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RE: starship-design: Numbers needed for Colonization (was Antiproton-Catalyzed Propulsion System)



Stephen,

After the last couple of messages I just read, at least this one sounds
sane.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Stephen Harley [mailto:stephen.harley@dial.pipex.com]
> Sent: Thursday, April 30, 1998 1:45 PM
> To: L. Parker
> Subject: Re: starship-design: Numbers needed for Colonization (was
> Antiproton-Catalyzed Propulsion System)
>
>
>
>
>
> I'm not disputing that you need 10,000 people I'm disputing
> the need to bring
> them all at once
> and in one large ship. Second if your gonna setup a colony I
> think your going to
> want a
> two-world economy with people and minerals moving in both
> directions eventually.
> I see
> no point in building a big colony and abandoning it to it's
> fate. So why can't
> we send ten
> explorers over a period of ten years rather than build Caravan ?
>

There may not be another ship. Do you want to trust your and your children's
future to the vagaries of politics back home on Earth? What if they send you
out and then cancel the program? Oh well, too bad? No, I want it all in one
boat. You may send as many boats as you like, but I would want everything I
need in the boat with ME.

> I hadn't thought about before but I think if you've got
> people willing to
> provide theirsperm and ova so that other people can have kids
> I don't see why
> this should become
> anymore of a problem if your giving it so humans can spread
> off this planet and
> secure
> the future of the human race.

Well, there is the problem. Getting people to donate their genetic
information for the use of strangers has not proven to be very attractive.
And as someone pointed out, the female settlers still have to give birth to
the chlordane. Their will have to be several paradigm shifts in our way of
thinking first.

> Your correct having separate ships that depend on each other
> but why notones
> that don't ? Surely it'd been easier to design and build
> several smaller
> ship than one large one ?

I didn't suggest several ships that depend upon one another. I stated that
each ship should be totally self sufficient.

> I think the original Pathfinder was too small but the idea is
> sound. I think the
> Explorer
> doesn't account for advances in computer technology and AI
> properly I hold my
> view
> that it is too large for inital exploration purposes. It's
> the sort of ship we'd
> all love to build,
> a do-anything ship.

Well, this is where we get to opinions I suppose. I was trying to be
compromising. Kelly is assuming that I will require the vast resources of an
Explorer class vessel to catalog a new system sufficiently for potential
colonization and he may be right. I think that AI will make a great inroad
into the amount of human oversight that is required, but that AI will not be
sufficiently versatile to handle unknown or unknowable situations. You are
finding the need for humans to be just a little greater than I do and less
than Kelly does.

Lee