Disturbing Implications of Land Rising into the Sky

[Logan Darklighter]

Was reading Acyl's cool bit about the island. Also remembered Bob's 4 Corners and the Alaskan guy with the chunk of land refitted to take on asteroid mining.
Suddenly something hit me -
First a question. Both meta and technical.
How big a chunk of land can handwaved devices lift? Is there some sort of upper limit?
Let's cut to the chase here - could someone crazy enough and determined enough and with enough connections and patience lift an entire CITY off the planet?
I'm not seriously considering this as a story element. It was really just - It struck me that someone somewhere might think of that. In fact that it might be yet one more reason why governments are so paranoid about handwavium.
Basically - something of a mind experiment to consider. Follow the premise down to one of the more extreme conclusions.
Now - ramp up the paranoia even further, into the socio-religious aspect.
What if the city that rises up out of the gravity well -
- is Jerusalem?
-Logan
-----------------
"Wake up! Time for SCIENCE!"
-Adam Savage
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[CattyNebulart]

I'd place the upper limit to what handwavium an lift to the point where you are moving the planet instead of lifting off. Sure it would be a huge projet needing thausands of people and much more handwavium than exists in all of fenspace, but it's theoretically doable. much like we could build an interstelar spaceprobe without handwavium, it's just too expensive to be feasible.
Edit: some back of the envelope show something along the lines of lake mead (the lake created by the hoover dam) as the aproximatte volume needed to lift a small city. I'm not sure if I can explain how mindbogeling huge that amount of handwavium is. Think how long that will take to grow, and how long it will take to apply...
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

[M Fnord]

---

Let's cut to the chase here - could someone crazy enough and determined enough and with enough connections and patience lift an entire CITY off the planet?

---

Probably, yeah. Given enough handwavium with a clear enough plan in mind and enough time to reinforce the undersurface, you could launch a city. Keeping it *viable* would be another story altogether - you'd need either a pressure dome enclosing the city, or to pressurize all the buildings and create pressurized connections between them; both of which are not jobs that could be done on the QT.

---

What if the city that rises up out of the gravity well -
- is Jerusalem?

---

*visibly restrains self from launching into a verse of "Jews In Space"*
Jerusalem would be a holy mother bitch to wave and launch; leaving aside political problems, the city's infrastructure is hella old and only haphazardly updated. Just getting the wave to everywhere would be a major challenge in and of itself. If you *really* wanted to play "throw major Abrahamic holy sites into space" it'd be easier just to wave the sites themselves and go from there.---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[Kokuten]

The Cube-Square Law of Projects will protect us here.
The Cube-Square Law of Projects states that as the square root of the size of your project increases, so does the cube root of the difficulty/odds against _you_ successfully completing the project.
The religious nature of the sites and the likelihood of the unhappy angry people with guns doing something about it just increases the size of the project.
though I can see the 'turn towards Mecca and pray' religions doing just fine in Fenspace - Mecca is on Earth, you are not on Earth, turn towards Earth and pray.Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979

[itsune9tl]

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Edit: some back of the envelope show something along the lines of lake mead (the lake created by the hoover dam) as the aproximatte volume needed to lift a small city. I'm not sure if I can explain how mindbogeling huge that amount of handwavium is. Think how long that will take to grow, and how long it will take to apply...

---

Not as mind boggling as you think. Somefen on Manhattan Isle dumps a gallon of the 'wavium goo (Guacamole?) down the drain. The stuff feeds on the sewage (modding the aligators), thirty days or so later the Island goes airborn as it's own sewage system tries to deal with the "crap". City emergency crews do an airborn spraying in an attempt to save lives. Controll is jury rigged in the Mayors Office, and government officials around the world politically "shit in their shorts." Laws are written, Fen proceed to ignore those laws (or go where they don't exist yet), much alcohol is consumed... I'm going to stop now.

[Rieverre]

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What if the city that rises up out of the gravity well -
- is Jerusalem?

