Not sure where to start

[Imagineer]

Hello and HOW do I do? I posted this elsewhere but I am not sure which area is the best place for this thread to appear, so I am trying it here.

I am working on a Sci-Fi novel. I have found a human culture on the inside of an ice shelled asteroid (Like Ceres, only smaller). It is like a "natural" rotating space station.

I need to do some reverse engineering now to figure out how the people got there (WITHOUT TIME TRAVEL, without time warp, or worm holes).

I am hoping that I can work up an story from a "mega-volcano," with people and resources sealed inside a chunk of ejecta, that will then rendezvous with the passing asteroid (which actually triggered the tectonic activity).

HOW did the people from 3k BCE get to the Asteroid in the first place and how, in the second place, did they develop and survive until they were discovered in 2050? The asteroid is found to be inhabited by FTs (Former Terrestrials) during Asteroid Resource Collection (a mining operation) which is a phase of a new WASA program called M.O.V.E. (Mars Outpost Viability Endeavor).

I am having a good bit of fun with the "IMAGINEERING" but the engineering is a real struggle and I need help.

[Tinaa]

moved to OTBB. The imaginations here run wild!

[Swift]

Hi Imagineer, welcome to BAUT.
Sorry, but I don't have a clue as to a solution for your problem. I can't imagine anyone surviving a volcano large enough to throw chunks that big out into space and out of Earth orbit. Maybe you would do better with time travel or worm holes. Or what about ETs moving them?

[Click Ticker]

Depending on where the asteroid is, you don't need time travel, warp, or worm holes to get there. There are plenty of asteroids close enough that can be reached via conventional rocket. The challenge is reaching escape velocity through a natural event and surviving with no food or oxygen. Perhaps the collision / landing on or in the asterroid creates enough heat to melt the water ice and release oxygen, but how does it stay warm? Of course, then there's the food issue. Trapped with a mammoth when launched, and survived on mammoth meat for a while?

Could use this as an opportunity to run with panspermia as an idea. Melt water from the collision released life bearing seeds trapped in the water ice that begin to grow. The crash moved the asteroids orbit enough that it received more direct sunlight because while it was close enough to the sun and in the habitable zone, it's orbit was such that it was in constant shade. Once out of the shade, more water begin to melt and lakes formed.

Now I'll let other imaginations run with generating escape velocity for a small group of humans and a mammoth - or better, a small herd of domesticated Aurochs.

[Imagineer]

Hi Imagineer, welcome to BAUT.
Sorry, but I don't have a clue as to a solution for your problem. I can't imagine anyone surviving a volcano large enough to throw chunks that big out into space and out of Earth orbit. Maybe you would do better with time travel or worm holes. Or what about ETs moving them?

No, there will be no worm holes, no, time travel, and no ETs, only FTs (Former Terrestrials). And there will be no earlier advanced intelligence.

OK, postulate THIS: 2 Billion years ago, an eruption sends just a few microbes and protozoa that remain viable after the rendezvous with the passing asteroid. Now what? How does that terrasperma in the new environment evolve? Work with me on this.

It was a combination of various forces with survivable g-forces in the launch vehicle that enabled pre-civilization humans to survive: initial eruption, secondary explosion of the object (Houston, we have second stage boost), then geysering -whatever it takes to reduce that horrible initial force, but still provide adequate escape velocity to then be captured by the passing asteroid.

They are out there. The Imagineer put them there. Now it is the job of engineers to examine the fact and figure out what combination of causes produced this effect.

It is hopeless to tell me it couldn't happen. They are how there and it was as a result of events connected with a passing asteroid and tectonic mechanisms in combination that did it. It took an intricate chain of events, where every "O-ring" has to do its job and coordinate in order to pull it off.

[Click Ticker]

You went from 3,000 year BC to 2 Billion years ago. Ejecting microbes and having them take their own evolutionary path on an asteroid is a far cry from ejecting humans in 3,000 BC and having them land safely on an asteroid.

Or are you saying that food sources were on the asteroid due to the 2 billion year old eruption and the humans got there in 3,000 BC?

