Idea Info Name: Searching for Life in Space Index: Primary Category: Adventure Submitted: 12/27/2003 4:37:29 PM Written By: dekev

In this game you will search Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto for life. It is based on facts, but is also fun (answer to comment by Valek). You will have danger on each planet and moon. The moons could be bonus levels. Some possible moons are earth’s moon, Titan, Io, Callisto, Europa, Miranda, and maybe Phobos. The gassy outer planets, from Jupiter to Neptune, will be hard to swim through. If somebody is searching for life, they'd probably search everywhere they can (answer to comment by hipboyscott). People don't think of aliens as fish, or birds, because most people think of them as humanoids. Also, there could be airborn bacteria.

Mercury is very warm. Its atmosphere is made up of helium, methane, and sodium, so I would assume a simple spark would go up in flames, since helium and methane are highly flammable. Any rovers, robots, or probes would have to avoid making sparks. I don’t know how you could do that in a game, but it’s possible.

Earth’s moon is covered in maria (plural of mare) and craters. It could damage equipment if you’re flying over thousands of little bumps and cliffs.

Venus is the hottest planet, due to the “greenhouse effect”. It also has the highest gravity strength. It also, so conveniently, has acidic clouds floating over the surface. The player must learn how to stay flat to avoid being compacted. They’d have to evade clouds that would eat the cooling devices.

Titan supposedly has cliffs and rivers of methane. You could ramp off cliffs to fly over the methane rivers. Too much speed would probably cause the rover to shatter. I really don’t know the temperature, but I know it has to be extremely cold for liquid and solid methane to occur, since methane is a gas on earth.

Mars is thought to have “tornados” and they would have to suck up dust particles, so that when flying, they rub against each other causing static electricity, therefore, there are glowing tornados on Mars. These will be fun to avoid. I don’t know why Mars has rust on its surface, but if Mars can rust, robots can too on it, so that would create a time limit. Olympus Mons, on Mars, is the biggest volcano in the Solar System.

Io’s volcanoes shoot out sulphurous gases up to 100 miles high. This could be used to be launched from volcano to volcano. It could also be dangerous to miss volcanoes.

Jupiter is a humongous liquid ball. It is -238˚F, and covered in hydrogen. When going underwater, the player must definitely avoid shattering easily, due to the cold, against underwater (well, actually hydrogen) rocks and ruins. Special submarine-like things will have to be used.

Callisto has more craters than any other body in the Solar System. Finding the perfect drilling spot will be hard. Bumpy terrain will be hard to go across, and it could result in flipping over with your rover.

Saturn will be hard to approach, since you must dodge clumps of rock and ice in the famous rings. I don’t know who would be stupid enough to fly through, rather than around, the rings, but suppose it is the quickest route and you’re low on fuel. Saturn is actually colder than Jupiter, so it will be even harder.

Europa might be a little hard, since it is covered with 60 miles of ice! The player could use explosive weapons (suppose they brought them along in case) from the ship to dig out enough ice to drill through the actual core. It might not be a popular idea, since it is quite unrealistic.

Uranus will be hard because it has almost completely horizontal poles, causing each pole to have 42 years of darkness, and then 42 years of light. You don’t want to wait that long, so you’d have to search for life in complete darkness, and then light, when you get to the north (or south, it depends). Also, don’t forget, it is a liquid planet.

Miranda’s canyons are ten times deeper than the Grand Canyon! It also has an ice cliff more than three miles high (I’d hate to slip off that). It might be a little dangerous.

Neptune has a liquid surface, but more importantly, 1,240mph winds, and the famous dark spot that is a storm the size of earth! I don’t know how to avoid this, but if you had a parachute, you could go pretty fast. It could also be a disadvantage, since waves and flying pieces are caused by wind.

Phobos will crash into Mars in 30 million years. The player will have to push it back (that’s where those explosives come in again) to spiral away from, not towards, Mars.

Pluto is the darkest and coldest planet. You would have to blindly make your way across, sampling ice, and avoid shattering among the ice pillars and bumps.

On each planet, you will have a GPS monitor telling you your longitude and latitude (no, I don’t know what point Neptune’s storm is on). Satellite photos can be used as maps, and may show potential life-sustaining areas. The player will have drilling rovers, submarines, robots with cameras, and other useful equipment.

If the Phobos and Europa ideas are used, the player will also have explosives. These could be used for other things too. It could be used to mess up wave patterns. Somehow the player has to be informed of the dangers of each planet. Maybe a space station on earth will do that.

When found, ruins will cause the probe to automatically send a space shuttle. The space shuttle will land there, and you will get new extra rovers (the player will have several, in case one is destroyed), and it will be a starting point for the extra rovers, rather than starting at the landing site again.

Fossils will be just for extra points in the game or something. Bonus moons will also give you points, if you complete the task correctly. I don’t know what they will be, (except for Phobos) so the task could be anything.

If you found an organism, you’ve obviously reached your goal. Then you would continue to the next planet. I don’t know if the planets should start from the sun, because if you want increasing difficulty throughout the game, it won’t work.

While flying through space, black holes (that don’t exist in our Solar System) and meteors could be obstacles. A space shuttle crashed before when hit by a high-speed paint fleck, but those aren’t very common.

Sources:

Ultimate Visual Encyclopedia 2001, Dorling Kindersley Limited, Great Britain

“Red Menace?” Current Science February 7, 2003, Volume 88, Issue 12, Weekly Reader