What do you do onboard a starship?

[Nyrath]

Re: What do you do onboard a starship?

 

And for that matter' date=' you'd probably want to have a huge rack of frozen embryos somewhere for when you reach your destination to refresh the gene pool there.[/quote']

This was touched upon in Andre Norton's The Zero Stone.

That she favored Faskel I had always known but there was a chill in her words now that I did not understand. She continued, making the reason plain.

 

"You are only a duty child, Murdoc. Though mark me true, I have never made the less of you in this house because of that. And no one can say that I have!"

 

A duty child - one of those embryos shipped from a populous world to a frontier planet in order to vary the stock, by law assigned to some family to be raised and nurtured as their own. There were many such in the early settlement of any world.

[The Mad GM]

Re: What do you do onboard a starship?

 

I like Supreme Serpent's idea - keep em busy with tasks that have some survival value. Maybe hollow out a small planetoid and have them build a city on the inside as practice for building a new world somewhere else.

 

Oh yeah, and you'll need at least one phone-sanitizer.

[Mentor]

Re: What do you do onboard a starship?

 

I choose archivist/librarian or administration/management.

 

I have found the most important feature of sci fi colonization in literature to be not knowing what it is they needed but forgot that they might need. The ability to collect, catalogue and most importantly retrieve appropriate necessary data not only on specific request but based on responding to the requirements at hand is critical.

 

Likewise, coordinating the most efficient use of labor, resources and time allocated to a given project or requirement is among the most important talents in real life even if not appreciated as much in adventure fiction.

 

Knowing what to do based on how it was done before, what you need, and how to use it is necessary to the survival of any nacent human society.

[austenandrews]

Re: What do you do onboard a starship?

 

I like Supreme Serpent's idea - keep em busy with tasks that have some survival value. Maybe hollow out a small planetoid and have them build a city on the inside as practice for building a new world somewhere else.

Heck with practicing. Have them build what they're going to need when they get there.

 

Oh yeah, and you'll need at least one phone-sanitizer.

They're on the second ship.

[Agemegos]

Re: What do you do onboard a starship?

 

What specialities would you want to be sure to include?

 

Good GMs.

 

At least two homicide detectives.

[Agemegos]

Re: What do you do onboard a starship?

 

Imagine a STL multigeneration ship. One thousand humans will start out from Earth' date=' their descendants will reach another star system in a century.[/quote']

 

That's awfully fast for a big ship like that.

 

Where are you putting your habitable planet? Even if at Alpha Centauri we are talking about a delta-vee of about 30,000,000 metres per second.

[Dr. Anomaly]

Re: What do you do onboard a starship?

 

I like Supreme Serpent's idea - keep em busy with tasks that have some survival value. Maybe hollow out a small planetoid and have them build a city on the inside as practice for building a new world somewhere else.

If you park the planetoid in orbit around the destination world, you've got a ready-made base / space station both for their own uses and to act as a Port of Entry for future arrivals.

[Basil]

Re: What do you do onboard a starship?

 

A few side-notes on this idea:

Imagine a STL multigeneration ship. One thousand humans will start out from Earth' date=' their descendants will reach another star system in a century. Population will increase to 25,000 during the trip.[/quote']

This has a major problem: the rate of growth needed is much too high.

 

In such situations, to find the rate of increase we assume continuous compounding. The formula is:

r = ln(ending amount/begining about)/time

Or:

r = ln(25,000/1,000)/100

Thus, r = 0.032189

 

In a population where there is no net migration (certainly true in the middle of outer space ), the rate of increase depends on two factors. (1) the number of female children who themselves bear children, that the average woman gives birth to: this is called "F". (2) The average age of a woman at birth: this is called "G" (from "generation time"). Here, we use the formula:

r = ln(F)/G.

Which gives ln(F) = r * G

 

Assuming an average woman might produce children from 18 to 40, (thus G = 29), and r = 0.032189, we get F = 2.54333. If exactly one birth in two is a female child, and all female children grow up to themselves produce children, we find the average woman must have 5 children to get the level of growth required.

 

I can't see it, absent some major change in current technologically-savvy societies.

 

Note also, that 1000 people is a minute gene pool.

 

Ship can support 50' date='000 safely and comfortably.[/quote']

Then why not put 50,000 (or at least 40,000) people on board in the first place? Bigger gene pool, and the average woman need only have 2 children so as to maintain the population.

