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

[Stephen Harley <stephen.harley@dial.pipex.com>]

L. Parker wrote:

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

Thanks Lee I do try to keep myself on the right side of the thin line
thatdevides genius from insanity.

> > -----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.
>

We'll you can have everything you need to support you, remember my Explorerwould
have most people in "deep sleep" or "suspended animation" if possible, so more
room for supplies. And since your not going to need all that explorational junk
Kelly
wants to haul half way across the galaxy, I'd have sent a 75 person ship to do
that
before hand.

I'm not suggesting we send all out people out on one ship and put the reactors
and
food on another. And besides if you got on the ship you knew the deal and the
risks,
if you arrive on the planet, set up camp and it looks like after your the only
lot coming
then don't have children.

This would have to be explained to colonists, they must know what they are doing

carries no money back warenty. These people must be prepared to die in space
before
they reach their destination. Back when thousands of people we're emmigrating
from
Europe to America the many colonists would die on the voyage because of poor
conditions but these people were brave enough to go anyway.

And as for politics I'd like to see any government explain to it's electorate
that it
was abandoning one thousand of its citizens to die who they put on a remote
planet in
another solar system. My view is that any government that ended a program that
had gone
that far would either have to be of a country in dire straits (quite a
turn-around in a year
from being able to send out a starship to perform the greatest mission mankind
ever
embarked upon.) or not care that next term they're going to get thrown out of
government and replaced by another one. (one which will probably reinstate the
program.) I'm not saying it's impossible for the program to be canceled and you
left to die but at the very least its highly unlikely. If it was 100 people not
1000 then
I'd agree you could explain that away, almost.

> > 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.

Yeah but money makes the world go round offer enough hard cash for sperm &
ovaand you'll be beating them off with a stick. It would nolonger be donation
it'd
be a sale which will benefit mankind.

> 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.
>

I'm sure we can find 1000 highly intelligent colonists who also happen to
befanatics ;-) either that or we revert to treating women as property. Oopps,
I've just gone over the line into insanity. Or have I ?

> > 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

--
stephen.harley@dial.pipex.com
http://ds.dial.pipex.com/s.harley/