Given a fully human habitable Earth like world An a human population of 100,000 - 1,000,000 Living in small hunter/gather groups or small agraian groups, spread out over the whole planet.
If you were in a spacecraft in Low Planetary Orbit With a full suite of remote sensing gear that is only slightly more advance that what is commerically available, ie Not military grade hardware.
1) Asumming that you don't suspect they are their and not actively looking for them and they don't know you are in orbit and are not trying to hide themselves
And all you are looking for is a good spot to set down your colony(ies)/settlement(s)
How easy or hard would it be to detect the presence of hunter/gather groups or small family farms?
Would thermal imaging systems be able to tell the difference from human body heat and that of a large native mammal? How big would a camp/cook fire have to be to be detectible from orbit? How large would a family garden or cultivated field have to be to be distinquished from just an ordinary open field?
2)You suspect they are people down on the planet and they don't know you are there and you are actively looking for them, how hard or easy would that be?
3)Same as 1, but they somehow know that you are up there, they see a new 'star' in the sky and reconize it for what it is a ship in orbit and take efforts to conceal themselves, how hard or easy to do that?
4)You suspect they are down there and they know you are upthere, so you are actively looking for them, whle they are actively hidding? How hard or easy would that make things?
On 3 Jul, 16:17, Space Cadet <kaw...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Given a fully human habitable Earth like world > An a human population of 100,000 - 1,000,000 > Living in small hunter/gather groups or small agraian groups, spread > out over the whole planet.
> If you were in a spacecraft in Low Planetary Orbit > With a full suite of remote sensing gear that is only slightly more > advance that what is commerically available, ie Not military grade > hardware.
That's a strange restriction. An exploration mission is quite likely to have hardware that is as good as military grade. For example, I don't think that NASA is restricted to what is commercially available. In fact, the explorers could well be military.
> On 3 Jul, 16:17, Space Cadet <kaw...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Given a fully human habitable Earth like world > > An a human population of 100,000 - 1,000,000 > > Living in small hunter/gather groups or small agraian groups, spread > > out over the whole planet.
> > If you were in a spacecraft in Low Planetary Orbit > > With a full suite of remote sensing gear that is only slightly more > > advance that what is commerically available, ie Not military grade > > hardware.
> That's a strange restriction. An exploration mission is quite likely > to have hardware that is as good as military grade. For example, I > don't think that NASA is restricted to what is commercially > available. In fact, the explorers could well be military.
In some cases commercially available sensors are superior to what the military is using. When it comes to sensors I don't think there is a meaningful difference between civilian and military, not any more.
> Given a fully human habitable Earth like world > An a human population of 100,000 - 1,000,000 > Living in small hunter/gather groups or small agraian groups, spread > out over the whole planet.
> If you were in a spacecraft in Low Planetary Orbit > With a full suite of remote sensing gear that is only slightly more > advance that what is commerically available, ie Not military grade > hardware.
> 1) Asumming that you don't suspect they are their and not actively > looking for them and they don't know you are in orbit and are not > trying to hide themselves
> And all you are looking for is a good spot to set down your > colony(ies)/settlement(s)
> How easy or hard would it be to detect the presence of hunter/gather > groups or small family farms?
It would be very hard to detect the difference between non- technological humans and non-sapient animals of similar body size from orbit. If they are at the level of building houses and warming them by fires, these could be detected from orbit, but might perhaps be misinterpreted if the observer isn't expecting and looking for them.
But I would think that any reasonable exploration team "looking for is a good spot to set down your colony(ies)/settlement(s)" would do a fair amount of surface-level survey, in which framers or even hunter- gatherers would be quite likely to be noticed.
(You don't make it clear, are the observers assumed to be a different species then the observed low-tech sapients, or are we to assume a "lost colony" or something of the sort?)
> Would thermal imaging systems be able to tell the difference from > human body heat and that of a large native mammal?
Not readily. If you explicitly know you are looking for a human, and know what they look like, visual imagery from orbit could possibly tell the difference, but if you don't know what the various animals look like, such observation is not very helpful.
>How big would a > camp/cook fire have to be to be detectible from orbit?
This depends critically on the exact performance of the sensors, but more important is how good the analysis programs are. How well can a campfire be distinguished from random hot spots (stone outcrops heated in the sun and slow to cool, for example) or lightning-set fires. How well do the explorers know the detailed environment and what is plausible there?
> How large would a family garden or cultivated field have to be to be > distinquished from just an ordinary open field?
There are lots of local, small micro environments in many non- cultivated settings. For the field to be distinguishable is one thing, for it to be recognized for what it is, the product of sapient technology is quite another.
> 2)You suspect they are people down on the planet and they don't know > you are there and you are actively looking for them, how hard or easy > would that be?