 

It is possible arriving at the new star system they will discover a planet with a breathable atmosphere. It is possible they will discover no usable resources (in which case they will use a gravity slingshot around the star to head to a different system. It is most likely they will find an Oort Cloud, and asteroid belt, and planets that can be terraformed in 100 to 1000 years. Communications will be maintained with Earth, and through Earth any sister ships, but speed of light lag insures these will be monologues rather than conversations.

This brings up a problem I have with this and similar scenarios---the assumption such a ship would leave Earth, having been built by Earthlings. Frankly, it would almost certainly be "launched" by inhabitants of the Oort Cloud (or maybe the Kuiper Belt). After all, they've already stopped using planets, and the sun to them is just a gravitational anchor---it's too far away for "solar power" to be of use, and they've got plenty of hydrogen (for fusion) in the planetesimal they've colonized. There would be no reason for them not to simply "cut the cable" and continue on outwards, heading for a different Oort Cloud.

 

Actually, more likely still is one group after another splitting off from the parent group, and simply colonizing outwards, into the area where it's hard to say which star (e.g., Sol or Proxima Centauri) a particular planetesimal is orbiting.

 

Though admittedly that's a tough meta-setting to generate an interesting campaign setting from, it's how I imagine it's most likely to occur IRL---assuming we silly humans ever get off this planet in any numbers at all.

 

Specifically, regarding McCoy's statement above: The colonists will care very, very little about "a planet with a breathable atmosphere." So long as they can get oxygen and nitrogen from somewhere, they can make their own breathable atmosphere.

 

Current scientific thought puts Oort Clouds around all star systems (save a few that've had near misses with other star systems), so volitiles will always be present; a colony will need only a very little amount of other resources, so "no usable resources" won't happen.

 

The colonists won't be interested in terraforming, but in building air-tight big ol' cylinders to live in.

 

And yes, the light-lag will effect communications; however, having lived a light-year or more away from Earth to begin with, they'll be used to it. They'll also be used to the signal-to-noise problem that such long-range communications involve, too.

 

At least, that's how I see things: no Earth-lauch-STL ship, but Oort-Cloud-colonies gradually drifting farther and farther out.

 

 

 

EDIT: A few things in response to others:

In my version, you don't have to worry about "what will they do?" They'll do what they were doing before the "launch"

As well, no psycho-problems; the culture/society has been in essentially the same situation for generations, so there's no "adjustment" needed.

 

BTW, even if the "drift outward from the Oort Cloud" meta-setting is not to your taste, if you assume a society that's settled the asteroid belt for a few generations, and they are the ones launching the STL ship, then most of the problems don't arrise -- they've already dealt with "what does everyone do" and "I feel isolated from Earth" already, and done so for long enough to come up with working solutions. BTW, here again it will be more of a settled colony moving outwards, than a specially designed and built ship.

 

BTW, re. Dr. Anomaly's (I think it was) idea of putting everything on manual --- not needed. "Ship" technology will become more and more complicated, and need about the same number of people to run it (this is especially true in the colonies-moving-outward scenarios).

[austenandrews]

Re: What do you do onboard a starship?

 

The colonists won't be interested in terraforming' date=' but in building air-tight big ol' cylinders to live in. [/quote']

I agree. In fact I built my satirical SF campaign with that premise:

 

By the year 2151, humanity has flung itself boldly into space. This should surprise no one, as humanity is prone to flinging itself boldly at anything in its line of sight. Astride a vast nuclear armada mankind set out to land upon every flat surface in the solar system. But our idealistic socks soon trod the cold puddle of reality as we discovered that most of the flat surfaces, namely moons and planets, weren’t hospitable enough to bother with the roaring gravity wells that surrounded them. Why should a cosmopolitan species like us crawl down these time-space sinkholes to live among acid clouds or liquid methane bogs or sunrises that melt lead? The planets, it turned out, were appallingly anticlimactic.

 

“No trouble,†said Mankind after changing its socks, “we’ve already solved this business of living in space. Let’s add a few rooms on the back and stay right here.†And so began our modern era of space habitation, in which humanity has not only flung itself into space, but also countless flat surfaces upon which to land. Space platforms erupted into space colonies which exploded into gigantic space cities. In fact we're so blasted comfortable in space that we're already looking for something new at which to boldly fling ourselves – interstellar space. The unending desolation looks more than slightly harrowing, but the only other direction is into the Sun, and that's not exactly a day at the beach.