---

Then it absolutely needs to leave part of itself 'down there', leading to any and all Fen out 'here' to start ignoring any and all official statements and referring to them both as Tiphares and Ketheres respectively.
-Griever
When tact is required, use brute force. When force is required, use greater force.
When the greatest force is required, use your head. Surprise is everything. - The Book of Cataclysm

[Duane Peters]

(The Quabalist on the boards does a major spit-take)
You *so* owe me a new laptop, Greiver.
(Laughing too hard to type)

[Duane Peters]

---

How big a chunk of land can handwaved devices lift? Is there some sort of upper limit?

---

To paraphrase Nick Polotta and Phil Foglio's excellent "Illegal Aliens", The hardest part of stealing a planet isn't hot-wiring it, it's getting it into First without killing the engine. (evil grin)

[Acyl]

There's a couple more implications about boosting land, I guess. From my own story notes, but there's no harm sharing it...I might not be able to work all of this into the actual fiction, anyway.
One of the things the Island crew did, in preparing to make the place spaceworthy...
They got some people in to take soil samples. Then did a bunch of rough back-of-the-envelope calculations.
Then took the 'wavium they'd been brewing up for the purpose, and diluted it with a lot of water. So they ended up with a rather large amount of extremely runny 'wavium derivative. And pretty much let it saturate the ground. They repeated this over a long period, in stages.
Yeah, some pumping and tunnels involved. End result, they were hoping by saturating the soil with 'wavium, it'd hold together when the Island lifted. It worked alright in tests...
Anyway. Implications.
One, it didn't go that smoothly - the Island lost some mass from the underside when it lifted - we're talking raining chunks of earth from the bottom during the ascent.
Mind, after all the excess not-quite-sticky debris fell away, the final shape of the Floating Island's underside was...pretty much an inverted mountain shape. IE, almost exactly as they'd envisioned it. 'wavium at work...but the falling debris was a minor issue.
Two, the infamous Hole...the crater left behind by the Island... is heavily contaminated with 'wavium. Nobody's quite sure about the extent of the spread, though, or whether the 'wavium's done anything to, say, surrounding vegetation. I figure 'dane scientists would be looking at that grass very carefully now...
So that's another reason why 'dane governments might be pissed. It's not just that the Island crew made off with a chunk of land, they left a pretty big 'wavium mess behind, sunk into the earth itself, and nobody's quite sure about the environmental implications of that. Handwavium pollution, as it were.
-- Acyl

[Kokuten]

'wavium pollution is an interesting problem, and could be a useful arrow in the Plot Quiver.
From my notes, on lifting Hepheastus;
Ten acres is a signifigant chunk of change.. but with automated boring/tunnelling equipment and a good supply of cement, it's not implausible/impossible to tunnel under a good ways and _seal the bottom_.
Which is more or less what we did. Think of the substructure of Hephaestus as a wicker basket of reinforced 'Wavium-Portland cement, with a plastic dropcloth laid inside it, full of sand. By reducing the area of unsupported unmodified earth, the hope was to be able to lift without loss. Given the conditions at the time, most of the ground was also frozen, which helped immensely.
Bob, any input from the Corners?Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979

[robkelk]

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'wavium pollution is an interesting problem, and could be a useful arrow in the Plot Quiver.

---

Ah, yes - there something that I'm mentioning but not exploring in my two-centuries-in-the-future story: Irradiated Handwavium. Anyone want to explore the ramifications of that? (I'm just declaring the entire station that it's on a write-off...)

-Rob Kelk
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[CattyNebulart]

my guess is that it would become ruber science radioactives, which means extreme biomods at range... the goverment will have much joy. Esspecialy the municipal goverment of Tokyo, they get to deal with the godzilla conventions. Still with wavium powered spae travel radioactives should not be a problem, you an always dump them into the sun or something, with waved radioatives I'm not sure if I would risk that though, still having a dumping ground in interstelar space should be safe enough.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

[Herr Bad Moon]

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wavium pollution is an interesting problem, and could be a useful arrow in the Plot Quiver.

---

Teenage mutant ninja turtles! Teenage mutant ninja turtles! Teenage mutant ninja turtles! Heroes in a half shell! Turtle power!---------------
-Jon
Being the Mariner hitting coach is like being the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts.
-Poster on USSMariner.com
---
Jon
"And that must have caused my dad's brain to break in half, replaced by a purely mechanical engine of revenge!"

