Solar System RPG

[Malenfant]

That resembles Jovian Chronicles quite a bit actually. In that, Earth colonises the solar system, then Earth society collapses and stops supplying the colonies which are forced to become more self-sufficient. A few decades pass and they're happily independent, then a new military government on Earth comes out and acts as if they still own the place, saying "oi, we want our colonies back", and all hell breaks loose.

 

[Evo Plurion]

D'oh!

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Drakon:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Malenfant:
[qb] Do you know that NASA has actually forgotten how to get to the moon? There's nobody around anymore who knows how to build a Saturn V, and I'm sure I've heard that the blueprints have been lost.

Urban myth. The design blueprints are still on file. We have not "forgotten" how to get to the moon. It is more a case of political will to do so.
</font>[/QUOTE]Well, perhaps it's more a case of 'we don't have the technological infrastructure and industry required to build the Saturn V anymore'. That was all dismantled after Apollo was scrapped, and the Saturn Vs that were going to launch Apollos 18,19, and 20 are now slowly-rusting tourist attractions .

 

[savage]

I don't buy the robots are better philosophy...well there easier and safer...but not better.

When we have serious access to another world it'll
take people making the decisions and doing the work to really dig deeper that a few inches of topsoil.

When we accidentally find something useful they'll send people.

Now the RPG:
So my 2 cents we find something that just might be useful and need to extract it with people. One thing leads to another....no FTL but we might toss out a few satellites.
1. discover a power source, new hit on the periodic chart....whatever
2. pathetic invasion...our missile defense utterly destroys a few mean aliens...now we need a defense.
3. over population or a near miss asteroid scares us into space kicking and screaming

Savage

 

[Drakon]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
Well, perhaps it's more a case of 'we don't have the technological infrastructure and industry required to build the Saturn V anymore'. That was all dismantled after Apollo was scrapped, and the Saturn Vs that were going to launch Apollos 18,19, and 20 are now slowly-rusting tourist attractions .

Yeah its a real shame what is happening to those old rockets. But I am not sure that we no longer have the ability to make them any more. We knew and still know how to make large metal structures like that. The VAB is still there at Cape Kennedy, and even though it is now used to mate the shuttle to its tank and boosters, why it can't be used to build Saturn V again, I don't know.

Of course, IF you were to build them again, all the electronics would have to be redone. Not sure about how material advancement had gone since those days, but even if it hadn't progress much to have any impact, we still can use the old stuff for the rest of the structure.

And the weight savings due to upgraded electronics alone might be formidable.

 

[Drakon]

Originally posted by Savage:
I don't buy the robots are better philosophy...well there easier and safer...but not better.

Goood point. I would argue with you, but if you are right, it makes it too difficult.

When we accidentally find something useful they'll send people.

Now the RPG:
So my 2 cents we find something that just might be useful and need to extract it with people. One thing leads to another....no FTL but we might toss out a few satellites.
1. discover a power source, new hit on the periodic chart....whatever
2. pathetic invasion...our missile defense utterly destroys a few mean aliens...now we need a defense.
3. over population or a near miss asteroid scares us into space kicking and screaming

Savage

I don't think the overpopulation thingy is going to happen. Yeah it might get a bit crowded, but it if gets too crowded, then we simply cannot feed all those people. And then you get famines, as well as the psychological effects that go with a time of scarcity.

In short, if we ever get close, people will have fewer babies because they think we are getting close.

But besides that, Buck Fuller noted that birth rates in industrized countries are falling compared with more backward, less technically advanced third world nations. That the more energy a society uses, the fewer babies it has.

Which makes sense. When there is no TV, movies, DVDs, musical instraments, or any other kind of entertainment, people will make use of the oldest and most entertaining thing of all. Sex.

Also, higher tech levels mean better birth control. Which means that even if they have as much, or even more sex than their less advanced neighbors, they still have fewer babies.

It used to be that higher birth rates were necessary, just to keep the population at some self sustaining level. Higher birthrates were needed to offset higher infant mortality rates. But again with medical science, infant mortality rates are falling, and those kids are growing up. So you do get a sudden a dramatic increase in people.