[Basil]

Re: What do you do onboard a starship?

 

I agree. In fact I built my satirical SF campaign with that premise:

By the year 2151, humanity has flung itself boldly into space. This should surprise no one, as humanity is prone to flinging itself boldly at anything in its line of sight. Astride a vast nuclear armada mankind set out to land upon every flat surface in the solar system. But our idealistic socks soon trod the cold puddle of reality as we discovered that most of the flat surfaces, namely moons and planets, weren’t hospitable enough to bother with the roaring gravity wells that surrounded them. Why should a cosmopolitan species like us crawl down these time-space sinkholes to live among acid clouds or liquid methane bogs or sunrises that melt lead? The planets, it turned out, were appallingly anticlimactic.

 

"No trouble," said Mankind after changing its socks, "we’ve already solved this business of living in space. Let’s add a few rooms on the back and stay right here." And so began our modern era of space habitation, in which humanity has not only flung itself into space, but also countless flat surfaces upon which to land. Space platforms erupted into space colonies which exploded into gigantic space cities. In fact we're so blasted comfortable in space that we're already looking for something new at which to boldly fling ourselves -- interstellar space. The unending desolation looks more than slightly harrowing, but the only other direction is into the Sun, and that's not exactly a day at the beach.

 

Bravisimo! Not only amusing, but full of home truths. The planets, and the major sattelites, are not going to be much use to humanity in outer space. The carbonaceous chondrites, the other asteroids, the comets, and (eventually) the planetesimals of the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud are going to be SO much more important.

[McCoy]

Re: What do you do onboard a starship?

 

Then why not put 50' date='000 (or at least 40,000) people on board in the first place? Bigger gene pool, and the average woman need only have 2 children so as to maintain the population.[/quote']

50K people in an enclosed space for the rest of their lives in a situation where someone has to die before anyone moves up on the waiting list to have kids. Nope, nothing can go wrong here.

[Nyrath]

Re: What do you do onboard a starship?

 

50K people in an enclosed space for the rest of their lives in a situation where someone has to die before anyone moves up on the waiting list to have kids. Nope' date=' nothing can go wrong here.[/quote']

Keeping in mind, of course, that it will be a largish "enclosed space".

If you take a asteroid of 100 kilometers in radius and gave it levels every four meters or so, you'd wind up with a livable area approximately equal to the surface area on Earth. And Ceres is 380 kilometers in radius.

 

More here:

http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/2000/ben0004.htm

[Dr. Anomaly]

Re: What do you do onboard a starship?

 

Keeping in mind, of course, that it will be a largish "enclosed space".

If you take a asteroid of 100 kilometers in radius and gave it levels every four meters or so, you'd wind up with a livable area approximately equal to the surface area on Earth. And Ceres is 380 kilometers in radius.

 

More here:

http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/2000/ben0004.htm

Sure, but McCoy wants this ship to be able to make an interstellar journey in just 100 years. The amount of energy it would take to do that with "just" a constructed ship maybe 10 km long is mind-boggling; I just don't see being able to do it with something a massive as a 100 km radius asteroid.

[Nyrath]

Re: What do you do onboard a starship?

 

Sure' date=' but McCoy wants this ship to be able to make an interstellar journey in just 100 years. The amount of energy it would take to do that with "just" a constructed ship maybe 10 km long is mind-boggling; I just don't see being able to do it with something a massive as a 100 km radius asteroid. [/quote']

Oh, I agree.

 

But they also probably don't need the free space equal to the entire Earth either. What I am getting at is that all asteroids, regardless of size, contain vastly more free space than one would intuitively expect.

[Dr. Anomaly]

Re: What do you do onboard a starship?

 

Oh, I agree.

 

But they also probably don't need the free space equal to the entire Earth either. What I am getting at is that all asteroids, regardless of size, contain vastly more free space than one would intuitively expect.

Once appropriately hollowed out, of course.

[paigeoliver]

Re: What do you do onboard a starship?

 

Back to birthrates.

 

Human birthrates are not 50/50 male female, they are 105 male to 100 female.

