MILSPEC-555: "EVACUATING A PLANET"

HARVARD BOGOTA CAMPUS





COURSE:

MILSPEC-555: "EVACUATING A PLANET"

COURSEWORK:

Evacuation Plan

Instructor: TBA

Course Description:

The galaxy's history of planetary emergencies has forced the need for detailed study on the proper mechanics of evacuating a planet and or system. Since these considerations are unprecedented, we will be laying the cornerstone and foundation of galactic preparedness.

Proposed Large Carriers: Rednek731

Unless the planet has a trivially small population to begin with or a timescale which makes the term meaningless, it is pointless to try to evacuate a planetary surface. As in, "bailing out the Titanic with a coffee mug" pointless. There is not remotely enough lift capacity to get people off the surface, nor would there be enough ships or habitats within reach to house them even temporarily.

EARTH: FEB 2099 A.D.
ETA Planet Killer: APR 2100
POPULATION: 7-10 Billion
SPACEFARING SPECIES: N/A
PROJECTED % EVACUATION: NONE

Notes: Lack of spacefaring capability leaves very unfavorable prognosis.



EARTH: Honorverse Present
ETA PLANET KILLER: Unknown. Unknown origin.
POPULATION:
SPACEFARING SPECIES: YES
PROJECTED % EVACUATION: NONE

Notes: Current recommendation of an evacuation plan. Pointless.

Potato wrote:Unless the planet has a trivially small population to begin with or a timescale which makes the term meaningless, it is pointless to try to evacuate a planetary surface. As in, "bailing out the Titanic with a coffee mug" pointless. There is not remotely enough lift capacity to get people off the surface, nor would there be enough ships or habitats within reach to house them even temporarily.

I think you are being a bit on the pessimistic side, but at the same time, evacuating more than 1% of a planets population is unlikely. Even evacuating that much of an Honorverse planetary population is likely to cause major dislocations anywhere you try to put them.

A couple of examples from our history, Houston Metro Area before/during Hurricane Harvey. ~3 day warning, lots of people remembered the last evac attempt which barely happened due to traffic congestion.

Then there is FL as Hurricane Irma came ashore. Plans had been rehearsed before and there were still problems with people who should leave waiting till after it was prudent and people who did not need to leave heading out. The also had severe logistic problems that were unanticipated, mostly fuel availability.

A great example of the problems of the dislocations the receiving area will have: Europe attempting to deal with large numbers of refugees fleeing the Syrian civil war.

This is easy! I know just what to do! All you need is self-replicating nanotech that can grow ships. Since there will certainly be unforeseen challenges to overcome you'll need a strong AI. The nannies will need to be adaptable, going through the ocean or air to consume all non-human, non-essential (to humans) organic matter. They'll need to be highly modular too. Like some sort of horrifying nano death cloud, except instead of committing horrifying murder it builds you ships.

I don't see how this could possibly go wrong.

Although the real answer is to evacuate a system you just need to build a few life boats for every habitat you construct. A lifeboat ship should be a small fraction of the cost per person of a decent habitat. Then you run the occasional drill for the people, and simulation for the pilots. So I guess the rule here is don't like like some sort of Neo-Barbarian on a giant rock covered in poop and rotted corpses. Seriously, that dirt stuff? 99% poop and rotted corpses. Its disgusting. And filled with insects. Ever heard of an insect? They can bite you, sting you, fly, be microscopic, poison you, or crawl inside you to control your brain. If you really want to live on a planet pick a clean one, like Mars.

P.S. Claiming your horrifying nano-death cloud is really an emergency device for evacuating planets is a good cover story though!

cthia wrote:EARTH: FEB 2099 A.D.
ETA Planet Killer: APR 2100
POPULATION: 7-10 Billion
SPACEFARING SPECIES: N/A
PROJECTED % EVACUATION: None

Notes: Lack of spacefaring capability leaves very unfavorable prognosis.



EARTH: Honorverse Present
ETA PLANET KILLER: Unknown. Unknown origin.
POPULATION:
SPACEFARING SPECIES: Yes
PROJECTED % EVACUATION: NONE

Notes: Current recommendation of an evacuation plan. Pointless?

It would take vastly less effort to divert or destroy a planet killer than it would to evacuate a planet. A single SD has broadside energy weapons capable of shattering a small moon, and the wedges are even more destructive. With a few months lead time even a single old-style LAC should be able to prevent something the size of the Chicxulub impactor from hitting a planet.

Yet the biggest passenger ship we've seen has a capacity of only thousands, and even the enormous Hephaestus space station, hardly designed to be very mobile, maxes out population at under 2 million.


Assume we need to evacuate the smallest of the Manticore system's planet, Gryphon, with just 600 million inhabitant, and we only have to take them on a roughly 9.2 [1] hour roundtrip to Sphynx. It'd take about 120,000 trips in a liner to move that many people. If you had 50 liners all capable of moving 5000 people per trip it'd take you "only" 2.5 years if you totally ignore embarkation and demarcation time. (And good luck evacuating the other way, Sphynx has basically double that population)

Now with more time you could build more ships, or design life support and habitat modules for freighters. But evacuating between halves of a binary system is an absurdly good case. The only one that would be better is evacuation between a pair of habitable planets within the same system.
In any case to have any hope of evacuating I think you'd need a disaster that can be reliable predicted at least 5 to 10 years out and that can't be mitigated more economically through some other means. (A sun about to go end of life - but that should be seen centuries out at least. Anything like a planet killer can be easily swatted aside by Honorverse navies at far less effort and expense than trying to evacuate a planet. And a military strike wouldn't be seen coming in enough time to evacuate.