I'd go with the humans being frozen in the last ice age and re-animated once their ejected block of ice melts. The pressure of the ice that they are encased in could protect them during the journey if it doesn't melt instantly in an eruption powerful enough to launch the block to escape velocity. The pressure of the traveling ice block could also shield them from the vacuum, if not the radiation experienced on the journey. The melting is complete once they land on the asteroid....

Hey - wait - if you like my ideas, we need split royalties. Write your own book. :-)

[Fazor]

Tough problem to solve "realistically" ... conditions inside an asteroid are so much different than on the surface of a planet, the requisits for life would be vastly different. Do the "Astroid people" have to be earth-compatable? I.e., could they come to earth and survive?

Tough part is that whatever mechanism you use has to not only generate "astroid people", but "astroid resources". What is their source of internal energy? What mechanism makes these resources plentiful enough / renewable to where they could survive for thousands of years?

But here's your advantage: It's sci-fi...it doesn't have to be totally realistic. This could be an excellent chance for a commentary on evolution: Primitave biological oranisms were ejected during violent earth shifts as the planet formed, and took root in a passing asteroid. Both environments are thus "seeded" with the same building blocks for life...and becuase they're from the same "seeds", it's not amazing that the outcomes would be simliar...but what different adaptations evolved between the two based on environment? Sounds interesting to *me* anyway.

[Larry Jacks]

One approach might be that the people don't know how they got there other than legends and an oral history. If they've been inside all the time with no outside view, then they'd likely have a very different perspective of the nature of the universe, perhaps similar to the Hollow Earth believers. Perhaps you could investigate their origins similar to what James Hogan did in "Inherit the Stars" and their views of the universe like LeGuin did in the "Left Hand of Darkness." Of course, it also sounds like part of an old Star Trek TOS episode.

[Van Rijn]

Perhaps you could investigate their origins similar to what James Hogan did in "Inherit the Stars"

Please no. If you're going to have a scientific mystery, you owe it to your readers to provide a realistic solution.

[Van Rijn]

No, there will be no worm holes, no, time travel, and no ETs, only FTs (Former Terrestrials). And there will be no earlier advanced intelligence.

OK, postulate THIS: 2 Billion years ago, an eruption sends just a few microbes and protozoa that remain viable after the rendezvous with the passing asteroid. Now what? How does that terrasperma in the new environment evolve? Work with me on this.

It was a combination of various forces with survivable g-forces in the launch vehicle that enabled pre-civilization humans to survive: initial eruption, secondary explosion of the object (Houston, we have second stage boost), then geysering -whatever it takes to reduce that horrible initial force, but still provide adequate escape velocity to then be captured by the passing asteroid.

They are out there. The Imagineer put them there. Now it is the job of engineers to examine the fact and figure out what combination of causes produced this effect.

It is hopeless to tell me it couldn't happen.

If I'm understanding you correctly (there are humans inside an asteroid that received a bit of bacteria from Earth 2 billion years ago?) you've written yourself into a corner by setting too many conditions. Something has to go. A closed ecology is a possibility. Just maybe it started with Earth 2 billion years ago. But there won't be humans unless they are transported there technologically or with a magic trick.

[Delvo]

They had to build a vehicle themselves... maybe one that was somehow powered/launched by a volcano (even though volcanoes don't put objects into space like that, but then all possible versions of this story have that problem in common), but still it has to be a vehicle they built themselves to be sent out from Earth in some way. There's just no natural or accidental way they could survive the trip to the asteroid, even if the asteroid itself were inhabitable... which, all by itself, wouldn't happen in the real world and thus indicates that they must have gone deliberately and modified it to suit themselves.

This eliminates the hard-science problems and boils it down to two soft-science issues:

1. How could they have developed such technology so long ago without the rest of the world noticing it then or since then?

2. Why would they have been motivated to try such a mission?

And those are the kinds of questions that storytelling is made of anyway...

[HenrikOlsen]

For some reason the idea reminds me of Blaylock's The Digging Leviathan and Homunculus, possibly because I think his style on thise would do the idea service.