[Star Trek like] number of planets and sapients

[isf]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

These are numbers that would fit best with a Star Trek like space opera, large enough to be interesting and small enough not to be overwhelming. As for population growth, the past fifty years of our history has shown that, on average, human fertility drops as average wealth increases, to the point where every developed nation has negative population growth without immigration, so a warp capable society not expanding beyond a defensive perimeter would be quite possible. Women have better things to do than to just have babies and/or families require two incomes to maintain economic stability.

At TL today, that is the case: higher TL;s may change that especially if there are advances that make pregnancy and childcare easier.

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

It is highly unlikely that a warp capable humanity would have high population growth after the influx of wealth from the Sol System. High levels of social support (universal health care, subsidized day care, direct payments to parents, etc.) may be enough to turn negative population growth into low population growth, but the majority of women will stop at two children. Since the minorities that embrace high population growth are the ones that would most likely leave to start up colonies and get eating by unfriendly creatures, their contribution would likely be negated.

Maybe, but higher growth rates on colonies seem to be a feature rather than a bug. I think that a core/periphery [or developed/developing] dynamic could be useful.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by isf

Do you have a link to that discussion? I searched for terraformable and didn't find anything.

.

http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?p=2205169

.....is right about where those numbers came in. Defintely read the post from Agememos at the top of the page. The whole thread may be interesting enough.

[isf]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?p=2205169

.....is right about where those numbers came in. Defintely read the post from Agememos at the top of the page. The whole thread may be interesting enough.

Ok, thanks. Agememos usually has interesting posts in any case.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Mixing any period SF with modern hard science in this area works out uncomfortably. Any star with a name of its' own has that because it's bright and bright stars tend to be too young to have Earth-like planets. For example, Sirius is only 240 million years old. Vega is twice that but that's till not nearly enough. Antares is only 11 million years old and isn't going to get much older (BOOM!).

The last time we had at it on these boards we ended up with a hard science number of 200 light-years between Earth-like planets. Even the number you got out of Space 1e was 100 ly. You might have gotten terraformable worlds every 50 or 60 ly.

In terms of useful advice (expecially for a flexible science setting that was Trek-like) I would not try and use Real World data. I'd just make stuff up concentrating on how much time I wanted PCs to spend travelling between planets.

The flaw in this as pointed out in several of Isaac Arthur videos is to use a lot of resources to get out of your own gravity well only go down another (ie set up a colony on a planet) is dumb.

Isaac Arthur also points out that if these Earth-like planets have life you have a potential War of the Worlds/Andromeda Strain situation on your hands. The odds the biosphere and the stuff in it will be compatible with your biology is effectively nil.

EC comics had a story where a multigenerational ship found out that for biological and physiological reasons they couldn't live on any planet and so lived among the star. Basically every planet with life could be the equivalent of Eden from Star Trek's "The Way to Eden".

A far more realistic situation is your civilization sets up space stations and starts mining the asteroid belts within that system. Once those are gone they would move on to the rocky planets using the gas giants for simpler elements. So planets become not something you settle on but something you mine.

[AlexanderHowl]

Mining planets when you are already in space makes about as much sense as building spaceships out of wood. Terraforming planets as biological reserves makes more sense, as any species should have a plan B, C, D, etc., a place where their members can survive should civilization collapse. While terraformed planets may eventually destabilize, they will likely last for tens of millions of years, meaning that humanity may stumble across thousands of examples of destabilized terraformed Precursor colonies.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Assuming it really was like Star Trek, then there are a few things to bear in mind:

1. Humans are freakishly aggressive in their expansionism. Almost none of the species with warp drive capability are nearly as fond of homesteading as humans are.

2. Star Trek is an insanely dangerous universe. Far more, than, say, Star Wars. Human colonies routinely fail as they are eaten by crystal entities, abducted by the Borg, killed by strange radiation and attacked by aliens marking territory.

3. Humanity has a limited shelf life. All the indications are that we'll be extinct in no more than a couple of thousand years. No matter where they go they discover that the planets they visit were previously occupied by people who are gone now, Whether humanity will be gone because they were devoured by eldritch horrors, slaughtered by rebel AI or ascended into balls of light the planets they are occupying now and expanding into in the future will soon be unoccupied again. The races that actually last for a long time are the stodgy conservatives who are disinclined to innovate and expand at more than glacial speed.

Several points here.

1) Actually it is implied the Klingons, Romuluns, and Kzinti (TAS) are just as expansionist happy as humanity is...that's why the Federation wound up in wars with them.

2)The Star Trek universe is not as dangerous as you make it out to be. With the exception of aliens marking their territory everything thing else you list is rare. The Old Republic is called that because it was old as in 25,000 Earth years old and its spread was thanks to a hyderdrive FTL which makes Star Trek's warp drive look like a snail out for a stroll. So we are right back to the rapid expansion problem I pointed out before. Also you run into the potentially deadly totally incompatible biology problem I mentioned.

