Colonizing planets--is this realistic?

amnesiotic said:

Does this sounds at least a little bit plausible?

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If you listen to some around here, they'd stop you right at the FTL travel...

Personally, I think 50 years would be plenty of time. 6 months may or may not be adequate, depending on what sort of technologies your "people" have developed in those 50 years.

But unless you're going for "alternate history" why not go for 2010 as the year the craft crashes?

A lot of these questions depend on the planet. Is it basically another Earth? If so, fifty years is plenty of time to get a colony going, especially if you sell stakes to civilians who can develop the land themselves.

As for contractors, it depends on what kind you mean, what the natural resources of the planet are, and the expense of traveling there--which would be very great for awhile.

My basic physics education has me shrink at the idea of "faster than light", but alas, this is scifi/fantasy. And that's not your question anyway.

One thing you might want to consider is how much raw material there is on the planet you're going to have them colonize. If, for instance, there's lots of coal and they can set up a decent power plant, it would go a lot better than if they had to import it from our earth. Subsitute for any soucre of energy or building product or food. It would probably make sense for the planet to be rich in something, because countries like to have colonies because of the resources they provide, and it provides a good reason to go there.

I'd say 50 years is plenty of time, but depending on technollogy, the amount of people working on it (and funding avaliable for them), and the resources, you could have only a small part set and ready or a large section taken over.

Another thing you might want to consider on the funding front is how much people are willing to pay for this project. It will depend on what the new planet has to offer, and the problems in our own world. Again, let's say the planet we're colonizing is really rich in oil. That would probably gather a lot of support, because of rapidly skyrocketing prices of it (at least, for today). Supposing in your theoretical 2010 this isn't replaced by a different problem, or we don't need oil anymore, people might view colonization as a relief, because they see it as a way that could ultimately help the economy prosper. If the planet is rich in, I don't know, oak trees, and there's not a demand for oak trees, then people would probably be less likely to say it's a good idea to colonize the planet, and the process will go slower due to likely lack of funding. Also, no matter what the arguement is for the colonization, it might be fun to keep in mind that there will always be dissent, people who think the colonization is a completely horrible idea.

So anyway, I'd say you could probably have some community living there in 50 years, but the size of it depends on a lot of things.

amnesiotic said:

In my WIP, we're about fifty years in the future. In 1990 an unmanned alien spaceship crashed on Earth and provided scientists enough information to figure out how to build a spaceship that can travel faster than light. Time passes, and the first colonization effort is started on a planet in 2010.

I assume it takes time to build up a whole new world. In my WIP only scientists and military personnel have moved to the colony (taking their families with them). How long would it take for the first civilians to settle on a new planet? When are contractors demanding a piece of the planet? Is fifty years working and building on the planet enough time? I'm also struggling with how workers/builders get to the colony. I imagine a shuttle travelling between Earth and the colony every six months to take/bring workers. Does this sounds at least a little bit plausible?

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Well I'm guessing that your having the US government back engineer this from the alien spacecraft, probably in Area 51 or something. There taking the technology and going to colonize a planet. My thoughts would be immediately going to yes this is the first time their doing this so it might take a century before the colonization is complete. The other is whether or not the government is going to cover this up because if they do, than the time span of starting the entire thing would take longer.

amnesiotic said:

In my WIP, we're about fifty years in the future. In 1990 an unmanned alien spaceship crashed on Earth and provided scientists enough information to figure out how to build a spaceship that can travel faster than light. Time passes, and the first colonization effort is started on a planet in 2010.

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That's really fast, especially if they want to understand the technology, build their own engines based on that propulsion system with the software to control it, etc. I think it would take much longer than that. But it depends how they adopt the new technology I guess.

Personally I wouldn't use FTL if it means objects with rest mass travelling within normal spacetime. I would probably use some speculative theoretical method.

I assume it takes time to build up a whole new world. In my WIP only scientists and military personnel have moved to the colony (taking their families with them). How long would it take for the first civilians to settle on a new planet? When are contractors demanding a piece of the planet? Is fifty years working and building on the planet enough time? I'm also struggling with how workers/builders get to the colony. I imagine a shuttle travelling between Earth and the colony every six months to take/bring workers. Does this sounds at least a little bit plausible?

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How do you transport everything there? Do you start out with a few habitation and lab modules, plus machines and equipment to extract raw materials in situ in order to expand the base? That way, you would reduce the amount of stuff you would have to transport from Earth. The first settlement could be assembled within weeks if you have all the core modules with you. But then how fast you would expand the colony depends on what sort of equipment you have with you, if you can bring the machinery with you to build more modules locally.

amnesiotic said:

In my WIP, we're about fifty years in the future. In 1990 an unmanned alien spaceship crashed on Earth and provided scientists enough information to figure out how to build a spaceship that can travel faster than light. Time passes, and the first colonization effort is started on a planet in 2010.

