This thread is an answer to Michael Taylor's questions in a thread in the GtD forum, and in part
For reference, however, I'll refer you to those two threads. My most pertinent points in favor of it being possible are on page 6 of the first thread, though Flynn and Strybow have some good points starting on page 1.
http://www.travellerrpg.com/cgi-bin/Trav/CotI/Discuss/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=5;t=000181
http://www.travellerrpg.com/cgi-bin/Trav/CotI/Discuss/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=5;t=000182
Population Density
Not insurmountable. As Flynn and Straybow point out, it's not even more densely packed than the most densely packed nations on Earth. And they weren't being generous -- they assumed the default diameter of Stoner. If you assume its like 1400 miles in diameter instead, you double the surface area.
Population Density, Part Deux
Another possibility to consider is that some or many people live in orbital habitats. The WBH suggests you can put Tl-6 pop in orbit. That is, you see, not enough to put the entire population in orbit. However, that is the only precedent that I am aware of defining how much of a population can be put in orbit, but it is (like most DGP stuff) not cannon anymore, so you may wish to declare that orbital habitats can make a bigger dent in the pop than WBH suggests.
Regardless, I would imagine that in a society with cheap grav propulsion and common artificial habitats, space habitats would be common, and an approaching visitor would notice the swarm of orbital habitats as they approach.
Food, Air, and Water
Frankly, I don't think in a tech E society, air and water are going to be a problem. I was on a submarine and air scrubbers and oxygen generators took up about 1 dton for 150 people with what is probably 60s tech. At tech E, I am more that convinced there will be fairly self contained equipment that can handle it.
Food is a bigger issue. Probably the biggest issue.
Let's first off admit to ourselves we aren't likely going be able to feed this many people JUST with interstellar shipments.
I did some calculations a while back indicating that using efficient 21st century farming techniques, you could support a city of 1.7 million with 1700 square kilometers of land. That's about 1000 people per square km (including allowence for living space). Alas, even with my generous assumptions for surface area, we are off by about a factor of 5. (Using 1400 km for the diameter, there are 5077 people per square km).
However, this was assuming efficient 21st century farming technique, and that land was a single layer. If you move the people into stacked underground cities (which Stoner Express says they live in anyways) and stack the farms 5 layers deep, you have enough room, provided you can provide the environment for them. Now consider that you are talking not tech 7/8, but tech E, on a world with a real need for efficient farming. Chances are you have something more efficient than that. We are probably talking massive hydroponic farms and nutrient vats filled with genetically engineered algae and fungus that do double duty recycling human waste. I beleive that you can do it at that tech level and acheive a 5:1 reduction in the ammount of surface area you need for food production.
Heat
Okay, we have all see the lego webcomic about Coruscant, right? There's a few things you have to consider before you take the waste heat thing at face value. First, Coruscant is not Stoner. Coruscant is a pop E world in traveller terms. So there is quite a bit less waste heat to worry about here. Biological waste heat would not be a problem, but the fusion plants that power heat and make life possible in a high tech society probably would.
Second, they guy was not all being realistic -- I would even say FORTHCOMING, because he had to know this -- about what can be done to eliminate waste heat. He assumed that radiating vanes would be treated as black bodies at the same temperature as the world and thus not be useful.
However, chances are if you are enjoying the comfort of an air conditioned home or enjoying a cold refreshment out of the fridge, you are using that technology right now. Refrigerators and air conditions don't eliminate heat, they move it. The trick is that they do it by moving heat from a low temperature to a high temperature by the miracle of a device called a compressor.
This technology implemented on a mass scale is all you need. You take your heat, pump it to towering red-hot radiating vanes, where the heat is radiated away into space.
Okay, how and why?
This is the biggest question, isn't it? And yet, I find it fascinating that, after seeing millenia of irrational behavior among humans in the history of our own world, that people have such a huge problem grappling with people who make decisions they would not make. Assuming that people have the freedom to live where they want, or that they even want what you think that they want, is rather naive.
Why not move?
Before I jump into why it got there, let me address the question of why people stay there. This may actually be fairly simple: The government may not let them or provide them with the means to leave; do not assume that the Stoner native has as much freedom and opportunity as we do today, especially given that they are a dictatorship with a high law level. It could be that the agricultural worlds are regarded as fragile, and were specifically protected from the ravages of industrialization so they could maintain their capacity as a supplemental food source and bio-resource for the remainder of the worlds of the Duchy. Reasonable or not, what the duke says, goes.
