This poem came out of the July 3, 2012 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from ellenmillion. It has been sponsored out of the general fund based on an audience poll.
This is definitely how the people of Traipah would have gone about it, and probably did, the first time. Before the Reformation, they weren't perfect (still aren't) and in fact were still a bit crazy like humans, but the combo of there being not enough metal on Traipah to waste, and the promise of mining asteroids, meant that it probably took them a generation or more of trying before they finally got up there, not in rockets but in re-usable space craft. After all, beyond the safety factors are the cost factors, and when metal is precious enough to recycle everything that isn't being used, you don't want to be losing pieces of it in space if you can help it, and only in the ocean if you can retrieve it
( ... )
>>And all this back before the Ancient Egyptians had even invented the plow.<<
That sounds cool!
>> It's been making me think very strongly about a story or stories to do with archaeology in space, in their system. But I don't know how much of it, if any, would survive ten thousand years in space. ... )
You're welcome. I also recommend running a search over at NASA. I've read recently that discussions are underway to protect the first landing site on the Moon so it doesn't get messed up by other, later traffic. So there may well be further material on how long certain types of signs and equipment last.
Oh, and there's this article with pictures of our traces on other worlds, some that stay intact in low-activity environments and some that are erased very soon in more active ones: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/12/planet-tracks/
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That sounds cool!
>> It's been making me think very strongly about a story or stories to do with archaeology in space, in their system. But I don't know how much of it, if any, would survive ten thousand years in space.
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Oh, and there's this article with pictures of our traces on other worlds, some that stay intact in low-activity environments and some that are erased very soon in more active ones:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/12/planet-tracks/
I wrote a series of poems about the images.
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the supervisors always said to the inspectors.
"This is not a race."
Gods above and below, we are so STUPID sometimes. I so, so wish it had gone this way.
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