How to quickly survey an exoplanet before colonization?

[Czcibor]

no or very few books.

I thought about main data back up device something like: http://www.mdisc.com/what-is-mdisc/

3D printer
raw metals and plastics

Shouldn't I mostly go mass production way, Ford model T approach?

genetically modified seeds that are programmed to grow into housing.

I go the cheap way -land there where climate is hot enough. And build there a simple shelter for start using local wood.

Algea
If printed meat is available then bring that along

I opt rifle and hunting for megafuna.

2 female animals of whatever you want and a number of embryos to imediately implant on landing
A good supply of power, probably to last a year.

I thought about a small herd for start (a few baby females and one baby male), plus drop in some high mountains package with frozen semen.

Everything else should be able to be made from those or quickly found. Depending on how much raw material and how many 3D printers you have as well as whether the seeds take to the ground or not determines how quickly you'll progress, but barring no one being utterly stupid or some catastrophe like i mentioned earlier you should would be pretty well set to have at least our western level of comfort at present in a few years if not a year, mainly owing to the fact that it takes time to mine out the raw resources and you probably aren't going to bring too many heavy machines to do it.

You might be wondering about the algea and where are the food crops... Simple Algea is the food crops. Seeds aren't garanteed where as algea can be mass produced fairly easily and in any environment we're going to live in. Seeds are a 2nd+ wave thing. First wave you'd not bring that. You'd bring the animals along for various reasons, such as food and source of power and transportation. Without the animals things would go slower, but they're aren't a necessity as on a habitable planet there probably is already animals of sort and likely could be used in the same way.

Aren't algae to complicated to grow? Comparing to simple plants?

Also... as far as phones and stuff, those would likely be mandatory and brought with you made to be more rugged and long lived. You may not have an "iPhone" but you're at least going to have some form of commucation and probably a public computer of some sort that you can access.

I was thinking about in long run producing one, proper ;) model of processor. And put one core to mobile phones, while make computers just a 8 core processor, while mainframes just more of such 8 core processors on a single main board and bundling such main boards together. Whatever needs computation power - would in long run to use this.

 

[Czcibor]

Anyway, I assume the following approach. Drop people:
- in hotter climate
- at a drainage basin of a big river, to allow water transport
- put them more or less spread to avoid over hunting
- first towns would have to be provided with food from outside (dry this meat and sent it to us by boat)
- within a few years, when there is less roaming around sources of meat, but harvest is good enough, organize moving population into some industrial center, surrounded by fields
- leave outside this center only natural resources extraction settlement (mines, dams, forestry, etc.)

 

[wabbit]

Um, they have an empty planet to evade taxes.

Something that was not available in Americas or Australia, because they did have native humans.

There was no progressive tax during the setlement era I thought, or at least none that applied to new colonies?

 

[Durakken]

I thought about main data back up device something like: http://www.mdisc.com/what-is-mdisc/

Why wouldn't you have a central server with all the data stored on it built into the ship? It's not like it takes a lot of space or power to run... also you need to do this anyways since you're going to want to use that data and to do that you need something to run it on. Plus with this specific thing you want redundancy so you actually want at least 2 servers with the same data and possibly a separate backup stored data somewhere, that is hyper secure. The disc you're proposing on the other hand is liable to be broken or need as much space if not more as a server to make sure it is protected... and then you have to build something to run it on.

Shouldn't I mostly go mass production way, Ford model T approach?

No. Electricity will be easier to come by than raw material and raw material is wasted in mass production...plus you don't have the population for such a thing.

I go the cheap way -land there where climate is hot enough. And build there a simple shelter for start using local wood.

It's not cheaper in reality, because the time it takes to harvest, work, and building the simple cabins all is precious time that you should avoid taking up, where as bringing along these seeds takes only the amount of time it takes to grow them, plus operate as a type of canary in the coal mine of sorts for the land. If they don't grow you know you might have a problem.

Also, I'd use all the trees to create paper and start printing books before using them for housing with this set up to cut down on power and have yet another back up of important data.

I opt rifle and hunting for megafuna.

Animals might not be edible ^.^ Also again, this takes away from defenses and such which should be avoided as much as possible.