Further, they may not WANT to move. I grew up in a relative backwater in the US, but then met folks from big cities who considered empty lots and trees a waste of space. If you grew up living in a clean, sterile artificial habitat, it could well be that you have come to appreciate the clean, recycled air, and find it unthinkable to live on a world with dirt, polution, carnivores, and (gasp!) random unsolicited showers and wind gusts that those quaint offworlders call "inclement weather."
Why settle / develop it this way
To propose adequate answers for this, I think we have to consider what we know about Stoner.
A quick miscellany of Stoner/GDS facts:
- Stoner is not the only pop A vac world in the region. There are three in this very subsector! In fact, I beleive one, Drachir, to be much more problematic than Stoner, as it is only TL 8!
- About as old as the Imperium
- Started by a rebellious Sylean noble
- Suspicious of Imperial influence
- Has interactions with Wanderer worldships
- Militarized society with privledges to nobles
- Khad Khabar originally built to higher tech standard but backslid to TL6 due to lack of investment.
- Stoner: "It was not the intended destination of the original colonists, but the opportunities offered by its vast mineral deposits were too good to pass up." - EA1
- "Its factories fuelled the colonization of the rest of the cluster, creating ‘breadbaskets’ at Massen’s World and Urmek that in turn fed an explosive population growth."
- "Stoner is inhabited by 800 million (sic) people grouped into large underground cities that are highly industrialized and have access to very high technology.
Okay, it does say that the two worlds are breadbaskets. This isn't coruscant we are talking about, and the duchy is one of the most impressive industrial powerhouses in the domain, so it just might be realistic that a significant portion of Stoner's food is imported. (Gazala, which was integrated recently, is harder to justify such a scheme for, so it's probably all mushroom soup, all the time for them.) One world is only one jump away and one is J-2 away. Starships travelling to Stoner wouldn't be THAT much slower to get there than delivery trucks are to get fresh produce to my house.
So its stated that the nice little worlds are "breadbaskets" right there in EA1. Which is reasonable, though they would have to be extensively farmed.
The GDS is fearful of the Imperium now, and probably has been since it's inception. There is a good chance that the considered the possibility that the forming empire they left behind would come to deal with them. So reasonable goals for someone in such a position is that they a) wished to get as far from the forming Imperium as possible, and b) wished to build up their base before the imperium inevitably arrived.
So why could they not pass up Stoner? The world description described it as a mineral resource too good to pass up, but maybe there is more to the story than that. Perhaps by the standards of the fledling imperium, it was a treasure world. Perhaps the resources of their fleet was wearing thin.
Their original destination might have even been in the ley sector. The timeline says that they ran into they "made contact" with the Matarishan federation in -27 and entered Luriani space in -16. I doubt they were bouncing around in their ships all that time (unless it was an extended convoy). Perhaps the content of their contact with the Matarishan federation was getting astrographic data about a possible site in the ley sector, but by the time they arrived, they found their first proposed world taken by the Luriani (perhaps some rich treasure world like the Nundis belt). So they sent scouts to other places and they resources were wearing thin by the time they found the Stoner cluser.
Or, maybe, that's just a front. Perhaps the old duke was a canny fellow who originally visited the luruani knowing the imperials would follow their breadcrumbs and get in a confrontation with the Luriani.
Three worlds?
I find three such worlds in one such subsector, um, astounding. And one is arguably in worse shape than stoner.
When I see coincidences when planning gaming material, I like to play connect-the-dots and play up coincidences so they aren't coincidences anymore.
So why/how could there be three similarly incredible world in such a small area? My first thought was that it is related to the Gateway artificial world.
The Gallastrian metals company made an artificial worldlet over 200 years before Stoner was established. They had access to technology that let the make an artificial world out of a large asteroid. This would include technologies that would allow them, for example, to use clean low yield fusion charges to tunnel out beneath tons of rock, the shape remnants into strong structural members without a manufacturing facility, as well as the life support facilities to support a population of such a world.
By the time dissident Syleans arrived at Stoner, the corporate sector wars were still ongoing. It could well be that one of the Galian companies or factions went beyond the border of the gateway sector in search of a secure industrial base away from the battlefields, and started devoloping these three worlds. When the Duke and his fleet arrived, perhaps one of several things happened.
1) They found an abandoned world, but with significant equipment left behind and a partially developed world, with many habitations already carved out on a world ripe for mineral expoitation.
2) They arrived there and were approached by the Galians corporate warriors with an offer to devolop the world in exchange for services. Perhaps the Duke's fleet was just what they needed to tip the balance, and they served as mercenaries in the corporate wars.
3) They arrived to find the world being developed, and took the operation over by force.
And perhaps the other two vacuum mega-worlds developed from settlers on these worlds long after the companies that started them dissolved.
