[Spaceships] Total life support

Fish · 08-26-2009, 11:22 AM

I was looking over the maximum capacity of spaceships just last night, and even taking into account the need for engines, fuel tanks, power plants and so forth, I came up with some seemingly ridiculously high populations per ship.

The problem with the mathematics, I think, is that a garden yield scales by the square, and ship capacity scales by the cube. Unless a way could be found to make garden yields scale in the same way — stacked, as nick says — we'll need a new model.

One thing to take into account, perhaps, is that accommodation of humans is far from 100% efficient. Although you could technically fit a large ship with wall-to-wall cabins, in reality you would need a certain percentage of that space devoted to medical treatment, tailoring and grooming (from as simple as showers to as complex as styling salons), food service and storage (for the things which cannot be grown in gardens), recreation and exercise (so humans don't go stir crazy), security (in case of conflicts or crime), training, education, and so on.

08-26-2009, 11:22 AM	#3
Fish Join Date: Sep 2007	Re: [Spaceships] Total life support I was looking over the maximum capacity of spaceships just last night, and even taking into account the need for engines, fuel tanks, power plants and so forth, I came up with some seemingly ridiculously high populations per ship. The problem with the mathematics, I think, is that a garden yield scales by the square, and ship capacity scales by the cube. Unless a way could be found to make garden yields scale in the same way — stacked, as nick says — we'll need a new model. One thing to take into account, perhaps, is that accommodation of humans is far from 100% efficient. Although you could technically fit a large ship with wall-to-wall cabins, in reality you would need a certain percentage of that space devoted to medical treatment, tailoring and grooming (from as simple as showers to as complex as styling salons), food service and storage (for the things which cannot be grown in gardens), recreation and exercise (so humans don't go stir crazy), security (in case of conflicts or crime), training, education, and so on.