I thought about a small herd for start (a few baby females and one baby male), plus drop in some high mountains package with frozen semen.

Whatever you bring you do you should bring as many live females as possible, because semen can easily be kept on ice. I say bring some embryos because that also lowers the space and increases the speed at which you can have more, but I'd also bring semen too.

Aren't algae to complicated to grow? Comparing to simple plants?

Not as far as I know. I'd have to look into it more, but last time I checked it was recommended for its high nutrition value + high storagability + high farmability.

I was thinking about in long run producing one, proper ;) model of processor. And put one core to mobile phones, while make computers just a 8 core processor, while mainframes just more of such 8 core processors on a single main board and bundling such main boards together. Whatever needs computation power - would in long run to use this.

As I pointed out earlier you're going to have a computer or two along anyways and if you know about PC power trends what you're thinking of currently is beyond archaic if you set it around 2050 or further. The processing power difference... well let's just say we don't have a name in SI for the FLOPS/Hrz that we'll be seeing then. That is to say it is orders of magnitude above what you're likely imagining. There is no reason to think that these colonist wouldn't have tablets that are superior to probably any computer today or take it with them. They serve as extra back up and they'd not take up much power. If they did they could just be turned off for only important use... and not to mention they could by linked to make any even faster computer.

I would count on every colonist to have a tablet, especially if it's going to take a decently long time to get to the planet. They are low energy, low space, education devices that would keep people from going nuts.

 

[wabbit]

One more thing they should quicly do is study native flora - if the fauna is edible the flora is likely to be as well, perhaps with some specific cooking methods required to get rid of toxins. The seeds from Earth might turn out to be hard to grow on that planet, yet an abundant and diverse supply of local plants could turn out to complement that perfectly.

 

[snorkack]

Anyway, I assume the following approach. Drop people:
- in hotter climate
- at a drainage basin of a big river, to allow water transport
- put them more or less spread to avoid over hunting
- first towns would have to be provided with food from outside (dry this meat and sent it to us by boat)

What are they getting for it?

- within a few years, when there is less roaming around sources of meat, but harvest is good enough, organize moving population into some industrial center, surrounded by fields
- leave outside this center only natural resources extraction settlement (mines, dams, forestry, etc.)

What is the population going to gain by leaving the remaining hunting and moving into the industrial center?

 

[Durakken]

btw... once you have competent space travel there is no reason to even remotely think of colonizing in this way.
Mass produce ships that are 1 to 2 km in width and length, load it with a power supply, a couple thousand colonists, raw materials, and send it to the planet.
Then you land a significant chunk of the colony ship on the planet which you use for the colony. If we have advanced to the point of having cable that can do it, you design the colony ship as a space station/anchor for a space elevator that you set up with your landing.

Once you have that the only thing you need to do likely is build a sewer system and power station on the ground maybe. Then as people get tired of living on the ship or want to expand or want to start business enterprises they slowly set up cities and such expanding from this base, but really there is no need to because all the stuff would be self contained on the ship to begin with, but there are always adventurous and curious that would go do it.

Another reason people might do it is to get away from people as they do now... build somewhere out in the wild away from the base colony.
And really any materials that would be needed to do that would be fairly easy to come by and 3d printers would be as well so the only reason people "colonize" in the way people envision is some huge tragedy where we're not really competent to do this or it's just some schmuck off on his own with a few people doing it because they want to more so than any hopes of setting up a permanent settlement. In that case they'd test the aggorcultural ability, but after that they'd like rough it because they're that type of person and not care to try to get up to high tech civ level.

 

[Czcibor]

What are they getting for it?

-money for paying tax (At start everyone is expected to pay head tax - no wealth differences, no possibility of using anything more advanced)
-goods in exchange (maybe at start in form of contract for being delivered the stuff when its finally produced)
-shares of a new factory (It wasn't me who called the system as communism ;) )

As last resort gov has access to the most of high tech stuff that were transported and finance itself from renting them.

What is the population going to gain by leaving the remaining hunting and moving into the industrial center?

Better employment opportunities. If that is not good enough, then as last resort gov would try to finance such resettling.

Durraken: Unfortunately I use teleports not ships.