The Great Leap Forward
Once the Duchy was established in Stoner, they were still left the problem of the possibility of the imperials coming down on their head. These concerns were probably deepened as they saw the imperium slowly moving into the ley sector and inducting worlds.
So, they were left with a problem: how to remain independant of the imperium, which was the vision of the man who brought them here.
This reminds me, in a way, of Mao. Some folks act stunned that someone would live in a little rockball when they could live on some nice garden worlds. But fear and the vision of a powerful man are power things.
Mao Zedong was the communist dictator who came into China and had the dream of reforging China into a world power. To this end, he focussed Chinas efforts on becoming a cheif exporter of steel in the world in an effort called The Great Leap Forward. You can go here to get some details:
http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/dictators/mao/
But to sum up, when you are a dictator with a vision, not only is it quite likely you can make your subjects uncomfortable, you can kill them.
So lets project the original Duke in the light of a slightly more successful Mao. He has a vision: to stand apart from the juggernaut of the forming Imperium. So he, much like Mao, decides the thing to do is to make his state into a major industrial power. He decides to do this by establishing his population, and by developing an industrial powerhouse of a world. So he sets forth laws requiring his people to breed and assigns as many of them as possible to expand his industrial base on stoner. Of course the nobles hang out on the idyllic little farming worlds.
But as Mao failed, so did the Duke, but not until years later. Continuing to hear reports of imperial conquests coming in from the ley sector, expecting it to reach their doorstep at any time, the duchy of stoner rapidly forges ahead. Year after year. But the imperials don't arrive as soon as they expect. The Luriani, the Sydites, the Civil war, all slow the advance of the Imperium.
By the 900s, the original thoughts that the Imperium has probably faded into the background a bit (but still part of the public subconscious). However, early requirements to breed and expand their industrial base have become well seeded into their society. Perhaps too well seeded. The population pressure is really becoming a problem, but it is taking some heavy handed policies to stem the tide of this long seeded public policy.
Well, there you go. That's my "quick" take. It could definitely use a few more passes to refine into something more compelling and detailed, but I think it explains the basics. I'll probably use it even if you choose not to draw from it for your supplement.
First off, I am going to spend as little time as possible on whether it's possible. I would like to get done with this post before it's time for the kids get to bed. We have discussed this issue a lot in two other thread. I'll assume that you are more interested in the how and why, so I'll try to bounce around some ideas to that effect.Originally posted by Michael Taylor:
This is exactly the proble i'm facing trying to justify why 80 BILLIONpeople settled/were born/live on Stoner when there are 3 agricultural earth-like worlds jump1 or 2 away.
It is a real problem. Any suggestions anyone, other than the usual "it was a mining paradise"?
For reference, however, I'll refer you to those two threads. My most pertinent points in favor of it being possible are on page 6 of the first thread, though Flynn and Strybow have some good points starting on page 1.
http://www.travellerrpg.com/cgi-bin/Trav/CotI/Discuss/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=5;t=000181
http://www.travellerrpg.com/cgi-bin/Trav/CotI/Discuss/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=5;t=000182
Population Density
Not insurmountable. As Flynn and Straybow point out, it's not even more densely packed than the most densely packed nations on Earth. And they weren't being generous -- they assumed the default diameter of Stoner. If you assume its like 1400 miles in diameter instead, you double the surface area.
Population Density, Part Deux
Another possibility to consider is that some or many people live in orbital habitats. The WBH suggests you can put Tl-6 pop in orbit. That is, you see, not enough to put the entire population in orbit. However, that is the only precedent that I am aware of defining how much of a population can be put in orbit, but it is (like most DGP stuff) not cannon anymore, so you may wish to declare that orbital habitats can make a bigger dent in the pop than WBH suggests.
Regardless, I would imagine that in a society with cheap grav propulsion and common artificial habitats, space habitats would be common, and an approaching visitor would notice the swarm of orbital habitats as they approach.
Food, Air, and Water
Frankly, I don't think in a tech E society, air and water are going to be a problem. I was on a submarine and air scrubbers and oxygen generators took up about 1 dton for 150 people with what is probably 60s tech. At tech E, I am more that convinced there will be fairly self contained equipment that can handle it.
Food is a bigger issue. Probably the biggest issue.
Let's first off admit to ourselves we aren't likely going be able to feed this many people JUST with interstellar shipments.
I did some calculations a while back indicating that using efficient 21st century farming techniques, you could support a city of 1.7 million with 1700 square kilometers of land. That's about 1000 people per square km (including allowence for living space). Alas, even with my generous assumptions for surface area, we are off by about a factor of 5. (Using 1400 km for the diameter, there are 5077 people per square km).
