On Moving Planets and other Impossible Projects
- Thread starter atpollard
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I must agree that based upon your numbers presented (which I am too lazy to redo the math myself) a per capita 5000 credit per year for 5000 year tax seems unsupportable. It cannot be built under your economic model.
And yet, there lies its own danger ...
If we begin with a Colonial American Plantation economic model, we could reason that it takes one slave a years worth of labor to grow the cotton/flax, spin the thread, weave the cloth and sew one complete set of clothes for one person. It is, therefore, impossible for every man woman and child to own three complete changes of clothes. Yet Industrialization quickly shatters the old economic model by allowing one person to grow, spin, weave or sew in one year what a thousand people could not have produced in their lifetimes under the old model.
So let me propose that an initial investment of a shipyard and 1 million robots, while expensive, is not impossible. With this investment, 10% of the robots are assigned to maintaining the infrastructure and provide nothing but maintaining the status quo. Another 10 percent are assigned to creating more infrastructure (expanding the shipyard, factories, etc.). A third 10 percent are assigned the task of creating more robots. The remaining 70 percent (700,000 robot workers) begin the process of building the drives and power plants to move the world - which includes the entire supply chain from asteroid mining, gas giant skimming, ore processing, part fabrication and final assembly.
Even if each robot can build only one new robot or factory workstation per year, the robot population will double every 10 years. With no investment beyond the initial start-up, in 100 years the worker population will have doubled 10 times. The initial 1 million robot workforce will now number over 1 billion. After 200 years, the robot workforce will number over 1 trillion workers.
Note that each robot can work 4 'shifts' per week, making it the equivalent of 4 human workers. Since only about 30-40 percent of a human population is part of the workforce, each robot worker has the productivity of at least 10 people (general population). Thus our 1 million robot investment now has a GNP equal to half of the Imperium's total GNP from all sophont labor.
If each robot can produce 1 new robot or workstation per month instead of per year, the 200 year production figures will be reached in 200 months or less than 17 years.
Under such an economic model, is moving a world more economically feasible?
And yet, there lies its own danger ...
If we begin with a Colonial American Plantation economic model, we could reason that it takes one slave a years worth of labor to grow the cotton/flax, spin the thread, weave the cloth and sew one complete set of clothes for one person. It is, therefore, impossible for every man woman and child to own three complete changes of clothes. Yet Industrialization quickly shatters the old economic model by allowing one person to grow, spin, weave or sew in one year what a thousand people could not have produced in their lifetimes under the old model.
So let me propose that an initial investment of a shipyard and 1 million robots, while expensive, is not impossible. With this investment, 10% of the robots are assigned to maintaining the infrastructure and provide nothing but maintaining the status quo. Another 10 percent are assigned to creating more infrastructure (expanding the shipyard, factories, etc.). A third 10 percent are assigned the task of creating more robots. The remaining 70 percent (700,000 robot workers) begin the process of building the drives and power plants to move the world - which includes the entire supply chain from asteroid mining, gas giant skimming, ore processing, part fabrication and final assembly.
Even if each robot can build only one new robot or factory workstation per year, the robot population will double every 10 years. With no investment beyond the initial start-up, in 100 years the worker population will have doubled 10 times. The initial 1 million robot workforce will now number over 1 billion. After 200 years, the robot workforce will number over 1 trillion workers.
Note that each robot can work 4 'shifts' per week, making it the equivalent of 4 human workers. Since only about 30-40 percent of a human population is part of the workforce, each robot worker has the productivity of at least 10 people (general population). Thus our 1 million robot investment now has a GNP equal to half of the Imperium's total GNP from all sophont labor.
If each robot can produce 1 new robot or workstation per month instead of per year, the 200 year production figures will be reached in 200 months or less than 17 years.
Under such an economic model, is moving a world more economically feasible?
Besides, from what I have found on the web, it seems that the official
defense budget of the USA in 2006 was about 527,66 billion USD, so
that each of the about 306 million inhabitants had to pay about 1,700
USD that year to finance this budget (if my math is right, which it rare-
ly is ...).
