[Space] The Galactic Empire according to GURPS Space

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by Rupert

In a setting like the OP talks about, hopping into stasis means leaving all your family and friends, all your network of contacts, and so on. I'm sure there will be people who'll be happy enough to leave everything behind, but I'm not sure that there will be plenty who will do that and who have the right skills to be colonists (let alone deal with unforeseen events that require someone to wake up and do something)

Also, it depends on the setting's FTL. Terraforming could be anything from just a day job to a seasonal contract to a full-on colonial settlement. It could also be a by-product or adjunct to mining or manufacturing rather than the primary purpose of people working there.

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Rupert

The assumption seems to be that marginal atmospheres are at the tamer end of what's discussed in the text, and that some parts of the world are probably reasonably pleasant most of the time. If they're never safe to breathe, it's an unbreathable atmosphere, not really a marginal one, especially if crops just die.

Space seems to define "breathable" as "having lots of oxygen". The most common problem indicated by a marginal atmosphere is that it's in some way "mildly toxic", which means you need to make an unmodified HT rule every hour or take 1 toxic damage. For a brief adventure on a planet, that could be a genuinely minor issue. It's just a much bigger one for colonization. It might be surmountable with genetic engineering by giving everyone Filter Lungs (or more specialized adaptations for specific poisons?)

[lwcamp]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

I'm skeptical of Ice worlds being easy to terraform. I don't know how you propose to do it without putting a lot of effort into pumping greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, or constructing a massive solar mirror.

If the ice world in question is similar to Earth's supposed "snowball Earth" state, spreading carbon black over the ice sheets could be an attractive way to terraform. This decreases the albedo, tipping it into the ice-free of the world's two bi-stable states.

If it is an ice world like Europa, then I don't think terraforming is gonna happen.

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

Ocean worlds are more promising, I think. Relative to Garden worlds, they have the downside that you can't go outside without air tanks, but you might be able to grow crops outdoors right away. I don't know if native microbes would be likely to be a problem for crops—once photosynthetic plants get established, the oxygen they produce would likely wipe out native life pretty effectively, but gaining a toehold might be hard.

Are you thinking of growing crops at the surface, where sunlight can reach? In floating barges, perhaps, or just harvesting cyanobacteria? Unless this ocean world has sea mounts that get up into the photic zone, you'll bee looking at a sea floor that is in perpetual darkness.

Many hypothesized ocean worlds have an ocean so thick that the lower layers of the ocean are crushed into exotic forms of ice, sealing off the liquid upper layers from the vital nutrients locked up in the rock.

Luke

[AlexanderHowl]

Ocean worlds are similar to the Earth before the advent of photosynthetic life. Their only real difference from Garden worlds is a lack a free oxygen produced by photosynthetic life, so up to 50% of their surface may be water free (30% if they are Large Ocean worlds).

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by lwcamp

Are you thinking of growing crops at the surface, where sunlight can reach? In floating barges, perhaps, or just harvesting cyanobacteria? Unless this ocean world has sea mounts that get up into the photic zone, you'll bee looking at a sea floor that is in perpetual darkness.

Many hypothesized ocean worlds have an ocean so thick that the lower layers of the ocean are crushed into exotic forms of ice, sealing off the liquid upper layers from the vital nutrients locked up in the rock.

GURPS Space uses the term "Ocean World" to describe worlds with liquid surface water, but no substantial free oxygen. They can have more or less water than Earth.

[gruundehn]

[QUOTE=AlexanderHowl;2229726]I am skeptical that any Garden planet will be compatible with Earth life, just because there will be no commonality between its life and Earth life. Yes, they will have chemicals that store genetic information, but there are probably an infinite variety of possible compounds similar to DNA and RNA. Yes, they will have proteins, sugars, and fats, but the majority of the possible proteins, sugars, and fats in nature are toxic to human beings (or at least inedible).
/QUOTE]

If humans colonized an alien world, they would bring plants and animals with them. While humans could not eat native foods, probably, for the reasons you mentioned, native animals and micro-organisms would not find humans compatible so they would not attack humans. Micro-organisms would be no threat to human life except that those micro-organisms would evolve to take advantage of humans and micro-organisms evolve quickly.