 

The penchant for the man to be older than the woman in the average relationship further changes the odds (this is the reason why western society has so many young single men and so many widows, women outnumber men ONLY because they live so much longer).

 

And couples are more likely to have 2 or 3 children in their first 6-7 years together and then NO MORE than they are to have them nicely spaced 5 years apart.

 

I would suggest something for the unlucky unpared men to do, something important, or you are going to have some serious problems with them.

 

The smaller the population the more OBVIOUS the gap between number of available women and number of available men becomes. In a big city you will only notice it on an anecdotal level. If your first generation consists completely of matched couples then you will begin to have problems in your second generation.

 

First generation lets say is 500 matched couples and say they each have 4 children, with a few of them having 5 children. Making 2050 total children.

 

2nd Generation is 2050 people, 1000 women, and 1050 men.

 

Assuming 98 percent of the women are willing and able to be partnered up, that leaves 20 single women, and 70 single men (the women being divided almost evenly between those who do not desire a partner, and the ones with "issues" large enough to turn off even those 70 desparate men).

 

2nd Generation has a similar amount of children (we have 980 matched couples from that generation), lets assume we have 4100 children from this generation. 2100 male and 2000 female.

 

Generation 3 has 4100 people, 2100 male and 2000 female. A small but noticeable percentage of the females from this generation will get snatched up by a few of the remaining bachelors from the previous generation, let's say 10 of the 70 from the last generation are able to secure a mate from this generation. If 98 percent of the women are once again willing/able to become mates you have 1950 women available (I have already subtracted the 10 snatched up by the previous generations bachelors). You have 1950 women available and 2160 single men (previous generations males, included, because they are still alive and WILL be trying to snag these women).

 

 

Anyway, it gets a little bit worse each generation until around generation 5 where the generations will be overlapping enough that you can no longer distinguish exact generations anymore.

 

The point is this though, there will be a significant percentage of the male population, roughly 10 percent, who will have absolutely no hope of ever finding a mate. It would only be 5 percent, BUT the male tendency to choose a younger mate (which will be even more prevalent here due to scarcity of same age mates), worsens the numbers even more.

 

We deal with these numbers in the real world as well, but the situation doesn't seem hopeless due to the large population. Sure there is only one single woman (and about 34 single men) in my circle of acquaintences, but I know that single women do exist out there SOMEWHERE. The large population and the fact that it provides some sort of HOPE is what keeps the single men of the world from killing themselves right and left.

 

But, put those people in a fixed system, where there are no more "other women" out there "somewhere" and you are going to have serious problems. Matter of fact the sheer "lack of women" issue will ensure that every single woman who desires a partner will be able to find one, regardless of her hygiene, weight, mental health, or bad habits.

 

Basically, if you don't genetically alter the birth rate to favor women over men (105 women to 100 men matched with real world mating numbers would ensure that everyone could actually have a partner), then you are going to have guys eating their blaster pistol and going out the airlock without a suit.

[Nyrath]

Re: What do you do onboard a starship?

 

Agreed, gender imbalace is a serious problem. It is becoming especially bad in China, due to their "one-child-per-couple" policy and widespread availability of ultrasound for prenatal gender determination.

In James Blish's ALL THE STARS A STAGE, gender selection becomes such a problem that society transformed into a matriarchy, due to men being a glut on the market.

http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=356

 

The traditional use for unlucky unpaired men is in the military, where their agression can be channeled and where mortality is elevated. Unfortunately this is probably not an option on a generation starship, unless the political situation has really deteriorated.

[Outsider]

Re: What do you do onboard a starship?

 

Sure, 105 males are born for every female, but males have a higher mortality rate at all ages, leading to there being more women than men around age 35-40. A big contributor to this higher mortality rate among men in our society is a tendency by said men to do risky/stupid things to try to raise their status in the male heirarchy and thus 'impress' the available women. I dont see why this would be any different on a generation ship.

 

Another thing to consider, though, is , even with all married couples at the start, there will be divorces, and the newly divorced men will show a preference for the younger/still able to bear children women, leading to some stiff competition for their attention.

 

One thing I wondered about in regards to the initial propopsal... The ship was said to be designed to hold up to 50,000 people, and its crew to be socially engineered to reach that target population about the time they reach the destination. But it was also said that, should the destination not be suitable for a colony, that the ship would use the target star as a gravitational anchor to change course to another star. So... If that happened, we'd have a ship of 50,000 people socialized to have big families stuck in a ship designed to hold only 50,000 people.

