A galaxy of humans

[Steve]

Re: A galaxy of humans

 

How long would it take to fill the galaxy with humans? My current setting idea is that humanity went through a series of expansions with occasional dark ages, so I'm thinking to do something on the order of 8-10 thousand years from now.

[csyphrett]

Re: A galaxy of humans

 

The RCN is human only so far. There have been hints that something was out there before the current human populations but nothing has been confirmed.

 

It might have been an earlier empire of man

CES

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: A galaxy of humans

 

How long would it take to get a "galaxy full of humans"? Let's say the natural "carrying capacity" for any given habitable system is around 10 billion people. Now' date=' you just need two numbers--the total number of habitable systems, and the rate of population increase(i.e., the number of years for population to double). If you've got, say, 16 billion habitable systems, well, that's 34 doublings. If you slow down the rate of doubling, you slow the expansion of humanity, but you also prolong the duration of its existence. The real world doubling rate is currently around 100 years. I think it'd be hard to slow that much below 200-1000 years without radically altering society and family structure.[/quote']

 

10,000 BC: ~10 million humans;

2011AD: ~10 billion.

Eight doublings in 12,000 years. The apparent acceleration of the last five centuries has far more to do with the decline in the death rate than a rise in the birth rate. Notice that to maintain population, every couple needs to have two children. Historically, human populations have sacrificed much to do this, because of the threat posed to their way of life by depopulation. That threat is no longer felt (although it may be real). It's debatable whether Earth will be hitting that target by 2100, perhaps 2070, even 2050.

 

It will take a very long time indeed to populate the entire Galaxy with humans. If, in fact, the human population doesn't actually peak in the next century.

[megaplayboy]

Re: A galaxy of humans

 

10,000 BC: ~10 million humans;

2011AD: ~10 billion.

Eight doublings in 12,000 years. The apparent acceleration of the last five centuries has far more to do with the decline in the death rate than a rise in the birth rate. Notice that to maintain population, every couple needs to have two children. Historically, human populations have sacrificed much to do this, because of the threat posed to their way of life by depopulation. That threat is no longer felt (although it may be real). It's debatable whether Earth will be hitting that target by 2100, perhaps 2070, even 2050.

 

It will take a very long time indeed to populate the entire Galaxy with humans. If, in fact, the human population doesn't actually peak in the next century.

 

Well, if it does peak, then any necessity to colonize space diminishes substantially. And expansion would effectively be diffusion--a thousand planets with 10,000,000 people each, rather than 1 with 10 billion.

 

But...so long as there is population growth, that means there will be a doubling every X years(in the aggregate). It takes about 130 doublings to get a mass of humanity equal to that of the observable universe. This would presumably be true for any sapient species anywhere else in the universe. Ergo, most sapient species either achieve a stable and sustainable peak population, or they overpopulate themselves into extinction.

[RexMundi]

Re: A galaxy of humans

 

Methinks the Chinese and the Indians have a head start.

 

~Rex

[Christopher]

Re: A galaxy of humans

 

Methinks the Chinese and the Indians have a head start.

Like I said:

With our current technolgy and enough place that every child can claim "his own land", population would increase a lot faster. While the averga bithrate for a stable population is only 2 human can give birth to a lot more children:

The female fertile period last form around 15-18th to 40-50th Lifeyear. Asuming even one pregnancy per year, that could mean up to 35 children per women. And this does not includes multiple births (wich can easily be produced with hormon therapies).

 

So we can populate the entire galaxy if we just start trying heavy enough.

[megaplayboy]

Re: A galaxy of humans

 

Of course, we also have to move people off planet faster than we create new ones. At current population growth rates, that'd mean moving 80,000,000 people every year not just off planet, but out to another star system. The logistics of that are so staggering to contemplate, it seems like pretty much a given we'd have to first have a long period of relatively stable population levels and ultra-low growth.

[Christopher]

Re: A galaxy of humans

 

I asumed we only need to have a sufficiently large initial colony (so we don't run into the problem of genetical degenration after a few generations). Once on a planet with a lot of room, they will grow very fast. That and ocassionally shipping in new people from other worlds, for a decent genetical mixing.

