SciFi Colonists

[Dale A. Ward]

Okay, here's a brain-stretching exercise for you folks.

 

Given the following:

 

We have developed a method to safely transport colonists and cargo to other star systems at normal light speed (1LY/yr).

 

Several Earthlike planets have been discovered and are awaiting their new population.

 

You are a member of a group given the responsibility to determine what qualities and/or skills a colonist must possess before being allowed passage.

 

Assignment: Suggest said qualities and/or skills.

 

 

I'll get the ball rolling with what I think should be number one on the list.

 

The prospective colonist should be capable of producing offspring as quickly as possible. Couples with proven cross-fertility would receive a higher priority.

 

Your turn!

[McCoy]

Re: SciFi Colonists

 

Assuming resources will be limited for a couple of generations, I would want people who score high on the "works and plays well with others" scale.

[TheRavenIs]

Re: SciFi Colonists

 

They will need to be adaptable and resourseful. It's going to be hard for the first few generations, no matter what thet bring with them.

[Manic Typist]

Re: SciFi Colonists

 

A wide skill range. Manpower and resources will be limited, so people who can be electricians and doctors, engineers and soldiers, farmers and mechanics........ will be valuable.

[Curufea]

Re: SciFi Colonists

 

Xenobiologists to study local flora and fauna.

Biologists to get our flora and fauna to work.

Trauma and emergency services for things that are likely to happen.

[Nyrath]

Re: SciFi Colonists

 

A sort of "Jack-of-all-trades" skill would be valuable. And "Tinker", that is, the ability to repair something by improvising and substituting equivalent materials (if you have no cordite to put in your bullets, a Tinker knows that gunpowder will do).

[Matt Frisbee]

Re: SciFi Colonists

 

I would include colonists who have a natural talent for fighting off disease (Immunity of sorts in game terms), who can psychologically deal with isolation (because of the distance and time involved) and who are self-motivated (don't need a lot of supervision). I would make sure to include colonists who are deeply rooted in core classical education subjects -- math, science, history, literature, music and art -- since access to computers, libraries and databases might be considerably limited for many years.

 

Matt "Working-the-possibilities" Frisbee

[Outsider]

Re: SciFi Colonists

 

Since we still have to keep things running here on Earth, they have to be people that we wont miss much here. Or, in a more dytopic vision, they have to be people we'd like to have gone from Earth.

[Cancer]

Re: SciFi Colonists

 

Since we still have to keep things running here on Earth' date=' they have to be people that we wont miss much here. Or, in a more dytopic vision, they have to be people we'd like to have gone from Earth.[/quote']

 

The ships would have to be large to hold all the politicians, but I could go with that.

[ThothAmon]

Re: SciFi Colonists

 

Sociable personality, no personality extremes, robust good health. Dysfunctional geeks need not apply, especially at those travel speeds

 

I recall a rather good classic SF novel (Joe Haldeman? Mindbridge?) suggesting that interplanetary explorers would be selected for such traits and would be required to breed at mandatory minimum intervals as part of their contract.

[Basil]

Re: SciFi Colonists

 

A wide skill range. Manpower and resources will be limited' date=' so people who can be electricians and doctors, engineers and soldiers, farmers and mechanics........ will be valuable.[/quote']

Since this is one of the two things I wsa going to suggest, I've repped you for getting there first.

 

The other thing I'd recommend would be genetic diversity; the more widespread the better. The colonists will be facing who-knows-what, and it's impossible to predict what will best fit the environment they will face. That is, it's impossible to predict what will survive evolutionary pressures and what won't, so they'd need as many variations as possible to have the best chance for the colony to survive in the long term.

[The Monster]

Re: SciFi Colonists

 

You don't want people who breed - you want people who produce

If you focus on breeding, you end up with a population boom that you may not have the resources to support; presumably, we can pack along a good supply of machinery and machine-producing machinery, so farming won't be so much a matter of manual labor. Same with knowledge - computer geeks, at least a few of them, will be invaluable to maintain and expand the system you take (Apple, Windows, or Linux?) and keep the machines running.

[Seenar]

Re: SciFi Colonists

 

Of course, people need to want to go, don't they? I figure that people wanting to leave Earth and go far away forever are going to self-select themseleves, instead of being picked.

