Highest population density worlds

[mike wightman]

The T5 statement is even more misleading than it ever has been.

The TL being manufacturing capability and common goods TL is all well and good, but one parsec away you have a TL15 industrial high population world churning out goods for trade - and yet no one on the TL6 world can buy them because it would contradict the USP TL rating?
Ok silly example - but as a merchant on the TL6 world I would happily pay the extra Cr1000 per ton required to ship fusion+ plants from their manufacturing world and then sell them at a vast profit for myself.
My offworld supplier will be very happy because I also order a lot of spare parts, and pay for bright young things to travel to the manufacturing world to learn the skills necessary to maintain the reactors.
My homeworld is still TL6, but now has all the TL12+ fusion+ plants it needs to maintain food production.
(And when virus hits, the computers rebel and the power plants fail my homeworld is doomed...)

 

[epicenter00]

And just found in the T5 rulebook (p. 496) :

Use Does Not Imply Manufacture. The world TL indicates the expected TL of commonly used equipment. Industrial worlds probably manufacture goods at their TL, but other worlds may not have such manufacturing capability

Is there more to that line? The lack of punctuation at the end suggests the quote has something more which might tell readers what worlds that don't have such manufacturing do.

Assuming that's all there is, I think pressure needs to be put on the author(s) of T5 to get this issue clarified once and for all, while the "god" of Traveller Marc Miller is still involved. T5 is a "living" rulebook IIRC, so there's still time to get this stuff changed.

I think there's really two options here:

1. Redefine TL to be the average TL the world can sustain natively. This usually but not always is the TL of products in common use on the world as well. However any number of high-tech worlds in the Imperium exist where they get their manufactured goods from other worlds and produce no industrial exports of their own, which can result in a low TL level that doesn't match the highest TL of equipment seen on a world; an example of this might be a megacorporate owned world devoted to mining - the mining equipment and all of the world's facilities are brought in by the company (or outside traders) and regular supplies means this equipment can be maintained, but if interstellar trade were to vanish, the world could actually only support TL4, as shown on its UPP, despite this every person on the world enjoys a TL12 lifestyle as they're all employees of the mining operation or someone involved in supporting it and nobody else lives on the world. As a result when visiting a world effective TL can be higher than the listed TL, but never lower than listed TL barring extraordinary circumstances (eg; wars, Virus outbreaks, whatever).

2. Go through the maps of Charted Space and once more eliminate all the weird outliers perhaps this time using 2017 computer technology instead of by hand.

My personal opinion is that #1 is more elegant as it is less work for everyone involved, but #2 somehow seems more likely to be tried, given past evidence.

 

[Ishmael]

You have fusion power plants and LEDs, and the plants are actually part of the life support system for the farmers - win win.

Each human uses about 8 Mj/day in food. This would require 80Mj/day of energy to grow a vegetarian diet and 800Mj/day to grow a meat diet.... per person

Does a 100Mw power plant put out 100Mj/sec? or a 100Mw/turn?
It seems to me that there may be some awfully big powerplants dedicated to food production. And the waste heat from inefficiencies.

 

[sudnadja]

Is there more to that line? The lack of punctuation at the end suggests the quote has something more which might tell readers what worlds that don't have such manufacturing do.
.

There is nothing more. I inadvertently struck the period when relaying the rule. The following statement is the start of a new section called “The Spectrum of Technology”, and covers experimental, prototype, early, advanced and ultimate articles, in a nutshell allowing factories on a world to produce experimental items at 3 levels beyond the base level of that item. For example, an experimental Jump drive can be produced by a TL6 world that is considerably larger and less reliable (I think) than a TL9 produced drive.

 

[mike wightman]

Each human uses about 8 Mj/day in food. This would require 80Mj/day of energy to grow a vegetarian diet and 800Mj/day to grow a meat diet.... per person

Does a 100Mw power plant put out 100Mj/sec? or a 100Mw/turn?
It seems to me that there may be some awfully big powerplants dedicated to food production. And the waste heat from inefficiencies.

One watt is one joule per second. So a 1MW reactor is putting out 1MJ per second. In one second that is enough energy for one person, one minute its sixty, one hour its three thousand six hundred...
the pp on a type S or a type A provides 500MW, so in one minute that's enough for thirty thousand people, in one hour one million eight hundred thousand people.
That's forty three million people's energy requirement from the smallest ship power plant in CT.

Traveller fusion plants are more than capable of providing the energy.

 

[inexorabletash]

Juess, E100964-7 with a pop multiplier of 9. At least 9 billion people, vacuum world, size 1, and tech 7 along with starport E.