[Bob Schroeck]

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Ten acres is a signifigant chunk of change.. but with automated boring/tunnelling equipment and a good supply of cement, it's not implausible/impossible to tunnel under a good ways and _seal the bottom_.

---

The GC crew did it differently, and more slowly -- taking two years to slowly grow a 'wavium hull, using local silicates as raw materials. One of the "specials"/"cool stuff" I'm calling in for my story is the idea that the coven can influence (slightly) what the 'wavium decides to do. Per rule 1, Handwavium is like a cat, but even a cat can be herded if 20 people work together on it...
-- Bob
---------
Visit beautiful Boston, proud successor to Seattle as
"City Most Scared Of Its Own Shadow

[Bob Schroeck]

---

How big a chunk of land can handwaved devices lift? Is there some sort of upper limit?

---

If the Grover's Corners handwavium drive is in fact a "real" spindizzy, there is no upper limit. We could just as easily have taken the whole county as the 250 acres.

---

What if the city that rises up out of the gravity well -
- is Jerusalem?

---

That actually brings to mind a separate idea entirely -- what other minority groups might be "interesting enough" to get into space with handwavium?
-- Bob
---------
Visit beautiful Boston, proud successor to Seattle as
"City Most Scared Of Its Own Shadow

[Acyl]

---

The GC crew did it differently, and more slowly -- taking two years to slowly grow a 'wavium hull, using local silicates as raw materials. One of the "specials"/"cool stuff" I'm calling in for my story is the idea that the coven can influence (slightly) what the 'wavium decides to do. Per rule 1, Handwavium is like a cat, but even a cat can be herded if 20 people work together on it...

---

Interesting. Different approaches...
Looking at the two large-scale projects, it seems that Grover's Corners was fashioned in a far more...careful and systematic fashion. The Islanders were a lot more haphazard and irresponsible in their land-conversion...saturating the ground with a special diluted 'wavium mix. Hence, the whole 'wave-pollution bit.
I'm guessing that Grover's Corners, then, is basically a giant bowl-shaped wavium hull...with unaltered soil and earth inside it. And then the buildings on top.
Kokuten's Hephaestus is on a smaller scale, but comparable...in the sense that it's a basket of concrete and sundry materials containing regular land.
In contrast, all the land that makes up the Island, all of it, is 'waved. To some degree.

---

If the Grover's Corners handwavium drive is in fact a "real" spindizzy, there is no upper limit. We could just as easily have taken the whole county as the 250 acres.

---

The Island's original lift drive is a similar sort of uber-'waved device. I need to go back and edit the ship registry entry...I've developed the concept a bit more since I wrote that. The numbers are wrong anyway.
But basically, the Island took off with an extremely powerful "antigravity" drive. The thing extends a field-of-effect to anything its in contact with...regardless of mass.
Well. Actually "antigravity" is a misnomer. That's what many of the Island crew call it. But what the device really seems to do is reduce effective mass. "Mass-reduction field" is more accurate.
IE, you still need rockets and such for propulsion, but what the rockets are pushing...suddenly seems a lot lighter.
-- Acyl

[Kokuten]

---

what other minority groups might be "interesting enough" to get into space with handwavium?