I assume it takes time to build up a whole new world. In my WIP only scientists and military personnel have moved to the colony (taking their families with them). How long would it take for the first civilians to settle on a new planet? When are contractors demanding a piece of the planet? Is fifty years working and building on the planet enough time? I'm also struggling with how workers/builders get to the colony. I imagine a shuttle travelling between Earth and the colony every six months to take/bring workers. Does this sounds at least a little bit plausible?

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Look, everything depends on the assumptions you make.

If you assume that the planet is so Earth-like that humans can eat native fruits off the vine, and that travel is cheap and fast (less than a year in transit), then fifty years is plenty of time, and you can read historical accounts of other colonization efforts to give you a feel...a somewhat genocidal feel, perhaps.

If the trip is hideously expensive and takes decades, then independence from Earth is de facto.

If you assume that there's life, but not terrestrial life (silicon based? Organic, but no DNA? DNA, and with virulent organisms of its own?) then it could take centuries - or the colonists might sterilize the planet and start from scratch.

If you assume that the planet is like Earth three billion years ago, then terraforming could take centuries.

Make your assumptions first, and then ask the questions.

You could always come up with your own theory of everything or something else that could allow for exotic propulsion methods. Just wondering, is the colony in another planetary system?

amnesiotic said:

It's probably more plausible if the spaceship can almost reach the speed of light. Time is relative and traveling as fast as light can create some interesting time differences between Earth and the colony. I don't want to venture into the area of bending space or warping time.

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OK, if you're talking about a ship traveling just below the speed of light, you're into relativistic time dilation. This gets into fairly well-substantiated physics, so you have to be kinda careful about the details. You have two time scales to worry about.

How long the travel takes from the perspective of anyone who isn't on board the spaceship:


A rough rule of thumb is that a one-way trip will take a number of years equal to the planet's distance from Earth, plus two. (The extra two years are the first and last year of the trip, when the ship is traveling much slower.) That means, for example, that if your planet is 20 lightyears away, one round trip--Earth to the planet and back to Earth again--will take 44 years total (22 each way).

Similarly, if you don't have a magic subspace radio, a radio message takes the same number of years as the distance in lightyears. So for the same planet 20 light years away, the message announcing that the ship has reached it will arrive back at Earth 42 years after the ship departed. Remember, it took the ship 22 years to get there, and it takes 20 years for the message to get back.

This makes your fifty year timeframe a little doubtful, unless they just fired off one ship after another, on the assumption that they would find a habitable planet at their destination.

Now, how long the trip takes from the perspective of someone who is on board the ship:

This is where relativistic time dilation comes into play. The people on board will experience the trip as being much shorter. If you assume the ship accelerates up to a certain speed, then coasts at a constant speed until it has to start slowing down, it takes anywhere from about 1/2 as many years as the distance in lightyears, to about 1/20 as many years. It depends on exactly how close to lightspeed the ship gets, so if you avoid mentioning a specific speed, you can make the time be whatever works best for your story.

Or, if you assume the ship accelerates continuously for half the distance, then decelerates for the second half, you can get anywhere in the reasonable neighborhood (probably several hundred lightyears) in 6-8 years.

ETA: The time using constant acceleration really doesn't vary much over any reasonable distance. The reference I was able to find quickly only lists: 4.3ly-->3.6yr, 27ly-->6.6yr, 30,000ly-->20yr.

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amnesiotic said:

Yes, a different planetary system within our galaxy.

The propulsion of the spacecraft is making me worried. I've established in my earlier drafts of my WIP that the planet is 2400 AU (atronomical units) away from Earth, but realize now that's pretty close and maybe I should change that. Or change the speed the spaceship can travel. I want the journey to the colony to be long--a month, two months.

I'm going to spill my thoughts here, knowing there's some fluke . I always thought the problem with space travel is to gain speed in space. Action is reaction, but that's a bit of a problem in space. I read about ion thrusters and thought of some engine that propells the spacecraft through a chemical reaction to provide 'thrust'. The spacecraft is in fact creating its own launching bed--so to speak--to push off. But that's only one side of the coin. Once the spacecraft is in motion, traveling with such a high speed, how to slow it down to dock at the colony? Entering the atmosphere around the planet would slow it down, but with these speeds? And not to mention can the hull of the craft handle the heat caused by friction? I'm thinking about using gravity as a way of decelaration. The spaceship has to orbit around the planet for a few days to decelerate.