It will take time for things to normalize again. There is a danger, as we see played out today, where less advanced cultures with swelling populations are finding their societies stressed. Many governments are unable or unwilling to provide the services that folks expect of a government. Which puts them in conflict with their own people.

Sadly, this is usually mitigated by the government finding a scapegoat to blame the lack of success or even technical progress on. Its never "we are bad, or incompetent" Its all someone else's fault.

The Nazis did it in the 30's and 40's. Some are still doing it today.

 

[Evo Plurion]

I don't think the overpopulation thingy is going to happen. Yeah it might get a bit crowded, but it if gets too crowded, then we simply cannot feed all those people. And then you get famines, as well as the psychological effects that go with a time of scarcity.

Not to be facetious, but the third world is already drastically overpopulated. Poverty, disease and starvation are already here. 3 billion of the world's people (almost one half) live in poverty (living on less than $2 per day). 1.3 billion people live in 'absolute' or 'extreme poverty' (living on less than $1 per day). Whenever we in the developed countries are reminded of the plight of the third world, we find it easy and reassuring to click to the next channel.

AND...overpopulation has begun to have a significant effect on us - increased crime, energy demand, etc.

Hey! I just refuted my initial statement about violence. Sorry guys - you were right!

 

[TKalbfus]

Evo Plurium said,

I actually envision sometime around 2200 AD. Lots of room for great interplanetary powers to develop, fall and redevelop. One of my favourite scenarios involves a great war which ravages Earth, allowing Mars to assert its independence and become a superpower. Then a "Reconstruction" movement grows among the colonies sympathetic to Earth and the plight of Terran refugees, many of whom have been subjugated by Mars. The Jovian system could be a fascinating third political pillar of the Solar System - playing Mars and a resurgent Earth against each other.

On the other hand, I don't want the setting to be too alien. I like to apply the Forward/Backward test. it is 46 years from 2004 to 2050, so subtract 46 years from 2004 and you get 1958. Now suppose you were stranded in the year 1958, would you be able to drive a car for instance? go to a store and do some shopping? What would be familiar to you in 1958 and what would be different? A lot of the technology would be the same just less advanced. They had Jet aircraft in 1958, not 747s but you could buy a ticket on a Jet plane. Socially 1958 would be familiar to most people from 2004, you'd be able to function in that era where automobiles are still prevaliant, drive in movies.

Now lets take it to the years 2100 and we'll apply the Forward/Backward test here. There is 96 years between 2004 and 2100 now subtract 96 from 2004 and we get 1908. In 1908 we have a prim and proper class society. There is the upper class and the lower class, this is the last dying vestige of the Victorian Era. Have you ever watched the PBS miniseries "1900 House" or "Manor House" where you throw 21st century people in simulated situations that existed at the beginning of the 20th century? In those days most people clip clopped on horses, washing clothes consumed an enourmous amount of time and people had few changes of clothes. Cooking was also very time consuming on a wood stove. You had the earliest mass produced cars, but they still shared the road with horses and buggies. The airplane was in its infancy and you can forget about buying an airplane ticket. Cars were unreliable requiring frequent maintenance and tire changes and they had no seat belts. the most reliable form of transportation was the train or steamship for long distances and horse and buggy for short distances. Now think of what 2100 would mean, it would be that diffent from today as 1908 is from now. If you have an RPG set in 2100 the GM would have to explain everyday facits of life besides aspects of space travel. He'll have to explain society, how people relate to one another, how they wash their clothes, cook their meals, get around on a planet's surface. A trip to 2100 would be quite as overwhelming as a trip to 1908. 2050 should be familiar to most of us, there would still be cars and planes, telephones, and washing machines now add in robots, and spaceships and colonies in space and you have a fairly good picture of what things will be like. There would be robots, but they'll be separate and not a part of you and they'll look like mechanical contraptions walking on two legs. A robot from 2100 might look more like a person and it might be hard to tell who is a person and who is a robot. 2050 robots would be fairly intelligent, they can understand human spoken language but they are faily stilted, inflexible, and interpret spoken words literally all the time. If you meet a robot in 2050 its fairly obvious, even if it's designed to look human, it may have artificial skin or hair, but spend some time talking to it and you realize that its not a person your dealing with. A 2100 robot would fool you, it is a good actor, if a robot is so inclined, you might even fall in love with one and marry one without realizing it.

