[Traveller_TNE] Re: Low Tech Stuff

> There is a REASON these people picked a planet. A reason
> founded in economic reality. Why got to Planet Gorgon if there
> is just mud there? Is the mud good for anything else? Is there
> Lanthium in it? Why are there people there?

First up, we've got several thousand years of history going on here. For
a colony to be built only requires that at some stage in there, some
group of people had the means and motive to go there.

There are plenty of motives for colonisation. A religious or political
group at odds with a government and wanting to strike out on their own.
A commercial venture in the classic sci-fi sense, selling tickets and
land rights to colonists. A government wanting to extend its strategic
reach and funding a colony. I could make these up all day.

The Conquistadors, the Pilgrim Fathers, the Midwest land rush, the
Klondike, transportation to Australia, Roanoke, Sealand, Darwin,
Australian deportation to Nauru - a huge variety of (sometimes
nonsensical) reasons why groups of poeple wound up in a new place. Give
enough people enough time, and they'll want to expand - even into
seemingly bonkers situations.

> If we went to Mars, would we take wooden carts and telegraph poles?
> No. We'd bring as much high tech stuff (for us) as we could
> cram onboard the ship. Why bring a 1950s walkie talkie that
> weighs 20 kilos when a 2007 model is 1/100 the mass and 100x
> more reliable?

Because a Mars colony wouldn't be an independent settlement - it would
be totally reliant on Earth's infrastructure. Let's say it survives a
hundred years or so, making it closer to a typical low-tech Trav world.

Let's say its UWP is C-451-433-6 (from a fairly average set of rolls on
the TNE world gen tables, with a Mars-like world). So we've got a
self-sustaining population of 50,000 people at TL-6.

Assume they get cut off from Earth. They've got the indigenous knowledge
and infrastructure to maintain their nuclear power plant, probably build
a new (simpler) one if they needed to. They've got all their TL-8
doo-hickeys like computers and modern walkie-talkies, but they can only
maintain them by salvaging parts from other electronic devices - no
infrastructure to fab microchips with only 50,000 people. But they can
resolder components between things. Stuff that's built on that sort of
principle will survive, stuff that's not will eventually break down
beyond repair. Their tech is sliding back from TL-8 to TL-6. They don;t
want it to, but that's what they can support with their indigenous
infrastructure.

Now, say they get contact re-established with Earth, but being used to
muddling along on their own, they declare independence. NASA isn't
sending them computers any more; if they want high-tech stuff they've
got to buy it with foreign currency, and pay to have it shipped out.
Which means they have to export something. Having nothing very
interesting to export, they're suddenly a very poor, fiercely
independent, low tech world with very little prospect for clawing
themselves up the tech tree.

> So, if they have people, and an economy, and something that makes
> the people worth being there in the first place, then they can buy
> a TL12 fusion plant.

By that logic, Sierra Leone would have a civil nuclear reactor. They
have people, and an economy, and something that makes it worth being
there in the first place (diamond mines) - but they can't afford a
nuclear programme, despite the enormous benefits that cheap electricity
would bring to their people and their economy. Economics tend to keep
poor people poor.

> When I was talking about U.S./UN taking high tech gear to third
> world nations, I was speaking of (for instance) high-tech
> water filtration pumps designed by NASA and used to help
> recover clean water from filthy rivers.

Okay. I don't think that happens.

Nick