Re: [GZG] FTverse colinies

Beth,

Great email! I never expected that someone of your caliber was working
this problem... I'm a bit intimidated.

I did have some questions about your model. (I also skimmed the
archives also so I could see the context.)

* First, you project a population of nearly 34 billion for Earth in
2188. The UN population projections I saw when I was taking Human
Geography as an undergrad said that the current thinking is that the
population would level off at about 12 billion in the next couple
decades and remain flat. In much of the EU, they said the population
is actually already declining. What kinds of assumptions are they
making that make their results come out so differently?

* Do you make allowances for differing start dates for interstellar
expansion? I'm a business student by trade, but your numbers look
roughly like the outcome of a compound interest expansion. Time
becomes more important than income in those scenarios, so I'm
wondering if that applies to population growth, too. If that is the
case, then the question of how the NI competes efficiently with the IF
is pretty easy to answer: the NI's early work developing FTL meant
they were early in the space race. The IF, whether for cultural,
political, strategic, industrial or technological reasons, got into
the space game late.

* One area where I *might* have enough expertise to add something is
in the economics of migration. I've done a fair amount of business
modeling, and we know from FB1 how much a colony ship can hold, what
it costs, and what a typical ship's lifetime is. So with some
assumptions about what the colonist : infrastructure tonnage ratio
might be and an estimate for operating costs, I might be able to
estimate how economically feasible the project is, which could feed
into your assumptions about ease of colonization. *(It might also be
useful for determining the volume of interstellar commerce and how
economically viable piracy is.)

Rob

On Fri, May 2, 2008 at 10:47 PM,  <Beth.Fulton@csiro.au> wrote:
> G'day guys,
>
>  For what its worth here is an old email containing rough population
>  numbers, from some simple population models (one sex, simple
immigration
>  and epidemic model components with shifting carrying capacity tied to
>  planet type, tech level and infrastructure investment). Its possible
to
>  refine them based on a two-sex model with metapopulation migration,
but
>  despite that being on my "to-do list" for more than a year now I have
>  had a serious lack of time to get it up and going. Now if I could
>  justify giving the coding to my grad students as a class exercise it
may
>  well get done before I retire ;)
>
>  Cheers
>
>  Beth
>
>  -----Original Message-----
>  From: Beth.Fulton@csiro.au [mailto:Beth.Fulton@csiro.au]
>  Sent: Sunday, 8 September 2002 11:42 PM
>  To: gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu
>  Subject: Population Models
>
>  G'day,
>
>  I did up some more numbers. These are still rough, but they're a bit
>  more
>  polished than the last lot.
>
>  Low estimate (space travel is restricted, terraforming is a slow
>  process,
>  society suffers from the aging problem and AIDS etc, though I skipped
>  major
>  natural disasters, a collapse of the ecosphere due to mismanagement
and
>  a
>  full on population crunch as I don't think we'd have time/economies
left
>  to
>  turn to the stars so quickly in that case)
>	    EARTH      OFFWORLD       TOTAL
>  ESU	  1.1 billion	 7 million     1.107 billion
>  FSE	  167 million	 4.5 million   171.5 million
>  NAC	  838 million	 8 million     846 million
>  NSL	  115 million	 8.5 million   123.5 million
>  UN*	  286 million	 1.5 million   287.5 million
>  FCT	  25 million	 285,000       25.29 million
>  IC	  505 million	 300,000       505.3 million
>  IF	  640 million	 400,000       640.4 million
>  JAP	  120 million	 260,000       120.26 million
>  KNG	  15.5 million	 30,000        15.53 million
>  LLAR   Nil		 425,000       425,000
>  NI	  Nil		 180,000       180,000
>  OU	  29 million	 225,000       29.23 million
>  PAU	  195 million	 304,000       195.3 million
>  RH	  23 million	 86,000        23.09 million
>  SK	  Nil		 194,000       194,000
>  SWISS  5.2 million	 225,000       5.43 million
>
>  TOTAL  4.06 billion	 32.4 million  4.09 billion
>
>  * Read this as = a lot of the rest of humanity for now
>
>
>  Middle estimate (pretty middle of the road on all assumptions)
>	    EARTH      OFFWORLD       TOTAL
>  ESU	  4.9 billion	 2.1 billion   7 billion
>  FSE	  344 million	 738 million   1.08 billion
>  NAC	  7.4 billion	 2.15 billion  9.55 billion
>  NSL	  378 million	 490 million   868 million
>  UN*	  958.5 million  250 million   1.2 billion
>  FCT	  143.3 million  7.2 million   150.5 million
>  IC	  717.5 million  56.7 million  774.2 million
>  IF	  1.02 billion	 25.6 million  1.05 billion
>  JAP	  196 million	 15 million    211 million
>  KNG	  20.5 million	 2.4 million   22.9 million
>  LLAR   Nil		 54 million    54 million
>  NI	  Nil		 15.7 million  15.7 million
>  OU	  40 million	 20.4 million  60.4 million
>  PAU	  602.5 million  81.4 million  683.9 million
>  RH	  46.6 million	 22.6 million  69.2 million
>  SK	  Nil		 10.6 million  10.6 million
>  SWISS  11.1 million	 10.9 million  22 million
>
>  TOTAL  15.8 billion	 6.0 billion  22.8 billion
>
>
>  High estimate (you would have to be able to pack them into ships like
>  sardines, have fleets on constant turn around to garden planets and
>  figure
>  out how to have artificial wombs or multiple births or huge support
>  system
>  to get this one done)
>	    EARTH      OFFWORLD       TOTAL
>  ESU	  9.8 billion	 7 billion     16.8 billion
>  FSE	  1.2 billion	 4 billion     5.2 billion
>  NAC	  11.05 billion  7.6 billion   18.65 billion
>  NSL	  845 million	 4 billion     4.85 billion
>  UN*	  3 billion	 875 million   3.88 billion
>  FCT	  419 million	 440 million   859 million
>  IC	  1.6 billion	 2 billion     3.6 billion
>  IF	  2.4 billion	 3 billion     5.4 billion
>  JAP	  430 million	 610 million   1.04 billion
>  KNG	  75 million	 20 million    95 million
>  LLAR   Nil		 348 million   348 million
>  NI	  Nil		 60 million    60 million
>  OU	  88 million	 545 million   633 million
>  PAU	  2.6 billion	 568 million   3.17 billion
>  RH	  295 million	 275 million   570 million
>  SK	  Nil		 54 million    54 million
>  SWISS  132 million	 100 million   232 million
>
>  TOTAL  33.9 billion	31.5 billion  65.4 billion
>
>  As to the question about the inner systems I assumed they were split
>  between
>  all of humanity, but weighted towards the larger nations which
started
>  FTL
>  flights early rather than later.
>
>  Cheers
>
>  Beth
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Robert Mayberry
(678) 984-5113
Robert.Mayberry@gmail.com

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