2050 spaceships are extrapolated from today, space elevators exist, but the only thing that's new is the material to make the space elevator with, a person of today would understand how it works. A spaceship needs a space elevator to get off of large planets like Earth or Venus. A scramjet requires an atmosphere with free oxygen in which to function, so it wouldn't work on Venus. Once in space, a spaceship is propelled by a plasma drive. The plasma is heated either by a nuclear reactor or a solar concentrator. Very large fusion reactors exist, but they are too large to fit on most spaceships. Interplanetary cruisers tend to rotate for gravity so they are either very large or very long and flip end over end with a plasma rocket pushing it near the center of gravity. Typical acclerations are produced by maneuver drives of 6 types rated for size. Manuever-1 produces 166 mm per second squared or 1/60-g acceleration. Maneuver-2 produces 333 mm per sec squared or 1/30-g. Maneuver-3 produces 500 mm per sec squared or 1/20-g. Maneuver-4 produces 666 mm per sec squared or 1/15-g. Maneuver-5 produces 833 mm per sec squared or 1/12-g. Maneuver-6 produces 1000 mm per second squared or 1/10-g acceleration. these are all interplanetary drives. Landing rockets can produce higher accelerations ranging from 1-g to 6-g but they consume an enourmous amount of chemical rocket fuel.

 

[robject]

I did some fooling around a few years back, trying to spec out what the Sol system was like just before First Contact. It's a big project...

 

[Drakon]

Originally posted by Evo Plurion:
Not to be facetious, but the third world is already drastically overpopulated. Poverty, disease and starvation are already here. 3 billion of the world's people (almost one half) live in poverty (living on less than $2 per day).

The fact that some are poor does not mean the planet is overpopulated. There are a plethora of factors that have to be taken into account, such as government structure, cultural willingness to take risks, education, etc. The fact that the third world has too little does not mean that they cannot have as much as they need.

And there is a fact that poverty is a relative term. You and I have access, as well as capabilities that even the kings of Europe did not possess. Technology has given rise to a host of products that make your life easier, even then that of the richest folks in England at the turn of the millenia.

Malthus was simply wrong. And I am always wary of folks who worry about overpopulation in the third world, as there is a very simple solution. Kill them. If there are too many people, the way to fix that is to kill a lot of them.

Now, in general I am opposed to killing sophonts. I do recognize there may be reasons for killing from time to time, but it has to be based on the individual case, rather than some general concept such as "there are too many people".

Also I find a lot of talk about overpopulation a bit strange as you have the ability to decrease the surface population by at least one. You can kill yourself. Yet you don't. Most folks who go on about it, always want someone else to step up and die, to fix the problem.

 

[Drakon]

Originally posted by Tom Kalbfus:
On the other hand, I don't want the setting to be too alien.

Its about to get a lot more alien, a lot sooner than you think.

Check out this. http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=624&u=/ap/20040625/ap_on_sc/space_elevator_3&printer=1

"Scientist Bradley C. Edwards has an idea that's really out of this world: an elevator that climbs 62,000 miles into space.

Edwards thinks an initial version could be operating in 15 years, a year earlier than Bush's 2020 timetable for a return to the moon. He pegs the cost at $10 billion, a pittance compared with other space endeavors.

"It's not new physics — nothing new has to be discovered, nothing new has to be invented from scratch," he says. "If there are delays in budget or delays in whatever, it could stretch, but 15 years is a realistic estimate for when we could have one up."

Edwards is not just some guy with an idea. He's head of the space elevator project at the Institute for Scientific Research in Fairmont, W.Va. NASA (news - web sites) already has given it more than $500,000 to study the idea, and Congress has earmarked $2.5 million more.

"A lot of people at NASA are excited about the idea," said Robert Casanova, director of the NASA Institute of Advanced Concepts in Atlanta.

