An interesting, but fairly lengthy, exercise would be to work through 'The Knowledge' chapter by chapter and try and understand what is relevant to building a world (on an exoplanet) as opposed to rebuilding one here. My Saturday job!!!
What would be an interesting exercise would be to start with a fairly simple, but necessary, tool such as an axe with a steel blade and wooden handle and create a tree, for want of a better word, listing all the requirements in terms of raw materials, processing and skills necessary to produce that ...
I agree that finding a good, easily usable source of energy would be a priority. Wood comes to mind - it would (sorry!!!) be useful for many things e.g. housing, boat building, paper making (The Knowledge p 207), methanol production (used as a fuel and solvent), weapons for hunting (bows, arrows, sp...
Sooner or later we will have to leave Earth if we wish mankind to survive - why? In another 4.5 billion years our Sun will reach the end of its life and expand into a red giant reaching almost to the orbit of Mars. Earth will 'fry' for want of a better word and cease to exist. Much has been written ...
Good afternoon all, I am an amateur astronomer whose main interests is comets. However planets around other stars, exoplanets, are being discovered by the dozen and we are getting to the stage where Earth sized planets can be detected. Sooner or later, if our civilisation is to survive, we are going...