 

[Czcibor]

One more thing they should quicly do is study native flora - if the fauna is edible the flora is likely to be as well, perhaps with some specific cooking methods required to get rid of toxins. The seeds from Earth might turn out to be hard to grow on that planet, yet an abundant and diverse supply of local plants could turn out to complement that perfectly.

The only plant that I found online that can grow with 24h of light (yes, tidal lock) is marijuana. But I hope that other plants can survive that too, just no one tries :D
I thought about the same, including also domestication of local animals. For sure it should be tried. However, there is only one serious drawback. Time needed - to do it well.

Russians needed 50 years to domesticate fox:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox

If so many years are needed - then it would not matter in crucial days of the colony. But I should include a few of such organisms in latter days.

 

[Durakken]

Durraken: Unfortunately I use teleports not ships.

So you have a 2 way teleportation system? If not you're not getting any taxes.
Assuming this is the case there is no reason even think of this as colonization at all because you can just teleport all the materials at will as needed and level all the land as much as you want. You don't even have to worry about treaties, borders, or any type of zoning because no one lives there yet.

You could build New York in a decade with such a set up, probably quicker too considering you just have to level the land which easier than leveling a building and clearing it out. The only real cost is whatever launch vehicle you use to launch the satellites into orbit which would be pretty cheap as you could send tons of them at once and have them set up orbits that allow for communication and surveying in a matter of however long it'd take you to build the site and get favorable weather.

If you're looking for where to teleport and drop these people, humans pretty much spread and then consolidated into 7 (possibly 8) major areas with the major land features being rivers/valleys. Finding such areas is not hard as stand out like a sore thumb, being that you just look for mountains and then find the largest river that flows in the water shed they create. You don't need to look at tectonics or anything else because such places are created by them not having the problem that you'd look for for those.

So yeah, with teleportation and trying to go from 0 to modern if you were to really tryng to do this I'd guess you could build several New York level city colonies in about 1 or 2 decades that stable and self sustaining. As far as surveying. That I'd put at taking no more than a year depending on the teleportation abilities and the weather of the planet, but assuming its a friendly enough place to be doing this at all on it shouldn't even take that long.

 

[mfb]

Shouldn't I mostly go mass production way, Ford model T approach?

You probably still want a 3D printer for more several parts.

I opt rifle and hunting for megafuna.

It is completely unclear if there are things you can eat, hunt, or digest at all. I would not rely on that.

Aren't algae to complicated to grow? Comparing to simple plants?

Algae are very easy to grow.

As model I assumed modified logistic function, with in long run increasing the limit. I assumed that losses caused by lack of scale economics, are being compensated by ultra high saving rate, good but ruthless governance and brutal elimination of any inefficiencies. (keeping person in prison for years is ineffective, punishing with electroshock not ;) ). Conclusion for such model was a poor first world in not much more than 25 years. Not bad.

Not bad, but also unrealistic. The semiconductor industry including all other industries that are necessary employs much more than 1 million people. You cannot produce a smartphone from scratch (including mining and so on) even if you carefully select 1 million people on Earth and give them access to everything we have built here on earth. On a different planet? Forget it for generations, until your population is up and you have enough free ressources (e. g. not necessary for food production and other vital things) to focus on high-tech.

 

[Czcibor]

So you have a 2 way teleportation system? If not you're not getting any taxes.
Assuming this is the case there is no reason even think of this as colonization at all because you can just teleport all the materials at will as needed and level all the land as much as you want.

Not as good. One time chance to teleport limited amount of stuff (humans, equipment, medication, etc.) from Earth

You don't even have to worry about treaties, borders, or any type of zoning because no one lives there yet.

Yes, I see the advantages of this part

If you're looking for where to teleport and drop these people, humans pretty much spread and then consolidated into 7 (possibly 8) major areas with the major land features being rivers/valleys. Finding such areas is not hard as stand out like a sore thumb, being that you just look for mountains and then find the largest river that flows in the water shed they create. You don't need to look at tectonics or anything else because such places are created by them not having the problem that you'd look for for those.

I've seen generally papers showing, that bigger cities tend to be more productive (yes, many million metropolises especially). Why do you think I shall spread those people in towns of 100k each?

You don't need to look at tectonics or anything else because such places are created by them not having the problem that you'd look for for those.