 

So I propose including gladiatorial training facilities and a big ol' arena, just in case

[McCoy]

Re: What do you do onboard a starship?

 

Back to birthrates.

 

Human birthrates are not 50/50 male female, they are 105 male to 100 female.

 

[snip]

 

I would suggest something for the unlucky unpared men to do, something important, or you are going to have some serious problems with them.

 

The smaller the population the more OBVIOUS the gap between number of available women and number of available men becomes. In a big city you will only notice it on an anecdotal level. If your first generation consists completely of matched couples then you will begin to have problems in your second generation.

 

[snip]

 

Basically, if you don't genetically alter the birth rate to favor women over men (105 women to 100 men matched with real world mating numbers would ensure that everyone could actually have a partner), then you are going to have guys eating their blaster pistol and going out the airlock without a suit.

Maybe the excess 2.5% go Gay?

 

P generation is not going to be 500 instinctively monogamous couples, it is going to be 500 men and 500 women. In my experience, about half will form lifetime couples, and the other half will not. Similar ratio will probably exist in the F1 generation, so while there may be an excess of 50 men in the F1 generation, it will not always be the same 50 men.

 

Records will be kept of births, would be simple to rebalance sex ratios. Separating X-bearing from Y-bearing sperm then using AI or in vitro fertilization comes to mind.

[austenandrews]

Re: What do you do onboard a starship?

 

Right, I can't imagine a generation ship would be launched that allows randomized childbirth. Much more reasonable to have strictly controlled, time-sensitive rates of birth, gender and other genetic factors coupled with frozen eggs, sperm and embryos. It's also got to allow for unforseen mass mortality from disease and accidents. A generation ship has to essentially constitute an entire sustainable species (many of them, most likely) which includes surviving population bottlenecks. One nasty meteor strike might erase half the population with totally unpredictable ratios of male to female and adults to children. The system must be set up to deal with such a catastrophe.

 

And Outsider's point is a crucial one, as well. The whole endeavor must assume that the ship won't find what it's looking for at its destination, or might not even reach its destination. Which hearkens back to Basil's point, that the generation ship itself must be a self-sustaining biosphere. The most essential factor is to control the ratio of population and resources. In interstellar space there are no extra building materials to collect, so the population must be controlled. There's just no alternative. The controls can be relaxed when and if the ship reaches a place where more resources are available. If you don't take these measures, any number of unforseen factors might doom the ship to death by overpopulation.

[paigeoliver]

Re: What do you do onboard a starship?

 

Sure, 105 males are born for every female, but males have a higher mortality rate at all ages, leading to there being more women than men around age 35-40. A big contributor to this higher mortality rate among men in our society is a tendency by said men to do risky/stupid things to try to raise their status in the male heirarchy and thus 'impress' the available women. I dont see why this would be any different on a generation ship.

 

Another thing to consider, though, is , even with all married couples at the start, there will be divorces, and the newly divorced men will show a preference for the younger/still able to bear children women, leading to some stiff competition for their attention.

 

One thing I wondered about in regards to the initial propopsal... The ship was said to be designed to hold up to 50,000 people, and its crew to be socially engineered to reach that target population about the time they reach the destination. But it was also said that, should the destination not be suitable for a colony, that the ship would use the target star as a gravitational anchor to change course to another star. So... If that happened, we'd have a ship of 50,000 people socialized to have big families stuck in a ship designed to hold only 50,000 people.

 

So I propose including gladiatorial training facilities and a big ol' arena, just in case

 

 

I actually researched the numbers extensively, men outnumber women in every age group younger than 55, the 55-65 age group is roughly 98 men to 100 women, after that the women start vastly outnumbering the men.

 

All the numbers are there if you read the census reports of any western country. They all have almost identical numbers, 105 men born for every 100 women, the women get married 2-4 years younger, and the number of single men dwarf the number of single women, especially in the 25-50 age ranges.

 

Also, for a lot of reasons (social proof, the fact that someone able to attract one partner is very likely to be able to attract another, etc), the divorced men actually have a higher chance of being able to attract a mate than the men of the same age who are still single.