It would be a race to see how fast humans and Earth-origin plants and animals (and micro-organisms) adapt to the new environment and displace the native ecology.

[Black Leviathan]

I think population growth isn't a guarantee, especially in a colonial stage. If we reach a new world by generational ship there will likely be very extreme taboos against having more than two children. New colonies won't be bountiful, scarcity could be an issue that would discourage births. Hard work would be another problem. Colony life wouldn't likely leave much time for maternity leave or staying home to raise the children. Even once the garden blooms and life becomes less strenuous there's no guarantee that generations of birth conservation won't have changed cultural attitudes about large families. Colonial worlds could very possibly fail for a lack of breeding.

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by gruundehn

If humans colonized an alien world, they would bring plants and animals with them. While humans could not eat native foods, probably, for the reasons you mentioned, native animals and micro-organisms would not find humans compatible so they would not attack humans. Micro-organisms would be no threat to human life except that those micro-organisms would evolve to take advantage of humans and micro-organisms evolve quickly.

It would be a race to see how fast humans and Earth-origin plants and animals (and micro-organisms) adapt to the new environment and displace the native ecology.

Native animals might not know they can't get nutrition from imported earth life. For example, artificially produced L-glucose (as opposed to naturally occurring D-glucose) tastes sweet to humans even though we can't get calories from it. However, figuring out pest control on a new world is probably a decades-long R&D project, which sure as hell beats a centuries-long terraforming project. As I think about this more, I have a hard time seeing it as a serious impediment to colonization on a timescale of millennia. And given that, I have a hard time seeing how you avoid a galactic population in quintillions.

Given that, how do you administer it? GURPS only vaguely gestures at how status and rank hierarchies might work in such a universe. Social Engineering suggests a galactic empire might have 12 Rank levels and a span of control of 10, which still probably isn't enough for a managing a quntillion people in a way recognizable to people today. It's interesting to consider universes with a nominal central authority that isn't actually that effective. In Star Wars, the Galactic Empire doesn't seem to have enough storm troopers to land them on every rebellious planet like Alderaan, hence the need for the Death Star. (In a more realistic setting the Empire might just "glass the surface" of rebellious worlds rather than worry about overcoming their gravitational binding energy.) A less bloodthirsty empire might focus on taxing trade, perhaps by controlling jump points. That might require less manpower (and administrative headaches) than trying to directly control what goes on on the surface of planets.

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Black Leviathan

I think population growth isn't a guarantee, especially in a colonial stage. If we reach a new world by generational ship there will likely be very extreme taboos against having more than two children. New colonies won't be bountiful, scarcity could be an issue that would discourage births. Hard work would be another problem. Colony life wouldn't likely leave much time for maternity leave or staying home to raise the children. Even once the garden blooms and life becomes less strenuous there's no guarantee that generations of birth conservation won't have changed cultural attitudes about large families. Colonial worlds could very possibly fail for a lack of breeding.

I'm postulating fast FTL—at least 20 parsecs per day per FTL rating. Even sending a colony ship to the other side of the galaxy at that rate isn't a "generation ship" scenario. At worst it's an "Oregon trail" scenario. Colonies potentially have backing from people looking to make a killing off a new planet's vast, untapped resources.

[Michael Thayne]

Hmmm, let's look at the taxing trade approach. Let's suppose the galaxy has 10^18 people, with an average per capita income of 10^5 GURPS $ per year. If trade volumes average 20% of the total size of the economy, and trade is taxed at 5%, that's only a 1% effective tax rate—quite light, and appropriate for a weak central government. But it will raise 10^20 GURPS $ per year. Even if payroll is only 10% of revenue, that's still an Imperial workforce of 100 trillion people. Still an administrative nightmare. Gah.