I'm not sure if you can follow my ramblings, ignore if you will. Just thinking out loud.

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It sounds like you're thinking in terms of planetary distances and speeds, instead of interstellar distances and relativistic speeds.

Distance within our Solar System might be measured in AU (1 AU = approx 9 light-minutes), but distance between stars is measured in light-years...because even the closest star system is more than four light-years away. (There are also parsecs, but let's stick with light-years.) A starship traveling fast enough to reach even the nearest stars won't be decelerated sufficiently by planetary gravity. And by interstellar standards, a journey of months is NOTHING. Anything below the speed of light gives you a journey of years at best.

Also, even though we can't build any of these suckers (yet) there are already some very well thought-out transport systems for interstellar travel, from the Bussard ramjet to the colony ship to the light sail to some combination of several different technologies. Google "interstellar travel," "interstellar exploration" and the NASA Advanced Propulsion Lab and take a look. Even if you go with FTL travel, the discussions will introduce you to issues and jargon you should consider.

Historically speaking, it was never the wealthiest who tried to colonize - the wealthy were having a great time back home. Instead, it was often the poor, criminals, landless farmers, religious exiles, and the formerly powerful (e.g. third and fourth sons of the nobility, ex-soldiers, etc.)

Finally, there have been a LOT of books about colonizing other planets. If you haven't already, you might want to read a few, not just because they're fun, but also so you don't reinvent the wheel. You might want to start with Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson, Orphans of the Sky by Robert Heinlein, and The Day the People Fell by Cordwainer Smith. For the behavior of spaceships traveling at relativistic speeds, try Protector by Larry Niven.

This is an alien space-craft technology. It's doubtful it would travel on chemical fuel, espcially considering the general9ly accepted) distibution of intelligent life in the universe, or even the galaxy. So you may not have to worry about relativity. You're better of going FTL. But that opens a whole new can of worms.

amnesiotic said:

Yes, a different planetary system within our galaxy.

The propulsion of the spacecraft is making me worried. I've established in my earlier drafts of my WIP that the planet is 2400 AU (atronomical units) away from Earth, but realize now that's pretty close and maybe I should change that. Or change the speed the spaceship can travel. I want the journey to the colony to be long--a month, two months.

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That depends on how you see it. A star that close would indeed be very close, but a spacecraft that far away, launched by us, would be very far away. The most distant object made by humans is Voyager 1, which is more than 106 AU from the Sun, according to Wikipedia. That's a lot, but it's still a long way from the Oort cloud, which is thought to be a few thousand AU from the Sun.

No stars that close have been observed. But back in the 80's there was this idea that the Sun was really a part of a binary star system, with a second star, a red or brown dwarf. At its closest it would be close enough to disturb the Oort cloud (maybe go right through it) which would cause a lot of cometary bodies to enter the inner solar system. Isaac Asimov wrote a book about a nearby red dwarf star named Nemesis.

I'm going to spill my thoughts here, knowing there's some fluke . I always thought the problem with space travel is to gain speed in space. Action is reaction, but that's a bit of a problem in space. I read about ion thrusters and thought of some engine that propells the spacecraft through a chemical reaction to provide 'thrust'. The spacecraft is in fact creating its own launching bed--so to speak--to push off. But that's only one side of the coin. Once the spacecraft is in motion, traveling with such a high speed, how to slow it down to dock at the colony? Entering the atmosphere around the planet would slow it down, but with these speeds? And not to mention can the hull of the craft handle the heat caused by friction? I'm thinking about using gravity as a way of decelaration. The spaceship has to orbit around the planet for a few days to decelerate.

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Since the technology is more advanced and if it allows FTL (or something like it) then it would probably be based on science unknown to us. Anyway, to decelerate when you reach the destination, you could just turn the space ship around half way (if you accelerate half the distance) and use the engines to decelerate the ship. Aerobraking is one thing you could do, but not from relativistic speeds. You could use it to alter your orbit around the planet though.

The planet that gets developed the quickest will be the one with the best run sex and gambling industries.

A key item to remember: Earth has an oxygen-rich atmosphere only because it has a huge interconnected web of organic life on it. Doesn't work the other way around. The presence of free oxygen in an atmosphere would be an instant signal that some form of metabolic life existed on a planet. Now, you can postulate a planet with life forms that do not produce oxygen as a by-product, but if the oxygen is there, you by definition can infer living things.

