You're not in a desert.
Population codes above A - why?
- Thread starter Lapthorn
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You're not in a desert.
And something else more important.
The energy/water/resources for carrying capacity has to come from somewhere
transport costs, if from off-world, simply add to prices which may make such a situation less than desirable.
o::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:Fairy dust. It comes from the "non-desert" desert that I live in. :file_21:
I agree to a point.
Traveller cheap abundant power from Fusion would allow cheap, plentiful power for farming.
The resources of a planet are finite, but the resources of an entire solar system are (still finite, but) MUCH larger than the resources of the world.
Just to look at my 300,000 person megabuildings, there are 264 agricultural levels in the basement providing 169,000 acres of greenhouse space for growing food with artificial light and, potentially, higher CO2 levels. Current research indicates that greenhouse crops could increase yields more than 6 fold above current open field agriculture, but let's stick with the current gross yields of about 1 acre of agriculture feeds 1 person per year. The 169,000 acre basement will feed 169,000 people with current 'Iowa' style agriculture production rates. If yields in a greenhouse increase production by only 50%, then the basement will feed 253,000 of the 300,000 residents with no outside food source. Each of the 528 small communities has about 80 acres of additional agriculture (without counting on the private gardens) capable of feeding another 63,360 people (528 x 80 x 1.5) for a total food supply capable of feeding 316,000 people. Each megabuilding is potentially a net food exporter.
Dirt is inexhaustible with proper practices, so I see no reason that the waste from people and animals could not fertilize the plants (with minimal chemical additives) and form a closed loop ecosystem.
Of course, I grant two things:
1. All of this requires lots of cheap Traveller Fusion Power and may cause a local heating issue from the excess heat generated by the high electric use (although LED lamps would help).
2. This is an infrastructure intensive society which will come only with a high standard of living and cost of living ... like living in NYC where everything is more expensive.
For a Traveller TL 10-12 (as compared with TL 7-8) average wages and planetary per capita GDP, I believe that the higher cost of infrastructure is supportable.
YMMV.
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pendragonman
Absent Friends Margrave
Yep. Just like the water/food/power for Los Angeles, New York, London, Rome, Rio de Janero (sp?), Cairo, Beijing, Tokyo,...has to come from somewhere. They have transport costs associated, and seem to be "desirable" locations for more people than is sustainable.
Human beings adapt, they overcome, they improvise. Yes the transport costs will be different. However, I point you to shipping costs in traveller. 1000 credits a dton to get someone to hall something. 14 cu meters (13.5 cu meters, as may be your reference.) 14000 (13500) liters of water, or .14 (13.5) credits per liter. Cheaper than bottled water.
Also, power prices will be different given fusion power plants vs today's chemical engines, inefficient solar power, and fission power sources.
My point is this, we humans move resources from one location to another and live in dense concrete jungles already. There are already some arcologies on this planet, although not to the scale proposed (yet). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcology for a few details.
Bottom line, if you don't want them in your TU, great. Some of us want a few. Also great. Fact is, there are already some very high pop planets that are canon (I can't think of an F off hand, but that doesn't mean there isn't one. There are definitely some Cs out there---10^12---Trillions of inhabitants).
I think it might be interesting to look into life support costs for those populations that aren't living on nice garden shirt-sleeve worlds.
imho, Those worlds must pay the life support maintainence costs and power usage out of its world budget, I'd think, or else be subsidized. .. say...100m^3 per person as an average? That'd be about 8dtons per person including work and play areas with living space.
For lo-gravity worlds, grav-plates but no inertial
Definitely for domed cities...
definitely for 'farms' using hydropnics, and closed environments.
imho, Those worlds must pay the life support maintainence costs and power usage out of its world budget, I'd think, or else be subsidized. .. say...100m^3 per person as an average? That'd be about 8dtons per person including work and play areas with living space.
For lo-gravity worlds, grav-plates but no inertial
Definitely for domed cities...
definitely for 'farms' using hydropnics, and closed environments.
Man has lived in non-garden world conditions for many millennium at TL's 0-1. Unless you are talking about worlds with insufficient atmosphere and the like, it is not an issue.
Gee...I always figured that humans have always lived on a garden shirt-sleeve world; Earth. You know, worlds with plentiful breathable air and drinkable water.
When have humans not lived on Earth?
And even then, we use heating and air-conditioning and water taps and sewer systems and electrical power grids and transport networks and all kinds of other things that use power and cost money.
When have humans not lived on Earth?
And even then, we use heating and air-conditioning and water taps and sewer systems and electrical power grids and transport networks and all kinds of other things that use power and cost money.
Then you haven't ever left the tropics...
4 months of the year, the local environment is life threatening due to cold in my area. People freeze to death every year in Anchorage, Alaska.
In Arizona, people die from extreme heat. While 30 to 60 minutes in a 130°F sauna is fun and relaxing, 30 to 60 hours in the high desert at 108°F is lethal without adequate water; further, high desert can drop below freezing at night and break 100°F by day the same day.
And, people have been living off Earth, in LEO, continuously since 2 Nov 2000. Not the same people the whole time, but rotating through for multiple month tours of duty.
Tell me about it. It's 107 again today. Even the ants are only traveling in the shade on my back porch. FAR too hot on the asphalt for them.
pendragonman
Absent Friends Margrave
A shirt sleeved garden world would literally only be the lush tropical areas between the Tropics. Anywhere outside that is not shirt sleeves all the time, and inside there there are times when the weather itself will kill.
