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As a change of pace from the usual doom and gloom of OT, I thought it'd be a "fun" mental exercise to discuss humans colonizing other planets.


What would be the best means of accomplishing transport? How many people (roughly) would be needed? What kind of people would be needed and the ratios of those people?

Well. Unless we develop wormhole technology, anything beyond out solar system is going to be a multi-generational journey(unless we develop stasis of some kind)

If we assume we have stasis and/or wormhole technology and the same people we send will be the first generation on the new planet.

There should be several hundred to upwards of a thousand members to ensure a large enough founding population. A 50-50 sex ratio.

In addition, we would need to bring along a ton of animals and plants to ensure we could start a new ecosystem(this furthers the need for stasis or relatively fast transport)

 Grey Templar wrote:


In addition, we would need to bring along a ton of animals and plants to ensure we could start a new ecosystem(this furthers the need for stasis or relatively fast transport)

This wouldn't necessarily be true, if we find planets that are earth-like enough that we know that we can survive/thrive off of the local flora/fauna.


As to your premise of needing around 1000 people, this was kind of where I was hinting with the topic.... What's the "best" means of transporting those colonists? Assuming we have the tech/ability to do so, would it be more functionally efficient to have numerous vessels with fewer people per ship, or one large vessel? If you go with the "smaller" ship, if one crashes, how much redundancy do you have spread across the other ships?

Given the distances involved, the scope of the operation, the precision required, and the limitations on the information we can gather I'd say praying for a magic space leprechaun to come down and whisk us away in his flying pot-o-gold is about as effective as any other.

Short of a discovery that re-writes our understanding of physics entirely, humans are stuck on earth and only earth forever. We will never leave our solar system at all and we will not leave our home planet in any meaningful capacity.

Only on Dakka do what if threads turn into debbie downers within 5 posts.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:


In addition, we would need to bring along a ton of animals and plants to ensure we could start a new ecosystem(this furthers the need for stasis or relatively fast transport)

This wouldn't necessarily be true, if we find planets that are earth-like enough that we know that we can survive/thrive off of the local flora/fauna.


As to your premise of needing around 1000 people, this was kind of where I was hinting with the topic.... What's the "best" means of transporting those colonists? Assuming we have the tech/ability to do so, would it be more functionally efficient to have numerous vessels with fewer people per ship, or one large vessel? If you go with the "smaller" ship, if one crashes, how much redundancy do you have spread across the other ships?

The physics of moving in space favor very large ships.

The bigger you get, the bigger the engine can be, and the faster you can go. Its the same reason why there will never be space fighters. Being small is only an advantage in an atmosphere where you have surface friction and better thrust to weight. A large ship can turn just as fast as a small one in space, and can go faster.


Anyway, we still want to bring earth life with us. Local life isn't guaranteed to be edible, non-poisonous, or even exist in the first place. Plus we could just as easily bring an earth disease that wipes out local life too. Terraforming, as the name suggest, does require Terran organisms.

Start on the moon
Send a tunneler first
Tunnel deep. Cap the open and start the logistics of expanding an underground base.....lets not start stock piling nuclear waste there or anything eventhough its way past 1999

Tunnels are ideal. Materials would cost thousands per kilo.

tunneling machines could be a far more efficient use.

Later can refine local materials to build but give a basicx baseon surface but strong and able to easily resist any dangerous wildlife or weather conditions. Struts, pins and such secure walls vs qaukes.

Stronger early beginnings, may not be nice at first but provide a solid start.

Also colony ship, design it to break down parts for building and such. The hull can v
Become reinforce!ent etc

We could build tunnels underground to live in, and create large robotic guardians we can call baileys to patrol the surface. Once we've invented working cryogenics we'll be able to freeze anyone (even exotic dancers) so that they can awake in the future to live a life of luxury.

No, wait. Sorry..... thats the premise for cleopatra 2525.

Our first colonies will most certainly be underground or in sealed surface buildings.

Underground has the advantage of not needing to build the entire thing. You just need to seal the area.

Terra forming will take hundreds of years to accomplish. Its easier if the planet has plenty of CO2, at least you can get plants off to a start.


Mars is a particular challenge because its quite cold and has no magnetic field to protect from solar radiation. So even if we get a breathable atmosphere on Mars, we would still need to spend most of our time in shielded buildings or environmental suits.

The cold can be brought up to a tolerable temperature by releasing greenhouse gasses. Although that absent magnetic field also makes keeping a thicker atmosphere difficult. So Mars will always have a thin atmosphere and be cold even once we are done fixing the place up. It would be like living at high altitude, but permanently.

Huge supply center to for Mars...incase we get into a SDF1 situation

Well, if you want to know what it would look like or you just want to feel inspired by listening to Carl Sagan and looking at awesome stuff, watch this video: Wanderers

It is spectacular...