Sagal, X887A9C-6, 80+ billion people, size 8 world but hydrographics limits land area, no real starport and tech level 6 (plus Red zone). if the tech level were a bit higher it might plausibly be explained that most of the food comes from sea harvest, but it's more difficult to explain with a low tech level.

Who says the population of either of these worlds is human?

The former might be 9 billion intelligent vacuum-mites. The latter could be dolphins or the equivalent.

 

[sudnadja]

Who says the population of either of these worlds is human?

The former might be 9 billion intelligent vacuum-mites. The latter could be dolphins or the equivalent.

In that case I can propose Murphy, D200A98-7, TL7, size 2, at least 30 billion people, and "NaHu" Allegiance, which I presume means Human.

 

[GypsyComet]

"NaHu" Allegiance, which I presume means Human.

Non-Aligned, Human-dominated. It doesn't preclude Native Intelligent Races (NIL) but T5 generally assumes lower population worlds don't have native sophonts. Murphy probably doesn't either, despite the "vacuum mite" line, unless it used to be a Titan and got stripped of its air later. All those ancient natives not live underground...

 

[Ishmael]

Traveller fusion plants are more than capable of providing the energy.

I never they couldn't. I just don't think anyone takes the issue into consideration.
Algae is about 2-5% efficient and uses about 90% for growth, reproduction, etc. meaning it has an effective efficiency of around .2-.5%. Maximum theoretical is around 12%, or 1.2% solar to food. 80Mj/day per person jumps to ~4Gj/day per person ( that works out to about 50Kj each and every second ) for one day of basic vegetable food. If you dump that much energy into an area, you can figure temps based on gray body radiation; you have to use at least a minimal area for this. probably not much, but then this is only for one day. And you'd need the area to get rid of the waste heat of any other non-unity power handling.

at 50Kj per person, a 1Mw power plant would be able to 'feed' only 20 people each day (assuming near 100% eff. ).
That's not counting life support, etc needed for the project ( water, ventilation, temp control ) and its not counting maintenance costs and personnel.

There is a reason why world stats are what they are for 'Ag' worlds.
If it were easy and just a matter of enough tech, then there'd be no real reason to engage in trade would there?

 

[sudnadja]

I never they couldn't. I just don't think anyone takes the issue into consideration.
Algae is about 2-5% efficient and uses about 90% for growth, reproduction, etc. meaning it has an effective efficiency of around .2-.5%. Maximum theoretical is around 12%, or 1.2% solar to food. 80Mj/day per person jumps to ~4Gj/day per person ( that works out to about 50Kj each and every second ) for one day of basic vegetable food. If you dump that much energy into an area, you can figure temps based on gray body radiation; you have to use at least a minimal area for this. probably not much, but then this is only for one day. And you'd need the area to get rid of the waste heat of any other non-unity power handling.

at 50Kj per person, a 1Mw power plant would be able to 'feed' only 20 people each day (assuming near 100% eff. ).
That's not counting life support, etc needed for the project ( water, ventilation, temp control ) and its not counting maintenance costs and personnel.

There is a reason why world stats are what they are for 'Ag' worlds.
If it were easy and just a matter of enough tech, then there'd be no real reason to engage in trade would there?

This does come up now and then in either science fiction or proposals of how to accomplish long term interstellar flight - that 6000 year flight on board a generation ship has to get energy in the form of carbohydrates to the human crew somehow, and as you point out, most of the known processes aren't all that efficient.

A world orbiting vaguely near its host star habitable zone should theoretically have plenty of power available in the form of the intersected luminosity of the star, but the most effective way to get that energy into a form that can power a human being is let plants do their thing then eat those plants. Capturing the energy in the form of electricity to power grow lamps to grow plants would have an efficiency loss, but I haven't sketched out just how much of a loss it would be, so thanks for that post.


I do realize that this whole thread is a representation of much more thinking going into the setting than into the game itself, but it is kind of fun.

 

[epicenter00]

If it were easy and just a matter of enough tech, then there'd be no real reason to engage in trade would there?

There is that maxim that says that "By the time we have the knowledge to seize the stars, we'll know enough so we won't even have to leave our own solar system."

 

[Ishmael]

There is that maxim that says that "By the time we have the knowledge to seize the stars, we'll know enough so we won't even have to leave our own solar system."

That's cool, too.
Look how many great sci-fi stories there are that never get out past Saturn.

 

[JFGarber]

Not total production, production methods (edited original post for clarity). Multi-storey polytunnel farming methods outproduce flat land production. Scale these up and you would out produce the USA, Canada, China, Russia, India...

Yes, but only in cases where you pipe in energy. US "flat" agriculture is already approaching the point where solar energy is the limiting factor of production.

Now, with fusion available perhaps grow lights aren't a problem. Unless you're TL = 6.

All of those thousands of enormous freighters are carrying spare bulbs...

