FUTURE CITY: VISIONS AND BEYOND

FUTURE CITY SERIES: CONCLUSION

ERA OF PLANETARY URBANIZATION

SUCEM

SUPER URBAN CLUSTER OF EARTH AND MARS

BY

KRITI KANAUJIA

Introduction:

The time is Earth Year 5,002,050, the world as we know; has changed drastically. We no longer inhabit Earth. An extreme event occurred. Our Sun was hit by a white dwarf which created an implosion-explosion around 30,000 Earth Years ago.

Fig.1: Sun's Photospheric Expansion. 

Fig.2: Map of Solar System in 2050 A.D. includes the Asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter's orbits.

The resultant Sun has now an extremely enlarged Photosphere which has enveloped Mercury, and Mercury no longer exists. 

Fig.3: Map of Solar System in 20,000,50 A. D.

Source: Author's Illustration

The second planet from Sun; Venus is now a dry and searing lump of rock. Its atmosphere has evaporated and the surface looks like a searing piece of coal. It no longer exists as the Morning or Evening Star but looks like an enflamed canon ball.

Fig. 4 & 5: A view from Earth of Venus (as a spot located in left side of the Sun) and a view of Earth and Sun's distance.

Our home planet; Earth is no longer our home. Due to Sun’s Photospheric expansion, the earth no longer remains as the Blue planet but exists as Third Rock from the Sun with a Bluish Halo around it. Since the planet started receiving increased insolation from the Sun, all the water evaporated; both from the surface and the underground. This led to collapse of our climate and ecosystems and consequently of other life forms on the planet. Humanity had by this time evolved enough technological advancement to create artificial environments for sustenance. The Moon no longer exists but has been swallowed by Sun’s gravity.

Our Reddish neighbour proved savior for humanity. Many experiments conducted on its surface 200,000 Earth Years ago in context of habitability and sustenance provided useful insights into artificial sustainable environments. Mars’ moons: Phoebos and Deimos have also been swallowed by Sun’s gravitational pull.

The Asteroid belt has been obliterated by Sun’s Photospheric expansion and resultant gravitational pull. We no longer have Ceres or any remnant asteroid belt. This has proved to be a boon because it provided a safe way to reach Jupiter and no longer we have to worry about tackling; falling or colliding asteroids, completely removing the fatal aspect in travelling beyond Mars to the Gaseous giants.

Jupiter, our biggest neighbour has some drastic changes. Due to Sun’s Photospheric expansion, the amount of insolation increased drastically for Jupiter. This helped in forming an appropriate atmosphere rich in Hydrogen and Oxygen with trace amounts of Nitrogen. It also led to tapping in its rich water resources and oxygen. But since the atmosphere has different composition than our Earth’s, we are not fit to directly breathe it. The Oxygen composition in Jupiter is 40 % which causes our lungs to rupture and be fatal to us. Jupiter’s moon: Europa has vast reserves of Water but lacks a breathable atmosphere; nonetheless a glass sealed testing station has been placed to test whether life is possible below the surface.

Saturn, the next biggest neighbour is now been explored to be the next human frontier.

Neptune, Pluto and Xena are being constantly tracked and investigated by satellites and robots to be future frontiers.

SUCEM:

The current habitation system comprises of a cluster of natural and artificial planets. They were created in the duration of impending collision of Sun and the White Dwarf. The White Dwarf was being monitored for over 50,000 Earth Years when it changed its direction towards our home system and collided with our Sun 30,000 Earth Years ago. At present, we live in this system of urbanization. Everyone has a uniform urban way of life. The human world is dictated by urban order. It would be correct to say that it is a “Cluster of Urbanization”.

The Cluster of Urbanization is a system of Six interconnected natural and artificial planets, out of which Four are inhabited by civilians and on the Fifth planet only skilled technicians reside providing vital air and water supply to the rest Four inhabited civilian planets. This super system is referred to as “SUPER URBAN CLUSTER OF EARTH AND MARS” or “SUCEM” for short. In this six planet system; three planets are natural and three are artificial.