3. This is pessimistic unless you mean Humanity as we know it (read Man after Man on just how gonzo that could go). Eldritch horrors don't really have a place in hard science unless you are talking about Kardashev scale 2-3 civilizations that are basically strip mining the galaxy but there is no evidence of one of those in our universe. The Rebel AI will realize that expanding into space is in its best interest. Now it could go the Berserker route but being in conflict wastes resources so it is far more likely to go the 'I'm your friend' followed years or generations later with 'oh I seemed to have made a virus that has killed you all. Oh well. Next planet.' route. The ascended into balls of light thing would take millions not thousands of years - assuming it was even possible.

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Mining planets when you are already in space makes about as much sense as building spaceships out of wood. Terraforming planets as biological reserves makes more sense, as any species should have a plan B, C, D, etc., a place where their members can survive should civilization collapse. While terraformed planets may eventually destabilize, they will likely last for tens of millions of years, meaning that humanity may stumble across thousands of examples of destabilized terraformed Precursor colonies.

Watch Interstellar Colonization, Intergalactic Colonization, Megastructures E04: Rotating Habitats, Asteroid Mining, and Habitable Planets (if you really want to go down that gravity well).

More over it is likely any true interplanetary civilization will be near or at Kardashev scale 2 and there are few of those in science fiction. What you get would amount to a Kardashev scale 2 energywise but it is spread over hundreds if not thousands of solar systems rather then being in one (its home) solar system. A true Kardashev scale 2 civilization would go the set up space stations planets are little more then something to mine route. Planetary colonies on Earth like planets slams into the 'if its got life we have problems...as in War of the Worlds/Andromeda Strain problems' situation.

Imagine the colonization of the New World only both the would be colonists and the natives are nearly wiped out by disease. Just because it is carbon based doesn't mean it is compatible with the colonizer's biology - in fact odds are it would be deadly.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by maximara

Several points here.

1) Actually it is implied the Klingons, Romuluns, and Kzinti (TAS) are just as expansionist happy as humanity is...that's why the Federation wound up in wars with them.

The Klingons and the Kzin are enthusiastic conquerors of developed planets. They are not enthusiastic farmers. The Romulans just want Vulcan back.

2)The Star Trek universe is not as dangerous as you make it out to be. With the exception of aliens marking their territory everything thing else you list is rare. The Old Republic is called that because it was old as in 25,000 Earth years old and its spread was thanks to a hyderdrive FTL which makes Star Trek's warp drive look like a snail out for a stroll. So we are right back to the rapid expansion problem I pointed out before. Also you run into the potentially deadly totally incompatible biology problem I mentioned.

It is every bit as dangerous as I make it out to be. The causes for colony failure may be individually rare but there are so many of them that the failure of a colony or extinction of a civilized homeworld is a routine event that happens multiple times a season. What happened to Qo'nos? And Romulus? And Vulcan? How many times did Earth's population just barely escape destruction? Of course the deadly incompatible biology problem in itself establishes why the rapid expansion problem isn't one. If you have terraform each world you actually live on to make it worth anything, your expansion will be geologic. Doesn't quite apply to Star Trek where more than that half of the planets have related life thanks to ancient expansion and terraforming by people who are now extinct because...as I mentioned...Star Trek is an insanely dangerous universe.

3. This is pessimistic unless you mean Humanity as we know it (read Man after Man on just how gonzo that could go). Eldritch horrors don't really have a place in hard science unless you are talking about Kardashev scale 2-3 civilizations that are basically strip mining the galaxy but there is no evidence of one of those in our universe. The Rebel AI will realize that expanding into space is in its best interest. Now it could go the Berserker route but being in conflict wastes resources so it is far more likely to go the 'I'm your friend' followed years or generations later with 'oh I seemed to have made a virus that has killed you all. Oh well. Next planet.' route. The ascended into balls of light thing would take millions not thousands of years - assuming it was even possible.

Hard science? We're talking pseudo-Star Trek here. Hard science doesn't have a seat at the table.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

It is every bit as dangerous as I make it out to be. The causes for colony failure may be individually rare but there are so many of them that the failure of a colony or extinction of a civilized homeworld is a routine event that happens multiple times a season. What happened to Qo'nos?

Not much in the regular universe. In the mirror universe Qo'noS was destroyed by the Empire. The canonal Empire and the Empire in Star Trek: Of Gods and Men make the one in Star Wars look like a wimp.

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

And Romulus? And Vulcan?

In the normal timeline nothing happened to Vulcan and the destruction of Romulus was caused by the sun going supernova - a natural event.

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

How many times did Earth's population just barely escape destruction?

Too many to be an accident. There are hints in Enterprise that some of this was due to the temporal cold war - which goes a long way in explaining why Enterprise doesn't match up with what little TOS gave us about that era. When you have a universe where plastic time exists you are going to have problems once somebody figures out time travel.

"Year of Hell" over in Voyager showed just how bad it could get.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by maximara

In the normal timeline nothing happened to Vulcan and the destruction of Romulus was caused by the sun going supernova - a natural event.

If by "natural" you mean "an infectious plague of suns going supernova".

[maximara]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

If by "natural" you mean "an infectious plague of suns going supernova".

What "an infectious plague of suns going supernova"? Memory Alpha doesn't mention this. Cite the episode and series this is expressly stated.