On 7/8/2022 5:08 PM, Bruce Johnson - johnson at Pharmacy.Arizona.EDU
(via tml list) wrote:
> Hey All,
>
> I'm writing up the backstory for a new non-TU Travelleresque game. I'm
> using The Last Parsec setting for Savage Worlds as a basis for this,
> but rewriting it to make the setting rather smaller (you can travel to
> different *galaxies* in TLP and I'm too much of a homebody for that).
> Anyway, a major feature of the setting is that - until very recently
> in the pre-game timeline - all settled worlds were either the
> homeworlds of various alien races or one of the handful of worlds
> settled by STL ships launched from Earth some seven centuries prior to
> game start. The furthest-out human colony is some 500 lightyears from
> Sol and jump drives mostly have only been in use for a little over 100
> years.
>
> What I'm trying to figure out is how long each world has been settled
> in actual elapsed time. I'm also keeping in mind how subjectively long
> the settlers *think* they've been at this, as that will give some
> indication as to current population as well as how much time
> their culture has had to deviate from that of baseline Earth. [NOTE:
> The Savage World setting already emphasizes that even
> the longest-settled of the colonies won't have had time to diverge far
> in the genetic sense.]
>
> A space travel calculator I found through a Google search tells me
> that - assuming constant acceleration at 1G, turnover, then constant
> deceleration at 1G - a 500 lightyear trip takes only 12.116~
> subjective years for the colonists but 501.935~ years for the rest of
> the universe. I'm using 1G because I'm assuming that the colony ship
> is a hollowed-out asteroid using an Orion drive. Of course, I'm
> postulating that 22nd-century Earth isn't going to
> remain silly regarding the use of nuclear explosions for peaceful
> purposes in space.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> --
> Richard Aiken

Some of the variables that I had to use when I worked up the subjective
duration for the "Earth to the Colonies" refugees in by BSG work was how
close to C you got, how long you stayed there, and then how long it took
to decelerate.  Reaching just less than C took relatively little time
(subjectively and objectively) and from there it was a matter of simply
maintaining it to you were ready to drop back into normal space.

For trips lasting more than a generation (say 20 years or so), I would
look into a population calculator.

https://www.metamorphosisalpha.com/ias/population.html  (Sadly, it looks
like this isn't working properly...)
This one, though, does:
https://calculator.academy/population-growth-calculator/#f1p1|f2p0 The
current rate of population growth (today) is ~0.012%

This is important because you may run out of space/resources before you
get where you're going.

For example, a colony ship with 100,000 people, current growth rate of
.012%, and a 200 year trip will wind up with a population of just under
103k.  Granted, it's only a ~3% increase, but if it isn't considered,
the colonists will be facing some very brutal cold equations which could
lead to some interesting cultural development.

--
Kurt Feltenberger
xxxxxx@thepaw.org/xxxxxx@yahoo.com
“Before today, I was scared to live, after today, I'm scared I'm not living enough." - Me

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