However, this was assuming efficient 21st century farming technique, and that land was a single layer. If you move the people into stacked underground cities (which Stoner Express says they live in anyways) and stack the farms 5 layers deep, you have enough room, provided you can provide the environment for them. Now consider that you are talking not tech 7/8, but tech E, on a world with a real need for efficient farming. Chances are you have something more efficient than that. We are probably talking massive hydroponic farms and nutrient vats filled with genetically engineered algae and fungus that do double duty recycling human waste. I beleive that you can do it at that tech level and acheive a 5:1 reduction in the ammount of surface area you need for food production.
Heat
Okay, we have all see the lego webcomic about Coruscant, right? There's a few things you have to consider before you take the waste heat thing at face value. First, Coruscant is not Stoner. Coruscant is a pop E world in traveller terms. So there is quite a bit less waste heat to worry about here. Biological waste heat would not be a problem, but the fusion plants that power heat and make life possible in a high tech society probably would.
Second, they guy was not all being realistic -- I would even say FORTHCOMING, because he had to know this -- about what can be done to eliminate waste heat. He assumed that radiating vanes would be treated as black bodies at the same temperature as the world and thus not be useful.
However, chances are if you are enjoying the comfort of an air conditioned home or enjoying a cold refreshment out of the fridge, you are using that technology right now. Refrigerators and air conditions don't eliminate heat, they move it. The trick is that they do it by moving heat from a low temperature to a high temperature by the miracle of a device called a compressor.
This technology implemented on a mass scale is all you need. You take your heat, pump it to towering red-hot radiating vanes, where the heat is radiated away into space.
Okay, how and why?
This is the biggest question, isn't it? And yet, I find it fascinating that, after seeing millenia of irrational behavior among humans in the history of our own world, that people have such a huge problem grappling with people who make decisions they would not make. Assuming that people have the freedom to live where they want, or that they even want what you think that they want, is rather naive.
Why not move?
Before I jump into why it got there, let me address the question of why people stay there. This may actually be fairly simple: The government may not let them or provide them with the means to leave; do not assume that the Stoner native has as much freedom and opportunity as we do today, especially given that they are a dictatorship with a high law level. It could be that the agricultural worlds are regarded as fragile, and were specifically protected from the ravages of industrialization so they could maintain their capacity as a supplemental food source and bio-resource for the remainder of the worlds of the Duchy. Reasonable or not, what the duke says, goes.
Further, they may not WANT to move. I grew up in a relative backwater in the US, but then met folks from big cities who considered empty lots and trees a waste of space. If you grew up living in a clean, sterile artificial habitat, it could well be that you have come to appreciate the clean, recycled air, and find it unthinkable to live on a world with dirt, polution, carnivores, and (gasp!) random unsolicited showers and wind gusts that those quaint offworlders call "inclement weather."
Why settle / develop it this way
To propose adequate answers for this, I think we have to consider what we know about Stoner.
A quick miscellany of Stoner/GDS facts:
- Stoner is not the only pop A vac world in the region. There are three in this very subsector! In fact, I beleive one, Drachir, to be much more problematic than Stoner, as it is only TL 8!
- About as old as the Imperium
- Started by a rebellious Sylean noble
- Suspicious of Imperial influence
- Has interactions with Wanderer worldships
- Militarized society with privledges to nobles
- Khad Khabar originally built to higher tech standard but backslid to TL6 due to lack of investment.
- Stoner: "It was not the intended destination of the original colonists, but the opportunities offered by its vast mineral deposits were too good to pass up." - EA1
- "Its factories fuelled the colonization of the rest of the cluster, creating ‘breadbaskets’ at Massen’s World and Urmek that in turn fed an explosive population growth."
- "Stoner is inhabited by 800 million (sic) people grouped into large underground cities that are highly industrialized and have access to very high technology.
Okay, it does say that the two worlds are breadbaskets. This isn't coruscant we are talking about, and the duchy is one of the most impressive industrial powerhouses in the domain, so it just might be realistic that a significant portion of Stoner's food is imported. (Gazala, which was integrated recently, is harder to justify such a scheme for, so it's probably all mushroom soup, all the time for them.) One world is only one jump away and one is J-2 away. Starships travelling to Stoner wouldn't be THAT much slower to get there than delivery trucks are to get fresh produce to my house.
So its stated that the nice little worlds are "breadbaskets" right there in EA1. Which is reasonable, though they would have to be extensively farmed.
The GDS is fearful of the Imperium now, and probably has been since it's inception. There is a good chance that the considered the possibility that the forming empire they left behind would come to deal with them. So reasonable goals for someone in such a position is that they a) wished to get as far from the forming Imperium as possible, and b) wished to build up their base before the imperium inevitably arrived.
