Mesan Alignment colony ship.

This is how I'd build a ship whose purpose would be the fastest-possible colonization of new planets by the Mesan Alignment.


Hull:
Superdreadnought-sized hull, military grade engineering/propulsion systems.

Supplies:
1 mt of foodstuffs (food for 100k people for 14 years)
1 mt of deployable construction (housing + planetary vehicles for 100k people)
2 mt of rare materials (hard to find/produce in a new colony)

Environmental:
300kt of oxygen (air for 100k people for 2 years)
300kt of water (drinking water for 100k people for 1 year)
Oxygen production plant (from CO2, energy-based)
Water recycling plant (distillation)
200kt of solar panels (200 Km sq: 200 GW power @standard light intensity)

Engineering:
1 mt of space mining/refining ships (5x disassembled and empty megaton-range craft)
1 mt of fabricators and production lines (disassembled)

Residential:
200 kt shipboard living space and equipment. (10k crew)
100 kt of cryo-stasis units (90.000 occupants)
100 kt of artificial wombs (100.000, each with 1000+ doses of preserved sperm and eggs)
500 kt of science/genetics labs (20k+ research positions, disassembled)
100 kt of small craft (300 assault shuttles and pinnaces)







This should allow for:

a) Quick transportation to distant colony worlds.
b) Survival of original colonists for 2 decades without resources from their new world, since such would be still in development phase, or support from the old world.
c) Seeds of orbital industry.
d) On-site genetic alteration for both plants and humans to fit their environment, if needed.
e) Capability to produce up to 100.000 children per year to quickly increase population without problems.

In less than a century, the new colony should have a population of 100 million, assuming a natural growth rate of 7% per year.

Belial666 wrote:This is how I'd build a ship whose purpose would be the fastest-possible colonization of new planets by the Mesan Alignment.


Hull:
Superdreadnought-sized hull, military grade engineering/propulsion systems.

...

Where are you going to build such a ship without it being noticed?

Why would the MAlign build such a ship when their long-term plan is not colonization but dominance of already settled space?

1) Darius. Alternatively, build it in normal systems under the cover of building a normal SD.

2) Because having several hidden colonies instead of one increases both the industrial base and the total number of scientists I got.




Of course, the Alignment is not very practical.

Why shouldn't they use the Standard Size Colony Ship
that is used by everyone else?

For that matter, why isn't what you describe
that Standard Size Colony Ship?

HTM

Belial666 wrote:This is how I'd build a ship whose purpose would be the fastest-possible colonization of new planets by the Mesan Alignment.


Hull:
Superdreadnought-sized hull, military grade engineering/propulsion systems.

Supplies:
1 mt of foodstuffs (food for 100k people for 14 years)
1 mt of deployable construction (housing + planetary vehicles for 100k people)
2 mt of rare materials (hard to find/produce in a new colony)

Environmental:
300kt of oxygen (air for 100k people for 2 years)
300kt of water (drinking water for 100k people for 1 year)
Oxygen production plant (from CO2, energy-based)
Water recycling plant (distillation)
200kt of solar panels (200 Km sq: 200 GW power @standard light intensity)

Engineering:
1 mt of space mining/refining ships (5x disassembled and empty megaton-range craft)
1 mt of fabricators and production lines (disassembled)

Residential:
200 kt shipboard living space and equipment. (10k crew)
100 kt of cryo-stasis units (90.000 occupants)
100 kt of artificial wombs (100.000, each with 1000+ doses of preserved sperm and eggs)
500 kt of science/genetics labs (20k+ research positions, disassembled)
100 kt of small craft (300 assault shuttles and pinnaces)

[snip - htm]

For all we know, this might be something similar to how they built Mesa to begin with. That said, and if the MAlign's plan for galactic domination was in the final phases of falling apart, and being completely destroyed, if I were the Detweiler's I'd want a "rabbit hole ship" to disappear with.

What I probably wouldn't do, however, would be custom build said ship. Better to buy several of the largest most reliable freighters, and if there is such a thing, hyper capable mining ships, runnable by smaller crews, etc, and a small set of warships and then disappear.... Question being, to where.

Story wise, that would be the ultimate cliff hanger, but half of the Detweiler's goal (and they're arguably quite insane by now (at least on the sociopath scale) is to "prove Beowulf was wrong". They worked by being the cancer inside the body of the SL. Whether or not they'd be willing to go into a true colony hunting mode and then sit on the sidelines for another x hundred years without trying to get back in the game seems unlikely.

Weird Harold wrote:Where are you going to build such a ship without it being noticed?

You don't, you build it in the open as a high end colony ship at an appropriate shipyard. Colonization is still ongoing in the Honorverse so an appropriately wealthy and established front organization buying a highly capable colony ship wouldn't raise eyebrows.

Grashtel wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:Where are you going to build such a ship without it being noticed?

You don't, you build it in the open as a high end colony ship at an appropriate shipyard. Colonization is still ongoing in the Honorverse so an appropriately wealthy and established front organization buying a highly capable colony ship wouldn't raise eyebrows.

I suspect that "standard colony ships" are just basic freighters and transports, as most colonies are months travel from settled space at most. An attempt to design a single specialty colony ship for decades of travel would definitely cause some people to wonder.

If you wanted to go way the heck off the map, your best bet would be to purchase a handful of standard ships and stock them with specific supplies to get the same results. If you want to go faster, just upgrade the hyper generator, as that would be the biggest time saver, and is pretty easy on a civilian hull.

