RE: B Ark Colonist and Colonial Industry... [LONG[

A colony is unlikely to have all the population concentrated in a small
area.  A good chunk will be devoted to transportation - raw materials
and goods.  Another will be devoted to making infrastructure - roads,
pipelines, electrical transmission.  Another chunk will be devoted to
straight construction - buildings, factories, apartments, houses.  Think
of how long it would take to generate enough single-family housing for
10,000 people, let alone hundreds of thousands.  Admittedly most will be
in barrack type apartments for the first few years.  Then there are
thousands of consumer goods - pen/pencil/electronic stylus, clothing,
shoes, eyeglasses, gloves, tires for vehicles, windows, drinking
glasses, plates, oven/cooking/heating appliance, lightbulbs, food
packaging, water containers, refrigeration units, doors, flashlights,
basic tools,  plastic fasteners, zippers/velcro, tooth brushes, comm
units, etc. etc.  Even if each item only requires one person to operate
the machin!
 e, chances are you want to run them 24/7 to meet demand and so you
probably need 3 shifts, or 3 people per machine.  Add in supervisiors
for direction, truck driver to bring in supplies, people to warehouse
finished and raw materials, distribution of goods (merchants or stores)
then an infrastructure to maintain all that (mechanics, handymen to
replace light bulbs, clean up crews to keep the streets and buildings
clean)	you can probably imagine a huge number of people involved.  

Paving a single lane road probably involves dozens of people between the
surveying, grading, laying down of pavment and such. If you can lay a
few miles a day, it would still take years to lay enough to provide
coverage on a medium (100,000 person) city, unless they all lived in
sky-rises.  Alternatively you could have dozens of teams working at the
same time.

In addition, a population of 250,000 assuming 1st generation colonists
would be about 60%  to 80% work capable - the rest being disabled or too
young to do meaningful work, this leaves you a work pool of only 150,000
to 200,000 workers.  A later colony will have a decrease in working
population due to the aging of the population and probably a temporary
decline due to a baby boom once initial conditions have stabilized.  The
baby boom would draw some females out of the pool during pregnancy and
unless there is some sort of creche or community day care, if a family
had more than two kids, it would seem to be more cost effective for home
care.  If there is a creche or community day care, then a portion of the
population is employed in this care, taking away from manufacturing or
technical postions.

Then there are basic services - medical, you probably need a doctor for
every 1,000 or 5,000 people: 50-250 doctors; a hospital or two or three
- probably one nurse or medical technician for every 10 beds, figure
enough bed capacity for a large outbreak - 1000 beds, another 100
nurses/techs times a fraction of three shifts for critical care units -
maybe 150 total.  Administrators, maintenance, and such another 20-30
people.

Fire department/security - probably need 1 unit per 1000 housing units
with multiple units converging on larger fires (i.e. a 4 or 5 alarm
fire)  Each unit would require 3-4 full time personnel with another 3-4
volunteers.  Assume each housing unit holds 8 people - 250,000 people
occupy 31,250 units or 32 firefighting units - another 120 full time
personnel.  Security is probably at a simlar level with 1 security unit
per 1000 housing units, assume a 2 man team, two and half shifts per day
= 160 men plus administrative, mechanical support and other associated
personnel.

Emergency transport - ambulance service - probably could be serviced by
10 or 20 teams total, but must be maintained 24/7 so count them as a
three man team times 3 shifts - another 180 personnel plus maintenance
for their vehicles.

Education - assuming a low student to teacher ratio - 1:20 or 1:15,
assuming education lasts a total of 17 years to the equivalent of a
bachelors degree, if 20% of the population is school aged that equates
to 50,000 kids then 2,500 people will be involved in teaching positions. 

If there are continuing education courses (the ultimate distance
learning via FTL transmissions) then another portion of the work force
is going to be involved in education.

Research and advanced education: A portion of the resources of the
colony are going to be directed at understanding the planet they are on:
the ecology, the geology, hydrology, meterology and such.  It would be
unlikely that the colonizers had the luxury of observing and studying
the planet for decades before moving in. Lessons from other planets may
or may not be of use in colonizing the new one and so research into the
geological formations, the weather patterns or water flows would be
useful in locating new areas for exploitation.	Even if experienced
geologists, meterologists, hydrologists, biologists and chemists arrive
in the first load, you can't expect new ones to show up every 5 to ten
years and must train your own.	This requires an institution of higher
learning that allows further research into these fields.  Figure a
hundred or so personnel allocated on a rotating basis to teach their
skills in an "advanced" class.

Then there is entertainment: Figure 1 bar per 5000 people - that's 50
bars.  Assume half a dozen personnel to run and stock the bar - that's
another 300 people used.  Then there is the whole alcohol industry with
manufacture, transport and storage.  If the city is large enough, there
might be a local TV/Tri-D station that outputs news, movies, educational
programs.  Figure another 100 people involved with that.

Infrastructure maintenance: City engineers, water treatment plant
operators, waste technicians etc.  Someone has to maintain the roads,
pipes, haul trash, change street lights etc.  Figure about 1000 people
on three shifts to do continual maintenance.  This assumes that it
doesn't snow in the city.

It takes quite a lot to run a city and you tend to get more overhead as
it gets larger - i.e organizing 10 people to do a job requires less than
1/10 the effort to organize 100 people.  So as communities get larger
and larger, you are going to get a higher percentage of administrative
personnel.

So the bulk of jobs are going to be raw material extraction,
transportation, manufacture, distribution and the remainder are going to
be the infrastructure to support these areas.

--Binhan
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ryan Gill [mailto:rmgill@mindspring.com]
> Sent: Friday, February 01, 2002 1:06 PM
> To: gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu
> Subject: B Ark Colonist and Colonial Industry...
> 
> 
> Something that occurred to me when I was discussing this thread with 
> Randy at work a little while ago.
> 
> If you have a plant that can make Chips, robot tractors, laser guns 
> and anything else. What are your colonist doing? Given the current 
> technology with regards to  farming and the decrease in the 
> requirement for manual labor, I don't see massive food production 
> taking that much human labor. Even if it stays where we are now, its 
> still not much of a fraction of the pop of a 250,000 number colony.
> 
> What are they all doing? Sanitizing telephones and making 
> documentaries about each other? I guess, you could have lots of 
> security guards...
> --
> Ryan Gill	    |	     |	       rmgill@mindspring.com
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>