Colonizing Ships and Colonies There Of

[sinbadsam]

OK some general questions.

Traveller has used colonizing ships to populate words in the OTU.

I see most colonizing ships having the majority of the colonists in cold berths.

I break the colonizing ships into two broad categories

Sub light Ships

Jump capable Ships

These two categories have the same subtypes

Totally self contained(ie batteries included)carries colonists, supplies, food etc.

(batteries not included) it just the colonists, some meager possessions, and not much else.

In my below examples the target world is a "garden" world, with everything right the middle of the temps, climate, atmosphere etc. But the planet is not prepared ie no infrastructure etc.

Ok how many colonists will it take to have a "Stable" breeding population with out resorting to "different" types of parenting? Lets leave in vitro fertilization out of the question for now.

How many tons of supplies(generic term for food, materials, tools etc) would need to be supplied for each colonist?

 

[sid6.7]

here is one i made with my ship generator
its very bare bones in a small ship universe:

Ship Name: COLONY1
Ship Type: 600 ton Colony Ship,

M-Drive Type: C, 1 G Model 4
J-Drive Type: C, Jump- 1 CPU= 8
Power Plant: C Storage= 15
Fuel( 70 )
Cargo Hold( 10 )tons +(1) 95t Shuttle +(1) 10t ATV +(1) 4t Air Raft
Bridge + 2 stateroom(s) + 2744 lowBerth(s)

T-1 , T-2 , T-3 , T-4 , T-5
Missles on board: 0
Total Price: 384.2 m Down: 76.84 m Mortage: 1600833 credits
NOTE:** low berths are total capacity of emergency berths not TOTAL berths
on Graph paper you'll use about: 1200 Squares
--------------------------------------------------

 

[sid6.7]

i do believe when asked before it comes down to about
1000 people of different genetic back grounds to
keep a healthy population...

on mine my ATV is called a multi use work vehicle
its a dozer, grader, dump truck, mini crane,
loader, and pile ram/driver along with a small
generator and water tank...10 tons think
fire truck size? but not part of my cargo space.


they would probably want a small very BASIC
satellite say 1 ton? i heard they are gonna
try using some new ones today that are less
then 2 feet in diameter so i think they could
have something workable in the 1 ton range...

seed....probably at least a ton of seeds with
a bigger portion being a grain(wheat, corn)

tools? a shovel is about 5 pounds an axe 8-10
depending on head size so mabye a ton of tools?

construction material except for a few temp
shelters would be used ONSITE...wood,rock,earth...
so maybe 1 ton of shelters?

a bare minimum of clothes ( i put 1 set on a scale)
is about 5lbs(light wieght clothes) plus
shoes...

so 2 tons of clothes(1 set) would cloth 800 people.

maybe another ton of books,games,computers,odds n ends?

food till the crops come in?
lets say thier smart and do it perfectly timed
with the planets weather/season cycle, that means
about 3 months to grow then harvest...

at 1k per day(2lbs) per 1000 people is 90tons
at .5 for rations would be 45 tons
at .2 for dehydrated stuff NEEDS water 20+ tons

total tonnage: 29-99 tons? of "stuff"

my ship is short so i'm gonna have to change
the generator obviously or ASSume that there
is a merchant used in tandem with the colony
ship to carry the extra stuff... or maybe shave
off some low berths down to 2000 poeple instead
of 2700+..

it would all depend ultimatley on how many in your colony...

 

[Whipsnade]

Sam,

From all the similar threads I've read across variosu fora, the minimal population you'll need to provide proper genetic viability is around 300 breeding adults. Please note that children and non-breeding adults will inflate that number.

That number also presumes babies are made the old fashioned way and that all the children a woman bears have the same sire. You can fiddle the numbers downwards by introducing technological advances like sperm/egg banks, in vitro fertilization, uterine replicators, and the like.

In fact, unless you want the female half of your colonial population permanently tied down to 'home, hearth, and children' like some Dark Ages thrall for the first few generations, then something like uterine replicators and communal child rearing will be a must.


Have fun,
Bill

P.S. sorry, didn't see your proviso against in-vitro and 'alternate' child rearing methods. Call it 300 breeding colonists with the female portion tied to child bearing/rearing like Dark Ages thralls.

