GZG Colonies - was RE: Re: [GZG] RE: Colonial tech level [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

> From my understanding of history, there were two basic reasons for

Economic colonies are founded with the idea that a large population/tech
base is needed to harvest/mine/extract the local resources, and that
such resources have sufficient value to justify the creation of a colony
- otherwise you'd just have a remote minehead, farm or factory.  The
founding country or company is willing to put sufficient investment in
terms of personnel, skills, equipment/tech to make the colony work.

Political/religious/criminal colonies are formed to get rid of a
population that is too difficult to manage at home. The government or
corporation views it as a politically/economically viable method to get
rid of dissidents in a "morally acceptable" manner. Why spent time and effort
imprisoning people at home, when you can send them away. The
home governments/corporations may or may not have much incentive to
provide appropriate technology/skills/personnel to make a viable colony.
In some cases, with political or religious dissidents, they may be able to
raise their own funds to provide them with the best skills and tech.

I would think that in the future, a weight limit of 25 kg per person for
"personal effects" would be reasonable. Things like personal memory cubes,
holographs, data storage devices, fancy clothes or jewelry. Things like basic
clothes, furniture, basic equipment and tools would be fabricated on demand
and not count against a person's personal limit. Even with 20,000 colonists at
25 kg each, you're only talking 500 metric tons of goods.

Things like basic clothes, dishes, small tools etc would probably be made from
some type of recyclable, extruded plastic or polymer that simply gets tossed
into the recycle bin after use or when it's broken to
be re-extruded/re-manufactured when needed.

Gear that would be need to be hauled would probably be things like
construction equipment and parts - trucks, bulldozers, cement plants,
graders, cranes - and those items aren't light.  Initial housing will
probably be pre-fab type structures - something along of the lines of
expanded foam sandwiched between 2cm layers of sprayed on concrete. So a large
supply of liquid foam base would be needed to be transported. In addition, key
buildings will probably need metal support struts that would also need to be
transported (unless you are cannibalizing your transport ship).

Power plant, water treatment, food processing will also need to be
transported, unless, once again you cannibalize your ship.

There might be two type of colonization ships - ones that are planetary
landing capable, and may carry only a thousand people plus accommodations for
them that they can live out of for the first few years, and larger "bulk
transports" that haul tens of thousands of people between the stars and depend
on shuttle or smaller atmospheric ships to shuttle people and equipment from
orbit to the surface.

--Binhan

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