Re: starship-design: Bugs again

[Timothy van der Linden <Shealiak@XS4ALL.nl>]

Jon,

>I must say, I trust these "10 year olds" would be by themselves, meaning
>a single group of bacteria. "Parents" would imply another stronger party,
>or another kind of bacteria. Being a relative is a possibility, but I
>doubt one bacteria would consciously help another defeat a third.

Hmmm, it some of my words have had more influence than others.
Let me try again: I did not intend to suggest that bacteria would help each
other. I meant to say that while species A cannot win from B, and B cannot
win from C, it does not mean that C always wins from A.
The mathematical A<B and B<C thus A<C does not hold. It could very well be
that A does have an attack mechanism that B does not have, yet B may be
able to protect itself adequately against A but not against C.

Now an example without A,B and C:

Suppose that among the normal children, some kids have a weapon that does
not work well against other children, but only against larger beings.
While normally these children will have a small disadvantage compared to
normal children (eg. because they have to drag along the weapon all the
time), their fate may change quickly once the other children are attacked
by say a wrestler.

Since there will be many kinds of bacteria in a relative small area, the
alien bacteria will have to be able to resist and conquer a lot of them
before it can say to have established a relative save/large enough
population size.

Timothy