Chris Taylor gave some valuable feedback on my previous article The New World: Space Travel. He proposed to use the plural version: The Old Worlds and the New Worlds, to allow for multiple star systems, or at least multiple colonies on different planets and moons (Mars, Ganymede etc.). I agree that this is an improvement, so I will from now on refer to The New Worlds. There may be a need to still have a singular Old World as the origin of human civilization, but that is a lesser detail.
Where should the New Worlds be? And what are their properties? If we accept the notion of expensive FTL as part of the universe, we can allow ourselves to be quite a distance from the Old World.
In order for these new worlds to be so close to each other that they can form some form of federation, the most logical choice is an open star cluster. These typically consist of hundreds or thousands of stars that are within a few lightyears of each other.
The logical choice is then to choose the closest one, which is the Hyades. I like both the name and its properties. In Greek mythology, Hyades is one of the daughters of Atlas, which needs no introduction to Ayn Rand fans.
Hyades is 153 lightyears away. Thus, if we allow the Alcubierre drive to have a maximum speed of about 20+ times the speed of light, it takes about 7 years to make the journey. By “maximum”, I mean something that would require less than about 10% of Earth GDP to achieve. In this universe it would be possible to travel faster, but it would just be backbreaking expensive to do so.
Thus, just like in the times when the Europeans colonized the Americas, the trip is exceedingly expensive and the first colonies had to put up a huge amount of money just to be able to travel.
If we set the date of the first trip to the Hyades to 2492, to mirror Columbus a millenium prior, we can use all the important dates of history + 1000 for the story. It’s not necessary, but I think it’s nice.
So the point is that Hyades is sufficiently far away that it was a government endevour in the beginning, and only later did private settlers go there. It is so far away that it gives the story a good reason for why the dominant Old World doesn’t just crush the revolutionaries. It’s far away and it’s expensive.
The Hyades
So what are the properties of Hyades? It has a radius of 10 lightyears. If we allow for low-budget FTL of up to 10c, you can cross from one end of the cluster to the other in 2 years. However, we can argue that most of the nice star systems are within 3 lightyears of each other, meaning that at the most expensive travel, a trip can be made in 4 months. The FTL parameters can of course be finetuned to make for more interesting story telling, but this is a rough sketch.
How about star systems? The two types of stars that are best suited for life are G stars (like our suns) and K dwarfs (orange dwarfs). There are at least 48 K dwarfs in the cluster, and about 50 G stars. If we allow 50% of these to be suitable for life in the story, that amounts to about 50 habitable stars, corresponding to 50 states.
The red dwarfs (M dwarfs) can also be habitable but are subject to violent outbursts that make them dangerous. Most stars contain lots of minerals that can be mined. Some of the things found in the Hyades may be so valuable that they warrant trade with the Old World.
2 replies on “The New Worlds part 2: Location”
What things could be so valuable they would justify the huge expense and time delay of interstellar trade? Some would just be a status symbol. Anyone can have a diamond. How many people have a diamond from another star system? Perhaps Van Riin has it right and some alien spices (or medicines) would be so valuable per once they could justify it (the interstellar equivalent of saffron). This could combine with the previous luxury items: This perfume is made from the glands of the rare fjwhrbdf on Hyandes4. Maybe manufactured goods from a higher tech (in at least some areas) alien race?
Could there be some super rare raw material? I don’t know what would be cheaper to ship than make. Small chunks of an exploded neutron Star (what disintegrated it?)? An anti matter asteroid (how did it form and survive? Or was it created?). Stable super heavy elements?
I think alien stuff, e.g. spices, or some “plant” or species would be sufficiently low volume to warrant an expensive trade route. This would be the equivalent of the Silk Road in ancient times which warranted travels of several weeks and months from China to the West.
I like the notion of some kind of spice with special properties (e.g. can be used for perfume, has healing/anti-aging properties, can be used as herbal tea etc.). This allows some kind of scenario where Earth places some heavy tax on these spices (on top of the warp costs), which would mirror the Tea Tax that spawned the Boston Tea Party.
The exact nature of this highly valuable thing is somewhat arbitrary and can be fleshed out to best fit the narrative, but the key point is that it sets up a good reason for the settlers to want to break free from Earth.