It's hard to envision a real colonization project going anywhere there wasn't already some organic life (I don't think we will ever truly "colonize" Mars, for precisely this reason). At the same time, the presence of another biotic system unconnected with ours presents all kinds of other obstacles (notably, potentially lethal disease microbes to which we would have no immunity).

So your story really depends on how much fantasy you put into it. That said, lots and lots of SF writers have people living on other planets and traveling between star systems.

caw

amnesiotic said:

Thanks, you guys are fast and awesome. Those are really good pointers.

I imagined the people on Earth would see the colonists as elitists. Only the richest of the rich would move to a colony, putting a dent in Earth's economy on the way. People are unhappy/jealous and activists pop up to shout out humanity is not ready for expansion when there's enough to deal with closer at home.

Excellent point about having some resource on the colony that could benefit Earth.
Also about the secrecy. I don't use Area 51, I've made up something similar (I was unsure if I could use Area 51 in my novel). I think it's difficult to keep a crashed spaceship hidden from the public eye. Especially with so many witnesses and media coverage. The US government in my WIP was under heavy pressure from other countries to disclose their research project.

The colony starts very small; a population of around one hundred (scientists, engineers, military, researchers). A dome is set up to grow food, pumps are placed to extract water. The atmosphere is very much like Earth, although there is some difference in the amount of oxygen present in the atmosphere. The first people suffered from altitude sickness for example.

The idea is to keep Earth much the same as it is now, with a sudden jump start technology-wise (and only the space ship). I'm still working out the details of what parts of the crashed spaceship gives Earth a sudden advantage (I'm thinking of an energy core that depletes very slowly, a healthier version than nuclear powered engines). It's probably more plausible if the spaceship can almost reach the speed of light. Time is relative and traveling as fast as light can create some interesting time differences between Earth and the colony. I don't want to venture into the area of bending space or warping time.

In my WIP the people on Earth are divided into different 'camps'. Some people are very pro toward the colony, others are very against it and feel neglected by the government. My main character is from Earth and has very strong opinions toward a member of his team who was born and raised on the colony.

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Does the point of view of people on Earth matter at all in the story? After all, from their point of view, if the colony is say 20 ly away, a round trip takes over a generation even if the travelers might see it as only a year or two. Jack Sputter could leave as a Fledgling Space Cadet at 20, come back as a twittish young Space Cadet Third Class of 22 and find that his girl friend Connie is in her early 60s running an evil empire and raising rare Orchids. This is more like Horror, maybe.

blacbird said:

A key item to remember: Earth has an oxygen-rich atmosphere only because it has a huge interconnected web of organic life on it. Doesn't work the other way around. The presence of free oxygen in an atmosphere would be an instant signal that some form of metabolic life existed on a planet. Now, you can postulate a planet with life forms that do not produce oxygen as a by-product, but if the oxygen is there, you by definition can infer living things.

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Not necessarily. You can have a planet with a vastly different chemical mixture than earth. True, oxygen tends to react and not stay as free oxygen, however if you have a planet with mostly oxidizing athmosphere not reducing athmosphere, the can still be free oygen around since there's nothing it can react with. This doesn't even have to be an all-oxygen athmosphere, for example the planet could contain a lot of halogen elements, which would oxidize available material and leave the oxygen free.



Anyway, another important point is that trade in space is pretty much impossible unless you have unbelievably cheap FTL travel. I'm talking about something like the wormholes in hamiltons commonwealth books.
Basically no material resource is ever worth enough to put it on a spaceship.
Simple stuff like elements (yes, even gold, even tritium), can be found in any amounts within the solar system. Before you go interstellar for that, you'd harvest the complete asteroid belt, all the lifeless planets (and their moons) heck, even the kuiper belt is just so much closer.
Technological artefacts are pretty much the same. The only machinery you'd ever transport at interstellar ranges are a starting set of factories that can make anything else you need. Just look at todays economics, car factories are already being built closer to customers to save on transporting the cars across the atlantic or pacific.
The same goes pretty much for any compound. Got this wondrous medical plant that cures cancer? Make one trip to ship over a few hundred tons of seeds or even a complete terrarium. Not multiple trips shipping the wonder drug. Got diamonds? Hell, we can make artificial diamonds today, and they're only distinguishable from natural ones because they're better! Got some strange animal that's the new must-have pet for the rich and dumb? Get a dozen and start breeding.
The only things that make any sense being transported across interstellar distances are information and people. (unless you have dirt cheap travel, see above. And remember, time is money. One-year trips are rarely cheap, unless the transport ships crew works for free)

Now, that being said, of course when that colony has just been established there would be quite a bit of transport. After all, all those pets and plants have to be shipped back to earth to start with the breeding and farming.
On the other hand, the colony has a whole planet to work with, they will be self-sufficient very very fast. Think of it in three stages. The first expedition start by building housings for themselves and means to grow food for many people. Then the second comes establishing a modern production base. (check out how long it takes to build a modern car factory for reference. Or even better a factory that builds industrial robots) And third, everyone who wants to migrate to the new planet can start to arrive.