 

[graymask1120]

Sinbad Sam,

The bigger your colony ship, the more supplies you can pack aboard.

While your minimum-viable breeding population is indeed around 250-300 unrelated adults, you have to account for losses due to animals eating colonists, people falling off cliffs, eating poisonous fruits, etc. -- so, assume that you should have a seed-colony of about 1,000 people at a bare minimum.

Using the standard assumption that the single "low berth" on deckplans represents a stack of four actual berths - which is reasonable - that means that you need to place 250 such beds in your colony ship's cargo bay. Oddly enough, that equals exactly 250 dtons.

Figure an equal amount of space for herd animals.

They'll need a minimum of 2 years food at their destination, in addition to grains and herd animals, but with average Imperial tech (are we assuming 3I?) that shouldn't be an issue, if they are willing to survive on hydroponics and vat-grown "fauxflesh". While the size is open to question, I think that a "fauxflesh" vat would occupy about 4dtons. (That's strictly a guess.)

Based on GT:Modular Cutter's 30-dton Hydroponics Module being able to support c.400 people, I think that you could transport the relevant equipment in about 10dtons; call it four such equipment packs for a 1000-person colony to allow for expansion.

But, in the short term, they'll need ready-made food, so: 1000 colonists x 365 standard days x 2 years equals 730,000 man-days of food. Figure to add +10% (for spoilage/wastage), and that becomes 803,000 man-days.

Based on the fig's in GT:Far Trader (pg69 "Parts and Stores"), dividing that by 12,500 man-days per dton of cargo space leaves us with 64.24 dtons - round that up to 66 dtons to account for packaging and waste-space...it'll be bland for a while, but that's an encouragement to get those 'ponics farms going, and fast!

To review, we're now at 610 dtons of cargo space, and we haven't added seeds, building supplies, tool kits or vehicles -- just round it up to 290 dtons for those, add another 100 dtons for personal effects (0.1 dton/colonist - which is actually a lot of space, when you factor in technology) and we are now at a figure of 1,000 dtons...or, one dton of space per colonist.



Hope this helps......

 

[Hal]

Things to consider as well: How long will the colony be considered "out of supply" such that ships will not be bringing in more material? If that is the case, assuming a 10% spare parts concept per year - would result in parts being needed on a yearly basis for all of the equipment you are considering that needs to be brought along. If you consider that the colony will want prefab buildings, construction equipment, light manufacturing tools (lathes, drills, etc), the real question that should be hitting you right about now is "Just how much will those colonists be bringing along?"

One thing that you might want to consider the possibility of is "insurance". If for example, you settle down on a world and 1/2 of your foodstocks are gone (accident, hostile action, stupidity) - what next? Having a little redundancy in your calculations is the best route that most colonists would probably want when setting out. Also consider that colonists will likely have a "live off the land as much as possible" mentality. In many instances, dual use technology might be the order of the day.

As a thought? Why not turn this into a "Ok, here is the gig. 1,000 colonists are about to leave for a world some multiple of parsecs away. What would you think they'd take, how much of it, and why" Then see what people bring up in discussion

 

[RandyT0001]

Originally posted by Graymask1120:
[QB] Using the standard assumption that the single "low berth" on deckplans represents a stack of four actual berths - which is reasonable - that means that you need to place 250 such beds in your colony ship's cargo bay. Oddly enough, that equals exactly 250 dtons.
/QB]

In Classic Traveller the type of low berth that can 'freeze' four people in a dton of space is an emergency low berth. Emergency low berths are for emergencies, ship evacuations and such, and really aren't built to sustain four people for very long. The 'standard' low berth is 0.5 dtons and can hold one person. Maybe Gurps Traveller deviated from it's classic roots a bit here. Using a standard low berth it would take 500 dtons of tonnage.

