How far have they gone??

[WizWom]

If the Terrans invented Jump drive in 2087, and the T5 Current year is 1105 again, we've got 5626-2087, or 3541 years. At J-1, travelling a Parsec every week, and returning, we have star and planet "cursory scan" data for 25 parsecs out from colonies with maintenance ports. But once they took over the Vlani empire, those planets would be their outward bases, so out from the Vilani border starting in -2204, and by then using J-3 (TL12 in -2250), so 78 Pc out. I would assume colonies organized by terrans would push out an average of 1 parsec a year - but it could be "wild wave" periodically, with ships going out at best jump until they would need maintenance, call it 150 pc; but then they'd need time to build up to have a Class "B" starport, which might take 100 years on a garden world. Each time a better jump drive is invented, that rate of expansion improves, as we would expect that discovery to permeate human space as fast as possible.
J3 period during Rule of Man: -2204 to -1776; 428 years, 642 pc. That's 15 SECTORS off the Vilani Imperial border
Seeing as the collapse of the Rule of Man is not going to significantly affect people hundreds of parsecs away, we'd be looking at this continuing until the invention of J-4, which was likely around -1700 in most of these fringe empires.
So, for ease, let's do the J3 era as -2200 to -1700, 500 years, 750 pc.
Now the J4 era is another 1000 years, -1700 to -700, 2000 pc, or 2750 total out from the Vilani imperial border.
TL14/J5 era is probably 1500 years, -700 to current 1100; AHL puts the Imperium at TL15 around 1000. Let's just use that, 1700 years, 4250 pc, 7000 parsecs total, and scouting at J5 being 125 pc further out from that.

The IISS probably would NOT have all that data, the question then becomes how far out the IISS can establish bases for maintenance to determine their knowledge base. But wherever they go, it is almost certain they encounter high tech humans.

 

[mike wightman]

We know from Marc's novel that the IISS sent jump 5 scout cruisers on twenty year missions beyond the borders. Assuming they stay in each system for a week and make 25 jumps per year outbound that gives a range of 12,500 parsecs.

 

[whartung]

I think the biggest problem is just the bulk transfer of population. Earth at 8B with 1% growth is 80M people per year. Moving 80M people off of the planet each year is...

Lets bump up to TL11, put population at 10B, 1% growth, 150TCr global GDP.

5% dedicated to a mass colonization effort. That's 7.5TCr per year.

A napkin based 10K ton TL 11 J2/M1 can readily carry double occupancy 3000 people and cost 4B Cr. 7500/4 is 1875 ships. 5.6M people per year.

Depending on how big you want your seed colonies to be, in order to be self sufficient, that can be 56 100K colonies, 5 1M people colonies, etc.

Per year.

There's 145 "Agriculture" worlds in the Solonami Rim. Those are essentially T-shirt worlds, the obvious first choice for early colonization.

I honestly don't know if they're all reachable via J2.

It would be 30 years to put 1M people on all of those. 60 years is probably more reasonable. I assume the ships do not return but stay, are grounded, and provide early shelter and readily available power.

At the end of that, assuming an amazing 4% colonial growth rate, the earliest colonies will be at about 8M people.

 

[Straybow]

For shirt-sleeve worlds you don't need to ground a ship and use it for shelter and power. You have a portable reactor (fission, initially) and can fabricate wind and solar power. Use the ship to ferry materials, machinery, and tech that is more difficult to make until the colony has a firm handle on extraction and fabrication. And it can ferry people along with materiel, and then finally people almost exclusively.

With continued use, those 1875 10kT ships per year mean that in 10 years you can move 56M per year, and you're only draining off half the very conservative home planet growth. After 20 years you can move the full equivalent of home planet pop growth out to the stars. In 30 years you could move 1M to each of 145 colonies, every year. And that is assuming only one round trip per year.

Looking at it another way, 1875 10kT ships is 12.9 for each of the 145 colonies. All colonies won't all be settled at once. The first wave will focus on colonies within 3-4 jumps. They will probably be getting one ship a week in that first year, and double that as the next annual production of transports comes on line. As each colony becomes an efficient starport for resupply the wave will move outward.

The closest colonies could reach 8M in the first decade. If we look at the USA as a model of combined internal and immigration growth, 1810 pop was comparable at 7.2M. By 1860, pop was around 31M. Western Europe, from whence immigrants were drawn, had pop of 130M to 180M in the same period (virtually no migration from East and South Europe to date). This homeworld has roughly 60 times the population pool. It is reasonable that the closest colonies should see parallel immigration and birth rates. It is possible that the furthest colones could still grow at a comparable rate. After all, crossing the Atlantic in the age of sail took as long as crossing a sector at J2.