 

Unless things are really bad at home, most people won't want to go anyway.

[bigdamnhero]

Re: SciFi Colonists

 

Decent combat skills, to fight off the inevitable hostile life forms.

Ability to drive/fly really fast.

Lots of interesting phsycological limitations and phobias.

An inability to follow anything resembling a chain of command.

 

...Oh wait, did you mean in reality or in your typical RPG?

 

I always get those two confused.

 

 

bigdamnhero

“Seasoned? That’s a hell of a thing to say to a man!â€

[LoresLost]

Re: SciFi Colonists

 

Decent combat skills, to fight off the inevitable hostile life forms.

Ability to drive/fly really fast.

Lots of interesting phsycological limitations and phobias.

An inability to follow anything resembling a chain of command.

 

...Oh wait, did you mean in reality or in your typical RPG?

 

I always get those two confused.

 

You know this reminds me of a rant I did once on StarTrek...

[austenandrews]

Re: SciFi Colonists

 

Of course, people need to want to go, don't they? I figure that people wanting to leave Earth and go far away forever are going to self-select themseleves, instead of being picked.

 

Unless things are really bad at home, most people won't want to go anyway.

That's an interesting dilemma, though. Is de facto selecting for adventurousness and even wanderlust a good strategy, socially or even genetically?

[Nolgroth]

Re: SciFi Colonists

 

My thoughts;

Given that no established criteria was established as to the cost of the technology or to the reusability of the ships used to transport the colonists, this is how I see it.

 

The first expeditions would probably be surveyors. They would map out the topographical area of the land, conduct basic atomsphere, water and soil sample tests, and throw together a quick flora and fauna guide. Obviously none of these expeditions would seek to create exhaustive databanks on the new worlds, but the basics would be almost essential ("Lovely place, bit warm and humid, but let me tell you about the large carnivorous bastiches living on the northern plains of Continent A. Nearly took down an entire survey team before the security backup arrived with the big weapons.")

 

These expeditions would require a bit of the submariner psychology. They would have to be capable of enduring long-term journeys in confined quarters and be very mission driven. They would also have to be skilled in whatever niche they filled.

 

So now, the surveyors have returned. Whoever is claiming nominal control of these distant (even a year of travel is fairly distant) worlds would then create a "land rush" campaign. Settlers to the new world get free land in exchange for settling. That way, you get plenty of volunteers looking for a better life. They are motivated to make the best of it on their new world and will defy the odds against them, because that's what we as humans do.

 

Now, the cynical side of me kicks in. Once you get the settlers to their better worlds (all of them, better worlds), they really don't have much in the way of equipment to start their new lives with. Well don't worry, because we have an intricate system of financial lending in place. For a reasonable amount of compound interest, we can sell you these fine tractors, combines and harvesters.

 

Dang, I'm already setting up for the inevitable conflicts and stuff.

 

Anyway, this type of colonization only works if there is passage between good ol' Earth and the colony world(s). If it is a one way trip, the dynamics become a whole lot less easy. The settlers there would have to be highly trained, motivated and tough. No sissy la la's there. They have to be "look somebody in the eye and pull the trigger" tough and colony attrition would still be high even with those attributes.

[Rapier]

Re: SciFi Colonists

 

Well, I imagine you would want to think of a fairly old school (say early 1900s) village and populate accordingly. Skills appropriate for:

 

- Agriculturists (aka Farmers)

- Medical

- Manufacturing (both new tech and old tech - blacksmithing)

- Communications

- Rancher (raising animals for food, transportation and work)

- Xenobiologists/Biologist (you never know what kind of adaptation issues you may run into)

- Raw Material Production (logging, mining)

- Staple Production (millers, coopers...the guys that turn raw materials into components)

 

Colonies are VERY expensive. If the tech does not exist to change raw materials into finished products (a factory that can break down materials into their constituent atoms or molecules and reconstitute them as something else) it would be best to rely on as little high tech as possible...spare parts are a LOOOOONG way off and most likely pretty expensive. So you might want to stay predominantly low tech (using horses instead of hover cars) with a couple high tech requirements (space port, comm equipment, etc).

[Victor]

Re: SciFi Colonists

 

Well, no distances have been mentioned, so presuming the people you send will be the ones doing the work on arrival, I would say "training".

