Re: Realistic Fleet sizes

In message <Pine.OSF.3.95.970920162345.3093C-100000@ccins.camosun.bc.ca>
	  Brian Burger <burger00@camosun.bc.ca> wrote:

> Only problem is that no one colony world will have this level of
> population.

Let's stick some numbers in. We'll assume the oldest colony
worlds have had a hundred years in which to grow up a
population.

  Growth    After 100yrs     Equivalent to...
  0.1%	    x1.1	     Approx UK
  1%	    x2.7	     Approx USA
  2%	    x7		     Third world
  3%	    x19 	     Third world
  4%	    x50 	     About highest I could find.

Colonists are going to be reasonably high tech (so low
death rates), but have few reasons for extensive birth
control, so growth rates may well be high.

Also, Earth is probably overburdened with population
when the new colony worlds open up, so very possibly
tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of
people will move to colony worlds.

Even with a initial population of one million, and a 4%
growth rate, there will be only fifty million people on
the world after a hundred years.

Billions seem unlikely. If we wanted populations of
billions, we could argue for it, by either having
very high birth rates (10% gives x13780 after a century,
which takes a starting population of 100 thousand up
to 1.3 billion), or massive outflux of population
from Earth.

I think the largest worlds will have populations
in the millions, rather than billions.

-- 
Be seeing you,
Sam.