Depends on their tech level, the quality of the sensors, and the amount of effort you take, and how well you know what to expect. If they are farmers, and you are looking for farmers, you will probably find them. Hunter-gatherers, particularly ones that don't use fire, will be hard to find unless you know exactly what they look like compared to other animals of similar size.
> 3)Same as 1, but they somehow know that you are up there, they see a > new 'star' in the sky and reconize it for what it is a ship in orbit > and take efforts to conceal themselves, how hard or easy to do that?
If they had legends/memories of high-tech, they might be able to conceal themselves fairly well, depending on their lifestyle. If they can stay in caves during daylight, and not make fire outside at night, they would be quite hard to find for orbit, IMO. But how would they figure out that that is the way to hide without some fairly accurate knowledge of tech and what it can and cannot do?
What is the point or context of these various speculations?
Space Cadet wrote: > Given a fully human habitable Earth like world > An a human population of 100,000 - 1,000,000 > Living in small hunter/gather groups or small agraian groups, spread > out over the whole planet.
> If you were in a spacecraft in Low Planetary Orbit > With a full suite of remote sensing gear that is only slightly more > advance that what is commerically available, ie Not military grade > hardware.
> 1) Asumming that you don't suspect they are their and not actively > looking for them and they don't know you are in orbit and are not > trying to hide themselves
> And all you are looking for is a good spot to set down your > colony(ies)/settlement(s)
> How easy or hard would it be to detect the presence of hunter/gather > groups or small family farms?
With just the resolution you can get via Google Maps, a small family farm is real easy to spot from orbit. Just type in the address of a known farm and see for yourself. There was a farm next door to where I used to live, and I have had fun looking at a photo of it from space. A baseball diamond, which is even smaller than a family farm, is easy to spot from space too.
A hunter-gatherer group wouldn't make its presence known quite as easily. If they lived in large lodges or large tents, those might just show up. Yes, you might pick up the thermal imaging from any bonfire they set. But you wouldn't be able to know if the fire was a naturally occurring brush fire or not. Naturally occurring brush fires come in all sizes. Unless you saw it being lit again and again in the same place, night after night.
> Would thermal imaging systems be able to tell the difference from > human body heat and that of a large native mammal? How big would a > camp/cook fire have to be to be detectible from orbit? > How large would a family garden or cultivated field have to be to be > distinquished from just an ordinary open field?
Not big at all. It's the *shape* that gives it away--more or less rectangular or circular, suggesting the human propensity to surveying by Euclidean geometry, rather than some irregular naturally occurring shape. Even more so if the field contained irrigation ditches or roads, which are usually straight.
> 3)Same as 1, but they somehow know that you are up there, they see a > new 'star' in the sky and reconize it for what it is a ship in orbit > and take efforts to conceal themselves, how hard or easy to do that?
They could hide themselves, fleeing into a nearby forest or jungle. But erasing all evidence of their existing civilization would be much tougher.
Like I said, try browsing the satellite photos on Google Maps. You'll soon see how to tell man-made objects from naturally occurring ones.
-- Steven L. Email: sdlit...@earthlinkNOSPAM.net Remove the NOSPAM before replying to me.
"Steven L." <sdlit...@earthlink.net> writes: > Space Cadet wrote: >> How easy or hard would it be to detect the presence of hunter/gather >> groups or small family farms?
> With just the resolution you can get via Google Maps, a small family > farm is real easy to spot from orbit. Just type in the address of a > known farm and see for yourself. There was a farm next door to where > I used to live, and I have had fun looking at a photo of it from > space. A baseball diamond, which is even smaller than a family farm, > is easy to spot from space too.
Uncharted worlds seldom come with addresses databases compatible with Google. :-)
...
> Like I said, try browsing the satellite photos on Google Maps. > You'll soon see how to tell man-made objects from naturally > occurring ones.
A very simple experiment would be to try to find low tech villages in Siberia or the Amazon - only by visual.
> >> How easy or hard would it be to detect the presence of hunter/gather > >> groups or small family farms?
> > With just the resolution you can get via Google Maps, a small family > > farm is real easy to spot from orbit. Just type in the address of a > > known farm and see for yourself. There was a farm next door to where > > I used to live, and I have had fun looking at a photo of it from > > space. A baseball diamond, which is even smaller than a family farm, > > is easy to spot from space too.
> Uncharted worlds seldom come with addresses databases compatible with > Google. :-)
However, his point remains valid: With technology no different than what we have *RIGHT NOW* (AKA "High altitude photography" - the Google interface just makes the mechanics of doing it easier) it's fairly trivial to spot cultivated fields and similar macro-objects/features that are, if not all-out signposts reading "intelligent life somewhere in this vicinity" in ten foot tall flaming letters, a very strong hint to take a closer look at the area.