 

Put together a Colonial Training Center, where prospective colonists are educated on probable conditions and situations, tested both on what they have and haven't been taught, and run through a year or so of a Simulated Colony Site (where they have no contact with the outside).

 

Optionally, train them on operating/fixing the ship in case things go wrong along the way, or if the ship needs to be flown back for the next graduating class.

 

Those that do well get to go, those that fail miserably may be dead or injured as a result, and everyone else eventually gets sent home, or ends up working in a support role at the training center.

 

This also has some roleplay potential, particularly if someone "cheats" to avoid the law at home, or if someone wants to make sure someone else doesn't get to go. Or perhaps someone comes back on the ship that shouldn't have.

[Lucius]

SciFi Colonists

 

The prospective colonist should be capable of producing offspring as quickly as possible. Couples with proven cross-fertility would receive a higher priority.

 

Your turn!

 

Couples? Baloney.

 

One option would be to send all females, with copious amounts of frozen sperm. Among other things, the females would be selected for maximum genetic diversity, and once on the new world, would be expected to breed several children (I would think maybe, three to five - no need to breed them to death, and they will of course have a LOT of things that need doing other than staying pregnant and nursing.) No one woman would use frozen sperm from the same donor twice; perhaps, in the interests of genetic diversity, the same donor would not be chosen even for two different women.

 

Or, given how much can go wrong, including disasters that might take out the sperm bank, a selection of living men could go along - but far fewer than the women. It takes a woman nine months to make one baby no matter how many men you put on the job, but during those nine months the father could be starting several other babies on the way.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary is another matter

[Markdoc]

Re: SciFi Colonists

 

If you want to make the colony a success send workers, agriculturalists and technicians. You just need to look at the early history of European colonisation. Colonies that were heavy on militarisation almost all collapsed. Like arctic and antarctic research, what you want are people who can double-specialise: a doctor who is pretty good with electronics, or an astrophysicist with a solid bacground in IT.

 

And send a good balance of men and women. The frozen sperm idea sounds efficient in theory (though the costs and inefficiency of IVF mean that actually it's far less cost-efficient than the old-fashioned way), but your colonists are going to be really isolated, and experience shows that stably-mated couples deal with isolation and social friction better than mixed groups. Obviously they'd need to be realtively fit and healthy.

 

Last of all, I can't see it would be too hard to get people to go. Sure it means isolation, but there were people ready to leave merrie ol' England for the colonies, even though it meant effectively going to a foreign environment and probably never returning. You just need to offer them an incentive - and for many people, the adventure would be a pretty big incentive just by itself.

 

cheers, Mark

[austenandrews]

Re: SciFi Colonists

 

Or' date=' given how much can go wrong, including disasters that might take out the sperm bank, a selection of living men could go along - but far fewer than the women. It takes a woman nine months to make one baby no matter how many men you put on the job, but during those nine months the father could be starting several other babies on the way.[/quote']

Sign me up for that job!

 

Very thought-provoking post, btw.

[Outsider]

Re: SciFi Colonists

 

Sign me up for that job!

 

 

And put extra guards -female guards- on the cryogenic storage!

[Seenar]

Re: SciFi Colonists

 

That's an interesting dilemma' date=' though. Is [i']de facto[/i] selecting for adventurousness and even wanderlust a good strategy, socially or even genetically?

 

Well, I would say that it has worked for 80,000 years, why tamper with sucess.

[Seenar]

Re: SciFi Colonists

 

Couples? Baloney.

 

One option would be to send all females, with copious amounts of frozen sperm. Among other things, the females would be selected for maximum genetic diversity, and once on the new world, would be expected to breed several children (I would think maybe, three to five - no need to breed them to death, and they will of course have a LOT of things that need doing other than staying pregnant and nursing.) No one woman would use frozen sperm from the same donor twice; perhaps, in the interests of genetic diversity, the same donor would not be chosen even for two different women.

 

Or, given how much can go wrong, including disasters that might take out the sperm bank, a selection of living men could go along - but far fewer than the women. It takes a woman nine months to make one baby no matter how many men you put on the job, but during those nine months the father could be starting several other babies on the way.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary is another matter

 

 

Men need to go along to be expendable labor. In the modern world we forget how important physical strenght is in a primative setting. Sperm banks cannot dig ditches.