Fig.6: Author's illustration of SUCEM cluster.

The first planet; earth is not inhabited and is completely deserted following inhospitable conditions and atmospheric, lithospheric, hydrospheric system collapse due to extreme insolation reception. Moon no longer exists, hence it also disrupted gravitational balance, increasing gravity 10 times more than it was present earlier. The Earth no longer rotates on its axis due to increased gravitational pull from the Sun. It now exists truly as the “Third Rock from the Sun”. But it forms part of SUCEM because it acts as a shield from increased insolation for the later planets and also provides Core material to them.

Fig.7: An image illustrating the technological advancement on a planetary scale.

SUCEM works like a normal planet system because of inter- connected cores. It was found that the Core material rich in Iron; provides a natural dynamo effect to sustain magnetic polarity and since all these planets are inter-connected, hence the polarity also does not reverse like it used to do on Earth. Also the core material provides a natural source of internal heat used to run the artificial planet and to fulfil the energy requirements of the entire SUCEM system. The Core material is used to generate or tap energy in a way similar to Geothermal energy on Earth only that it is regulated and circulated now.

Sine all the cores are connected, SUCEM rotates at one speed that is; 1 day at SUCEM lasts for 48 Earth Hours, 24 hours each of Day and Night with no seasonal variations. The slow rotational speed is due to inter- connectedness of 6 planets in SUCEM.

The artificial planets were created from an alloy of  Iron, Silica and Nitrogen with trace amounts of Zinc available on planets Earth and Mars to create a metal which was strong and anti- corrosive.

The three artificial planets have been named as Artificial Earth I or AE I, Artificial Earth II or AE II and Artificial Earth and Mars or AEM. Polarity of AE I and AE II is similar to that of Earth and Mars that is; North- South poles while polarity of AEM is East- West oriented like Uranus. AEM has East- West polarity due to combined effects of Earth and Mars.

The Glass domes on all these three planets along with Mars are made of the same composition of Glass with Silica in it. The Glass domes are actually composed of hexagonal solar cell panels on the outside to generate energy for the planets and their infrastructures. But the amount of thickness of glass within the dome decreases as we move away from Earth towards Mars due to decreasing insolation. The domes also have Ultra Violet radiation filters since none of the planets have Ozone layer.

These three artificial planets have equally distributive land and water surfaces so that extremes of weather are controlled and least energy is invested into temperature control all over the planet. Since land and water surface is present in alternate bands, a coastal type climate is the prevalent norm on SUCEM’s artificial planets.

For Mars, water is like acid since it is rich in Iron and hence it was decided that Mars will not have a large artificial water body to avoid any kind of corrosive problems on a planetary scale. Mars obtains its water supply from Jupiter through the many pipeline systems connected between the two planets. Mars is characterized by vertical rises and is nicknamed as “Planet of Glass Scrapers”.

There are very strict building bye-laws on SUCEM. The norm is 200 storey development all over the surface of the planets, except that towards the poles; a vertical development till 1000 storey is permissible and generally promoted. The poles on SUCEM have been developed as Research and Development and Military areas.

The last planet in SUCEM, is still in development stages. Jupiter is surrounded by a network of inter- connected rings that transport breathable air and water to all the other inhabited planets in the SUCEM. At present, Jupiter’s surface is developed by robots for habitation.

AE I, AE II, AEM and Mars have a total population of 45 billion with AE I being slightly more populated than the other three. Jupiter has a 5 billion population of technicians and researchers.

Society of SUCEM:

The SUCEM cluster is a segregated urban space. The planet nearest to Earth i.e. AE I resides the poorest of the poor, in terms of choice of decision making while AE II resides the richest of the SUCEM. The Richest decided to reside in AE II because it is the most central planet of the cluster and hence provides a strategically safe position, along with the ease of maintaining law and order in the cluster. The SUCEM cluster does not have any problems as regards to basic amenities; food, air and water and other necessities are cheaply available.