Edwards believes a space elevator offers a cheaper, safer form of space travel that eventually could be used to carry explorers to the planets.

Edwards' elevator would climb on a cable made of nanotubes — tiny bundles of carbon atoms many times stronger than steel. The cable would be about three feet wide and thinner than a piece of paper, but capable of supporting a payload up to 13 tons.

15 years, 10 billion dollars. There is your 2020 date.

 

[Evo Plurion]

Originally posted by Drakon:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Evo Plurion:
Not to be facetious, but the third world is already drastically overpopulated. Poverty, disease and starvation are already here. 3 billion of the world's people (almost one half) live in poverty (living on less than $2 per day).

The fact that some are poor does not mean the planet is overpopulated. There are a plethora of factors that have to be taken into account, such as government structure, cultural willingness to take risks, education, etc. The fact that the third world has too little does not mean that they cannot have as much as they need.

And there is a fact that poverty is a relative term. You and I have access, as well as capabilities that even the kings of Europe did not possess. Technology has given rise to a host of products that make your life easier, even then that of the richest folks in England at the turn of the millenia.

Malthus was simply wrong. And I am always wary of folks who worry about overpopulation in the third world, as there is a very simple solution. Kill them. If there are too many people, the way to fix that is to kill a lot of them.

Now, in general I am opposed to killing sophonts. I do recognize there may be reasons for killing from time to time, but it has to be based on the individual case, rather than some general concept such as "there are too many people".

Also I find a lot of talk about overpopulation a bit strange as you have the ability to decrease the surface population by at least one. You can kill yourself. Yet you don't. Most folks who go on about it, always want someone else to step up and die, to fix the problem. </font>[/QUOTE]Yeah, right.

 

[TKalbfus]

The Third World is not overpopulated at all, it is simply poorly run. India produces more food than it can eat, its just that there are Indians who can't afford to buy the food that is produced. What's affecting India and much of the Third World is a lack of jobs, not food. A lot of Indians can't read, and that is inexcusable, I do not believe that's because so many Indians are dislexic or have a learning disability that prevents them from reading. Teaching someone to read is one of the easiest things there is, I don't know why so many Indians fail to learn this basic skill. My daughter is learning to read at 6 years old, I don't know what excuse so many illiterate adults have. Compared to calculus, reading is a piece of cake.

 

[TKalbfus]

Its about to get a lot more alien, a lot sooner than you think.

Well yes, I did say 2020, but building space colonies takes time even assuming easy access to space, that's why I say 2050 to give time for there to be places to go. The first settlers will encounter an empthy Solar System. I believe the development of AI capable computers will produce a social reaction and controversy which might delay the general acceptance of it.

There is the concern that AIs will take over the world, so a suitable operating system incorporating the three laws of Robotics for civilian systems. AI warbots would be an exception of course. Also programming a computer so it can learn by itself instead of having its knowledge typed in on databases will take time.

There is the concern that AI robots will steal jobs, and they will; the resolution to this will take time. By 2050 the proper role of robots in society will be determined, so I think its a good starting date.

 

[Evo Plurion]

Originally posted by Tom Kalbfus:
The Third World is not overpopulated at all, it is simply poorly run. India produces more food than it can eat, its just that there are Indians who can't afford to buy the food that is produced. What's affecting India and much of the Third World is a lack of jobs, not food. A lot of Indians can't read, and that is inexcusable, I do not believe that's because so many Indians are dislexic or have a learning disability that prevents them from reading. Teaching someone to read is one of the easiest things there is, I don't know why so many Indians fail to learn this basic skill. My daughter is learning to read at 6 years old, I don't know what excuse so many illiterate adults have. Compared to calculus, reading is a piece of cake.

Kalb, I must disgree with your notion that Third World nations are not overpopulated, that their problems are due merely to poor administration and that there's no reason why their people shouldn't be able to read.

European nations have enjoyed a significant geographical advantage over the rest of the world for centuries. This has led to a distribution of the world's wealth vastly in favour of Europe and her temperate zone colonies - most notably the US, Canada and Australia. Rather than go into a lengthy expanation as to why, I'll simply refer you to one of the many books on the subject - for example, "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers" by Paul Kennedy, "The Rise of the West" by William H. McNeill and "Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared Diamond.