So why could they not pass up Stoner? The world description described it as a mineral resource too good to pass up, but maybe there is more to the story than that. Perhaps by the standards of the fledling imperium, it was a treasure world. Perhaps the resources of their fleet was wearing thin.
Their original destination might have even been in the ley sector. The timeline says that they ran into they "made contact" with the Matarishan federation in -27 and entered Luriani space in -16. I doubt they were bouncing around in their ships all that time (unless it was an extended convoy). Perhaps the content of their contact with the Matarishan federation was getting astrographic data about a possible site in the ley sector, but by the time they arrived, they found their first proposed world taken by the Luriani (perhaps some rich treasure world like the Nundis belt). So they sent scouts to other places and they resources were wearing thin by the time they found the Stoner cluser.
Or, maybe, that's just a front. Perhaps the old duke was a canny fellow who originally visited the luruani knowing the imperials would follow their breadcrumbs and get in a confrontation with the Luriani.
Three worlds?
I find three such worlds in one such subsector, um, astounding. And one is arguably in worse shape than stoner.
When I see coincidences when planning gaming material, I like to play connect-the-dots and play up coincidences so they aren't coincidences anymore.
So why/how could there be three similarly incredible world in such a small area? My first thought was that it is related to the Gateway artificial world.
The Gallastrian metals company made an artificial worldlet over 200 years before Stoner was established. They had access to technology that let the make an artificial world out of a large asteroid. This would include technologies that would allow them, for example, to use clean low yield fusion charges to tunnel out beneath tons of rock, the shape remnants into strong structural members without a manufacturing facility, as well as the life support facilities to support a population of such a world.
By the time dissident Syleans arrived at Stoner, the corporate sector wars were still ongoing. It could well be that one of the Galian companies or factions went beyond the border of the gateway sector in search of a secure industrial base away from the battlefields, and started devoloping these three worlds. When the Duke and his fleet arrived, perhaps one of several things happened.
1) They found an abandoned world, but with significant equipment left behind and a partially developed world, with many habitations already carved out on a world ripe for mineral expoitation.
2) They arrived there and were approached by the Galians corporate warriors with an offer to devolop the world in exchange for services. Perhaps the Duke's fleet was just what they needed to tip the balance, and they served as mercenaries in the corporate wars.
3) They arrived to find the world being developed, and took the operation over by force.
And perhaps the other two vacuum mega-worlds developed from settlers on these worlds long after the companies that started them dissolved.
The Great Leap Forward
Once the Duchy was established in Stoner, they were still left the problem of the possibility of the imperials coming down on their head. These concerns were probably deepened as they saw the imperium slowly moving into the ley sector and inducting worlds.
So, they were left with a problem: how to remain independant of the imperium, which was the vision of the man who brought them here.
This reminds me, in a way, of Mao. Some folks act stunned that someone would live in a little rockball when they could live on some nice garden worlds. But fear and the vision of a powerful man are power things.
Mao Zedong was the communist dictator who came into China and had the dream of reforging China into a world power. To this end, he focussed Chinas efforts on becoming a cheif exporter of steel in the world in an effort called The Great Leap Forward. You can go here to get some details:
http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/dictators/mao/
But to sum up, when you are a dictator with a vision, not only is it quite likely you can make your subjects uncomfortable, you can kill them.
So lets project the original Duke in the light of a slightly more successful Mao. He has a vision: to stand apart from the juggernaut of the forming Imperium. So he, much like Mao, decides the thing to do is to make his state into a major industrial power. He decides to do this by establishing his population, and by developing an industrial powerhouse of a world. So he sets forth laws requiring his people to breed and assigns as many of them as possible to expand his industrial base on stoner. Of course the nobles hang out on the idyllic little farming worlds.
But as Mao failed, so did the Duke, but not until years later. Continuing to hear reports of imperial conquests coming in from the ley sector, expecting it to reach their doorstep at any time, the duchy of stoner rapidly forges ahead. Year after year. But the imperials don't arrive as soon as they expect. The Luriani, the Sydites, the Civil war, all slow the advance of the Imperium.
By the 900s, the original thoughts that the Imperium has probably faded into the background a bit (but still part of the public subconscious). However, early requirements to breed and expand their industrial base have become well seeded into their society. Perhaps too well seeded. The population pressure is really becoming a problem, but it is taking some heavy handed policies to stem the tide of this long seeded public policy.
Well, there you go. That's my "quick" take. It could definitely use a few more passes to refine into something more compelling and detailed, but I think it explains the basics. I'll probably use it even if you choose not to draw from it for your supplement.
