GZG Colonies - was RE: Re: [GZG] RE: Colonial tech level [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

>From my understanding of history, there were two basic reasons for
colonies - economic exploitation, and political/religious/criminal
dissent.

Economic colonies are founded with the idea that a large population/tech
base is needed to harvest/mine/extract the local resources, and that
such resources have sufficient value to justify the creation of a colony
- otherwise you'd just have a remote minehead, farm or factory.  The
founding country or company is willing to put sufficient investment in
terms of personnel, skills, equipment/tech to make the colony work.

Political/religious/criminal colonies are formed to get rid of a
population that is too difficult to manage at home.  The government or
corporation views it as a politically/economically viable method to get
rid of dissidents in a "morally acceptable" manner.  Why spent time and
effort imprisoning people at home, when you can send them away.  The
home governments/corporations may or may not have much incentive to
provide appropriate technology/skills/personnel to make a viable colony.
In some cases, with political or religious dissidents, they may be able
to raise their own funds to provide them with the best skills and tech.

I would think that in the future, a weight limit of 25 kg per person for
"personal effects" would be reasonable.  Things like personal memory
cubes, holographs, data storage devices, fancy clothes or jewelry.
Things like basic clothes, furniture, basic equipment and tools would be
fabricated on demand and not count against a person's personal limit.
Even with 20,000 colonists at 25 kg each, you're only talking 500 metric
tons of goods.

Things like basic clothes, dishes, small tools etc would probably be
made from some type of recyclable, extruded plastic or polymer that
simply gets tossed into the recycle bin after use or when it's broken to
be re-extruded/re-manufactured when needed.

Gear that would be need to be hauled would probably be things like
construction equipment and parts - trucks, bulldozers, cement plants,
graders, cranes - and those items aren't light.  Initial housing will
probably be pre-fab type structures - something along of the lines of
expanded foam sandwiched between 2cm layers of sprayed on concrete.  So
a large supply of liquid foam base would be needed to be transported.
In addition, key buildings will probably need metal support struts that
would also need to be transported (unless you are cannibalizing your
transport ship).

Power plant, water treatment, food processing will also need to be
transported, unless, once again you cannibalize your ship.

There might be two type of colonization ships - ones that are planetary
landing capable, and may carry only a thousand people plus
accommodations for them that they can live out of for the first few
years, and larger "bulk transports" that haul tens of thousands of
people between the stars and depend on shuttle or smaller atmospheric
ships to shuttle people and equipment from orbit to the surface.

--Binhan

-----Original Message-----
From: gzg-l-bounces+lin=rxkinetix.com@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
[mailto:gzg-l-bounces+lin=rxkinetix.com@lists.csua.berkeley.edu] On
Behalf Of laserlight@verizon.net
Sent: Thursday, May 11, 2006 8:50 AM
To: gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
Subject: Re: Re: [GZG] RE: Colonial tech level [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

>From: john tailby
>Colonies will have the small amount of high tech gear that the colony
ship can carry.

I'm sure that there will be studies on "given a ship with 1,000,000 ton
capacity, how much should be devoted to colonists and how much to gear?"
There's no particular reason it should be "every colonist gets one
suitcase of gear".

And bear in mind that colonies won't necessarily be started just for the
sake of founding a colony. It's at least as likely that they'll be put
in place to exploit a resource, eg a mining camp, and the "self
sustaining" part will grow up around it.

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