[megaplayboy]

Re: A galaxy of humans

 

I asumed we only need to have a sufficiently large initial colony (so we don't run into the problem of genetical degenration after a few generations). Once on a planet with a lot of room' date=' they will grow very fast. That and ocassionally shipping in new people from other worlds, for a decent genetical mixing.[/quote']

 

Yes, but...you still need to stabilize population on the original planet(Earth), or else they will overpopulate and gobble up all the resources necessary for space colonization. You could probably allocate 10,000 settlers per colony, but even then, the logistics required to move that many people off planet, up to escape velocity, out of the solar system and towards another star system at a meaningful fraction of light speed--all while feeding them and taking care of their basic needs--it's a lot!

[Christopher]

Re: A galaxy of humans

 

All our asumptions about how "fast" you can colonize the galaxy asumed that we even can colonize the galaxy. So we just have to asume that in the scenario we are somehow able to do it.

[Andrew_A]

Re: A galaxy of humans

 

Elizabeth Moon's Serrano Legacy and Vatta's War novels were humans only. The latter series had people with minor genemods and cranial implants.

 

Familias Regnant Universe

 

Vatta's War

[novi]

Re: A galaxy of humans

 

On the issue of how fast we can colonize the galaxy, at least one limiting factor is how fast are spaceships. Unless you have FTL, it will have to take at least 100,000 years to colonize the galaxy, give or take a few years depending on the true radius of the galaxy. Possibly much longer, depending on how fast ships can go.

[Mallo]

Re: A galaxy of humans

 

Anything John Campbell edited is human only. (He edited a number of Asimov's works and it was something they disagreed on.)

 

The Jerry Pournelle's Codominium future history is human only.

 

Mallo

[Sweeper]

Re: A galaxy of humans

 

If I remember history correctly, Birth-rates skyrocket when there's a need for it or the community in question doesn't have other diversions. Where a new colony was concerned, couples try to, well, pump out, as many children as they can. This was due to a combination of needing extra (non-paid) hands to work the fields as well as a high mortality rate in children and adults. It's been speculated that this is one of the larger factors as to why slavery took root big time in the Americas when it was going out of fashion in Europe.

 

For Colonies on other planets, one can reasonably expect that the colonists will have plenty of labor-saving devices, (tractors, if nothing else), as well as modern medicine, so birth-rates wouldn't be as great. They'd still increase with all that extra room on a new planet, but not as fast.

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: A galaxy of humans

 

I think that you may be recalling history incorrectly. Again, it is death rates far more than birth rates that constrain human population growth rates, particularly perinatal mortality rates. Those are significantly affected by the resources available to parents. The characteristic pattern is for parents to have children to replace the ones that die to the extent that resources are available.

 

This explains why recovery from demographic events such as epidemics can be so rapid. It does not explain how the fact of new colonies frees up resources to support more children. (With the exception of the colonisation of a few places such as the Azores and Iceland, at least in historic times.) Everywhere else, "new colonies" were established where there were already people, and ethnogenesis fits our evidence much better than sudden endogenous surges in the birth rate.

 

New technologies are another matter --if they are endogenous to the economic process. I would be willing to go out on a limb and say that by far the most significant historical episode of this kind is the Columbian transfer, when New World crops were taken to the Old, and vice versa.

 

Hence, modernity; and, in its last stages, the collapse in death rates that led to the rapid population growth of the last century. That growth is almost over, and we are unlikely to see its like again.

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: A galaxy of humans

 

And another thing; the CoDominium Universe has aliens. The Moties. And apart from them, if you believe the official CoDominium line about how spacefaring technology was suddenly discovered in California in the late 1990s, you're being just a little naive.

 

All those "transported convicts" that the Marines shoot on sight out on the colonies? The real reason that they're so savage is that they're long-tribalised survivors of the First Empire of Man.

[Escafarc]

Re: A galaxy of humans

 

The Honorverse is mostly humans there is some geneticly altered humans and they have mentioned 3 unnamed alien races(maybe 5 if that doesn't include the Fish in a Barrel(i.e the Medusians) and the Tree-cats. But outside the Medusians in the first book only the tree-cats have shown up.

 

 

EDIT: I'm happen to be reading Webers A Beautiful Friendship today and the number of tool using sentient alien races discovered before Stephanie Harrington runs into the tree-cats is 11 so the total of aliens is 12+(?) in Honorverse.

 

EDIT: Subtract one race as the humans wiped out one of the alien species because they didn't want to share the planet.