If each further wave of colonies is delayed by roughly 5 years, with 6 waves total, the last wave of colonies would have around 12M.

Horace Greely said, "Go West, young man!" The 22nd century equivalent would say, "To the stars, young man!"

 

[whartung]

I suggested grounding the ships simply because it boot straps the colonies, one less thing for them to bring supplies for right off (no need to toss them out with a bunch of tents), cargo saved for all of that.

Just park the things, they have power, shelter, kitchens, water processing, waste management, the whole kit in a nice tidy package.

 

[Enoki]

Probably the best way to do colonies is once the system(s) to be colonized are scouted and mapped, you send a ship like a battlerider--that is a frame type that has jump capability and carries several colony ships that are non-jump capable on it. Each colony ship carries, tailored to the world, the initial colonists and the 'stuff' (a highly technical term) to set up a functioning colony.
The colony ship provides power. The colonists focus on getting a water source and agriculture going. Food, water, power, and possibly air if required, are their focus. The ship provides the living space for them.

As more colonists arrive, you start building shelter, other structures, and begin operations to expand the economy. The focus of these is to build a stable economy that has something they can export elsewhere to generate capital for local growth.

That's the pattern colonialism has traditionally followed. The colonists go seeking wealth--well the smarter ones do. Once the colony has some product or material that generates wealth, they're set to grow on their own.

 

[WizWom]

We know from Marc's novel that the IISS sent jump 5 scout cruisers on twenty year missions beyond the borders. Assuming they stay in each system for a week and make 25 jumps per year outbound that gives a range of 12,500 parsecs.

Could you imagine trying to jump after being out of maintenance 19 years?

 

[mike wightman]

They would take the necessary spares/makers and the like with them to conduct their own.

 

[Drew]

One of the proposals for the colonization of Mars is to send a series of robotic (I read that now as AI) manufacturing plants ahead of the main body. They would create the necessary fuel and possibility of building habitats before the main body would arrive. We have to consider using 3D printing to build out some of the necessary equipment or other required items with the first wave of colonists or ready for use on the ground upon arrival. An alternative to food sources is the use of hydroponic gardens for green algae. They are already being studied on the ISS. Basically, send down a hydroponic garden module before the colonist arrive.

 

[Spinward Flow]

Could you imagine trying to jump after being out of maintenance 19 years?

That was my first concern too.

You can't "bootstrap" your way to bringing enough maintenance dock facilities in order to overhaul yourself.

A 100 ton ship requires 200 tons of maintenance facility to service the overhaul needs of the 100 ton ship.
Basically, for every 1 ton that goes on the expedition, you need an extra +2 tons to overhaul that 1 ton every year.

If you send out a million tons of exploration ship ... you need to take 2 million tons worth of maintenance dock facilities with it in order to keep it overhauled every year.

You can't "bootstrap" your way to bringing enough maintenance dock facilities in order to overhaul yourself ... or at least, you can't without being Dimensionally Transcendental ...

 

[mike wightman]

Where does it say you need a maintenance dock as large or larger than the ship?

Cite your sources - because as far as I can tell you just made that up.

Providing your scout cruiser has manufacturing capability to make spare parts for every system on said cruiser (shops and makers plus spare parts)

There are now four examples of multiyear long range missions that would have to do their own maintenance
Zhodani core expeditions
IISS 20 year missions
Solomani Rim expeditions - 30+ years if I remember correctly
And probably the best of the lot Deepnight Revelation - which actually contains the canonical rules for this.

A full overhaul will take 2D+12 days and absorbs the
attention of almost the entire crew. Most of the work
done is preventative maintenance that does not repair
broken down systems or damage to the hull. However,
repair tasks can be built into the overhaul period and
resolved using the system on page 89. An overhaul
would normally be carried out in orbit over a suitable
world but does not require specialist facilities. If the
overhaul is interrupted some systems may be offline or
in pieces on the cargo bay floor, so choosing a suitable
time and place is of paramount importance.
An overhaul will be automatically completed to an
acceptable standard providing the Travellers are diligent
and the crew willing to do the work. If morale is very
poor, some jobs may be skimped or left undone but the
lives of everyone aboard depend on the ship being kept
in good working order, so things would have to be very
bad before serious problems were ignored or critical
systems left unchecked.
An overhaul requires 4Dx5,000 Supply Units. This
can be reduced by a successful Difficult (10+) Admin
check, with SU consumption reduced by 5% per point
of Effect. A negative Effect increases consumption by
5% per point.