A lot of this depends of course on your planet. I assumed a somewhat earth-like planet. There a countless scenarios though that can change the whole thing. It might very much earth-like, earth-like enough to have some nasty organic stuff to deal with. Alien viral diseases are unlikely enough to be pretty much impossible, however there's no reason a nasty flesh-eating alien bacterium couldn't exist. Or maybe in the blooming season all the pollen on the planet is poisonos for humans which they only find out three month in. And so on and so on. You could fill a book with nothing but the struggle against such a threat.
Another possibility is of course if the planet isn't earth like and has to be terraformed.
The easiest example would be of a planet with an oxygen atmospere and his own life that is incompatible with earth life. That'd just mean gradual killing off of the native life and planting of earth plants (and soil microbes, insects etc.) terraforming the planet piece-by-piece while there is still a working ecosystem that keeps the athmosphere breathable.
Or maybe there planet has a compatible atmosphere and climate and is simply dead, which means to terraform it you need to start a complete new ecosystem.
Or in the worst case it's totally uncompatible and colonists have to live in airtight buildings, or maybe city-sized dome structures until the atmosphere was changed. This however is again stupid at interstellar distances since there are planets and moons much closer so you can start by terraforming mars first.

Lhun said:

Basically no material resource is ever worth enough to put it on a spaceship.

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Echo this. I'm always amused by the space operas that postulate some kind of industrial spacewagon transporting "ore" of some kind, a la the movie Alien.

caw

amnesiotic said:

In my WIP only scientists and military personnel have moved to the colony (taking their families with them). How long would it take for the first civilians to settle on a new planet? When are contractors demanding a piece of the planet? Is fifty years working and building on the planet enough time? I'm also struggling with how workers/builders get to the colony. I imagine a shuttle travelling between Earth and the colony every six months to take/bring workers. Does this sounds at least a little bit plausible?

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I think there'd be civilians from the very beginning. Military skills and science don't prepare you for being a farmer, architect or construction worker. Nor does being rich. You'll need workers.

Polenth said:

I think there'd be civilians from the very beginning. Military skills and science don't prepare you for being a farmer, architect or construction worker. Nor does being rich. You'll need workers.

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The Seabees and the Army Corps of Engineers might beg to differ with you about the "architect or construction worker" part.

For farmers, you have a point. A few agronomists deciding the best locations for various crops would be considered scientists, and everyone might be expected to have their own vegetable gardens, but you would need some agricultural workers for bulk foods.

amnesiotic said:

Time passes, and the first colonization effort is started on a planet in 2010. I assume it takes time to build up a whole new world.

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Have you ever read RED MARS, or the MARS series in general? It sounds like something that you might benefit from having a read of. Although, I must confess that I never finished the first book and loathed parts of it.

Red Mars is hard science fiction and deals with a number of issues with people landing on Mars and how they coped with it.

As far as your FTL idea, try not too get too bogged down in the details of that, unless its going to prove to be a major plot point, like in THE FOREVER WAR.

Supposing a 3:1 water/land planet with similar rotation, similar mass and similar gravity to Earth. A big issue would be sufficienct oxygen and lack of toxins. Underground sealed burrows in geologically stable zones would work as initial colonies until the planet can be terraformed to support humans and their flora/fauna. Depending on technology, cloud seeding, existing conditions, that could take hundreds of years.

The only feasible trade that might exist in a FTL situation would be in small luxuries (i.e. your Udmurtian cheeses, etc.), that are consumed as a status symbol. This trade would be almost entirely one-way (Home to colony). Stuff that's shipped on commercial airliners (as opposed to container ships) in our world and wouldn't take up too much valuable mass on a FTL ship. This assumes you don't have reliable manufacturing on the molecular scale that could produce authentic Udmurtian yak milk in your colony.

Well this is mostly a question of human behaviour. Just compare our current artificial diamonds to real ones. There will definitly be some trade in luxuries, and basically anything will do as long as it is exclusive enough.
Sure you could probably copy it (and people will) but that will not stop the market.
People are stupid that way.