[Xavier Onassiss]

Re: A galaxy of humans

 

The Honorverse is mostly humans there is some geneticly altered humans and they have mentioned 3 unnamed alien races(maybe 5 if that doesn't include the Fish in a Barrel(i.e the Medusians) and the Tree-cats. But outside the Medusians in the first book only the tree-cats have shown up.

 

I'm not sure if this one meets the 'humans only' criteria; as you say, there are two alien species (Medusians, Tree-cats) in the first book. But after that, (IIRC) Weber seems to shy away from introducing any more aliens, and focuses on developing the Tree-Cat/Human relationship through the rest of the series.

[Xavier Onassiss]

Re: A galaxy of humans

 

And another thing; the CoDominium Universe has aliens. The Moties. And apart from them, if you believe the official CoDominium line about how spacefaring technology was suddenly discovered in California in the late 1990s, you're being just a little naive.

 

All those "transported convicts" that the Marines shoot on sight out on the colonies? The real reason that they're so savage is that they're long-tribalised survivors of the First Empire of Man.

 

This brings up an interesting point -- a "humans only" universe remains so only until first contact with aliens. Up to a point, Pournelle wrote exclusively human CoDominium stories, and AFAIK he planned to leave it that way. Introducing the Moties was Larry Niven's idea; he considered Pournelle's CD universe ideal for a "first contact" story precisely because it didn't have any aliens in it up to the time they co-wrote Mote in God's Eye.

[RexMundi]

Re: A galaxy of humans

 

I liked the CoDominium stuff. But then I'm a Fan of Pournelle and a Fan of Niven. As for the other posts on how fast Humans can swarm when need be....

 

Hopefully theres one World left over out of the batch in the Galaxy that's a Rugrat free zone.

 

~Rex

[Vondy]

Re: A galaxy of humans

 

If you add in biotech that alters the human genome' date=' you can have a very diverse humanity. Given enough time to expand across the stars and diversify, you might have beings that look like "aliens" when compared in appearance to baseline humans, but their origin is Earth.[/quote']

 

You beat me to my comment.

 

So, was Vulcan settled by Larpers?

[tkdguy]

Re: A galaxy of humans

 

So' date=' was Vulcan settled by Larpers?[/quote']

 

Yes. Yes, it was.

[lapsedgamer]

Re: A galaxy of humans

 

Actaully kind of a fan of the Alien Franchise Universe....clean and simple, lota fun and plenty of room for additional stuff. Same could be said for Species as well.

 

~Rex

 

The Alien Universe had at least three alien species in it IIRC: Space Jockeys, Xenomorphs, and Arcturians. Though it was never really made clear about the Arcturians because humans could copulate with them (male or female). I also assume that there had to be others because the Marines talked about "bug hunts" like they had happened before, though that might mean alien creatures with animal intelligence I suppose.

[RexMundi]

Re: A galaxy of humans

 

Oh yeah I know there's more then Just Humans in the Alien Franchise Universe....It's just you don't trip over each other often. The Bug Hunts are mostly against the Xenomorphs once those get going....

 

So in that Expanded Universe you get the Humans, the Mala'kak (the Space Jockey), the Yautja's (Predators), Hmm the Insectoid River Ghost from Predators. Move the time frame around and you can keep the "alien" influence down to a minimum or crank it up to full blown Over Run Earth Hive stuff.....But it's still a pretty thin universe compared to say, Star Trek or Starwars ....So Humans got a lot of room to run around in before they trip over maybe one or three Yautja on a hunt, or find a Mala'kak ship full of Xenomorph eggs to muck with.

 

~Rex....goes back to playing AvP on the X-Box .....Go Marines!

[Orion]

Re: A galaxy of humans

 

With our current technolgy and enough place that every child can claim "his own land", population would increase a lot faster.

So we can populate the entire galaxy if we just start trying heavy enough.

 

Could vs would. While we could up the growth rate, I think it wouldn't go up much. On a low-tech frontier, there would be higher growth rates, but also higher infant mortality. If quality medical was available, there would be fewer born because more survive. Also, higher med tech probably means higher other tech, and so the extra farm hands aren't needed. In the long run, I think it comes down to home many kids does the average set of parents want to raise. They could raise 8, but I bet most would raise far less than this if they had the choice. I like the idea of population explosions on colony worlds, but personally don't think it would happen.