---

To be blunt, Pakis, Irish, Jews, Amish, Nigerian, Homosexuals.. the list could go on and on, if needed.
Nigerians - A rather tightly-knit community of Nigerians have set up shop on Mars, and are doing quite nicely for themselves. The prime reason for their mini-exodus was to provide an honorable face to the Universe, in contrast with the Nigerian Prince email scam, which they're quite unhappy with.
Pakis - Tired of treatment as second-class citizens in their native Britian, the Pakistani immigrant is by and large a happy healthy person, who while they may end up working in a service position, is now working with people who believe that their services are honorable, valued, and worthy of respect.
Irish - Bars In Spaaace. No, really. a nucleus of irish brewmasters and distillers pushed off, to investigate and take advantage of the easy availability of vaccum and zero G in fermentation and distillation of beverage. In general, they're a fairly technical folk, nowhere near as tightly knit as the Nigerian or Amish communities. They're profiting a lot in stability from the concept that "If ye don't like it here, we'll be happy to help you get back home", forcing noone to stay Out that doesn't want to..
Jews - The old persecution of the Judaic peoples hasn't escaped from the gravity well yet, leading some of the more verbally pugilistic of this community to debate upon the specific gravity of hatred.. A split community, part of the Jewish prescence in Fenspace believes that the Fenchurch and it's sacraments (such as they are) are Kosher, while the other half appears to think that that Fenchurch thing is a fine, fine idea, but they still need to be holding their own sanctified observances. As of yet, this 'conflict' has led to well-reasoned debates, and quite a lot of profit for coffee and bagel sales.
Homosexuals - Yes, there is a 'Gay Station'. It's a fully functional space station, with a surprisingly balanced gender mix in it's permanent population. The station is a political haven for anti-discriminatory lobbying and propoganda, and they've finally come clean about the Gay Agenda:
1) Live well
2) Be Happy
While the station does have a red light district, it, like Candy Apple Reds, is a seperate entity, clearly marked, and not really that big of a deal, since that's not what their main purpose here is.
Amish - A surprising member of the Fenspace population mix, the Amish can be found primarily on Mars, though the Venus Terraforming Project has already made it clear that there will be land available for them on Venus, when.. The Amish in Fenspace are, unsurprisingly, quite liberal compared to their Earthbound kin, but still avoid technology as much as possible, preferring instead to utilize handicrafts and manpower, where some of us would use antigrav and grapples. An Amish hand-woven spacesuit will shock the wearer on their first donning, as it's lighter, more flexible, and just works better than the average run-of-the-mill. The fact that it was constructed by hand as much as possible, well, that's just their thing, right?
One Amish elder has been quoted as stating that "Mars, while not Heaven, is certainly a very nice place to raise a barn, thanks to the gravity."
The modern Amish buggy is horse-drawn, sure, but the horses are signifigantly smaller, wear their own pressure setups, and the buggy itself is air tight and uses a variant on the Hephaestian zipper-lock.Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979

[Bob Schroeck]

---

it seems that Grover's Corners was fashioned in a far more...careful and systematic fashion.

---

Yes, very much so. Inspired by the Island but motivated by the need to do it very covertly, designed by several engineers, witches and an SF writer, it was planned and guided into its final form. Less, of course, the usual unexpected features and quirks.

---

I'm guessing that Grover's Corners, then, is basically a giant bowl-shaped wavium hull...with unaltered soil and earth inside it. And then the buildings on top.

---

Exactly. And not just a lower hull, but a collapsible geodesic dome up top, grown in collapsed form at the same time as the hull. It was "unfolded", locked into place and sealed at pretty much the last minute.
(Oh, and after extensive talks with Kat, Joe and Scott this weekend, I've decided that the GC is -- once again -- a true sphere instead of the oblate spheroid it's been since my earliest descriptions. As a side effect this means that the lower hull dug down as much as 1850 feet, and the underside of the ship is made up of a fair amount of solid bedrock -- which itself would probably be a pretty stable base.)
As for "unaltered", well, yes and no. There is an irrigation system that "just growed" on its own. And all the animal life on the ship is thought to be infiltrated by 'wavium, to the point that one of the ship's four AIs is believed to be the gestalt result of all their collective brainpower.
-- Bob
---------
Visit beautiful Boston, proud successor to Seattle as
"City Most Scared Of Its Own Shadow

[robkelk]

---

(Oh, and after extensive talks with Kat, Joe and Scott this weekend, I've decided that the GC is -- once again -- a true sphere instead of the oblate spheroid it's been since my earliest descriptions. As a side effect this means that the lower hull dug down as much as 1850 feet, and the underside of the ship is made up of a fair amount of solid bedrock -- which itself would probably be a pretty stable base.)

---

Oh, my - it's that big?  The launching of Grovers' Corners had to have made an impression on anyone who was watching, then... and on the SMOFs, too.

Actually, that raises the question of what the Fen think of Land Rising into the Sky.  I can see this exchange having happened on Stellvia if they saw the Grovers' Corners launch:

"Commander, something just took off from North America. Something big."

