What if a nation decided to leave?

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

However, whereas the early 17th century colonists in what is now the USA came unaware of the problems they'd face and they weren't good at teaching the lessons they learned either. Any realistic space settle will have vast mountains of preliminary research to work from. It will be a whole different ball game.

Yes, they can make entirely novel mistakes, instead of repeating old ones.

More seriously, are you suggesting that space settlement will only happen when there is no more danger in settling then there is in staying at home? That's apparently what happened with the Americas, except that staying at home become more dangerous to meet the danger of the unknown lands.

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by cptbutton

Like in Heinlein's Tunnel In The Sky where there are college degrees in running colonization efforts on earthlike planets reached via teleport gates.

No, not like that; no magical abridgment of time or space (other than the 21C timeline). Civil engineering and urban planning curricula would be augmented to include off-world development, and you'd need a couple of extra city departments like life support and microecology.

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by Owen Smith

I know all about the Darian Expedition and it's effect on the Scottish economy.

I note you say North America was "merely hard", which is fine I agree with that. There are people here saying it was a cakewalk, which I disagree with.

Establishing the colonies was hard, but once people quit trying to build shelters on stormy shores in November, or expecting people to wait 3 years for their yearly resupply, then it became much easier, to the point of where immigrating to America was more a question of deciding how much money and time to risk rather than one's life. This had a cumulative effect, where each person arriving added to the talent pool and their assets to the available capital, making the new world economy more diverse and enticing for the next. The addition of one more pair of hands and/or one more educated mind outweighed the additional mouth to feed made survival less precarious instead of more.

This proceeded until in just a couple hundred years, the OP's thesis did happen: the Irish nation emmigrated en masse to the US so that now Ireland holds the minority of Irish people in the world.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by cptbutton

Like in Heinlein's Tunnel In The Sky where there are college degrees in running colonization efforts on earthlike planets reached via teleport gates.

Maybe not that advanced. Although I could see colonization studies as an major interdisciplinary department.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by jeff_wilson

Yes, they can make entirely novel mistakes, instead of repeating old ones.

That's the wonder of life!

More seriously, are you suggesting that space settlement will only happen when there is no more danger in settling then there is in staying at home? That's apparently what happened with the Americas, except that staying at home become more dangerous to meet the danger of the unknown lands.

No, there will be dangers. However there will be a level of analysis and planning that the 16th and 17th century Europeans simply didn't have access to.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by jeff_wilson

No, not like that; no magical abridgment of time or space (other than the 21C timeline). Civil engineering and urban planning curricula would be augmented to include off-world development, and you'd need a couple of extra city departments like life support and microecology.

Now we're on the same page. Just as Elizabeth's London lacked a functional (in our terms) sewer system, so the off-world settlements will have features, planned for ahead of time, that 17th century settlements lacked.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Now we're on the same page. Just as Elizabeth's London lacked a functional (in our terms) sewer system, so the off-world settlements will have features, planned for ahead of time, that 17th century settlements lacked.

In any case, this entire discussion is something of a side point. The issue is not whether colonists could survive (given THS tech, the answer is yes). The issue is whether going out and creating colonies is a method for economic success.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by Pomphis

The US always had an environment comparable to europe, it was never worse than the australian outback. And the US had lots of natural resources which a growing population could exploit. Where do you find something comparable in space ? And technology costs money. Even if you could terraform triton, if you had remained on earth you could use that money for something else, and what advantage does being on triton give you ?

Distance from Earth. Precisely the same desire that drew the Pilgrims to Massachusetts.

All the same arguments applied to Massachusetts in the Pilgrims' time. The money spent travelling across the Atlantic could have been spent setting up a settlement in England, or Ireland, but they precisely wanted distance (while remaining within the overall English demesne). Massachusetts provided that.

The same logic, on a different scale, drew monks to found monasteries in some truly back-of-beyond places, centuries earlier.

The problem for the THS canon setting is that the tech is not up to the concept, that is, relative to the challenge of colonization, 17C England was more technologically advanced than 21C Earth. Turning Mars into a really good environment for human settlement, or even parahumans settlement, strains THS tech to the breaking point. Past it, really, as has often been noted on other threads. Terraforming Triton would be utterly out of the question for THS tech and resources.

OTOH, going to Triton as infomorphs actually works, up to and including giving you that desired distance from the metropole. In fact, that's going on in-canon, there's a rebel colony of infomorphs on Triton and they are there precisely because they are outlaw and want that distance.

But the presence of SAI and ghosting changes everything, the story really ceases to be about people anyway, and becomes about sapient machinery.

If you leave out the AI/ghosts, then all the same motives to desire distance would apply to future malcontents that did in the past, assuming the tech base is up to making it happen.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

But the presence of SAI and ghosting changes everything, the story really ceases to be about people anyway, and becomes about sapient machinery.

Only if the GM picks a side (the Infomorphs Are Unpeople side) in the PSR debate instead of running the setting agnostically.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Only if the GM picks a side (the Infomorphs Are Unpeople side) in the PSR debate instead of running the setting agnostically.

Regardless of who you call people, it's no longer about humans.