 

[shadowdragon]

One of the reasons heinlein's colonies tended towards "wild west" was to allieviate the supply problem for spare parts. if your horse breaks down you get a new horse. if your air car breaks down,
hope for parts and the rank in the colony to get to them. once you get where your going, there really isnt any hurry to head over the next ridge, so wagons and mules work just fine. plus seed for hay is lighter than a bucket of grease, or a grav module. bulk items will be prefab housing, wagons that can be broken down and reassembled at site, tools for farming, mining, smithy, etc. brood animals for host mothers to all the embryos brought along, weapons/ammo, metal and wood stock to be made into needed items not shipped until mining ores and lumber harvesting is underway. ready to eat food for the skeleton crew along the way, and who set up the initial colony areas. once you have a few extra houses set up, thaw a family or three and set up some more. that way you do not strain your food supply. second building up no matter what is a bank, then hydroponics. why the bank first? gotta buy the land for the hydroponics shack silly. once you have the basic first settlement up, send out explorer teams etc..

as for colony expedition, i'll be back

 

[graymask1120]

Originally posted by Randy Tyler:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Graymask1120:
[QB] Using the standard assumption that the single "low berth" on deckplans represents a stack of four actual berths - which is reasonable - that means that you need to place 250 such beds in your colony ship's cargo bay. Oddly enough, that equals exactly 250 dtons.
/QB]

In Classic Traveller the type of low berth that can 'freeze' four people in a dton of space is an emergency low berth. Emergency low berths are for emergencies, ship evacuations and such, and really aren't built to sustain four people for very long. The 'standard' low berth is 0.5 dtons and can hold one person. Maybe Gurps Traveller deviated from it's classic roots a bit here. Using a standard low berth it would take 500 dtons of tonnage. </font>[/QUOTE]GT has always been rather ambiguous, going back and forth on the subject. I didn't have my CT stuff available when I wrote that, but after checking, you're right.

Still, I was rather surprised by the fig's - even bumping it up to 2 dtons/person, that's still only half of my original "off the cuff" estimate before running the numbers.

Good catch.....

 

[Whipsnade]

Originally posted by shadowdragon:
One of the reasons heinlein's colonies tended towards "wild west" was to allieviate the supply problem for spare parts.

Shadowdragon,

That presumes, of course, you can feed the horse.

Ever feed livestock like cattle and horses? I have and I'll let you in on a secret. They eat a lot, more than people. You bring a horse along in your first colony load and you'd better bring along a lot of fodder or else you'll be eating the damn thing pretty soon.

In the sort of mission Sam's discussing, horses are a luxury. You can either pack rations that will feed yourself or feed the horse. Take your pick.

plus seed for hay is lighter than a bucket of grease, or a grav module.

That presumes, of course, that you can grow hay. Hay is nothing more than dried grass. In a good year where I live you can mow twice for hay. How long can your colony feed it's horses from the stores while they wait for the hay to come in?

And it isn't just hay either. Livestock need to graze too. If they can't graze you need to feed them hay and grain. Gotta grow that grain too and feed your horse out of stores while you wait.

Getting complicated, isn't it?

Until the agriculture picture is settled you're not going to have any livestock you can't feed. And you're not going to waste precious shipping space on foodstocks for anything but humans. Horses and all the rest will be a great help once you can feed them, but you aren't going to be able to feed them for the first couple years or so.

The first settlers are going to move about by shank's mare, that is they'll walk. Like you said, there's no need to explore too much. They'll have machinery you can fix with a smithy and handtools. Rugged stuff deliberately engineered for remote locations.

My cousin collects and repairs 'one-lung' IC engines that were sold to farmers in the late 1800s through the 1930s. They can be set-up to run on anything from alcohol to kerosene to wood liquor and repaired with a file and chisel. You'll see things like that plus those wind-up radios and flashlights that are sold now. There'll be lots of stuff like that, items deliberately designed and engineered with colony start-ups in mind. Solar panels have no moving parts to wear out by the way, so small amounts of electricity will be no problem either.

This also lets me introduce IISS Supervisor Jared D. Whipsnade's First Law of Interstellar Colonization:

The More Things There Are In A Biosphere That You Can Eat, The More Things There Are In A Biosphere That Can Eat You.

When you, your livestock, and your crops show up, you are all opportunities for the lifeforms already present to exploit. New diseases, new parasites, and new predators are waiting in direct proportion to the number of plants and animals you can eat.