May you rephrase/explain?

 

[wabbit]

The only plant that I found online that can grow with 24h of light (yes, tidal lock) is marijuana. But I hope that other plants can survive that too, just no one tries :D
I thought about the same, including also domestication of local animals. For sure it should be tried. However, there is only one serious drawback. Time needed - to do it well.

Russians needed 50 years to domesticate fox:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox

If so many years are needed - then it would not matter in crucial days of the colony. But I should include a few of such organisms in latter days.

True - but before domestication, they can start gathering plants and trying them out - if they landed in a mediterannean desert island (or even better in some tropical island) they might find edible plants they can just pick up in the wild, and then work on domestication etc. - this goves them a chance to survive if their imported seeds don't grow too well, or starts out fine but is suddenly wiped out by a disease, like it happened to some crops on earth.
Survival would be a greater concern to me if I was there, than computers and books : )

And if no local flora is edible (unfortunately this seems likely), i d be pretty confident the fauna isn't either (the fauna is just processed flora) - bad news, odds of long term survival are lower, but then they have no choice but to rely on imported seeds and livestock (though large livestock is inefficient, i would suggst insects instead).
It might be a good idea to bring in Earth soil samples or at least a good variety of bacteria, funghi, worms etc. - without these imported plants might find it hard to strive locally.

 

[Durakken]

Not as good. One time chance to teleport limited amount of stuff (humans, equipment, medication, etc.) from Earth

How much stuff?
If you are talking about different locations then it is not a one time teleport.
Also this idea of taxes makes no sense within a non-two way system

I've seen generally papers showing, that bigger cities tend to be more productive (yes, many million metropolises especially). Why do you think I shall spread those people in towns of 100k each?

I have no idea what such a paper would mean by "productive" as I hardly think of churning out millions of built in obsolete widgits being built as "productive" nor do I see how one could fairly make that assessment that it is a population number given that it's where all the factories with heavy machines to produce those widgits are... on the other hand compare that to the relatively low population of farmer who do a productive thing such as feed the world many times over, using that as a metric low population wins out.

But if we look at how humans spread and all like that we generally like to be in groups of 250 to 500 max and divide along those lines So if you're looking for the most productive one might plan some sort of built in system of division that feeds into a center used for trade between these groups while trade within the groups are done in their own area.

May you rephrase/explain?

Where rivers that you'd be looking for form is where mountains form. Those mountains are the type that form when they're pushed up due to tectonic activity. In other words. If you are in a river valley like the ones you're looking for you're most likely not going to near a fault line as the fault line is on the other side of the mountains. Likewise if you're in a river valley you have mountains around and mountains are where ore has been pushed to the surface. River Valleys are also often protected from sea level rise for the most part and because mountains are protected from most harsh weather.[/quote][/QUOTE]

 

[mfb]

You probably want to feed the local life (if present at all) to your other animals first before humans try it.

Survival would be a greater concern to me if I was there, than computers and books : )

Conservation of knowledge in tons of different areas should not be neglected. This knowledge can help to survive.

 

[Czcibor]

You probably still want a 3D printer for more several parts.

Presumably, for short series, but I think they are quite slow.

Not bad, but also unrealistic. The semiconductor industry including all other industries that are necessary employs much more than 1 million people. You cannot produce a smartphone from scratch (including mining and so on) even if you carefully select 1 million people on Earth and give them access to everything we have built here on earth. On a different planet? Forget it for generations, until your population is up and you have enough free ressources (e. g. not necessary for food production and other vital things) to focus on high-tech.

I have a feeling that you a trying to convince me that it's impossible to produce mobiles the way as we do with a smaller population. I fully agree with that. The problem is whether some different production methods are possible. I especially mean cutting corners, accepting uniform, simpler, bulky products, etc.

(I remember reading a study concerning that in case of running out of copper, it would be necessary to rely on aluminium cables, which just wouldn't be so good. I think in similar line, of making some cheap substitutes)

Do you think that more than a few years would be necessary to get food production in order and free over 90% population for industry and services? (developed countries now use something like 2% of population for agriculture, and here because of extensive use of land in long run even less should be needed)

 

[wabbit]

You probably want to feed the local life (if present at all) to your other animals first before humans try it.
Conservation of knowledge in tons of different areas should not be neglected. This knowledge can help to survive.

