When Worlds Collide" by Wylie and Balmer? Just read it again after about 30 years. Excellent descriptions of what happens when an 'Earth' sized body gets close to us.

Actually, this might work...It was written in the 1930's, so we could extrapolate a decent backstory to get us to the 1960s official start point.

 

[drkem99]

As I recall from earlier in the thread, the instability in the 2-planet system was due to gravitational tidal effects slowing down the mutual rotation and causing the two bodies to slowly spiral into each other. Presumably, whatever deus ex machina is keeping the system stable would also protect both planets from surface-level (and tectonic plate!) tidal effects.

Just a thought. Back to historical and social effects; they'll be disruptive enough you'll never miss the giant tides and earthquakes.

Kem

 

[parmasson]

“I think the unnaturalness of a Venus-Earth pairing might lead one to suspect that an alien intelligence is involved.”

An artificial planet system left over from the Ancients? An impossible and inexplicable TRIAD of worlds perhaps? Hmmm . . .so may ideas.

 

[Laryssa]

I'm putting a version of this in my America Sector.

Hex 0230
Orbit Name UWP
Primary Sollus G2V
3 _ Terrene 0230 E867872-7 1.0g Normal
_ 240 Cybrill E868670-1 0.90g Warm

Terrene is an Earth-clone World with over 200 nations, two superpowers are engaged in a cold war with each other and a space race One is a Federal Democratic Republic while the second country pretends to be democratic but is really a Socialist Self-Perpetuating Oligarchy. One nation has formed an alliance with an number of smaller nations while the second had carved an Empire for itself consisting of subjugated satellite states, although they are ostensibly independent and pretend to be in an alliance with the Socialist Self-Perpetuating Oligarchic Nations, those nations governments are really controlled by that Socialist Oligarchic Superpower, Terrene has recently fought two World Wars in the past 50 years and in the second one the Federal Democratic Republic invented the Atomic Bomb and defeated a third Empire in that second World War with the help of the Socialist Self-Perpetuating Oligarch Nation. Once that war was over, some spies from that Oligarchy stole the plans for atomic bomb manufacture from the Federal Democratic Republic and thus a Cold War for global World domination had begun.

Cybrill is a slightly smaller world than Terrene, it is inhabited by Dinosaurian creatures, primitive humans and reptile humanoids commonly called Lizardmen. The planet's inhabitants are mostly in the stone age, but one nation has reached the Early bronze age TL1 under traveller. There has also been a space race between the two superpowers of Terrene and one has managed to land colonists on the planet's surface, for now its just a handful of humans, but every 6 months another mission is launched and 4 more astronauts are added to the colony. The technology for return to Earth does not exist as yet, so each journey is one-way.

Some Alien involvement is suspected by the United States Federal Government, as always the prime directive is in force, but the USA has some agents investigating both planets. Some tall pyramidal structures were discovered on the surface of Cybrill from orbital surveys, the technology looks to be way too advanced to have come from Terrene, but whatever its origin, work has only just begun in examining these oblisks. the material they are made of appears to be very tough to analyse, attempts to break off pieces for further examination have proven unsuccessful due to its extreme hardness and high melting point.