-- Don Bruder - dak...@sonic.net - If your "From:" address isn't on my whitelist, or the subject of the message doesn't contain the exact text "PopperAndShadow" somewhere, any message sent to this address will go in the garbage without my ever knowing it arrived. Sorry... <http://www.sonic.net/~dakidd> for more info
> > >> How easy or hard would it be to detect the presence of hunter/gather > > >> groups or small family farms?
> > > With just the resolution you can get via Google Maps, a small family > > > farm is real easy to spot from orbit. Just type in the address of a > > > known farm and see for yourself. There was a farm next door to where > > > I used to live, and I have had fun looking at a photo of it from > > > space. A baseball diamond, which is even smaller than a family farm, > > > is easy to spot from space too.
> > Uncharted worlds seldom come with addresses databases compatible with > > Google. :-)
> However, his point remains valid: With technology no different than what > we have *RIGHT NOW* (AKA "High altitude photography" - the Google > interface just makes the mechanics of doing it easier) it's fairly > trivial to spot cultivated fields and similar macro-objects/features > that are, if not all-out signposts reading "intelligent life somewhere > in this vicinity" in ten foot tall flaming letters, a very strong hint > to take a closer look at the area.
Most of the 'civilized' portions of the world in Google Earth are not satellite photos, but aerial. In the portions that are still satellite. a small population of hunter-gatherers would go unnoticed, especially in forested areas. Agrarian groups *might* be noticed, if their fields are large enough, and enough intelligence examined the right spot.
Don Bruder <dak...@sonic.net> writes: > In article <m2od5ehjyg....@rogue.de>, Peter Bruells <user...@rogue.de> > wrote:
>> Uncharted worlds seldom come with addresses databases compatible with >> Google. :-)
> However, his point remains valid: With technology no different than what > we have *RIGHT NOW* (AKA "High altitude photography" - the Google > interface just makes the mechanics of doing it easier) it's fairly > trivial to spot cultivated fields and similar macro-objects/features > that are, if not all-out signposts reading "intelligent life somewhere > in this vicinity" in ten foot tall flaming letters, a very strong hint > to take a closer look at the area.
It's possible - not trivial. Note that Google concentrates of places of interest of internet users. Lots of Google-Earth is still unmapped - even fairly attractive touris places like the small island at the coast of Northern Germany have a very bad resulation. I tried to find the remains of a concrete bunker where I used to play. Walls 3 meters high, 1,5 metres wide, angular shape. Couldn't make it out, the resolution is too bad.
Also: Clouds. At any given moment large parts of Earth are obcured by clouds.
It took years to create the data Google is using right now, the by-product of a fairly large industrial base.
The tech may be sufficient to chart a wild planet and to find hunter-gatherer groups, but it's simply not trivial. Or rather, perhaps trivial compared to getting to such a planet.
> Don Bruder <dak...@sonic.net> writes: > > In article <m2od5ehjyg....@rogue.de>, Peter Bruells <user...@rogue.de> > > wrote:
> >> Uncharted worlds seldom come with addresses databases compatible with > >> Google. :-)
> > However, his point remains valid: With technology no different than what > > we have *RIGHT NOW* (AKA "High altitude photography" - the Google > > interface just makes the mechanics of doing it easier) it's fairly > > trivial to spot cultivated fields and similar macro-objects/features > > that are, if not all-out signposts reading "intelligent life somewhere > > in this vicinity" in ten foot tall flaming letters, a very strong hint > > to take a closer look at the area.
> It's possible - not trivial. Note that Google concentrates of places > of interest of internet users. Lots of Google-Earth is still unmapped > - even fairly attractive touris places like the small island at the > coast of Northern Germany have a very bad resulation. I tried to find > the remains of a concrete bunker where I used to play. Walls 3 meters > high, 1,5 metres wide, angular shape. Couldn't make it out, the > resolution is too bad.
> Also: Clouds. At any given moment large parts of Earth are obcured by > clouds.
> It took years to create the data Google is using right now, the > by-product of a fairly large industrial base.
> The tech may be sufficient to chart a wild planet and to find > hunter-gatherer groups, but it's simply not trivial. Or rather, > perhaps trivial compared to getting to such a planet.
I'm not sure of how thorough the coverage is, but goodly chunks of mars have been photographed at resolutions of 30 cm by HiRise. You can see the wheel tracks of the rovers, and the shadows of their instrument masts. For Phoenix (the polar lander) you can see the two solar panels. Astonishingly, it managed to capture an image of Phoenix as it was descending under its parachute.
You could probably make out a human only if he/she were casting a long shadow, but any dwelling would be visible.
The satellite portions of Google Earth are at 1m resolution, far worse. Of course, Mars doesn't have vegetation cover, and not much in the way of clouds (it does have occastional dust storms).