Agreed on both : ) robust, low maintenance ways of keeping that knowledge stored and accessible would be a very valuable thing to bring from earth. But still, the chances of survival aren t that great, and if you are in a sinking boat and throwing some of your books overboard is what it takes yo survive...

 

[wabbit]

Do you think that more than a few years would be necessary to get food production in order and free over 90% population for industry and services? (developed countries now use something like 2% of population for agriculture, and here because of extensive use of land in long run even less should be needed)

Developed countries rely on agricultural machinery, fertilizers etc, and the industries behind that. These will take time to establish. Perhaps the percent of farmers in the early days of settlement of the western US is a better guide.

Also mass production is an advanced stage of development. With 1M you might need in many case s to get by with small scale factories / workshops.

 

[Czcibor]

You probably want to feed the local life (if present at all) to your other animals first before humans try it.
Conservation of knowledge in tons of different areas should not be neglected. This knowledge can help to survive.

I wondered about preserving knowledge. How big would be all useful knowledge that you can quickly backup?

I mean one book (plain text) as I found is assumed to have 1/4 of MB. So on one M-disk (I selected it because it looks good enough, but presumably if google well, there would be better sources). So on one such disc 4 * 25 *10^6= 100 mln plain textbooks. According wiki, US Congress Library has merely 23 mln books. (yes, I know some pictures, would ruin such calculation, but it still would not be bad) For me it means that one can easily also back up all StarTrek movies and Mormon genealogical database. Or create some redundancy by making a few back ups.

 

[wabbit]

One thing to consider about your idea of an authoritarian society, is that part of the population may well escape from that harsh rule and try their luck elsewhere, in another valley - i m not sure you d really have the resources to run the kind of police force and surveillance system you d need to prevent that.

 

[Durakken]

Why would you not want 3d printers... they are currently at a stage they can print circiut boards and print themselves and can build to specification which means no loss of resources and lower the amount of time to getting those more automated aspects of infrastructure going.

The idea that you couldn't produce a cell phone almost immediately is just wrong. The only limitation there is getting the materials which is solved by bringing enough raw materials and an industrial 3d printer which can do most of that labor. Once that is achieved it is just a matter of waiting really to find those veins and with a good geologist it wouldn't be that hard as there are signs for most of the veins you'd be looking for. Even assuming you're only going to build the phone out of found raw materials I'd bet you could do it in less than 3 decades.

 

[Czcibor]

I have no idea what such a paper would mean by "productive" as I hardly think of churning out millions of built in obsolete widgits being built as "productive" nor do I see how one could fairly make that assessment that it is a population number given that it's where all the factories with heavy machines to produce those widgits are... on the other hand compare that to the relatively low population of farmer who do a productive thing such as feed the world many times over, using that as a metric low population wins out.

But if we look at how humans spread and all like that we generally like to be in groups of 250 to 500 max and divide along those lines So if you're looking for the most productive one might plan some sort of built in system of division that feeds into a center used for trade between these groups while trade within the groups are done in their own area.

I mean studies like this:
http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/why-innovation-thrives-in-cities-0604

Saying that when you double population, then productivity goes up by 130%, so you get net +15%

Where rivers that you'd be looking for form is where mountains form. Those mountains are the type that form when they're pushed up due to tectonic activity. In other words. If you are in a river valley like the ones you're looking for you're most likely not going to near a fault line as the fault line is on the other side of the mountains. Likewise if you're in a river valley you have mountains around and mountains are where ore has been pushed to the surface. River Valleys are also often protected from sea level rise for the most part and because mountains are protected from most harsh weather.

Brilliant, thanks, I haven't thought about it.

According to map seems to work:
http://i59.tinypic.com/1zdvkf9.jpg

 

[mfb]

Presumably, for short series, but I think they are quite slow.

You won't need many pipes with 54° bending angle, but if your system needs one, you don't want to set up a factory line to make thousands of them.

(I remember reading a study concerning that in case of running out of copper, it would be necessary to rely on aluminium cables, which just wouldn't be so good. I think in similar line, of making some cheap substitutes)

There are good cheap substitutions for many things, but the low-tech substitutions for computers are abacus and slide-rule. Or cathode-rays but those are expensive. You'll need a 19th- or better 20th-century chemical industry running to make new transistors.