Poverty in the Third World prevents or hinders every benefit of civilization: food, housing, education, health care, infrastructure and civil order. These countries are overpopulated because their economies cannot sustain a normal standard of living for the vast majority of their citizens. Their people are illiterate because there are no schools. And, of course, these problems are self-reinforcing.

BTW, illiteracy is not a privilege of the most poverty-stricken countries.

 

[TKalbfus]

Evo Plurion said,

European nations have enjoyed a significant geographical advantage over the rest of the world for centuries.

Then why did the European Nations bother to colonize those areas that now make up the third World? Why did so many Europeans move to Africa, India, and China and talk so incessantly of the riches of those places? What so motivated Christopher Columbus to sail west to find a shortcut to the East Indies and China if these places were so geographically disadvantaged. To the contrary, many of those places have geographic advantages over us, the Middle East certainly has more oil, and if we lived there, we'd certainly know what to do with it. We don't however and someone else does, those people don't know what to do with their natural resources and so squander them on big palaces and consumer goods and then manage to make themselves poor anyway. Saudis are well on their way toward this, even though their standard of living was raised to America's level because of all that oil they had, they did not invest wisely in human capital and so they made themselves poorer. Africa has lots of gold, but little good has it done them, the problem is their cultures, they don't know how to produce wealth and engage in self destructive warfare and mindless tribal killing until they are as poor as dirt.

This has led to a distribution of the world's wealth vastly in favour of Europe and her temperate zone colonies

Europe and America would do fine without the third World. Sometimes I wish the oil fields in the middle east have never been discovered, so we don't have to bow to their sheiks and mind their petty politics and hatred of Jews.

I'll simply refer you to one of the many books on the subject - for example, "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers" by Paul Kennedy,

So empires rise and empires fall. So what? I don't pretend that the US is an immortal Empire, but I think we should make the most of the time we have and not worry about the fall. All things have a beginning and an End. Paul Kennedy probably wants us to think the end is around the corner, but I don't buy it. Perhaps some people hope the end is near and would be profoundly disappointed if their expectations aren't met in their lifetime, too bad. I bet that many Europeans expected that the United States should crumble shortly after the Soviet Union did to balance things off, since that did not happen, perhaps they feel cheated because of this and that's why they hate the United States? I like to take a poke at the people across the Atlantic who are always trying to predict our decline and fall, perhaps they should look at their own countries instead of minding ours.

Poverty in the Third World prevents or hinders every benefit of civilization: food, housing, education, health care, infrastructure and civil order. These countries are overpopulated because their economies cannot sustain a normal standard of living for the vast majority of their citizens. Their people are illiterate because there are no schools. And, of course, these problems are self-reinforcing.

In time Robots and automation can fix things there, its just a shame that they can't pull themselves up.

 

[Evo Plurion]

Originally posted by Tom Kalbfus:
...Africa has lots of gold, but little good has it done them, the problem is their cultures, they don't know how to produce wealth and engage in self destructive warfare and mindless tribal killing until they are as poor as dirt.

...Europe and America would do fine without the third World. Sometimes I wish the oil fields in the middle east have never been discovered, so we don't have to bow to their sheiks and mind their petty politics and hatred of Jews.

...I bet that many Europeans expected that the United States should crumble shortly after the Soviet Union did to balance things off, since that did not happen, perhaps they feel cheated because of this and that's why they hate the United States?

Kalb - With respect, I'd like to continue this discussion, but not if you continue to denigrate other cultures.

 

[TKalbfus]

Africa has lots of gold, but Africa is still poor, that is a fact, as to why? I heard that it has to do with Africa's lack of land ownership. People in Africa have farmed on their land for many generations, but they have no legal title to the land they farm on, no one does. Much of the land in traditional African countries is held in common, this means that farmers can't get loans using their land as collateral. In Zimbabwe, land owners are being forced off their land by the government so it can be redistributed among the party loyalists, the leader has even said he plans to abolish land ownership and have only 99 year leases that can be revoked if there is a question of loyalty, this in particular causes poverty. The cultural problem here is that African traditional culture does not recognize formal land ownership. Farmers plant whereever the soil is good without regard to who owns the land. I do not mean to denigrate this culture, only to tell the truth about it, in the same sense that one would tell the Emperor that he is wearing no clothes.