Fine then, eliminate the words "shirt-sleeve*", but humans have always lived on a garden world despite HG_b's assertion that "Man has lived in non-garden world conditions for many millennium at TL's 0-1."
the best definition I have found on-line for "Garden world" is this...
The consensus is that "garden world" denotes the presence of native life or has been terraformed to allow life to exist without technologic devices.
Hopefully, the one-climate per world trope ( desert world, jungle moon, etc. ) isn't taken seriously here.
* but only in that its official use is to denote "no special clothing needed"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirt-sleeve_environment
I guess furs and heavy clothing for cold don't really apply?
Desert is livable with shade and an a good supply of water.
Sheesh... literalists when semantics suits ya and rules/science are an abstraction when it doesn't
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Another take on all this using rules and a canon source of information....
In TNE's WBH, a ration feeds a human for 1 month and there are 10 rations per m^3, and at 14 m^3 per dton, therefore one dton of rations can feed 140 humans for one month...
So, a pop of 140 billion ( pop B * 1.4 ) requires the shipment of 1 billion dtons each month to supply the demand for food.
the shipping cost if supplied from off-world, would be 1 trillion cr per month ( 1 billion * 1000 cr )
the purchase cost would be as much as 4 trillion cr per month and the sale price could be as high as 6 trillion cr per month
I have to double check, but that is a bit over 2300 RU's from PE where the value of an RU is based on tech 15 Imperial and not the old Sylean tech 12 values ( 1 RU ~ 3000 million crimps vs ~5000 million sylean cr )
That's only for food
What is such a world's GWP per month, eh?
Can it afford to eat?
the best definition I have found on-line for "Garden world" is this...
Traveller has relatively few of those.
The consensus is that "garden world" denotes the presence of native life or has been terraformed to allow life to exist without technologic devices.
Hopefully, the one-climate per world trope ( desert world, jungle moon, etc. ) isn't taken seriously here.
* but only in that its official use is to denote "no special clothing needed"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirt-sleeve_environment
I guess furs and heavy clothing for cold don't really apply?
Desert is livable with shade and an a good supply of water.
Sheesh... literalists when semantics suits ya and rules/science are an abstraction when it doesn't
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Another take on all this using rules and a canon source of information....
In TNE's WBH, a ration feeds a human for 1 month and there are 10 rations per m^3, and at 14 m^3 per dton, therefore one dton of rations can feed 140 humans for one month...
So, a pop of 140 billion ( pop B * 1.4 ) requires the shipment of 1 billion dtons each month to supply the demand for food.
the shipping cost if supplied from off-world, would be 1 trillion cr per month ( 1 billion * 1000 cr )
the purchase cost would be as much as 4 trillion cr per month and the sale price could be as high as 6 trillion cr per month
I have to double check, but that is a bit over 2300 RU's from PE where the value of an RU is based on tech 15 Imperial and not the old Sylean tech 12 values ( 1 RU ~ 3000 million crimps vs ~5000 million sylean cr )
That's only for food
What is such a world's GWP per month, eh?
Can it afford to eat?
CosmicGamer
SOC-14 1K
Don't know if it's typical, but I can easily spend $10 a day on food and beverage. Multiply that by a pop of 140 billion would be 1.4 trillion a day spent on food.
The US with a rounded off population of 300 million has a GNP around 15 Trillion/year. Again, being real rough here, 140 billion people is about 500 times the 300 million population in the US. So lets multiply the 15 trillion GNP by 500 to get 7500 trillion then divide by 12 to get roughly 625 trillion per month.
I don't have a point - just saying for comparison.
I agree, and your basic point that it would be interesting to work out per capita life support costs for a hostile planet remains unanswered.
For me, I have taken a stab at it a couple of times, but generally found that it varies widely by rule system and all of the starship life support costs come out both way to high (compared with limited known Earth costs) and unaffordable. As a quick 'for instance', I took a preliminary stab at the 300,000 person Megabuilding using starship hull to enclose the volume and 300,000 staterooms ... I quit after it reached 1 MCr per person per month.
6+1 trillion credits per month for food, divided by 100 billion people (to make the math easier) is only 70 credits per month per person for food.
Just as a WAG, if we assume another 70 credits for water and a third 70 credits for air, then the Life Support cost is 210 credits per person for month ... 840 credits per month to support a family of four.
Expensive but sounds doable, maybe.
Actually..
All games are simulations, not all simulations are games.
The difference is entertainment value. games are entertaining.
any simulation that is not entertaining is not a game.
Also for this thread think about sophonts who are much smaller than Humans, how many of them could you fit on a size 15 world or a size 20?
how many humans could you fit on a size 15 world?
Actually, WBH suggests that the amounts given represent the lowest percentile group where most foods are grains with a bare minimum of animal products. The amount given in those rules prevent dm's for unrest or higher morale as a result of diet. It certainly is not representative of the typical advanced Western Country.
It is the bare minimum food to prevent social unrest, such as rioting, etc. under those rules.
Meals such as most players might be used to would be anywhere from 3 to 5 times more costly ( given the disparity between USA per capita ~ 50,000 vs world per capita ~12,5000 incomes assuming similar percentage of income spent on food...not a great assumption though )
pendragonman
Absent Friends Margrave
As I said earlier, you don't want them, fine. Leave em out of your TU.
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.
Facts: Large population worlds exist thru-out Science Fiction literature/media. CF the Fifth Element, alone. I am not going to bother you with an exhaustive list.
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.
Facts: Large population worlds exist thru-out Science Fiction literature/media. CF the Fifth Element, alone. I am not going to bother you with an exhaustive list.
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