From: Thomas Barclay <Thomas.Barclay@s...>
Date: Tue, 9 Feb 1999 10:24:59 -0500
Subject: Re: Military Strengths was First Order of Business
Steven spake thusly upon matters weighty: Well, I don't know right now. But here's my quick baseline. All doubling rates should be between 20 and 50 years.... based on your estimate of quality and culture of a society - higher quality of life breeds lower birth rates and culture affects it. So take the population today, and assume we have 180 years till then - I can't remember all of who are in the NSL today, but find their populaitons, add them up, add a fudge factor (the gzg world lets dissidents grow) and probably assume a doubling period of 40 years (45 for NAC, so 40 for NSL seems about right). That means you'll have doubled your pop (I assume unlimited growth - I've used a slower doubling time to account for some restriction and I've also accounted for cheap stardrive and other space living here too) 4 and a bit times.... but since it is a compounding that is 2^4.5 which would be somewhere between 16 and 32 times. So say 20 times to be conservative. So take current day NSL (or 80% to account for departures of people) pop and multiply by 20. I have (but it has had to be shelved due to work) a project to spreadsheet the year by year growth of all the major powers which lets me look at the impact of varyious growth rates and add in factors affecting pop such as wars and disasters and post-war booms. But that's a lot of work, and I'm too darn busy at the present. > Thomas,