If such an amount is possible at the current technology level, and if one
assumes that a higher technology level should be able to create a higher
level of income, the 5,000 Credits per year (ca. three times the equiva-
lent of the 1,700 USD) still seem frighteningly high, but not really impos-
sible.
defense budget of the USA in 2006 was about 527,66 billion USD, so
that each of the about 306 million inhabitants had to pay about 1,700
USD that year to finance this budget (if my math is right, which it rare-
ly is ...).
If such an amount is possible at the current technology level, and if one
assumes that a higher technology level should be able to create a higher
level of income, the 5,000 Credits per year (ca. three times the equiva-
lent of the 1,700 USD) still seem frighteningly high, but not really impos-
sible.
For what it might be worth, I do not advocate that this is something that the Imperium should do, since (as was pointed out) an orbiting habitat at 1 AU would be far cheaper and hold far more people and could be built with far less initial investment.
I am simply exploring the 'what if' of moving a world. The organizational autonomy needed for my hypothetical robot force, might require a TL 17+ culture (with full AI) to actually pull it off.
I am simply exploring the 'what if' of moving a world. The organizational autonomy needed for my hypothetical robot force, might require a TL 17+ culture (with full AI) to actually pull it off.
Supergamera
Mongoose
I'm not sure if this was brought up in the previous thread, but the OTU did have a Rosette system, although there wasn't much information on it. IIRC, all the planets were in a range favorable to Droyne/Ancients.
There was also a mention of an unfunished Ringworld, but I've seen even less on that.
There was also a mention of an unfunished Ringworld, but I've seen even less on that.
Tobias
Banded Mongoose
Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. If the work of moving celestial bodies (or other industrial work) could be made cheaper by using self-replicating robots, it would be cheaper. Maybe it is as cheap as it is now because you're using robots.atpollard said:
Now what you can say is:
Traveller economics are whacked - basic, mass-produced stuff should be a lot cheaper.
That has a lot going for it, but you would need to change this for the TU in general. Let us assume that robot building would be even more efficient than you proposed - and that the end result production would double (= the robots would produce as much as the sophonts.) That would mean that all manufactured goods are on average two times cheaper than they are without, or that everybody has twice as much money to afford them, which is the same thing.
Keeping this in mind: A society which could economically move a planet would have to be a post-scarcity utopia with lots of productive power to spare. Provided, of course, that the relative costs of producing planet-moving goods and making-life-easier goods stay the same.
So, if you want to have affordable planetbuilding but still a "normal" society which knows poor and rich, and has not abolished scarcity, you would need to tweak the cost of planet-moving hardware relative to other hardware. Massively. And then you start to run into questions why the robots can affordably build a drive system for a planet, yet you don't get starship engines as a freebie gift with your toaster.
EDIT: Celestial bodies. Not the bodies of all those who comitted suicide because they couldn't bear life in a 40-billion hellhole anymore or something.
Tobias
Banded Mongoose
The money per year is not the problem. In fact, I intentionally picked a figure that I thought to be high, but affordable. But this reasonable amount would need to be spent for 5000 years. Each year.rust said:
So my approach was: Logically derived data (from planetary size) + reasonable assumption = Sobering result. I could have also used a reasonable number of years (say, 100) and ended up with MCr 0.25 per citizen and year, but this way it is clearer.
A Ringworld would be just as unaffordable, even if possible to build from a material as cheap as BSD.
I do agree with you, I am just trying to give the concept a few hardTobias said:
knocks to see whether it flinches ... :wink:
For example, there is also the "Columbus Problem" ("Had he waited
a few hundred years, he could have travelled comfortably by plane"):
Technology is very likely to continue to be improved over those 5,000
years you mentioned, so the 5,000 Credits per citizen per year would
only be the "entry ticket", and afterwards the technology should beco-
me more affordable with each century - the project itself should be suf-
ficient to cause permanent research into the technology.