 

[Condottiere]

I think the compromise is that without a properly spaced dock where every facility is next to hand, it just takes longer to service the spacecraft, if you have the correct spare parts and skilled personnel.

 

[Spinward Flow]

Where does it say you need a maintenance dock as large or larger than the ship?

Cite your sources - because as far as I can tell you just made that up.

MgT2 High Guard, p62 (reportedly) ...

 

[mike wightman]

And yet it is MgT that gives us canonical explicit rules for long term missions doing their own overhauls...

page 62 gives the size of shipyards - will check if there is something I have missed in there or in the 2022 update.

 

[Grav_Moped]

That was my first concern too.

You can't "bootstrap" your way to bringing enough maintenance dock facilities in order to overhaul yourself.

Modular starship with redundant drives, that can disassemble itself and bring each module inside to do annual overhauls on each of the modules in turn.

Run on the backup drives while you're tearing down the primaries; have some fraction of extra staterooms you can rotate crew into while their section is getting refurbished. Definitely a second bridge, too.

Bring spares. Bring Maker Devices. Have shuttles with mining and resource collection drones to collect materials for feedstock.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Modular starship with redundant drives, that can disassemble itself and bring each module inside to do annual overhauls on each of the modules in turn.

Run on the backup drives while you're tearing down the primaries; have some fraction of extra staterooms you can rotate crew into while their section is getting refurbished. Definitely a second bridge, too.

Bring spares. Bring Maker Devices. Have shuttles with mining and resource collection drones to collect materials for feedstock.

And the two largest modules (the "shipyard" ones) can be disassembled and each brought into the other, in turn, for maintenance.

You'll need extra crew along to do the continuous overhaul in addition to the crew that's flying the ship.


Alternate option: "Shipyard" includes both the workspace and machinery. Have the workspace part of that be inflatable work-bubbles that can hold entire ships, specifications as collapsible internal fuel tanks (if that'll hold liquid hydrogen in a room-temperature cargo bay, it'll retain a standard atmosphere against vacuum). Set aside some tonnage for compressed air... Once a year, make one of the mission's jumps into interstellar space (empty hex) to get some breathing room and hide using lightspeed lag, and overhaul the whole fleet there. Unless hostiles accidentally jump to within a few light-weeks of your position during the maintenance stop (out of the light-years across of each hex), you'll be done and gone before anyone sees you.

 

[Timerover51]

How many people are going to sign up for a 20 year mission with the same people around them for 20 years? How do you deal with the inevitable buildup of internal friction in the group? A. E. van Vogt, in Voyage of the Space Beagle gives an idea of the internal problems that can show up in a 5 year trip. I cannot see how a expedition of that length is going to survive.

Then you do have the problem of using a Jump-5 ship, which means a maximum jump of 5 parsecs or about 16 light years. If you hit a star that does not have any stars except for the one you just left within 16 light years, you start back-tracking. If you hit an area of lower stellar density, you might find yourself blocked from going further.

 

[Condottiere]

You could put a lot of the crew on ice, and rotate them.

 

[Grav_Moped]

How many people are going to sign up for a 20 year mission with the same people around them for 20 years? How do you deal with the inevitable buildup of internal friction in the group? A. E. van Vogt, in Voyage of the Space Beagle gives an idea of the internal problems that can show up in a 5 year trip. I cannot see how a expedition of that length is going to survive.

Then you do have the problem of using a Jump-5 ship, which means a maximum jump of 5 parsecs or about 16 light years. If you hit a star that does not have any stars except for the one you just left within 16 light years, you start back-tracking. If you hit an area of lower stellar density, you might find yourself blocked from going further.

Use multiple ships, and rotate personnel between them as needed. If it comes to it, rotate personnel into and out of low berths.

Or be Zhodani, who can repair internal friction through periodic personnel maintenance.

The solution to pathfinding is to have Jump-5 scouts running 2 weeks (up to 10 parsecs) ahead of the main fleet's scheduled route. If they hit a dead-end, they can jump back to the fleet's next arrival point and tell them they need to go a different direction. Saves two weeks of wasted travel for each dead-end found. Resetting the vanguard's "lead time" again would take two weeks though (which might be a good time to run the annual overhauls...)

There'll already be a small fleet of the scouts anyhow, as they'll be needed to relay information back home.

 

[Condottiere]

Zhodani and micro aggressions.