And that's just physically moving the people - actually being able to absorb a planets worth of refugees without famine or economic catastrophe is even harder.

[1] Assuming a 388 g safe acceleration for an Atlas class liner, and using the Eta bands, I make it 9580 seconds from Gryphon to the hyper limit, 1647 seconds to cross to Manticore-A, 1945 seconds to turnover, 1945 more seconds from turnover to Sphynx. Then going back it's 2751 seconds from Sphynx to the hyper limit, 1647 seconds to cross back to Manticore-B, 6774 seconds to turnover and a final 6774 seconds to Gryphon. This ignore the tiny residual velocities and assume you manage to drop out at the closest point. And as noted totally ignores embarcation and debarcation times, much less need for fuel maintenance, etc.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:EARTH: FEB 2099 A.D.
ETA Planet Killer: APR 2100
POPULATION: 7-10 Billion
SPACEFARING SPECIES: N/A
PROJECTED % EVACUATION: None

Notes: Lack of spacefaring capability leaves very unfavorable prognosis.



EARTH: Honorverse Present
ETA PLANET KILLER: Unknown. Unknown origin.
POPULATION:
SPACEFARING SPECIES: Yes
PROJECTED % EVACUATION: NONE

Notes: Current recommendation of an evacuation plan. Pointless?

It would take vastly less effort to divert or destroy a planet killer than it would to evacuate a planet. A single SD has broadside energy weapons capable of shattering a small moon, and the wedges are even more destructive. With a few months lead time even a single old-style LAC should be able to prevent something the size of the Chicxulub impactor from hitting a planet.

Yet the biggest passenger ship we've seen has a capacity of only thousands, and even the enormous Hephaestus space station, hardly designed to be very mobile, maxes out population at under 2 million.


Assume we need to evacuate the smallest of the Manticore system's planet, Gryphon, with just 600 million inhabitant, and we only have to take them on a roughly 9.2 [1] hour roundtrip to Sphynx. It'd take about 120,000 trips in a liner to move that many people. If you had 50 liners all capable of moving 5000 people per trip it'd take you "only" 2.5 years if you totally ignore embarkation and demarcation time. (And good luck evacuating the other way, Sphynx has basically double that population)

Now with more time you could build more ships, or design life support and habitat modules for freighters. But evacuating between halves of a binary system is an absurdly good case. The only one that would be better is evacuation between a pair of habitable planets within the same system.
In any case to have any hope of evacuating I think you'd need a disaster that can be reliable predicted at least 5 to 10 years out and that can't be mitigated more economically through some other means. (A sun about to go end of life - but that should be seen centuries out at least. Anything like a planet killer can be easily swatted aside by Honorverse navies at far less effort and expense than trying to evacuate a planet. And a military strike wouldn't be seen coming in enough time to evacuate.


And that's just physically moving the people - actually being able to absorb a planets worth of refugees without famine or economic catastrophe is even harder.

[1] Assuming a 388 g safe acceleration for an Atlas class liner, and using the Eta bands, I make it 9580 seconds from Gryphon to the hyper limit, 1647 seconds to cross to Manticore-A, 1945 seconds to turnover, 1945 more seconds from turnover to Sphynx. Then going back it's 2751 seconds from Sphynx to the hyper limit, 1647 seconds to cross back to Manticore-B, 6774 seconds to turnover and a final 6774 seconds to Gryphon. This ignore the tiny residual velocities and assume you manage to drop out at the closest point. And as noted totally ignores embarcation and debarcation times, much less need for fuel maintenance, etc.

Notice the fun involved in getting a few thousand members of MAlign out of Mesa over a period of months.

Granted it had to be done secretly but THAT could have been done. Getting huge numbers out, forget it.

Jonathan_S wrote:...
Yet the biggest passenger ship we've seen has a capacity of only thousands, and even the enormous Hephaestus space station, hardly designed to be very mobile, maxes out population at under 2 million.


...

Now with more time you could build more ships, or design life support and habitat modules for freighters. But evacuating between halves of a binary system is an absurdly good case. The only one that would be better is evacuation between a pair of habitable planets within the same system.

With a little pre-planning and R&D I'm sure a contra-grav civilization could design city-sized lifeboat systems.

Take a bubble side-wall as a starting point. Increase force-field density to make it impermeable to air. Make it bubble field strong enough to form even with a barrier like bedrock so it can cut an entire existing city fee of the planet. Make it big enough to envelop an entire honorverse city with mile+ high towers.

Develop (or acquire) enough contra-grav generators to lift a fully formed city-bubble into an orbit high enough to survive in impending planetary apocalypse.

Once developed and pre-placed in large cities and selected parks, preserves, and agricultural areas, evacuation can be done in whatever time it takes the Bubble to form and the Contra-grave to lift the city-bubbles out of danger. Add in any available warning time for those from outside cities, who wish to evacuate, to travel to the nearest city, park, preserve, or agricultural area.

The technology could have commercial applications that would defray R&D costs (eventually) even if the Apocalypse never happens.