Colony Growth(Was Re: Realistic Fleet sizes)

> Brian Burger wrote:

check out the book

Red Mars by Kim Stanely Robinson

its a very good example of this kind of colonization

> On Sun, 21 Sep 1997, Samuel Penn wrote:

> In message
These numbers bear out what I was thinking about colonial populations adn tthe
fleets they can support.

Except for one thing: a starting transported population of one million seems
very high. Don't forget that each of those million, plus their household
effects plus machinery etc has to find space on a transport vessel to take
them to thier new colony. Even if a lot of those colonist are peasants (which
would add to the mortality rate) and have little stuff, that's still a load of
people to ship.

The initial landing group would probably be quite small, relativly
speaking. Say 50-100,000 or less, mostly specialist types to prepare
infrastructure for the rest, who come in batches over the next decade or more.
That way, you don't have to have immensely vast transport fleets to get a
million people and equipment to a planet all at once...but it slows down your
population growth model somewhat.

I'd say that the 'average' colony would be a million or so after 100
years, at best - trade/transport interruptions (eg wars), disasters, etc
could lower this number drastically.

To get back to FT: an entire sector, filled with successful colonies as
above, could have a population of, say, 20 million only. About 20+
worlds with one mill. pop. would also be a vast 'geographic' area to cover.
The
Lafayette sector, in FT, with 4-5 older colonies plus a bunch of younger
colonies and stations of various sorts, could have a total pop. of less than
10 million.

My $0.02...