With the advent of SUCEM cluster, the definition of poverty changed. Poverty now refers to right to choice of residence and work permits. If we observe SUCEM, then the unskilled reside at AE I, the highly skilled at Mars and Jupiter, the semi- skilled and the artistes on AEM and the entrepreneurial class, the owners of SUCEM cluster on AE II. AE II decides who lives where and why, no questions asked. Though no one can ask questions from AE II, there is no dictatorship or authoritative governance set up. AE II also resides the highly intellectual, the thinkers of the cluster and the government is set up on democratically accepted morals and conscience. The oppression of Thought no longer prevails, it is the era of Free Thinking. 

The mobility is hindered because every planet in the cluster has a defined optimum population number, if at any point of time, the population moves towards over or under population, the migrants are either deported or imported to that specific planet.

Since all the planets in the cluster work according to the principle of Optimum population and the Cluster already has a population of 50 billion, there are strict rules imposed upon reproduction as well. Accordingly, it was decided that since the population doubling time is 40 Earth Years, therefore, any couple can have ONE child when both the partners have aged 35 years each and that too with the consent of their respective Ministry of Optimum Population Implementation. This policy is the reason for the human population stabilizing at 50 billion mark. For past 10,000 Earth Years, the population is stable at this mark and is also healthy.

The Life expectancy of the human populace is 100 years and due to past inter- mixing of all the races, Racism does not exist. Inter- mixing plus genetic modifications were able to bring the best mutations in the human populace which led to 100 Earth Years life span. This was necessary for humans to adapt to newer environments and gravity.

Economy of SUCEM:

SUCEM was designed in a way to minimize transportation costs. People are assigned residences in close vicinity of their workplace. If two people marry, then the new couple would be reassigned preferential jobs and residences. SUCEM is characterized by a highly skilled set of population, excluding AE I. The population is very versatile in terms of their skill sets and most of them can be retrained to be compatible to their newer job reassignments. The highest category of job is considered to be that of Scientists and they are given utmost freedom of choice for the betterment of the cluster. The economy works on Credit system. Every individual earns a certain amount of credits according to their job description and performance. These credits are stored in an Amenities card which is used to buy goods and services on the cluster. The rates are pre-fixed and cannot be arbitrarily raised. Everything is monitored.

Food and Garbage:

The Food is no longer required to be grown on huge farms. Genetic Engineering is so successful that to feed a populace of 1 billion, food tablets could be produced in 1 Earth Hour. The problem of Garbage has been resolved. Anything which is considered as garbage is either recycled or incinerated in a furnace linked to pipelines leading to cores. Garbage also acts as a fuel source.

Conclusion:

The stereotypical notions of Geography that existed in our primitive levels of civilization around 5,002,050 Earth Years ago have changed drastically. Geography was at that time the study of the man- environment relationship of the Earth but many million years later, this has changed. We no longer consider the study of Geography separate from Astronomy but entwined into one another. At present we have GeoNomers who study every planet and satellite in the Universe possible and try to resolve the problems for their habitation by humans. Now, we do not have maps of countries but maps of different habitable worlds and also of the planets in the SUCEM cluster. This is a time in academic discourse, wherein all the disciplines have become entwined to resolve the issues of human sustenance.

Fig.8: Frontiers of Human Habitation, study area of GeoNomers.

The SUCEM cluster is expanding and searching for newer horizons for habitation. The Worm Hole mechanism has been very useful in travelling to the vast crevices of the Universe within a blink of an eye. The Artificial planets of the SUCEM cluster are also self sustaining space ships, which in a case of emergency; in this case, solar photospheric explosion could be used to escape within moments. Even the artificial concentric rings of the Jupiter are designed in a similar way. Mars has a fleet of spaceships, with a capacity of 1 billion each to escape to a safe distance.

Author’s Bio- Note:

Kriti Kanaujia is currently pursuing her Doctorate in Philosophy from Department of Geography, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi. Her interest areas include urban planning and development, urban culture and society and urban aesthetics.