Population codes above A - why?

[rancke]

Facts: Large pop worlds are canon. As I said before, I can't recall a pop F off hand, but there is likely at least one, especially near Capitol. A quick scan of second survey pulls numerous pop A's (10's of billions) and the Earth is nearly doing that at current supply levels.

That's because the old world generation system made one world in 36 pop A. If there is a world with a higher population level, it must have been introduced 'by hand', and I can't recall any. So until I hear a reference, I'm going to say that the fact is that worlds with population levels above 10 are non-existent. In the OTU, that is.


Hans

 

[HG_B]

That's because the old world generation system made one world in 36 pop A. If there is a world with a higher population level, it must have been introduced 'by hand', and I can't recall any. So until I hear a reference, I'm going to say that the fact is that worlds with population levels above 10 are non-existent. In the OTU, that is.


Hans

So, 99 Billion is the tops then.

 

[simonh]

I’m not sure how relevant this is to the discussion, but surely whether or not the T5 world generation system is consistent in terms of statistical consistency with the world stats in the OUT is not really an issue. It’s not as if anyone’s going to use it to re-generate the OTU, we already have those stats.

The job of the T5 world generation system is to generate worlds for our own settings, in which case it’s a starting point from which we should of course feel free to diverge. After all many worlds in the OUT were generated using slight modifications to the world generation rolls, e.g. I think the core sectors had a +1 TL bonus (possibly capped), and I think worlds in various alien spheres of influence were also modified either manually or systematically.

Simon Hibbs

P.S. StarBase has a built-in tool for adjusting, limiting or outright setting the codes for whole regions at a time. Just saying.

 

[Ishmael]

As I said earlier, you don't want them, fine. Leave em out of your TU.

I never said to not have any.
Just be aware of potential knock-on effects on economies and shipping volumes and that the stuff those populations need to live without politic turmoil have to come from somewhere.

 

[Lapthorn]

Just to argue against my own original post, Hong Kong has 6,544 people/sq km. Contrary to popular belief there is a lot of green space - just google map to see what I mean. Multiply Earth land surface area by HK population density and you get about 975 billion people, which is near Pop C (only 3 times the current population of Earth off...).

HK is dependent on imported food. I can live with a Pop C world managing to feed everyone at high TL agriculture ("soylent green for tea again, dear").

HK is dependent on water piped in over the border from China proper. The Pop=C world needs a lot of desalination plants, or a major comet farming industry, or more likely both. If a person need 150 litres a day (England average), I reckon the city needs to provide about 0.01% of the volume of Earth's oceans in water for the citizens every day.

Trantor has 40 billion people at the start of Foundation so clearly either Asimov hadn't done his maths, or it's a smaller world to be as densely populated as he describes.

Niven's Ringworld talks about the problem of waste heat at high TLs - not CO2 global warming, but old fashioned thermodynamic waste heat. There is an issue that at higher TLs, energy intensity of people's lives will go up. I'm not physicist enough to work out how serious a problem that is. Then again, if we don't worry about heat on ships, why worry about it on worlds...

 

[HG_B]

HK is dependent on water piped in over the border from China proper. The Pop=C world needs a lot of desalination plants, or a major comet farming industry, or more likely both.

With an ocean present it would be MUCH cheaper to do desalination. No need to haul rocks around space.

 

[CosmicGamer]

The Pop=C world needs a lot of desalination plants, or a major comet farming industry, or more likely both. If a person need 150 litres a day (England average), I reckon the city needs to provide about 0.01% of the volume of Earth's oceans in water for the citizens every day.

What happens to all the water that is used? I'd think that recovering and treatment would be preferable to the costs of comet farming.

How about rainwater? Efficiently collecting, transporting (to multistory hydroponic farms residences and industries?) and treating the abundant rainwater. The Earth has about 99 x 10^12 m3/year precipitation just over land, not counting over the oceans. I'll let others better at math determine how many liters per person per day this is.

Perhaps the bigger issue is the volume of water lost to keep fueling all the jump ships that service such a high population.

 

[HG_B]

Perhaps the bigger issue is the volume of water lost to keep fueling all the jump ships that service such a high population.

Someone did a calc on here (or another Trav board) a couple years ago. In a nut shell, that is a non-issue.

 

[Ishmael]

How about rainwater? Efficiently collecting, transporting (to multistory hydroponic farms residences and industries?) and treating the abundant rainwater. The Earth has about 99 x 10^12 m3/year precipitation just over land, not counting over the oceans. I'll let others better at math determine how many liters per person per day this is.

Now you've moved things to overlap with climatology.
Hydrographic % and atmosphere pressure and solar incident radiation all have a lot to do with that.
Even with all the rainwater mentioned, aquifers in several locations are being seriously depleted, so its not quite as easy as precipitation per capita.

 

[inexorabletash]

At the extreme population densities being discussed, it may be better to think of the habitations as closed-system space colonies that happen to rest on the surface of a planet. The sunlight, atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere (if any) outside the colony are incidental for water cycling, air scrubbing, food production and waste recycling.

At some point, waste heat would be a major issue. Pump it all to the poles and generate extreme winds, making the areas outside the habitations even less attractive?