@Durakken: 3D printers cannot print chips (or even single transistors). You can assume some high-tech product that can do it in the future, but then you can assume nano-machines can produce anything you like.

 

[Czcibor]

One thing to consider about your idea of an authoritarian society, is that part of the population may well escape from that harsh rule and try their luck elsewhere, in another valley - i m not sure you d really have the resources to run the kind of police force and surveillance system you d need to prevent that.

How would you behave in such case?
-gov is not corrupted, quite competent, has rather reasonable investment plan, and is obsessed about survival of civilization;
-Technically speaking you volunteered and pledged loyalty to it (which of course may not be so relevant, if those people make you really unhappy, then of course you may claim that you did it under effectively compulsion...); (they had millions of potential volunteers)
-there are some traces of democracy and self governance on local level, there are some vague promises of semi free election on central level in long run, when the situation would cool down;
-if they succeed without you then in long run they have industrial goods, if you try to buy them, then they would in really unfriendly way ask for back taxes.

Your move?

 

[Durakken]

I mean studies like this:
http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/why-innovation-thrives-in-cities-0604

Saying that when you double population, then productivity goes up by 130%, so you get net +15%

It's important to say economic productivity there...
And that's obvious, especially with theot currency. You don't really need to do research on that.
Money is just a substitute for iou item in the future that can be paid by anyone taking part in this group. More people interacting with each will automatically have more people trusting in that money and demanding that money and using that money resulting in the money's value increasing and likewise the "standards of living" are often higher per person averaged out in more populated areas thus you can argue that there is higher "productivity" but that isn't really the case in most situation... But that's not what this is about so I'll leave that aside... and not get into how much i think economics as studied today is largely nonsense.

Instead I just want to point out that economic productivity is not the same as actually being productive and being a stable thriving civilization that is able to maintain or sustain random groups of people. It should be noted that some of the most productive members of our species were the poorest and would be considered low producing according to an economic modle of productivity.

This being the case it is smarter to build around ideas that worked in the past to create stable colonies. Namely town halls and town squares that reinforced community but let the community dividing into any number of sub-communities around it. Provide a place to go to like a church, not necessarily one, schools are also good for this, but something like that to give the community some sense of belonging to that community and guidance. Once that is done it is more likely people will thrive than and be productive in all senses of the words rather than trying to push on them having to deal with a lot of people all at once that they don't neccessarily like, but have to work with. In fact the more you do that the more likely the colony will splinter and destroy itself or try to attack the authorities.

 

[Durakken]

@Durakken: 3D printers cannot print chips (or even single transistors). You can assume some high-tech product that can do it in the future, but then you can assume nano-machines can produce anything you like.

but I'm sure they can print or build all the fabrication tools necessary to make computer chips, though I forget what all is needed, about the biggest problem would be getting the chemicals needed for it for current processors. Though a few years down the line there is the possiblity of, what is called, graphene? that could be much simpler and more abundant.

 

[Czcibor]

It's important to say economic productivity there...
And that's obvious, especially with theot currency. You don't really need to do research on that.
Money is just a substitute for iou item in the future that can be paid by anyone taking part in this group. More people interacting with each will automatically have more people trusting in that money and demanding that money and using that money resulting in the money's value increasing and likewise the "standards of living" are often higher per person averaged out in more populated areas thus you can argue that there is higher "productivity" but that isn't really the case in most situation...

Honestly that are just:
-economics of scale (ex. in my country gov spends for primary education of a kid in village 2-3 times, then a kid in a city)
-flexibility of employment (you need 100 properly educated workers for next week for a construction, good luck in finding that in a village of 80 people ;) )
-better spread of new creative ideas, more competition and less monopolies that abuse power

But that's not what this is about so I'll leave that aside... and not get into how much i think economics as studied today is largely nonsense.

Be more merciful for my feelings, I'm an economist ;)

Instead I just want to point out that economic productivity is not the same as actually being productive and being a stable thriving civilization that is able to maintain or sustain random groups of people. It should be noted that some of the most productive members of our species were the poorest and would be considered low producing according to an economic modle of productivity.