As long as they never came down to the new planet's surface, everything may be fine. But ... if everybody did come down, then in about 6 months everybody would be dead.

We are talking about a new planet? It takes literally decades if not centuries to figure out everything about a new unknown different colony planet ... even before colonizing.

Look what happened to Manticore and others. New planets are NOT like earth. We have not evolved to live on new planets. A good survey can still miss very important stuff.

Except for everybody who sets foot on the surface ending up dead, everything is fine. I can see settling in orbit for quite a while since ongoing surface surveys will be needed.

Just me. Yikes! HB of CJ (old coot) Junior Captain soss salute!

HB of CJ wrote:As long as they never came down to the new planet's surface, everything may be fine. But ... if everybody did come down, then in about 6 months everybody would be dead.

We are talking about a new planet? It takes literally decades if not centuries to figure out everything about a new unknown different colony planet ... even before colonizing.

Look what happened to Manticore and others. New planets are NOT like earth. We have not evolved to live on new planets. A good survey can still miss very important stuff.

Except for everybody who sets foot on the surface ending up dead, everything is fine. I can see settling in orbit for quite a while since ongoing surface surveys will be needed.

Just me. Yikes! HB of CJ (old coot) Junior Captain soss salute!

Terraforming is well known in the honorverse. They could stay on board their colony ship until their terraforming teams assured them that it was safe for them to disembark.

Don

PHASE 1:
(years 1-5)

1) Assemble sealed housing units on planet surface.
2) Deploy the solar panels.
3) Build carbide/silicate/oxide processing plant on planet while wearing skinsuits.
4) Mine planet's crust at any point for silicates/oxides/carbides for your processing plant with semi-automated miner.
5) Construct (sealed) ceramacrete domes out of processed material.
6) Release oxygen byproduct of silicate/carbide processing in domes if the atmosphere doesn't have it.
7) Remove harmful gases and adjust useful gas ratio from dome atmosphere via liquefication and clasmatic distillation.
8) Thoroughly irradiate domes with gamma rays to kill all alien life (if any).
9) Fabricate soil mixture or use existing one to begin agriculture.
10) Fabricate more solar panels, housing and grow more people to live/work within.
11) Repeat steps #1 to #10.


This process will work on any earthlike planet. You don't care about pathogens, flora and fauna; you kill all of them within your colony. You don't care about heavy metals; you keep them out. You don't care about harsh environmental conditions; you have air conditioning and insulation. You don't care much about atmosphere composition as you can provide your own.

A 2-kilometer-high, 10-kilometer-radius dome should take about a year to be ready for full habitation and use for the 100.000 settlers aided by antigrav and construction vehicles. Think "Grayson Sky Domes", except with a far larger number of workers than Sky Domes had in the first decade of its life.
In the 314 square kilometers of terraformed land the dome provides, 100.000 people can live with less population density than many RL countries, assuming agriculture on a recently colonized planet in the Honorverse has no higher yield than common agriculture practices today. If it is engineered for higher yields and pracices in general have improved overall, you could easily have surprlus.



PHASE 2:
(years 6-25)

1) Once you got a few domes built and food and material surplus, you start up the artificial wombs and start producing new colonists.

2) New dome production slows down as "families" among the colonists devote most of their energy into raising large numbers of children (3-4 children per couple per decade, the maximum number on average a family could handle without major problems)

3) By the end of phase 2 you got 100.000 original colonists, 200.000 colonists in the 16-20 year bracket and another 200.000 in the 6-10 year bracket. You got 7-8 domes built but only half of them fully operational. Orbital industry is still in the assessment and design phase.



PHASE 3:
(years 26-100)

1) Population growth falls down to 7% per year, to allow development in other ways. This is the same rate of growth as RL developing nations and sustainable for extensive periods without devoting all resources to just population growth.

2) Emphasis is placed in developing the industrial and science sectors, both planet-based and in orbit. With the original settlers still in the prime of their life due to prolong, instruction in technical, scientific and military skills can continue without the danger of regression.

3) The slower terraforming of the biosphere outside the domes and the genetic engineering of subsequent generations to adapt to the planet as well as for basic genetic improvement continues. The goal is full integration for those born after the century mark, while previous generations will still have to mostly live in their domes.

4) By the end of phase 3, the colony has 1000+ city-domes, 100 million total citizens, 1 million total workforce in its orbital infrastructure and has just begun its long journey towards social, economic and industrial maturity.



PHASE 4:
(years 101-200)

1) Population growth no longer artificially sped up, though fetus growth still artificially assisted to avoid physical and social impediments on the female half of the population. Projected growth at 5% per year as terraformed planetary surface is fully colonized without the need for artificial domes.

2) As original colonists slowly reach the end of their prolonged lifespan, maturity of government and social structures required to prevent neo-barbarism.

3) Orbital infrastructure in perpetual development to keep occupying 1% of population as absolute population numbers rise. By now, the development of strong military and civilian navies a must.

4) Survey initiation for second generation of colonies. Same system as initial colony, with allowances made for advanced technology. Colonization goal set at 1/10.000 of population sent as colonists per year.

5) By end of phase 4, planet fully colonized. 10 billion planetary population, 100 million orbital population, 1 million total colonists sent to 10 daughter-worlds.