05-22-2012, 04:05 AM | #11 |
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Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
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Re: Generation Ships
Having food production so tightly controlled and regulated for every gram of efficiency that even the handful of ketchup packets it takes to make bad prison alcohol would be noticed sounds a lot more depressing than having a voluntary drunk tank.
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05-22-2012, 04:06 AM | #12 |
Join Date: Nov 2011
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Re: Generation Ships
Not to mention being a neon sign asking for disaster. I think it's reasonable for there to be excess production of food.
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05-22-2012, 04:07 AM | #13 | |
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: One Mile Up
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Re: Generation Ships
Quote:
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05-22-2012, 04:08 AM | #14 |
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Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
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Re: Generation Ships
The first generation will whine about what food isn't on the ship. But the future ones will only know what they have, and won't miss what they never had.
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05-22-2012, 04:14 AM | #15 | |
Join Date: Nov 2011
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Re: Generation Ships
Quote:
Well there is probably a necessary amount of food diversity but I meant that only producing enough food to feed everyone is problematic if something goes wrong and reduces the food production or the population increases or something. It makes sense to be paranoid when designing a generation ship. |
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05-22-2012, 04:21 AM | #16 | |
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Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
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Re: Generation Ships
Quote:
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05-22-2012, 04:26 AM | #17 | |
Join Date: Jul 2009
Location: Berlin, Germany
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Re: Generation Ships
Quote:
So I really can't see the drunkenly-pressed-the-"self destruct"-instead-of-the-"flush toilet"-button scenario. |
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05-22-2012, 04:36 AM | #18 |
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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Re: Generation Ships
That's not what I meant. (Also, I'd point to The Culture and Beta Colony as cases where canned societies exist without martial law.) But I meant things like how mane teachers per 1k people, how many navigators, how many janitors, how many doctors, how many law enforcement officers. And the there's the issue that not all professions are equal - you can't maintain 50 élite SWATs per 1k pop, because they're much more expensive in terms of 'maintenance' than 50 janitors.
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05-22-2012, 04:50 AM | #19 |
Computer Scientist
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Dallas, Texas
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Re: Generation Ships
TL8 can't make a self-contained human-suitable biosphere that will last more than a few years if that. The canonical GURPS generation ship treatment is in BIOTECH for 4/e.
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05-22-2012, 04:56 AM | #20 |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: Generation Ships
This pretty much needs to be true for everything. Trying to run a society as a total command economy where everything has to be perfectly right all the time or we all die is not going to work for years, let alone generations. You absolutely need some margin in everything or you are going to have a disaster. At absolute minimum, you need to set things up so something going wrong only means some of us die, and we have redundant people we can afford that.
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brainstorm, generation ship, space, spaceships, ultra-tech |
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