Re: Establishing extrasolar colonies
- From: David Johnston <david@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2008 17:30:29 GMT
On Thu, 10 Jul 2008 18:19:59 -0700 (PDT), MacFraggin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
wrote:
Suppose a setting where a reasonably cheap method of FTL travel was
discovered, but otherwise it's supposed to be relatively hard SF. The
jump drive can be engaged anywhere provided it's far away from the
nearest gravity well; the jump takes just a few minutes but covers a
minimum distance of, say, 1ly (so there can be no insystem jumps), and
the jump exit points will be at a fixed (non-orbiting) position about
10-20AU from the nearest star (depending on the size of the star and
other factors). Insystem travel might take a few months though.
However, there is NO means of FTL communication, other than sending a
message by ship. (Likewise, there are no other magic thingamabobs like
replicators or the like.)
Scout ships have explored, say, about a 50ly radius around the sun and
discovered a few systems with habitable planets. (Let's not argue
about the probabilities, fwiw it could also be a 300ly radius). A plan
is made to colonize the most inviting of these new systems. Assume
Earth is overcrowded and there are more willing colonists than you can
probably transport.
The target system can be expected to have a 3rd-generation star (for a
nice distribution of elements), one planet with water and oxygen
atmosphere in the habitable zone (so no major terraforming is
required), at least one gas giant in the outer system (functioning as
asteroid trap), and other planets etc.
How would you go about to establish a colony?
I'd start with scientific outposts. Biologists and geologists and
support staff to do a comprehensive survey of the planet and system
looking for the ideal spots to set up a serious colony with an eye to
safety, building resources and above all some kind of viable export.
With the Americas they started out with gold, but without tobacco the
British colonisation venture would not have been much of a success.
Because trade is going to be expensive we're looking for some kind of
luxury good, probably local organisms or parts of them.
My first take:
1) as the very first thing, set up a fuel factory in the target
system, whereever it makes the most sense. If you use hydrogen as
fuel, mine a gas giant. If it's fissionables, search the planets. If
you need solar power, build an orbital power plant near the sun.
Whatever it is, make sure your ships don't run out of fuel in the new
system.
2) build a space station in the orbit of the habitable planet. This
will serve as shuttle relay for future surface-to-orbit traffic. You
can also build a solar power plant here that can send down the
collected energy by microwave to a receiver (to be constructed) on the
ground.
Hauling in the resources to build a space station is going involve a
lot of weight. It is more likely that you build some kind of mining
and manufacturing capacity first and then build your station, although
it's possibly that the first big colony ship will be a one-way deally
and you'll leave it in orbit once you get there to act as the station.
But that depends on the constraints of your superscience interstellar
drive.
3) bring in service ships, like orbital shuttles, tugs and similar.
Build a landing strip on the planet. Or if you can, build some kind of
orbital lift, or vacuum dirigibles, or whatever will allow you to get
stuff to the ground.
4) build colony ships with lots of room for settlers and supplies. My
first thought was to build a huge ship to land on the planet to be
stripped for parts there, but if it's such a big ship, the engines
needed to land this thing intact (and not killing the colonists) would
leave the area devastated (if it doesn't sink into a pool of freshly
molten lava upon touchdown).
Instead, make the colony ship modular, so that it can be taken apart
in the target orbit and then sent down piece by piece. The material is
supposed to be re-used for construction, provided it didn't get
irradiated badly in space (I have no idea how bad that can be).
5) you need settlers, tools, supplies (consumables) and construction
materials planetside.
For cheap colonization, don't bring vehicles, fuel refineries and
repair facilities, bring horses. Horses eat what grows on the ground
and reproduce on their own. Yes, I took this from Firefly, but it just
makes sense.
Not unless the horses have been genetically custom-made to be suited
to the planet. Try to feed a horse what grows on the ground of an
alien planet and you'll be lucky if all you get is malnutrition.
They'll probably poison themselves. And if you've already brought in
all that space station and fuel refinery stuff it's kind of absurd to
think you won't bring in the much smaller equipment required to make a
little vehicle fuel even assuming that you can't run a vehicle on
whatever your spaceships run on.
.
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