 Grey Templar wrote:
. A 50-50 sex ratio.

I've seen it suggested in scifi in the past that any colonisation effort like this should just include women and frozen sperm... That way you need to accomodate fewer living bodies to produce the same level of baby production and genetic diversity.

 insaniak wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
. A 50-50 sex ratio.

I've seen it suggested in scifi in the past that any colonisation effort like this should just include women and frozen sperm... That way you need to accomodate fewer living bodies to produce the same level of baby production and genetic diversity.

Bad idea.

Stored sperm loses a lot of viability, and you are in trouble if the stocks are destroyed.

Having some frozen sperm and eggs is a good backup plan in case something terrible happens, but its a terrible idea as the primary means of initial reproduction.

Plan A) Normal reproduction. With a built in safeguard of having multiple members of both sexes.

Plan B) Frozen reproductive material. Only to be used in case you have almost total loss of one sex.


Really this plan is just an extreme feminist anti-male fantasy. Its not actually a good idea.

In the short term, I think we should invest more in NASA and the ESA. Colonization of another celestial body would be a multi-generational affair and we need to get the groundwork started now. First thing I would do is start focusing on a manned voyage to Mars. 5-10 astronauts on a long voyage that would inevitably cost those brave souls dearly physically as well as psychologically. People forget just how much technology was created during the space race and especially during the race to the moon. Medium and long duration manned space flight would require advances in hydroponics, life support, artificial or induced gravity, rocketry, and a host of other fields.

The near term goal is to get the technology moving in the direction we need it to - that won't happen without a Manhattan level project. Once we've proven that we can actually get into our stellar backyard, I would start looking at building permanent space stations that are more than science labs in low earth orbit. Once we can adequately sustain a presence in space, we should think about gathering our resources needed for interstellar flight from space. Astroid mining, hydroponic farming, and comet mining may give us many of the materials needed to push towards the Jovian moons.

The entire colonization effort should be led by a vanguard of advanced USV (unmanned space vehicles) and robots in order to pave the way for human habitation. As no planet or moon in our solar system is capable of supporting human life, they will have to do the majority of the dirty work outside whatever structures we (or actually they) build. Much of the colonization effort really depends on what planets and moons have suitable resources with which to build a viable colony. So much of the technology we depend on requires plant matter, fossil fuels, or organic compounds that may not be available anywhere outside of Earth - another reason to get the technology train up and running by funding NASA….

if this was TL;DR, then the gist of the entire post is …. fund the space programs.

A big step for space colonization would be space elevators. That way, we could move more materials off world and space built ships are not hindered by gravity or aerodynamics (think borg cubes). Plus, space elevators look really cool.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
. A 50-50 sex ratio.

I've seen it suggested in scifi in the past that any colonisation effort like this should just include women and frozen sperm... That way you need to accomodate fewer living bodies to produce the same level of baby production and genetic diversity.

Bad idea.

Stored sperm loses a lot of viability, and you are in trouble if the stocks are destroyed.

Having some frozen sperm and eggs is a good backup plan in case something terrible happens, but its a terrible idea as the primary means of initial reproduction.

Plan A) Normal reproduction. With a built in safeguard of having multiple members of both sexes.

Plan B) Frozen reproductive material. Only to be used in case you have almost total loss of one sex.


Really this plan is just an extreme feminist anti-male fantasy. Its not actually a good idea.

You can fit more than 1 man's worth of sperm backups with less space and weight than you can fit 1 man. At the end of they if what you need is redundancy you're better off just packing in more more frozen sperm, a living human is more fragile anyway.

The ability of a population to grow is wholly and only depedent on the women of that population. That isn't anti-male anything, it's just biology. Even if you are bringing real dudes, you only need around 20-30% for genetic diversity at that point you're still better off packing in more women.

All that is assuming you need actual sperm. Given potential advances in reproductive technology I'm not entirely sure sperm/dudes are needed at all. We're not too far off from just being able to introduce the genetic material from a woman into another woman to produce a genetic daughter of both women. Presumably if we've overcome the other insane challenges, writing out dudes out is a trivial part of the equation. This is just more efficient.

At any rate looking to actual humans for this kind of thing is silly. If we're actually going down this path, why send whole humans at all? Develop viable long terms means to store genetic material (frozen sperm & eggs or.. just eggs, whatever), along with some kind of gestation vats. Send automated systems that Shake & Bake their own humans on-site. Include an automated process (drones of some kind) for harvesting basic nutrients and feed the young humans some kind of nutritional slurry until they're ready to fend for themselves. Automated computer systems teach them language, survival and technological skills. You only need to do a handful this way, once they've established a foothold they can shake & bake up the rest from the stored genetic material until they've got a stable population.

If we somehow wave magic wands and make all the other problems go away, shipping huge amounts materials and keeping whole humans live along the way is just a totally wrong-headed approach.

