Population of Sirius

[Unseelie]

Some background reading: Ecumenopolis and Tower Farms.


Starting points
Libertypop = 3000, 1 AS
Rhienlandpop = 3000, 3AS
Kusaripop = 3000, 5AS
Bretoniapop = 3000, 19AS
Cretepop = 800, 20AS
Maltapop = 1500, 50AS

**first hundred years after ships landed, different hundred years for each ship.
Libertypop (1 + .06)^100 = 1,017,906=L1
Rhienlandpop (1 + .06)^100 = 1,017,906=R1
Kusaripop (1 + .06)^100 = 1,017,906=K1
Bretoniapop (1 + .06)^100 = 1,017,906 =B1
Cretepop (1 + .05)^100 = 105,201=C1
Maltapop (1 + .04)^100 = 70,042=M1

And now, at 816AS
L1(1 + .02)^715 = 1,434,929,240,000
R1(1 + .02)^713 = 1,379,209,180,000
K1(1 + .02)^711 = 1,325,652,810,000
B1(1 + .02)^697 = 1,004,679,160,000
C1(1 + .01)^696 = 107 076 957
M1(1 + .005)^666 = 1,950,391


I understand these numbers are insane, and that population pressures would set in. This is pure growth. Anyone want to make assumptions as far as carrying capacities on planets, when each planet was coloniezed, and what the stations can hold?

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[Zygoeths]

How are we not to know that the old residents of earth (the earth system, milkyway) hadn't set path to other reigions of the universe O.O, maybe sirius is not the only place humans found protection.

[Unseelie]

How are we not to know that the old residents of earth (the earth system, milkyway) hadn't set path to other reigions of the universe O.O, maybe sirius is not the only place humans found protection.

Why do we care?
This is a thread about the population of Sirius Not anything else...and I believe the cannon is that the nomads wiped them out very very soon after the sleepers launched. Not much time, but, anyway, its completely off topic...

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[Unseelie]

My new population data, with a base rate of 50k people, because Kuriane convinced me that thats how many I should take to maintain genetic diversity, and the old growth rates.

I've not yet adjusted for landing outside of the 10 year brackets. Will do that later.

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[AdamantineFist]

Those numbers seem very reasonable to me. Good work, Unseelie.

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[sovereign]

Let's take Bretonia as an example;

Habitable planets;

Leeds, New London, Cambridge

Cambridge has a lot of farmland and less urbanization, but Leeds and NL seem to be excessively urbanized and feed their citizens from troughs (read the Leeds rumors, I'm not kidding), so for simplicity's sake we'll say they balance out.

Unseelie's chart calculates ~8.7 trillion for our current date. That's a little less than three trillion per planet.

Now; assuming these planets are all roughly the size of the Earth, and we are projected to reach our sustainable population limit at 9 billion, this gets whacky. If we purge the oceans and assume the same density as land (the oceans provide less food than can be replaced by covering land in high-yield grains instead of cattle) that gives us roughly 30 billion. Now, let us assume for a second that they have engineered super-crops that give off ~30x the calorie density of our own (barely feasible with conservation of energy assuming Earth-normal atmospheres, experimentally impossible but let's use techno-magic for the sake of argument). That provides a reasonable population of 1 trillion. 1 trillion per planet. Times three planets, that's a third of the projected with that population growth.

I suppose that if you clear all wildlife and fill all available space with either housing complexes, super-farms, or power plants, it can be stretched to 3 trillion per planet. But it's still a really big stretch, and a very different worldview from what I would have expected.



Actually.... does anyone have the population growth statistics for the periods upon which each house was based? For Liberty, use immediately pre-WWI (WWII is probably closer but agricultural advances and depression obscure the numbers). For Kusari, use... 1100 A.D. Japan I want to say, but maybe as far as 1400. Bretonia is definitely Industrial Era England, and Rheinland probably fits the Bismarck era. The Corsairs could probably go for something like the rate on the Jamaican colonies (Belgian Congo could work too); lots and lots of kids, but lots and lots of deaths too. If at all possible subtract the immigration and emigration to and from those regions.

Outcasts can probably use the same statistics as the Corsairs, but cut all results in half before putting them in the final table. The birth rate difference matches the death rate reduction decently, and we might as well use FL's 'half' assumption.

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[AdamantineFist]

You're forgetting the fact that we have freakishly advanced technology and that a good number of people must inhabit space-stations, which I think are likely a lot larger than they appear in-game.

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[sovereign]

Ooh, forgot about space stations. I think the excessively generous super-crop allowance covers most technological benefits, but if the station infocards are correct (or their sizes in comparison with what we can tell of ship sizes) they add a negligible amount to the trillions on the planets. The orbital colony in Munich, however, is as big as the planet behind it ingame, and could probably help deal with the bit where Stuttgart isn't really used for people so much as feeding all those stations.

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[Cellulanus]

How are we not to know that the old residents of earth (the earth system, milkyway) hadn't set path to other reigions of the universe O.O, maybe sirius is not the only place humans found protection.

One very good reason:

All of humanities resources were tied up in the war of sol (see Starlancer for more information) and the Alliance constructed the sleeper ships as a last ditch attempt to keep there civilizations and way of life intact.


Also, I doubt that Manhattan is one big city, from orbit it looks like there is a large ocean covering the planet and on the landing pad you can clearly see buildingless mountains in the backround.

Leeds on the other hand, does look like it is covered completely by man made constructs from orbit.

[Unseelie]

Sov brings up the point that from space alone, the numbers are a bit whacky. I'm willing to cede the point, even assuming mile high farmtowers and the like. I'm very much willing to put in a reasonable population cap for every planet, and every station. I'm not quite sure what that is. For the city planets, I think it makes sense to have, at the very least, hundreds of billions, because, simply, they are city planets. Stations, if we assume keep the same scale as planets (rather than ships) are really actually very very big, and could hold millions of people. They could, likely, hold multiple NYC sized population centers, and thats hundreds of millions..which, granted, doesn't compare well to trillions or hundreds of billions on a planet.

The Mountians in the background could be a park...and I assume that the oceans aren't drained. That, frankly, the landmasses of each planet are what they appear to be from their skins.


To conclude, I just want to toss out again, that assuming infocards are correct in any case, when discussing population, is a mistake. And not a logical point I'm willing to credit unless argued very, very well.

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