Don M schrieb:
> From: K.H.Ranitzsch <KH.Ranitzsch@t-online.de>
Well, in this whole thread, very little has been said about actual coly sizes.
My impression was that most people on this thread thought in terms of
wilderness planets with very thinly scattered populations.
> And to further insure that the colony does succeed you would
Well, at medieval technology levels, a settlement of a few dozen people
is basically self-sustaining (assuming an earthlike environment),
though prone to be wiped out by local catastrophes. A single settlement of
5.000 to 10.000 people is quite a large town, and hardly
self-sustaining. It will require food brought in from surrounding
areas.
However, spreading 200.000 people over a whole planet AND assuming
high-tech industry implies very easy transportation and communications.
I don't see a viable infrastructure or vehicle industry within that framework.
200.000 people in a reasonably compact area (a US state or European country,
at most) might be more plausible.
Greetings
[quoted original message omitted]
> At 11:42 AM +0100 1/30/02, KH.Ranitzsch@t-online.de wrote:
> Well, in this whole thread, very little has been said about actual coly
Its a pretty nebulous concept which is why I've be using very general ideas
that certain products require more industries behind their production than do
older technology items (steel Firearm vs chemical laser).
> Well, at medieval technology levels, a settlement of a few dozen people
I'd figure that you'd have a great deal of robotics and automated systems
helping the farmers out on the fields. ie doing much of the mindless work of
mow this field, plow that one, harvest that one. GPS would allow a very easy
way of telling a robot where to go and what path to follow. So our farmer is
something of a sysytem's operator who can do basic parts replacement and
welding and such. Just like they can now. They also know something about bio
tech and other
plant/animal technologies.
I suspect that mining operations are going to be in place in various parts of
the region that has been settled. Also, basic drilling and pumping operations
for petrochemicals for industrial process (this is easy as it takes less work
to keep a well going than it does to keep a mine working).
Your towns would be geared towards supplying the basic needs of the
population. First is power and water. New clothes is also high on the list
assuming natural fibers. Then theres variety in food. Most complex items are
going to be shipped in. Supplies of materials, parts, goods, machinery, and
other gear is going to be very very surge based. Not a steady stream like a
running economy on Earth is. Given how reliable a computer is now days your
colonist won't need to be making those. They'll be wanting other more
important items shipped in besides chip fabrication plants that take up an
entire ship ( I still don't think you'll be able to get a chip fab system in a
container, industries have become more complex and larger as our technology
has progressed, not smaller).
I also forsee basic mills and other plants that process the raw materials
harvested into things more easily usable. Food processing, ore processing,
lumber mills, an oil refinery then a chemical plant, a brewery and likely very
soon, someone will make a distillery, even if very small. All of these
industries will take materials from local harvest as well as additional
influxes of off planet gear and hardware to expand their capability.
For example, likely your refinery will start out just separating your basic
petro chemicals and doing some basic purity refining. You'll have kerosene,
petrol, diesel, lube oil, fuel oils and would be able to take many of those
things and send them to the chemical plant for further refining. Some of those
are still going to be useful to your budding colony, others too dirty to be
used.
Also, your major export will be what ever is in short supply back in other
colonies or for a better price, what ever the home worlds lack.
Things will progress faster and be more self-sustainable if you have
a set play book. Build a settlement. Expand it to the size of a state where
the longest travel to the capital is half a day by the average form of
transport. You won't waste time designing new things unless you have to. Use
an existing design that the colony founders licensed.
Then when you've got that built, you start pumping people and machinery into
the next area that looks very promising. It could be right next door, it could
be on the next river system on the other side of the continent.
> However, spreading 200.000 people over a whole planet AND assuming
Agreed.
> 200.000 people in a reasonably compact area (a US state or European
Especially given some quickly built roads for heavy traffic and some sort of
basic air car. I see something the size of germany or Oklahoma depending.
> At 11:42 AM +0100 1/30/02, KH.Ranitzsch@t-online.de wrote:
I asked Beth to calculate population figures for various planets of the
Islamic Federation. Using the optimistic (high pop) figures, it ranged IIRC
from Dar es Salaam about 700,000 up to Misr Jadid (New Egypt) at about 9
million. This includes forced emigration (the "colonist recruiting parties"
have machineguns to encourage people to
volunteer)--don't recall whether it includes depletion from KV Wars,
don't think it does. Misr Jadid was much more heavily populated than any of
the others, I think Arabiya Jadid only had a couple million.
G'day,
> Yes it works for games but in real life I think and earth like planet
Its not the people its the getting them there that is the bottle neck when
I've been doing my modelling for people.
> These are the initial numbers I think a million plus would
Depends on population base supporting the fledgling colony, how many extra
migrants come and how fast, what kind of tech they've got supporting their
population growth and how easily the planet is converted to what humans
consider "nice".
So in the various GZG population models I've done, I've had starting
populations spanning anything from 600 to 100,000 though about 10,000 is the
most common. The fastest growth I've seen in the models is for cases like
John's where there was HEAVY relocation of population from Earth (on the order
of 100,000s per year), or where tech helped keep reproduction at about 5% per
year. However, on ecofriendly worlds it shouldn't be too hard to reach a
million within about 100 years even with more conservative reproduction and
immigration levels. Really depends on the assumptions you make (though to
justify the size of their fleets etc, most people in the GZGverse tend to
assume high support, high tech, high reproduction rates, healthy immigration
rates and a solution to people transport in space).
Cheers