The Arab Middle East has some serious cultural problems as well, so where do I start:

1) It discriminates against women and treats them as property. I'm sorry if I offend Arabs by saying this, but its the truth.

2) Human life has less value, people are more willing to throw their lives away and to kill others, and innocent people are targeted for simply belonging to the same group the enemy is a member of. There is no shortage of people who are willing to commit suicide to kill others. I don't know about you, but to me this makes them seem less human in my eyes, and more like some robot or insect-like alien programmed to self-destruct. Multiple suicide bombs going off on a daily basis in a single city is not normal human behavior, I think part of this has to do with their religion, they believe that death is not the end and that the spirit moves on to a higher plane of existance and they believe this so much that Death loses its significance to them, if they must kill themselves to accomplish something, they don't give it a second thought. When life is not precious on this Earth, it is a cheap commodity and willingly sacrificed on a routine basis. My own view is that my life on this Earth is the only one I know, and that religious viewpoints on the afterlife were created to make the process of dying easier, In Islamic society, the process of dying is too easy, and people accept it too readily with a shrug of the soldiers. If life is not precious, then murder is not so bad or so the reasoning goes, so chopping off heads is a perfectly acceptable punishement for Blasphemy and other irreligious atttudes. This culture tends to make democracy difficult as so many "human puppets" are willing to sacrifice their lives to overthrow it. Freedom suffers greatly here, and that makes their society poor. Our buying their oil simply subsidizes their behavior and reduces economic pressure on them to change their societies.

3) Now the Europeans are simply jealous, I can't explain it any other way, it seems that when the Cold War ended, they were less than satisfied. The fact that they were no longer on the brink of nuclear armaggedon didn't satisfy them as it took away they enemy which they used to unite against and glue the EU together. The French and Germans looked around for another enemy and they found the United States, as the sole remaining superpower, to be perfectly suitable. The French government now sees it as its mission to sabotage US foreign policy so they can score victories against the US, that they have no legitimate grievances against the US isn't the issue; the issue is they need an enemy to unite their society and distract there publics from their domestic problems that the local politicians are unwilling or unable to solve, so its the "Big Bad USA" for them and we must united against our enemy and keep on reelecting these politicians who so "boldly" and "bravely" oppose the United States. The US has liberated France during World War II, it has sent its troops into harm's way to preserve the peace afterwards, and all the French can think of doing is countering all our moves. The German Social Democrats now have a united Germany and no longer need the US troops for security, so they jump on the anti-US bandwagon. It was because of our influence that Germany was reunited against France's wishes, but France is not a big superpower and the US is, so Germany turns against us to they can demonstrate their policy of standing up to us.

 

[robject]

Whoa, back on track, please! Let's drag this back into a role-playing system, ok? The discussions so far are interesting and, it seems to me, productive.

In my mind there are three main practicalities to consider, and they've all been touched on so far:

(1) Drakon brought up the beanstalk. ASSUME we can get into orbit cheaply by 2020. Who was it that said once you're in orbit, you're halfway to everywhere [in the solar system]?

(2) Maneuver drive technology has to develop a bit, to support continuous, long-term acceleration of 0.01 G or more (or is that 0.1 G?).

(3) Tom brought up colony-building effort. What we need is some possible colony locations, their purpose, what their initial productive size should be, and how fast they'll grow.


My Starting Assumptions

Your assumptions will help me refine my assumptions, of course.

Assumption #1. A beanstalk is feasible and cheap with a 2020 target. Thus, we can lift payloads to orbit with price efficiency.

Assumption #2. Maneuver drive may reach 0.01 G by 2020, via breakthrough or steady improvement. I don't really know much about the current state of propulsion, so I'm guessing. But in order to really exploit the solar system, we ought to have this kind of acceleration. And of course human colonies depend on travelling weeks or months, not years.