In the end I think that such a project would be quite possible, but at the
same time extremely unlikely, and that it would probably require a much
different "mindset" than the one of the Third Imperium - something on
the scale of a "dying race" willing to leave a "monument for eternity" or
some such rather extreme motivation.
Tobias
Banded Mongoose
No doubt. But this is an RPG setting, and most campaigns are not going to last 5 millenia. If the Imperium started it now, characters would never see it even near completion. If it had started it 1000 years ago, they still wouldn't.rust said:
But the timescale is one reason why I think Dyson swarms are a lot more reasonable: You get tangible, useful results at each intermediate step. A Dyson sphere is something that can more reasonably grow over the timespan for centuries, or millenia.
I gotta admit I'm also biased against moving planets because it's too unimpressive.
Alien: "Look at the great engineering feat of our ancestors!"
Visitor: "... it's a planet. I've seen them before."
Alien: "Yes, but it was ARTIFICIALLY MOVED into this habitable orbit."
Visitor: "Nifty. But how is that different from the few thousand planets in the near interstellar vicinity which are in habitable orbits all by their own?"
Alien: "..."
Too leave a monument you should build something which cannot occur naturally. I mean, if your race dies out, people might later not even recognize the planet was moved.
GypsyComet
Emperor Mongoose
Supergamera said:
There is a Kemplerer Rosette in Vargr space, IIRC. I thinks that's about all the information ever provided.
The unfinished Leenitakot Ringworld is in the Hinterworlds, and is under the protection of The Outcasts of the Whispering Sky.
Tobias said:
I don't think so. There is something more fundamental to the status quo of inequality that retards logical progress. Automation has clearly demonstrated in certain Real World applications that a computerized machine can dwarf a factory worker in terms of productivity. Yet the shirts at Walmart are still made by impoverished workforces in India and China rather than robotic factories in Japan and Germany.
I do not pretend to understand the force that would prevent manufacturing (including starships) from being a near zero population enterprise (like modern Agri-Industry), but there appears to be a natural force which resists such a change as long as possible. In Traveller terms, I suspect that nobody would have the incentive to make the initial investment rather than a flaw in the basic plan.
[and arguing that things can't be different because then they would not be the way they are is a little like trying to prove a negative - (ie. Prove that you have never eaten monkey meat.)
]
Tobias
Banded Mongoose
That's because the workers who produce those shirts are cheap. Cheaper than building and maintaining a machine to do it. If the machine was cheaper, the shirt would be cheaper (for Walmart, not necessarily for you.)atpollard said:
Not at all. It's happening all the time. Products will be produced in whatever manner is most economic. Basically all progress depends on that.
But in any case, it's somewhat of a side point. If the relative costs of producing planet-moving machinery and other stuff stay the same, it is still inevitable that a civilization capable of moving even a single planet in a suitable timeframe will be a post-scarcity society.
Tobias said:
I would go as far as "COULD be a post scarcity society" (perhaps even SHOULD BE), but we grow enough food to end starvation, yet people still starve.
Perhaps the disparity of wealth is far greater than today, where a rosette of three terraformed worlds around Sol (original birthplace of Humanity) becomes a playground for the few who earn Trillions of credits per day. If automation suggests 'post scarcity' should be the norm (like post starvation) and yet 'scarcity' still exists (like starvation) then there must be 'haves' with Lots of Lots of Stuff to offset the have-nots that define the average.
atpollard said:
The forces you'd have to apply would interfere with magma flows in the core causing the crust to become unstable. You'd probably get a wobble effect through the planet, at best a kind of standing wave deforming the planet's geometry whiel under thrust.
A thrust unit powerful enough to move the planet would blast a column of air above it into space, eventualy depleting the atmosphere to a near vacuum.
Even assuming very low energy leakage and no chemical pollutants, the waste heat from the power supply and drive units would cause massive heat pollution that would devastate the ecosystem.
The thrust would cause semi-permanent tides that would cause massive ecological damage. This would also lead to a massive tide reversal when the drives are switched off. The wobble effect mentioned previously would also of course have an effect on tides.
Simon Hibbs