 

[Nathan Brazil]

Now, with fusion available perhaps grow lights aren't a problem. Unless you're TL = 6.

All of those thousands of enormous freighters are carrying spare bulbs...

:smirk: Even when they bring the light bulbs, some idiots wait until its almost too late.

 

[infojunky]

Yes, but only in cases where you pipe in energy. US "flat" agriculture is already approaching the point where solar energy is the limiting factor of production.

Kinda, Viable topsoil is a bigger factor.

 

[JFGarber]

Kinda, Viable topsoil is a bigger factor.

True, for the industry as a whole. I had in mind a couple of university affiliated row crop farms in North Carolina where the soil is good, and water/nutrients are micro-applied. Clear sunny days are the limiting factor for corn production, but it's a very specific set of circumstances.

Many, many years ago I had a little book from a Scholastic book fair. It was about "The Future". One page was devoted to an orbital mirror that was used to lengthen the growing season, lengthen the harvesting day (must not have had headlights on combines in 1970), and generally boost production. Back then, I thought that flat impossible and kind of ridiculous.

 

[aramis]

Kinda, Viable topsoil is a bigger factor.

Hydroponics, for those veggies that can use it, use none.

And can, per recent evidence in urban farming, produce well more than double the per acre on the same sunlight; at least one farm operates on solar, but uses the solar to drive LEDs in just the right wavelengths for photosynthesis (reduces cooling needs, makes more efficient use of the available energy). By use of outside sources of power, the footprint of 1 acre of hydroponic farming can be as little as 1/50th of an acre or less.. due to vertical stacking.

In anchorage, for example, the best fresh herbs are hydroponically grown, at about half the cost of import, and better quality as well.

Not all crops will grow hydroponically... nor are all able to grow on narrow emission band LEDs... but the availability of fusion, and the potential to generate needed compounds chemically without worry about polluting the atmosphere, any TL 9+ society with grav drives should also have a huge "indoor farming" revolution, making raw acreage irrelevant.

 

[kilemall]

The T5 statement is even more misleading than it ever has been.

The TL being manufacturing capability and common goods TL is all well and good, but one parsec away you have a TL15 industrial high population world churning out goods for trade - and yet no one on the TL6 world can buy them because it would contradict the USP TL rating?
Ok silly example - but as a merchant on the TL6 world I would happily pay the extra Cr1000 per ton required to ship fusion+ plants from their manufacturing world and then sell them at a vast profit for myself.
My offworld supplier will be very happy because I also order a lot of spare parts, and pay for bright young things to travel to the manufacturing world to learn the skills necessary to maintain the reactors.
My homeworld is still TL6, but now has all the TL12+ fusion+ plants it needs to maintain food production.
(And when virus hits, the computers rebel and the power plants fail my homeworld is doomed...)

I've always looked at TL for interstellar communities as a function of it's economic clout and therefore ability to maintain X TL.

So a colony at startup might be dumped off to TL3 subsistence, strikes it rich with an iridium mining boom, people move in wealth per capita flows such that TL13 is achieved initially with imports and develops integral industries to support all those goods with local manufacture, but more and more people move in and the iridium runs out, so the economy falls back to a more TL9 level.

 

[kilemall]

Hydroponics, for those veggies that can use it, use none.

And can, per recent evidence in urban farming, produce well more than double the per acre on the same sunlight; at least one farm operates on solar, but uses the solar to drive LEDs in just the right wavelengths for photosynthesis (reduces cooling needs, makes more efficient use of the available energy). By use of outside sources of power, the footprint of 1 acre of hydroponic farming can be as little as 1/50th of an acre or less.. due to vertical stacking.

In anchorage, for example, the best fresh herbs are hydroponically grown, at about half the cost of import, and better quality as well.

Not all crops will grow hydroponically... nor are all able to grow on narrow emission band LEDs... but the availability of fusion, and the potential to generate needed compounds chemically without worry about polluting the atmosphere, any TL 9+ society with grav drives should also have a huge "indoor farming" revolution, making raw acreage irrelevant.

I'm counting on that for my Oort Cloud environment.

Well, not locally gathered chemicals, more likely biochemical facilities that create the base chemicals.

 

[sudnadja]

I'm counting on that for my Oort Cloud environment.

Well, not locally gathered chemicals, more likely biochemical facilities that create the base chemicals.

I searched your post history for a description of your Oort cloud environment and didn't see it - if you don't mind, what is your oort cloud environment?

I'm going to infer that it's some kind of research station or "mining" facility set up in a system's cometary halo, but what is it exactly, why was it set up out there, etc?

The reason I ask is that the mechanics of Traveller jump drives and maneuver drives make the cometary halo just about as hard to reach, or even harder to reach, than another star.