Thoughts for a story set in the solar system

Many residential places exist in the solar system with about 5 million people living fairly self contained in solar powered quad thick iron hulled in polar orbit around the sun.  Pencil shaped with a boot/umbrella at one end to give 8 hours of dark.  The residents spin quickly on the long axis to give 1 gee gravity just inside the living space and more slowly end over end to give a 24 hour day 16 hours of moving sun angle and 8 hours of dark.

Mercury and Mars have been mined for the materials to make the residents.

Earth is almost lifeless from human action hundreds of years before.

Venus has a space based shade to cool it to a livable temperature and some humans live there with an expanding biosphere.

Some miners are extracting material from Jupiter.

In the resident where the story is mostly set there is an Icelandic like mania for family trees and about who you are allow to have children with though there isn't much in the way of nuclear family tradition anymore.

A rare traveler from the outside arrives (from a Jupiter mining operation) to allow fresh eyes explanation of the environment.

Local problems declining yields, no insects so massive manually agricultural work force.

No fossil fuels, plastic, wool, cotton nor much steel. No computer, no mass transit.

Setup for full recycling, waste management built in.

Radio communication internal and external with other populations around the solar system

Aluminum shaped coins for currency, glass, bone, leather and wood.  Coral reef for seafood, grass lands, crop fields, kangaroos, wombats, bilby and marsupial rats for meat animals.  Australian and New Zealand sets of birds including parrots.  Eucalyptus and pine forests.

The drama comes from the winding down of the residential environment with very limited resources to spend on changing things. Young people making a future for themselves. Crop failures, coral deaths, forests shrinking, social restrictions, odd religious practices lessening knowledge base.

Family stories going backward and forward, trials, revenge, madness, resource wastage, loss and celebrations.

The microwave divide

At a job very early in my patchwork of positions a supervisor freaked out when I opened a microwave oven's door and reached in before the timer had finished. The little internal "cooking" light was on which in the model involved didn't switch on when the door was opened. Disregarding my eye rolling, a short speech about the dangers of microwaves plus long and detailed instructions about the correct way to use a microwave oven followed, much of which I still use today.

This morning my youngest daughter stacked the microwave panel to panel with sealed plastic containers straight from the fridge, punched in a high number of minutes, pressed cook and exited the kitchen. After assuring me the containers would move about within the oven and some eye rolling of her own. And yes the containers did sort of shuffle around in spurts when enough of them pressed up against one another, so what was my issue?

Yes more music

On the outside

What the Girl Tagging?

Who said old ladies weren't funny?

Talking of science and driving fast.

Gotye - Eyes Wide Open - official film clip
www.youtube.com
Film clip for the Gotye song Eyes Wide Open, directed by Brendan Cook at PictureDRIFT, featuring character design and animation by Darcy Prendergast at DeePee Studios, and design and animation by Jeremy Bianco, Darryn Rogers and Brendan Cook. Full credits: Production Company: pictureDRIFT

Pamela Kungpow-Chicken recommended this, I'm not fully convinced yet but it might grow on me.

Social Bookmarking

Yes, Social Booking Marking too!

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