"How big is it?"

"It's..."  The technician on watch gasped.  "It's over a kilometre in diameter!"

"Is it in the recognition database?"

Yoriko looked at the screen.  "No, sir."

"We've got a possible colony launch, then.  Yellow alert, but don't panic the paying customers.  Inform the Island and Hephaestus that we may have to go into crisis management mode... again." As Yoriko turned to the FTL comm, Noah muttered, "Let's hope they're good neighbours."

At which point the real movers and shakers in Fenspace start to get involved...

[Bob Schroeck]

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Oh, my - it's that big?

---

It's there in the ship registry -- 3700 feet across, 250 acres of land. For a while, it was a flattened sphere -- looking sort of like a pudgy flying saucer -- but I've been convinced to make it round again.

---

The launching of Grovers' Corners had to have made an impression on anyone who was watching, then..

---

That's in the registry, too -- at least groundside, it set off military radars for hundreds of miles. As the particular part of WV it took off from is about 90 mins from DC, that would be a powerful many military radars... Hadn't considered the Fenspace reaction, though -- I just figured it'd be, "cool, here come some more folks."
And if that's the way folks are going to react, maybe I need to reconsider the "hanging out at a Lagrange point for a couple weeks after boosting before meeting the neighbors" bit.
-- Bob
---------
Visit beautiful Boston, proud successor to Seattle as
"City Most Scared Of Its Own Shadow

[Kokuten]

The buzzer, as is it's wont, buzzed.
Given that it's 3am, and I've been in bed for almost two hours, I lunged at the squawking demon and vainly scrabble at the plate with my bare hands for a few seconds, before my brain catches up to my kill-reflex.
"Gnnnrrrr - Whaaa?"
"Stellvia calling, boss - there's another land colony coming up, and they'd like to make sure we're aware of it. They seem a bit worried"
"Can't blame them, who knows what these people are gonna be like.." I scrubbed sleep from my eyes and shucked into a shipsuit as I talked, dragging a brush through my hair and beard."I'm.. I'm gonna head out there, at least keep an eye peeled and say 'howdy'.. Can you ask V to get ready, tank up the usuals, and I'll meet her at bay 1.. probably bring Doc with us, you never know.."
I stumbled out the hatch as Hermes responded in the affirmative, and figured I could get a bit of a nap on the way in.Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979

[robkelk]

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Hadn't considered the Fenspace reaction, though -- I just figured it'd be, "cool, here come some more folks."

---

That's the usual reaction, yes, but the usual new folks don't bring along enough land to start a decent-sized farm.

I'd see initial Fennish reaction being "Let's get some folks who've been through this over there pronto, in case what happened to Hephaestus happened to them too. Oh, and let's hope they're friendly, because that thing could hold a lot of weapons."  Noah, being the paranoid git that he is, reverses the priority of those two concerns...

[CattyNebulart]

Bob I think that the reactions of everyone, fen and dane are like are going to start with "Who the **** are these people?" Followed by either an appreciative comment on your courage, ("Whoever they are they've got balls.") to worrying about your intentions or whatever comment the respecitve viewer has.
Look at it this way no-one had the slightest inkling of what you where going to do, and suddenly the bigest thing to ever liftoff starts heading for space and they only have a few hours notice.
Imagine for a moment that there is an empty lot next to your house, and when you come home one day from work someone has suddenly build a new mansion there. How would you react to your new neighbors?
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

[Kokuten]

Catty, your characterization is good, but incomplete. Say there's a new mansion in the neighborhood, but the neighborhood is a dangerous place, full of zombies and poison, and the existing populace is fairly tightly knit..
My first reaction would be to show up with tools and supplies, and make sure that these folks are Good People and that they are OK, all in the same trip.Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979

[Bob Schroeck]

Well, that puts a whole new spin on the GC "origin story". Maybe if I write a piece that gets it up to the L3 point as originally planned, anyone who wants to chime in can put in their reactions -- as already seen above -- and I can take it from there.
-- Bob
---------
Visit beautiful Boston, proud successor to Seattle as
"City Most Scared Of Its Own Shadow