Assumption #3. If exploitation of the solar system can be market-driven, then I suppose the first targets will be:

a. the moon and/or trojan points
b. the belt

Orbital Starport

A maintenance center or drydock of sorts will go up in Earth orbit to service and even build parts of corporate ships -- if anything's cheaper than building it on the surface and shipping it up. This primitive orbital facility will also service corporate prospecting ships, designed to look for mineral resources. Perhaps an orbital refinery might be useful for processing ores from the Belt, if/when the Belt begins to be colonized.

The initial orbital drydock will probably take ten years to build -- say 2030. Nice round number. By 2040 an ore refinery and shipyard could be up and running.


More Beanstalks

Additional beanstalk(s) may start to go up after 2020 if demand is there. Perhaps they would each take 10 years to build.


Corporate Prospector Ships

Corporations interested in looking for mineral wealth in the Belts will first send prospecting ships. Will they be sent in groups, not unlike a Battle Rider concept, with ten 'buggies' attached to a central propulsion ship?

The 'buggies' may each be around 50 tons, and the central 'drive spine' they deploy from could be 500 tons. Any opinions?

The initial prospecting for locating colony sites may take up to ten more years, so the first colonies would be launched between 2030 and 2040.

I suppose there will be 2d6 companies with the desire and ability to do this kind of prospecting and colony building. I'll say '8', but I really mean 2d6, although I really mean 'whatever the referee wants'.


Corporate Belter Colonies

If there's economic interest in developing the Belts, then there will be corporate Belter colonies. Corporate ships to the Belt will be optimized for the size of the belter colony: shipping goods to the colony, and shipping raw ores back to Earth orbit. Corporate interests may have to plan initial colonies carefully, sizing them, shipping the materials there ahead of time, and bringing the colonists up to speed relatively quickly.

Belter colonies, I suppose, may be serviced by monthly cargoliners. What's a small but useful mining colony size? What were the sizes of mining towns in the 1800s? It appears that boom towns had a few thousand, and a lucky few had over 20,000. Can we assume a Belter colony could start with have 2500 colonists? So then, the ship or ships sending the colonists will together accomodate 2500 'passengers' in modules which will probably detach upon arrival, and when ores are produced, cargo modules will be built (probably from prefab material in an extra ship) and attached to the same ship for return to Earth orbit.

If one assumes (wild guess) eight companies with the desire and ability to launch colonies, then by 2040 there'd be perhaps 8 colonies of about 2500 people each in the Belts: 20,000 people total. I imagine this is a very expensive undertaking.

Colony Growth

Wild Assumption: due to the amount of mineral wealth in the Belt (?), colony growth is, for awhile, only restricted to how many people a company wants to send out there.

If the first decade sees 20,000 people sent, the next decade could well see double that. A useful rule might be: for each decade, roll 2d6. If the number is greater than the population 'digit' for the belts, then add 1d6 to the population multiplier; otherwise, leave it be for the moment, and prorate it when the next growth spurt happens, or something like that. So a possible population growth pattern would be:

</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">Year 2d6 Population Digit/Mult
2040 - 20,000 4 2
2050 4 35,000* 4 3
2060 9 50,000 4 5
2070 4 80,000* 4 8
2080 7 110,000 5 1
2090 9 700,000 5 7
2100 7 1,300,000 6 1

* Interpolated ex post facto</pre>[/QUOTE]You'll see the population growth starts slow but picks up in the middle, and ought to stop when it gets within 10% of the mainworld population (Earth).

Over time, population distribution will probably spread out to be similar to that of Earth: a few big cities and a bunch of towns and villages. Probably the big cities will follow a ratio: N, N/2, N/3, N/4, and so on, where N is the size of the biggest city (colony).

 

[Malenfant]

Tom, if you're going to rant about politics and whine about how everyone is ungrateful and nobody likes the US anymore, please do so in Random Static, eh? But if you're going to be as ignorant and racist about it too as you are, I'd rather you didn't say anything at all.