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Proof-reading EG
What does "carved up" in this context mean? At this point Tsiolkovsky only arrived about 20 or 30 years before.  Is this like when Spain and Portugal "carved up" the Americas via the pope between them despite not having pratical access to the majority of the Americas?

By early in the sixth century the new system had already been carved up by Sol-system megacorps, venture capitalists, governments, and science interests, both ai and human, and with the microwave beam stations it was now relatively cheap to ferry crew, equipment, supplies, and eventually colonists to Tau Ceti. Only the vast distances were an obstacle - the colonists and crew on the shuttles would have to expect a century-long trip, a punishing time for non-space adapts even with medical nano. For this reason only a few fortunate souls were qualified enough to justify the expense, and had the psychological and geneered characteristics so they could go through such a prolonged and claustrophobic existence without mental imbalance.

http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/48e2e21ee6d7f
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Skimming the article, it does rather seem as if things were moving along faster than seems likely, given the tech of the time. Unless, as you say, the 'carving up' was done by fiat, which should then be explained.

There is also the issue of the colonists needing to have left before the first ship even arrived for this sort of timeline to have worked and the apparent lack of biostasis (or hypersleep as this old article calls it - which should be changed) even though this was used for the first mission and was apparently available by the time of the Technocalypse in at least a limited form (cryostasis actually). Although the tech was tricky and perhaps wasn't used for that reason with regular humans (the original crew having been gengineered to be better able to survive hibernation/cryosleep).

Beyond that, the entire article is a bit old and dated and could probably benefit from a bit of updating and polishing to bring it more in line with our current take on things.

Todd
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What kind of updating should the Nova Terra article have?

I have read a lot of the site but I'm not entirely familiar about the difference between this article and the current O.A. take on the period.

Do you have some examples of how to update it? If I know how it should be updated I can help find places that could be updated and write a replacement for some paragraphs or terms.
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Does the 61 Cygni article ("Trip") reflect the current O.A. take? I would assume this since it was published in 2016.

Maybe we should contrast the 61 Cygni article with the Nova Terra article to see how the Nova Terra article should be updated. 

Link to 61 Cygni  ("Trip") article.

http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/57ab8a3c4959c
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The Nova Terra article is adapted from the pre-OA RPG Big Ideas, Grand Visions, which was written mostly by Anders Sandberg. The timescale in BIGV was very much compressed compared to OA, mostly because it includes very fast (handwavium) Higgs-field based spacecraft. Even though Anders and Alan Kazlev did a lot of work to adapt it to OA, some of the history still happens much too fast. I would be quite happy to stretch the events of the early history of Nova Terra over a period at least twice as long, taking it up to the end of the First Federation period at least.

On the other hand I'd prefer not to lose any of the major events, unless they directly contradict the general timeline.
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(03-28-2017, 12:21 AM)QwertyYerty Wrote: What kind of updating should the Nova Terra article have?

I have read a lot of the site but I'm not entirely familiar about the difference between this article and the current O.A. take on the period.

Do you have some examples of how to update it? If I know how it should be updated I can help find places that could be updated and write a replacement for some paragraphs or terms.

As Steve mentions, a big part of the problem is how compressed the history of Nova Terra is. If it is stretched out a good bit, that would help.

Beyond that, there are some typos and sentences in the data panels that appear to stop in mid-sentence. There is also a section on The Terraforming of Nova Terra in which past and present tense are mixed together. Also, there is some mixing of CE and AT dating that makes things confusing.

There is also the description of the use of masers to help propel the initial and later colony vessels, which doesn't quite line up with how we've generally described interstellar missions from the early timeline. Not to say we can't have maser propulsion playing a role - but I'm not sure if it lines up with the bulk of what we've described. So, I think it would be good to look into this to make sure everything is consistent.

Finally, the historical portion of the article is very long and I have to wonder how much is telling an interesting story about the history of the planet and system - and how much is essentially 'filler' that ups the word count and throws everything and the kitchen sink at the article - but doesn't really provide the reader with notable or useful information that is relevant to the current version of the project. I would need to read it through from beginning to end to get more into the details on this, but don't have time for that right now.

My 2c worth,

Todd
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What kind of things in the article would be considered fluff, and what parts would be considered essential?  If I had some guidelines on this I could help weed out the fluff.
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I think some kind of early 'boostbeam' technology would have helped the Tau Ceti colony ships, and indeed all the early ships; but masers are probably not the most efficient way of projecting momentum across space (except for propelling very lightweight objects). So I'd change this to 'early boostbeam tech' rather than omitting it all together. We can work out the details later.

I would try to keep most of the history, maybe reduce some of it to a few salient points - there is a good reason that Tau Ceti has so much history, after all. Nova Terra is the oldest extrasolar human colony, and a lot of the work Anders did on the early history was basically created to give Nova Terra and the other Inner Sphere worlds a rich history.
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Did the subversion happen 250 a.t. or 2157 c.e. (188 a.t)?

Neptune was an important source of extracted deuterium and He-3 in the Interplanetary age; first reached by a Brazilian mission in 250 AT which colonized its moons Proteus and Triton, but the mission was subverted at long range by the Augmentation Activist faction. The AAs continued to hold Proteus even after the arrival of other explorers, including a secondary colonization mission from Jupiter

http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/46cf9d774980c

Paolo wondered how many isolated habitats had fallen to such a simple strategy.
Hundreds of years before, steganography- the technique of hiding messages within other messages - had been developed by mediaeval monks, but by the Year of our Lord 2157 the messages that could be hidden within moving video files were effectively undetectable without the right algorithm.
Paolo had the right algorithm, and knew how to use it.

http://www.orionsarm.com/xcms.php?r=oa-s...pe_terrain
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http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/46d38510904a3
Neural Implant, Neural Interface, DNI

that enhances a bionts sensory ability
should be
that enhances a biont's sensory ability
Selden
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