 

All of this could be completely ignored in a game, but on a real generation ship it would quickly grow to be a huge problem, unless you put a lot of bears on the ship.

 

THE BEAR THEORY.

 

Humans grew up in a more dangerous world, there were a lot of bears around, the women stayed close to home and thus seldom got eaten by bears, the men on the other hand had to go out and hunt and fish and farm and a much higher percentage of them were eaten by bears, which equalized the gender numbers. Very few men get eaten by bears these days, which is why we are in the mess we are today.

 

Obviously bears aren't JUST bears, but are all the dangers of a pre-industrial world.

 

 

THE ONLY BEGOTTEN SON THEORY

 

The gender gap is entirely social in origin, based completely on the fact that a small, but noticeable percentage of couples have children until they have a son, and then STOP, while very few couples do the reverse.

 

The problem with this theory is that one would assume that Muslim cultures and other male dominated cultures would show a higher male birthrate, they do not, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and other Muslim countries have the exact same gender ratio at birth.

 

China obviously has a variation on this problem to a massive extent.

[Vondy]

Re: What do you do onboard a starship?

 

Breed. A lot.

[Outsider]

Re: What do you do onboard a starship?

 

Well, I didnt reasearch very extensively, but according to the US Census bureau, at least, the break point is 40-45 in the US.

 

Link : http://www.census.gov/popest/national/asrh/NC-EST2003/NC-EST2003-01.pdf

[McCoy]

Re: What do you do onboard a starship?

 

Just plain doctors. Unless there are real good air filters' date=' a simple cold will infect the whole ship. You'd especially need pediatricians to ensure that the next generation grow up safely.[/quote']

Don't anticipate too much contagious disease. Serious diseases, usual childhood diseases, sexually transmitted diseases, can probably all be left behind. Yes, sniffles and flu-like syndrome will probably pop up. But IIRC population has to be above a certain size for serious contagious diseases to develop. In a small population, everyone gets it, and becomes immune to it, before it can mutate much.

 

Other factor is going to be the livestock, it is possible to raise livestock in such a way that it does not encourage the development of the next bird flu, swine flu, or cowpox. Surely these guidelines will be followed.

 

So doctors starting out would need to be trauma specialist, obstetricians, and pediatricians. Doctors would probably outnumber nurses in the P generation, but nurses and other specialist could come from among the shipborn children.

[McCoy]

Re: What do you do onboard a starship?

 

It really depends on the key foci of the mission. Chances are each person will be highly skilled in an advanced technology or skill to insure a variety of real life capability. Even if they are bored, you definately will want security. They could be multitasking with more important things at the start but then focused as the population grows. These are humans, after all.

 

I would start with several generation of people. If you have a new cycle of people every 20 years, you should plan on several generations brought in (depending on how old the oldest group is) to have that cycle going from the start. A gene bank, I think is a 100% need to insure the variety of people and to help with unforseen low birth rates while not giving up any diversity. As far as genetic variety due to children, that is not an issue because no one says that they have to be *their* children. They could be test tubies.

 

There should be a really huge luxury segment to help with the psychological aspect of the journey, definately. It is doubtful that everyone will be a workaholic and with so much automation, there will be alot of boredom.

 

For me, from a planning perspective (not gameplay), I would probably only have 200% of the needed people around at any point. Maintain a population of 400-500 for the entire journey. Once you get close, start the test tube babies and gear for a huge population explosion. You can likelt grow the 25,000 population well into your journey and not have just a standard growth progression.

A key reason would be to reduce the resource consumption. There is nothing saying that you cannot find a planet and then stay in orbit til the population grows. In addition, it reduces the risk of not finding a planet before your onboard resources deplete. It would suck travelling 1000 years only to run out of tacos...

 

If the ship can stay in communication with earth, then you do not even need to worry about technological advances; they can all still be done at earth and shared so research and that type of expertise will really not be needed.

Assume recycling is near 100% efficency, that they will not run out of tacos before reaching a suitable star system.

 

Were this a story background, yes, there would be a bank of 10,000 frozen embryos, sperm & eggs from at least 100,000 people that didn't get on the ship, and everyone born on the ship would contribute to the gamate bank as a teenager.

 

While a population of 500 with a gene bank backup would be biologically stable, don't think it would be socally stable for a century, and do not think that it is physically possible for 500 people to raise and educate tens of thousands of children in a single generation.