That forty acres, quonset hut, and seedlings on New Greenpernt may also come with Greenpernt Toe Rot and Rummy Tummy Syndrome.


Have fun,
Bill

 

[shadowdragon]

more later, must to bed, but other biospheres bugs prolly wont bother us much. they will prolly have a completely different genetic structure than us, even if carbon based.

later bill

 

[aramis]

One report said that a minimum safe mammalian population is 50 pairs (100 individuals) who are genetically healthy, with a breeding schedule. Without such a schedule, either culling the infirm or deformed or a much larger population are needed.

Inbreeding effects wane at about 5 generations of separation.

Note that Cheetahs seem to have been a rebound from a breeding population of under 100 individuals within the last several thousand years. They are so closely related that transplants need not be type-checked, and they are all the same blood type.

IMTU, I've had colonies ship by multiple subbies... at 100-120 people in low-berths, plus some extra gear. (I don't allow shipping colonists in ELB's, as those are much riskier IMTU... always hazardous and fateful.)

 

[mike wightman]

What about the resources the colony ship itself provides?
A fusion reactor, workshops, medical center etc.

 

[rogermccarthy]

Hi-tech reproduction methods hardly feature in Traveller, but SF like CJ Cherryh's Alliance-Union books tend to assume that colonies will take frozen foetuses (or embryos or whatever)for both humans and livestock and 'thaw them out' when needed.

Cherryh's 40,000 in Gehenna is a particularly good example of how even the best laid plans of mice and men can go seriously wrong if the colony is completely abandoned and the native flora and fauna proves far less tameable than originally thought.

AFAIK the longest treatment of colonisation in Traveller is the 100 Parsecs campaign in the GT Sword Worlds book - this is six pages long including extensive write-ups of the ships (a converted 3,000 ton Jump-2 ore tender and the various 400-ton lighter modules it carries for colonists and livestock).

FWIW the colony is described as 800 colonists, 20 miniphants, 10,000 fowl, 280 cattle, 1,400 pigs, 1,000 goats and 20 dogs and is intended to be fully self-sustaining far from both the threat of the Imperium and the Sword Worlds from which the colonists come.

 

[Whipsnade]

Originally posted by shadowdragon:
more later, must to bed, but other biospheres bugs prolly wont bother us much.

Shadowdragon,

Leaving the Star Trek school of biology aside, if you can eat them, they can you eat you.

And you aren't going to have livestock until you have feedstocks.


Have fun,
Bill

 

[Ran Targas]

^ You're better off growing your meat in vats! At least then you can guarantee it won't kill you colonists to eat it.

 

[sid6.7]

Originally posted by Graymask1120:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Randy Tyler:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Graymask1120:
[QB] Using the standard assumption that the single "low berth" on deckplans represents a stack of four actual berths - which is reasonable - that means that you need to place 250 such beds in your colony ship's cargo bay. Oddly enough, that equals exactly 250 dtons.
/QB]

In Classic Traveller the type of low berth that can 'freeze' four people in a dton of space is an emergency low berth. Emergency low berths are for emergencies, ship evacuations and such, and really aren't built to sustain four people for very long. The 'standard' low berth is 0.5 dtons and can hold one person. Maybe Gurps Traveller deviated from it's classic roots a bit here. Using a standard low berth it would take 500 dtons of tonnage. </font>[/QUOTE]GT has always been rather ambiguous, going back and forth on the subject. I didn't have my CT stuff available when I wrote that, but after checking, you're right.

Still, I was rather surprised by the fig's - even bumping it up to 2 dtons/person, that's still only half of my original "off the cuff" estimate before running the numbers.