This being the case it is smarter to build around ideas that worked in the past to create stable colonies. Namely town halls and town squares that reinforced community but let the community dividing into any number of sub-communities around it. Provide a place to go to like a church, not necessarily one, schools are also good for this, but something like that to give the community some sense of belonging to that community and guidance. Once that is done it is more likely people will thrive than and be productive in all senses of the words rather than trying to push on them having to deal with a lot of people all at once that they don't neccessarily like, but have to work with. In fact the more you do that the more likely the colony will splinter and destroy itself or try to attack the authorities.

That what you mentioned is a nice goal for a stable, affluent society. Let's sacrifice 10 percentage points of GDP and have more fulfilment in life. Just that's not a case when survival matters.

 

[Durakken]

Honestly that are just:
-economics of scale (ex. in my country gov spends for primary education of a kid in village 2-3 times, then a kid in a city)
-flexibility of employment (you need 100 properly educated workers for next week for a construction, good luck in finding that in a village of 80 people ;) )
-better spread of new creative ideas, more competition and less monopolies that abuse power

That's the thing... you don't need educated people to do this. Educated people are the ones who will get you killed because more often than not they aren't used to the type of environment nor the willingness to say "that's just how it is" as much as educated people are. You need a large amount of loyal, street smart, but rather dumb people with a small number of smart people who can plan at the top that are trusted by those uneducated people.

Be more merciful for my feelings, I'm an economist ;)

Sorry, it's true. My disdain is more for the prattling pseudo-intellectuals than the subject itself... It's the latter that happen to get to say what is "economics" so the subject suffers, much like the subject of morality and other such things that are really interesting subjects that are misunderstood due to pseudo-intellects being listened to while showing nothing gained by it or harming the people who listen...

Though I could be wrong. I've never looked to deeply into theories and all that because they're not very interesting and can be seen to be wrong headed before delving very deep into them. It could also be my encounters with Anarcho-Capitalists v.v

That what you mentioned is a nice goal for a stable, affluent society. Let's sacrifice 10 percentage points of GDP and have more fulfilment in life. Just that's not a case when survival matters.

Nope. Town Halls and Churches are the very first buildings that colonies start building, because it does work on the psychology of humans which keeps the morale up which ups the productivity. They serve very useful functions such as trade centers, community intermingling, information dissemination, fortifications, etc... Whatever you lose in base resources to build these structures you gain in overall efficiency.

Also consider that cities as we know them don't build up instantly...Let's say you have a string 25km of land represented each by 1 letter of the alphabet:

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXY

You build the "city" at "M". with say 4 quadrants each with a max 500 people.
When the colonists get 500 people they're going to split into a group that stay and group that leaves.
This first group with start move out to get growing land so they'll move to "L" and "N" with farms

ABCDEFGHIJK=^=OPQRSTUVWXY

^ = main colony
= = farm
+ = village

But some will want to move further away and go to "A" and "Y" and establish villages

+BCDEFGHIJK=^=OPQRSTUVWX+

Then as trade and more groups divide and development you'll get this...

+=CDEF+HIJK=^=OPQR+TUVW=+

And then...

++CDE=+=IJK+^+OPQ=+=UVW++

Then...

++C+E=+=I+=^^^=+Q=+=U+W++

It's a pretty simple pattern where it is the consolidation of stable smaller groups over time with trade through a stable center that makes a colony grow and be extremyl successful. Although 25km is a bit small to apply this model to accurately. As it goes more along the lines of pushing out farmers into further out farming areas and building walls around the previous farming areas incorporating them into the city proper. The other "villages" are usually further out, about 30km and are eventually absorbed into the largest city in the area.

 

[wabbit]

How would you behave in such case?
-gov is not corrupted, quite competent, has rather reasonable investment plan, and is obsessed about survival of civilization;
-Technically speaking you volunteered and pledged loyalty to it (which of course may not be so relevant, if those people make you really unhappy, then of course you may claim that you did it under effectively compulsion...); (they had millions of potential volunteers)
-there are some traces of democracy and self governance on local level, there are some vague promises of semi free election on central level in long run, when the situation would cool down;
-if they succeed without you then in long run they have industrial goods, if you try to buy them, then they would in really unfriendly way ask for back taxes.