I think it would be safer, for all involved to simply send a bunch of couples. I know I wouldnt spend the rest of my life in space without my partner.

Find a balance between efficiency and humanness.

As much as I think space travel is a waste of time, it still has to be an event for people. Kids are better when raised by people, diversity doesnt hurt to have either. Why not send couples of many nations up there?

I dont know, they will all probably die on their journey anyway.

Plus who knows what might happen. Always have two plans at least.

If you're think of robots, just send these guys out.

 Swastakowey wrote:
I think it would be safer, for all involved to simply send a bunch of couples. I know I wouldnt spend the rest of my life in space without my partner.

Find a balance between efficiency and humanness.

As much as I think space travel is a waste of time, it still has to be an event for people. Kids are better when raised by people, diversity doesnt hurt to have either. Why not send couples of many nations up there?

I dont know, they will all probably die on their journey anyway.

Plus who knows what might happen. Always have two plans at least.

Because at the end of the day for such a crazy thing to be viable you need to

A) Minimize cost.
B) Minimize mass.
C) Maximize Redundancy
D) Maximize Automation

Really even my above approaches were still too dependent on keeping large complex systems intact over long distances.

Assuming we're waving our infinite technology magic wand again, we just sound send out small packages: A powerful computer, an initial batch of nanites, some genetic material. Then when the capsules land, the nanites go into action self-replicating and configuring for different tasks. They build up some shelter, gather food by some mechanism, then build the gestiation vats and shake & bake the humans.

Such packages could be presumably very small, probably even smaller than what we package our current day landers in. They'd be cheap, fairly easy to test on earth and could be mass produced in huge numbers. We could literally launch billions of these things, particularly if we had an easy to produce them in-orbit. We just aim a couple thousand at every possible colonization candidate we can spot. In a few hundred, to a couple thousand years if we're still around we maybe hear back from one of our colonies.

EDIT: We could even program the nanites to destroy/attack/break down any life found on the planet that doesn't carry whatever markers are unique to being from earth - at whatever rate will keep the general atmosphere and soil quality from being destroyed before they repopulated it with earth-based genetic material. Trigger a sort of intentional partial grey-goo scenario to wipe the slate clean for us.

EDIT(AGAIN): If we've reached this level of finite control, which is not totally outside the realm of plausibility we may not even need the education-bots. Simply grow the unconscious human bodies to adult size and then have the nanites reconfigure the neurons & chemicals in their brains to match known patterns recorded on earth. In effect creating a copy of the living mind of humans from earth. This would create clean copies of stable, well-educated people carrying all their cultural heritage and stable relationships (with other copies) with them.

Any update on the "Win a Free Trip to Mar's as a Couple" gimmick making any headway?

 Grey Templar wrote:
The physics of moving in space favor very large ships.

The bigger you get, the bigger the engine can be, and the faster you can go. Its the same reason why there will never be space fighters. Being small is only an advantage in an atmosphere where you have surface friction and better thrust to weight. A large ship can turn just as fast as a small one in space, and can go faster.

I just wanted to snag this one. Sure, in space you don't have to worry about gravity, friction or drag, but the basic equations of motion still apply. Inertia and good old f=ma, in particular. For bigger = faster (and more manoeuvrable) you need the force to go up relative to the mass as the vessel gets bigger. The larger the ship, the larger the mass, the larger the thrust required. Sure, getting up to really high speeds is theoretically more achievable for larger vessels, but mainly because they'd have larger fuel reserves and be able to accelerate for longer. But smaller will almost certainly always be more manoeuvrable. Travelling at a consistent speed, in a single direction, is easy in space, once you've reached the requisite velocity, you no longer need *any* thrust, but changing direction, that's where acceleration is critical. The lighter the vessel, the less force it needs to change it's acceleration, and since most engines we can conceive don't have instantaneous acceleration, the quicker they can ramp up the quicker they can change direction.

Does that make sense? I get a bit rambeley at times.

 Grey Templar wrote:
There should be several hundred to upwards of a thousand members to ensure a large enough founding population. A 50-50 sex ratio.

Or you could send a small crew on a small ship with many fertilised human eggs and artificial wombs on board. Or send a large crew, entirely female, with frozen sperm aboard.

Both give far better resulting population densities for less investment.

Edit: Whoops, should have read the rest of the thread

 Pendix wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
The physics of moving in space favor very large ships.

The bigger you get, the bigger the engine can be, and the faster you can go. Its the same reason why there will never be space fighters. Being small is only an advantage in an atmosphere where you have surface friction and better thrust to weight. A large ship can turn just as fast as a small one in space, and can go faster.