Good catch..... </font>[/QUOTE]actually we're all making assumptions that are not there
in LBB 2 for the life boat berths, it
does NOT say how long the 4 person low berths
last. which i ASSume since its an "emergency"
berth would NOT be time limited as after a SHTF
emergency they can't possibly know when help
would arrive so would be long term "able".

remember ripleys "shuttle" low berth? she
lasted 50 years in it...one could ASSume
that the "shuttle" berths were "emergency"
berths VS the ones inside the main ship
therefore a TAD different but of equal value...

the only difference i read is that EVERYONE
gets the same saving throw in a emergency one
VS a single occupant one, so you could lose 4
people all at once in ONE throw.

now on the other hand one can ASSume the lifeboat
with the E-berths, automatically heads to a
pre-designated system/base once it ejects from the
ship, but then it doesnt say the life boat is jump
capable so we could still end up with a ripley scenario of many years...

for instance lets say your ship tanked around
jupiter your life boats pops out and it heads
for earth even at 5 g's its still gonna take
10,000 MP 10 minutes(LBB 2 1st page)...

jupiters 4 AUs (93 million miles) so 4.55 billion
miles away so roughly 9.6 days(LBB 2 1st page)
x 4.55 = 43 days...my other calulation says
13.2 days....but what the hey...standard low berth
equals 1, 2 week jump or 14 days. so a 43 day
day life boat can make it(ASSUME) it could easily
be used for colonists for a 2 week jump...

now if your MID jump when this happens and you
popped out in your life boat..who knows how many
years it could be..at 1 trillion miles thats 5
years your life boat needs to last...much longer
then a normal 2 week low berth..


per LBB 2..that is...correct me if i am reading the page wrong...or missed a word...

 

[sinbadsam]

OK on supplies there is in my mind two methods.

One is "Batteries Included" which means the colonizing ship carries everything the colonist will hopefully need.

The other "Batteries Not Included" is the colonizing ship carries very little in the way of supplies for the colonists, that means that other ships carry the supplies needed for the colonists or the colonists have a colony site prepared and stocked for them, prior to arrival.

One note is the scale in which I am referring too, the minimum number of colonists I am talking about is 1,000, From what I recall 10,000 is the minimum number needed for a "stable" breeding population.

From posts here the tonnage of supplies etc, needed is around 100 dtons per colonist.

Some assumptions on the genetic health of the colonists would be in place, ie those with genetic defects/conditions would be on a non breeding status and have to extremely essentials skills needed for the colony. That means very few with such genetic abnormalities would be breeding colonists.

As for the jump capable colonizer ships, jump one is the most efficient on ship space, but is also the slowest.

Several possibilities for jump capable ships,

One: Ships carrying the supplies travel along with the colonizing ship(s).

Two: Ships carrying the supplies for the colonizing ships travel ahead, and "set up things" prior to the arrival of the colonizing ships.

 

[Ganidirsii O'Flynn]

I vision two broad characteristics for colony ships as well, though not quite as you see it.

It seems to me that people bent on a colonisation effort will buy the most efficient, cost effective vessel they can for the mission. That would mean seriously considering losing about 30-40% of the vessels available tonnage to support a jump drive (and it's tankage payload), and/or taking *much* longer with a much larger payload and attempting the mission sublight. These options would be weighed by the individual colony leaders in the light of their own reasons for establishing the colony in the first place.

I see Colony Ships divided up into Colony Establishment Ships and Colony Support Ships. The difference is that Colony Establishment Ships are meant to be smaller vessels that can, if needed, be taken apart to supply the colony's needs... Raw materials for additional structures, power supply, computers and so on. These are by far the rarer of the two vessels and are built with the mindset of never returning to or contacting the home government ever again. These are used most often by dissident groups and persecuted populations to escape regimes they find unpalatable.

The colony support vessel is essentially a troop transport. Streamlined for landing and capable of carrying nearly the whole colonial infratructure and most of the population, these vessels are meant to stay intact and return to the home system for further supplies, follow-on colonists, and to begin to conduct trade with the 'mother country' (albeit on a fairly inefficient basis).

As to some of the other issues brought up, I can only leave that up to YTU and your group's concept of what a startup colony needs. There are alot of good ideas out there, especially given that No Planet Ever Survives Contact with Player Characters

 

[RandyT0001]

Sid,
From LBB 2, p14,
"Emergency low berths are also available; they will not carry passengers, but can be used for survival."


From this statement it is my supposition that emergency low berths cannot be used to transposrt the colonists since they are passengers.

In the movie Alien only Ripley (and the cat) could fit into the low berth. I don't think there was enough room to put three other people in the same pod as hers, therefore, I assume, it would be equivalent to a standard low berth.