Thread:Mr.Robbo/@comment-5870856-20150126033221/@comment-5135903-20150126174739

[|Here's] a larger version of the Pheidippides image. If you look directly above the first 'P' in the title, there's a component that looks a bit like an oil drum with some sort of cone or umbrella attached to the bottom; just below the umbrella are two cylinders with circles on their sides. That's the thorium reactor assembly; everything below that was jettisoned through the course of the mission to reduce weight (no point in using extra fuel to carry empty fuel tanks and expired heat radiators all the way to another solar system, after all). The thorium rector assembly itself, and everything above it, is what makes it into Quinoan orbit.

Now, Pheidippides is a creature of space. It was designed for space, constructed in space and fulfils its purpose in space. Its lightweight construction can handle the gentle G-forces produced by the engine and not much else. Its forward shield can take a few high-speed impacts with space dust and not much else. This thing ain't gonna land on a planet. Instead, that big box just behind the forward shield is full of capsules full of all the equipment the colonists will need to make a home of Quinoa; one by one they get released from orbit and enter into Quinoa's atmosphere protected by lightweight inflatable heat shields. Then they parachute down to pre-determined landing spots. See those big bulbous things just behind the box I just mentioned? Those are the habitats the crew stayed in during the trip; they're inflatable, so they get deflated and stuffed into a capsule as well (no point leaving behind some perfectly good space habitats, even if they do have a few years on the clock).

Everything else gets left behind. There's simply no easy way to get it down onto the planet. Worse still, Pheidippides has to be in a really low orbit to drop things down onto the planet, and objects in low orbits gradually get dragged down by the highest reaches of the atmosphere (even the International Space Station needs a regular push from thrusters to stop it from falling out of orbit). A few weeks after arrival, those parts of Pheidippides that weren't jettisoned or dismantled and dropped onto the planet would burn up in Quinoa's atmosphere. Built in another solar system, after an epic 160 year voyage across interstellar space, Pheidippides would end its life as a fiery meteor in an alien sky, its purpose fulfilled and its mission finally complete.

Hey, I never thought of the War of the Worlds analogy! That's a much simpler way of explaining it! Good thinking.

I'm glad you appreciate the site. I'm still in the early stages so I'm happy to take suggestions. Offline, I've already had some very constructive discussions with Avetzan1 for various things to add to Quinoa. At some point, I plan to mention him in an 'acknowledgements' section under the 'Author' page as a geographer/pilot from the city of New Auckland (the largest city on Quinoa, close to where my fictional naturalist lives).

Quinoan biochemistry is based on iron in a similar way to how our biochemistry is based on carbon. Most life on Earth is actually mostly water, because it's a great fluid for chemical reactions to take place in (humans are about 70% water), hence we're about the same density as water. Quinoan life also uses water (it would be a pretty lousy planet to colonise if it was covered in, say, oceans of sulphuric acid), so life forms on Quinoa would also be about the same density as water. Just as carbon makes up a comparatively small portion of our bodily makeup, so does iron make up a comparatively small portion of Quinoan life.