I just wanted to snag this one. Sure, in space you don't have to worry about gravity, friction or drag, but the basic equations of motion still apply. Inertia and good old f=ma, in particular. For bigger = faster (and more manoeuvrable) you need the force to go up relative to the mass as the vessel gets bigger. The larger the ship, the larger the mass, the larger the thrust required. Sure, getting up to really high speeds is theoretically more achievable for larger vessels, but mainly because they'd have larger fuel reserves and be able to accelerate for longer. But smaller will almost certainly always be more manoeuvrable. Travelling at a consistent speed, in a single direction, is easy in space, once you've reached the requisite velocity, you no longer need *any* thrust, but changing direction, that's where acceleration is critical. The lighter the vessel, the less force it needs to change it's acceleration, and since most engines we can conceive don't have instantaneous acceleration, the quicker they can ramp up the quicker they can change direction.

Does that make sense? I get a bit rambeley at times.

You're confusing acceleration and velocity at the end there: Changing velocity (or more accurately, vectors) is what matters, and changing acceleration is simply a matter of flinging more reaction mass out the back, a process that doesn't really take any appreciable amount of time.

Honestly, you're mostly looking at percentage of mass dedicated to reaction mass at this point, and big ships actually win at this: With a smaller vessel, you've got a requisite larger percentage dedicated to necessities such as life support and the crew itself. At a higher mass, the amount taken up by necessities shrinks rapidly and can be dedicated to engine and reaction mass. Depending on what propulsion system you're using as well, larger ships tend to be more efficient as well. NSWRs and Orion drives tend to work a lot better with a larger mass (and potentially a nice big spring) to cushion the sudden (and somewhat spiky with the latter) acceleration.

Would Terraforming Mars be more likely than us being able to create / manage Wormholes?

 Grey Templar wrote:
Really this plan is just an extreme feminist anti-male fantasy. Its not actually a good idea.

Ooor it is the best way to (currently) put human beings on another planet

Though I guess you would rather send up pairs of animals to seed another planet?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Wolfstan wrote:
Would Terraforming Mars be more likely than us being able to create / manage Wormholes?

In the short term, possibly.

 Laughing Man wrote:
You're confusing acceleration and velocity at the end there: Changing velocity (or more accurately, vectors) is what matters, and changing acceleration is simply a matter of flinging more reaction mass out the back, a process that doesn't really take any appreciable amount of time.

Honestly, you're mostly looking at percentage of mass dedicated to reaction mass at this point, and big ships actually win at this: With a smaller vessel, you've got a requisite larger percentage dedicated to necessities such as life support and the crew itself. At a higher mass, the amount taken up by necessities shrinks rapidly and can be dedicated to engine and reaction mass. Depending on what propulsion system you're using as well, larger ships tend to be more efficient as well. NSWRs and Orion drives tend to work a lot better with a larger mass (and potentially a nice big spring) to cushion the sudden (and somewhat spiky with the latter) acceleration.

Hurn . . . Yeah, that was a very poorly worded section there, sorry about that.

I can definitely agree that there are some amazing advantages with big ships, particularly with efficiency. But I guess what I was getting at is that I don't think small spaceships are going to be inherently worse at manoeuvring in space. I think my issue is that 'appreciable amount of time, is dependant on just how much force (reaction mass) you need to ramp up to and how quickly you can do it. The difference between something the size of a Mig and a 747 is not going to be discernable, but truly huge ships, (compared to 'fighters') will surely take an appreciable amount of time to change their vectors.

 Wolfstan wrote:
Would Terraforming Mars be more likely than us being able to create / manage Wormholes?

Both of those options are well beyond and foreseeable technology and are both unlikely to ever happen.

 Pendix wrote:
I can definitely agree that there are some amazing advantages with big ships, particularly with efficiency. But I guess what I was getting at is that I don't think small spaceships are going to be inherently worse at manoeuvring in space. I think my issue is that 'appreciable amount of time, is dependant on just how much force (reaction mass) you need to ramp up to and how quickly you can do it. The difference between something the size of a Mig and a 747 is not going to be discernable, but truly huge ships, (compared to 'fighters') will surely take an appreciable amount of time to change their vectors.

Thrust does not always scale with size either. A large engine can produce less thrust per unit weight/size than a smaller engine, or use significantly more fuel per unit time (thus negating its advantage when considering any but the shortest burn times as you will have to carry significantly more fuel, thus increasing mass and so reducing the overall thrust/mass ratio of the ship).

 Mr Nobody wrote:
A big step for space colonization would be space elevators. That way, we could move more materials off world and space built ships are not hindered by gravity or aerodynamics (think borg cubes). Plus, space elevators look really cool.

There are more than a few huge hurtles with a space elevator, like the cost in dollars as well as material. It have to be incredibly tough to not only snap under its own weight, but still carry supplies up.

I think 3D printers is really the way to go. We can print anything from plastics to metals already, and even organic things as well. Send up enough supplies and mini printing robots to get things going and then the materials for them to print up printers and bam, you're on your way