
Orion’s Arm Universe Project: Collaborative Hard Sci-Fi Worldbuilding - aspenmayer
https://www.orionsarm.com
======
aspenmayer
From the about page:

What is "Orion's Arm" you might ask? That is an excellent question, and in a
nutshell here is your answer: Orion's Arm is:

The next step in the evolution of science-fiction

A collective hard science fiction world building endeavor

A space opera

A communal background for science fiction stories

A universe ready to be brought to life through illustration

A forum for cutting edge science

A roleplaying setting

A transhumanist projection of what the future might look like

A bunch of semi-sane sentients having fun together

Why are we here? The answer to that question can be found in our Statement of
Purpose:

Our purpose is to inspire writers, artists and thinkers. To create a vision of
the future that is plausible at every level, internally consistent and abides
by the accepted facts and theories in the physical, biological, and social
sciences. We embrace speculative ideas like Drexlerian assemblers, mind
uploading, posthuman intelligence, magnetic monopoles, wormholes and the
technologies, and developments that will make all this possible.

To quote Arthur C. Clarke's Second Law:

The only way to explore the limits of the possible is to venture a little way
past them into the impossible.

Our task is to create an ever evolving universe that is interesting, inspiring
and provocative - to theorize on a future that may, or may not, come to be.

~~~
NikolaeVarius
Replace "Orions Arm" with "Star Citizen" for chuckles.

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sxp
The technology page at [https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-
topic/45b175dbc0d73](https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-topic/45b175dbc0d73) is
worth skimming for anyone who is interested in posthuman sci-fi. Much of the
exotic tech on their is based on realistic (but highly speculative) physics.
The site also has a good list of physically plausible megascale engineering:
[https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-
topic/45b5645097563](https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-topic/45b5645097563)

~~~
henearkr
I love the hard-sf in there.

However there are some weird things, like these Dyson-megastructures, that are
polyhedral and thus not equidistant to the gravity center:

[https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-
article/4670a60a449d5](https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/4670a60a449d5)

Would it not be unstable? Gravity pull and thus orbital velocities would be
wildly different at different points of the segments...

I wonder if I can bring the project to "harden" their SF, if this is truly
collaborative...

Or, at least, if there are discussion pages where they can convince me of the
existence (at this point in future) of suitable techs rendering the
megastructure viable ;)

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jimmcslim
If you are interested in this, you might also be interested in Atomic Rockets
/ Project Rho [1]

[1]
[http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/](http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/)

~~~
sxp
Project Rho is an amazing site with completely horrible navigation. It taught
me as much rocket science as Kerbal Space Program, but every time I visit it,
I can never find what I want on the table of contents (bottom of the page) and
have to search the site. It has some nice sections like this page on pre-
electronic computers and nomograms:
[http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/astrodeck.php#i...](http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/astrodeck.php#id
--Computers--Slide_Rules)

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jmiskovic
Be aware of their terms & conditions:

b. By visiting the Site, joining Orion's Arm, or initiating Communication via
the associated Discussion Groups, you agree to be bound by Section I of these
Terms ("General Terms").

The contents of this Site are protected by United States copyright law,
international conventions and other applicable laws. All Content and material
submitted to, or otherwise created for, Orion's Arm is the copyrighted
property of the original Contributor(s). Any use of any of the Content on this
Site other than for private, non-commercial viewing purposes is strictly
prohibited.

~~~
grawprog
This seems to contradict this:

>Our purpose is to inspire writers, artists and thinkers. To create a vision
of the future that is plausible at every level, internally consistent and
abides by the accepted facts and theories in the physical, biological, and
social sciences. We embrace speculative ideas like Drexlerian assemblers, mind
uploading, posthuman intelligence, magnetic monopoles, wormholes and the
technologies, and developments that will make all this possible.

Just looking at anything on that site means that if you happen to use any
similar ideas you're at risk of violating copyright. It seems kind of like the
same reason why none of the dolphin emu Devs can even look at the nintendo
leak. You'd have to then prove your ideas are original and not lifted from
Orion's arm.

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davedx
Interesting, but "hard sci-fi" with traversable wormholes seems questionable.
Why not have Alcubierre warp drives too if all that's required is a
theoretical physics paper and a thousand years of engineering progress? :)

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VectorLock
Really good stuff here, I love the Archailects bits the most. Kind of reminds
me when SCP used to be good before it was inundated by Dr. Soandso self-
inserts.

~~~
WJW
The setting really allows for some fantastic stories: \- There's a story about
a world where the local archailect forbids all non-animal power sources for
some reason, but high tech itself is still allowed. This leads to hyper-
optimised tech like computer-stabilised bicycles on metal rails that have so
little resistance they get up to hundreds of km/h. \- The "rebuild nanotech
civilisation from scratch" reality TV show where a group of people gets
dropped naked onto an uninhabited planet and have to work their tech level
high enough up to get back to orbit, kinda like factorio but as a game show.
The current record is 72 years, set by a group of superhumans who gene-
engineered themselves to need less food and no sleep. \- The whole sub-genre
of humans who don't trust the ruling AIs and build their ships to be invisible
against the background radiation of the universe.

And so many more. Highly recommended.

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kanzure
I grabbed an archive of the Orion's Arm mailing list a while back:
[https://diyhpl.us/~bryan/irc/yahoo-
groups.orions_arm.2000-20...](https://diyhpl.us/~bryan/irc/yahoo-
groups.orions_arm.2000-2013.zip)

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henearkr
Damn I love that!

I only feel the future itself is going to be properly astonishing... Even in
the mid term...

Nevertheless I just crazy love science-fiction, so, thanks for this project!!!

Btw I see that not just as a fiction works, but as an exploration of the
evolution paths for our real future as well, so that's just as important as
real science.

That's our compass for science and technological progress.

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dfischer
This is so incredibly cool. We need more imagination and storytelling. This is
exactly right - awesome.

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aspenmayer
There is an active forum and also a Discord server!

[https://www.orionsarm.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=3500](https://www.orionsarm.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=3500)

[https://discord.gg/gcBKANv](https://discord.gg/gcBKANv)