Your move?

Depends on how hostile the environnement is really, and how many are discontented vs buy the sweet promises of democracy tomorrow. In the nicer case with edible flora and temperate climate, I d skip bail and go found a free community based on low tech farming, trade with people in the city (there will be some willing to do business with renegades) and build from there towards higher tech etc. At the other extreme, if leaving the colony is deadly, i might try to overthrow the government. But I ll probably end in one of your prisons anyway : )

 

[Czcibor]

That's the thing... you don't need educated people to do this. Educated people are the ones who will get you killed because more often than not they aren't used to the type of environment nor the willingness to say "that's just how it is" as much as educated people are. You need a large amount of loyal, street smart, but rather dumb people with a small number of smart people who can plan at the top that are trusted by those uneducated people.

You need:
-people who adapt to new environment and learn fast
-creative ideas (how to build that damn mobile phone out of sticks :D ?)
-people who can be retrained easily
-who understand why there is going to be a hardship at start, but would work for some far away goal

I'd pick up intelligent ones, that agree with the whole project.

Sorry, it's true. My disdain is more for the prattling pseudo-intellectuals than the subject itself... It's the latter that happen to get to say what is "economics" so the subject suffers, much like the subject of morality and other such things that are really interesting subjects that are misunderstood due to pseudo-intellects being listened to while showing nothing gained by it or harming the people who listen...

Though I could be wrong. I've never looked to deeply into theories and all that because they're not very interesting and can be seen to be wrong headed before delving very deep into them. It could also be my encounters with Anarcho-Capitalists v.v

Anarcho-capitalist? Are you really certain they are in any way related to economics? I always considered them as a religious movement...

Technical info: in academic setting Austrian School (Anarcho-Capitalists official source of inspiration) is nowadays considered as a heterodox school, which is very polite way of saying that they are not being treated too seriously by anyone within the scientific mainstream.

Nope. Town Halls and Churches are the very first buildings that colonies start building, because it does work on the psychology of humans which keeps the morale up which ups the productivity. They serve very useful functions such as trade centers, community intermingling, information dissemination, fortifications, etc... Whatever you lose in base resources to build these structures you gain in overall efficiency.

I don't think that people in my generation would appreciate church so much, on last meeting in my university a guy came in T-shirt with Spaghetti Monster and no-one really cared.

Also consider that cities as we know them don't build up instantly...Let's say you have a string 25km of land represented each by 1 letter of the alphabet:

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXY

You build the "city" at "M". with say 4 quadrants each with a max 500 people.
When the colonists get 500 people they're going to split into a group that stay and group that leaves.
This first group with start move out to get growing land so they'll move to "L" and "N" with farms

ABCDEFGHIJK=^=OPQRSTUVWXY

^ = main colony
= = farm
+ = village

But some will want to move further away and go to "A" and "Y" and establish villages

+BCDEFGHIJK=^=OPQRSTUVWX+

Then as trade and more groups divide and development you'll get this...

+=CDEF+HIJK=^=OPQR+TUVW=+

And then...

++CDE=+=IJK+^+OPQ=+=UVW++

Then...

++C+E=+=I+=^^^=+Q=+=U+W++

It's a pretty simple pattern where it is the consolidation of stable smaller groups over time with trade through a stable center that makes a colony grow and be extremyl successful. Although 25km is a bit small to apply this model to accurately. As it goes more along the lines of pushing out farmers into further out farming areas and building walls around the previous farming areas incorporating them into the city proper. The other "villages" are usually further out, about 30km and are eventually absorbed into the largest city in the area.

I toyed with ideas like such. The drawback was that at the end I end up with city center full of tiny huts. Or I have to demolish a fully good cottages to build there apartments. Additionally in my story in long run (after over 30 years) there is 4 child policy, which boost the population somewhat.

Idea for the capitol:
You are not allowed in build in the zone for the city center at start.
You build villages in the place that would be suburbs.
You place a whole zone for industry, based on wind direction
You build a city in shape of a triangle - one side touches industrial district
First tiny huts, later, when tech improves, taller and taller buildings (your city center effectively moves)
You leave a place for rail / metro