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Post by jonen on Nov 5, 2016 21:47:03 GMT
Since I'm really more of a humanities guy, history and geography and the like, lets talk demo.
First of all, most of my numbers where dug up from ingame - I couldn't find where the population figures were stored in the files. This means that I've probably made transcription errors, and may have missed some bodies.
Additionally, I will not presume that the figures I've dug up represent the total population of Sol: Undoubtedly there are more out there around all sorts of minor planets, as well as a significant number of transients, and people in ships and stations in solar orbit. As no figures are available for this, however, those are ignored.
I'm also going to assume that the figures presented in game - since they do not appear to be subject to change between the campaign and the sandbox - are from a census taken at some time before the outbreak of hostilities, and so take no account for losses inflicted during the course of the war (what with cities and settlements and stations nuked).
Some initial observations:
The total population of Sol is about 1.76 billion.
(If the percentages don't add up, it's probably a rounding error in the summary.)
Breaking things down into categories, we find that 95% of the population of the Solar system live on, or in orbit of, one of the eight planets or their moons.
An additional 4.3% live on or around the dwarf planets (and their moonlets).
Asteroids (and moons) represent a bit more than half a percent of the total population of Sol.
Breaking the planets and moons down into the eight systems, we find:
45.5% of the population lives on or around Mars. Given that the RFP is said to be the dominant power on Mars (and they have their capitol there), their claim to be on the way to becoming the systems greatest Superpower is rather self evident - a demographic certainty.
20.7% in the Jovian system.
13.3% in Cis-Lunar space.
The Saturnian system has 6.3%.
Venus orbit holds 4.8%.
Neptunian system holds 2.2%
Uranian system holds 1.7%
Mercury, with 0.6% actually has less people in orbit than there are in the Plutonian system (Pluto being a dwarf planet) - obviously the Ninth Planet still has a fair amount of supporters.
Further breaking things down to individual bodies (with populations + orbital populations):
Mars still holds 45.5% of the total population - the moons are insignificant even compared to just the orbital population of Mars itself.
Callisto is the second most populous body, 9.5% of the total and 45.7% of the Jovian system.
Luna is third, 9%. With 67.8% of the population of the Cis-Lunar system.
Ganymede is fourth at 6.9%, and 33.2% of the Jovian system.
Venus fifth.
Earth sixth, 4.3%.
Titan, with 4% takes seventh place, with 63.3% of the Saturnian systems population.
Eight place goes to Europa (Jovian moon) with 2.3% of the total, and 10.9% of the Jovian system.
Ninth place to Io with 2.1% of the total population and 10.1% of the Jovians (all mad, surely).
Tenth place goes to Triton, also with 2.1% of the total, and the dominant body of the Neptunian system with 95.8%.
For the dwarf planets:
Pluto with 1.1% (for the whole Plutonian system) is beat out by Eris with 2.1% of the total population of Sol.
Eris is the eleventh most populous body in the Solar system with 2% of the total population, and 91.5% of the population in that system. (Compare Pluto, with 71.7 of the population in the Plutonian system.)
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Post by Pttg on Nov 5, 2016 22:35:26 GMT
I'm curious about the population of the system. It seems like people aren't dramatically different from a tactical perspective (such as electrically-powered carbon dioxide catalysiers implanted in the lungs). AI is at best a curiosity, not practical for spaceflight... but that still leaves a lot of room for very different people. I'm curious what people do for fun in this setting, what cultures exist. It seems that overwhelming censorship is a given, which is odd, seeing how omniscient a crew can be.
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Post by n2maniac on Nov 5, 2016 22:36:35 GMT
I wonder how this would play out given orbital mechanics mucking with interplanetary trade? Times, launch windows, and delta-V needed to travel between the bodies is significant enough to hamper trade of physical objects (think 17th century cross-oceanic voyages, but worse). Digital would be better (minutes - hours, rather than months), but still result in effectively intranets on each body.
Does this effectively isolate each planetary system for low value resources (propellants, food, water, air) but open the window for high value ones (fissiles, high NRE engineered parts, important people, military might)? Is there a time in human history where this separation cost and delay was similar (eg. the silk road, Atlantic slave trade, Roman empire)?
Thoughts?
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Post by jonen on Nov 5, 2016 23:59:49 GMT
The low population on the asteroids - and particularly the moonlets (and the other mini-moons all over the system) would indicate that they're probably mostly used for mining and industry, with the moonlets as refueling stations, or something like that.
The population in Earth orbit would logically be because there's no point in vasting deltaV getting all of them out of there (and for lower orbits, skimming over the atmosphere, they probably enjoy some level of protection from the Earths magnetosphere).
The high population over Venus seems anomalous - either a lot of people invested in terraforming, or maybe they're working on getting aerostat habitats running in the Venusian atmosphere (or they already have them, and they're counted as orbital pop)...
Certainly, you'd think there'd be more people over Earth (since Earth is, by definition, more Earthlike, less DeltaV involved to get them there, sentiment etc)... On the other hand, they've got Luna just next door to settle on and operate from. And it's possible aerotstats aren't as feasible on Earth as on Venus?
Or it's just congestion closer in to Sol with no other major bodies to orbit and enjoy some protection while running solar power arrays and skyfarms, and a decent source of carbon dioxide for cracking into methane?
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Post by thorneel on Nov 6, 2016 0:10:57 GMT
There is one big unknown, though: what about all the population not on one of the listed bodies? Sun-orbiting habitats, smaller asteroids or Kuiper objects. I would even expect efforts to colonize the Oort Cloud, be it by using passing comets or possibly by sending long-endurance colonisation ships/habitats/asteroids directly. Even without consistent STL interstellar colonisation ships (though unmanned probes is probably well within their industrial capabilities), Oort Cloud colonisation could slowly leak to other stars a few millennia down the line. I don't expect Oort efforts to be particularly advanced so far though: with the claim about ruling the entire Solar System and all of humanity, the Oort Cloud will probably end up too far to be ruled by a Solar System-based power. However, the Sun-orbiting dispersed populatoin could be significant, and even a majority depending on the details. Now, about the odd things in those numbers: - Why are the inner Jovian moons so heavily populated? They are right in the Jupiter radiation belt, which is a very, very bad thing. I would expect a few people for industrial and resource gathering purposes, but given how much radiation shielding is required, it should be kept at a minimum. Only Callisto is outside the belt, and the bulk of the Jovian population should be there. - In particular, what are those people doing on the surface of Io? If radiation wasn't enough, the entire surface is a volcanic hellhole where maps expire faster than an improperly stored sandwich. Sure, Io is probably great for resource gathering, but seriously - 30 million people? Is that a giant penal colony? - Mercury and to a lesser extent Venus should have some surface population: toughsf.blogspot.com/2016/10/how-to-live-on-other-planets-mercury.htmltoughsf.blogspot.com/2016/10/how-to-live-on-other-planets-venus.htmlWhile Venus could do with only a token amount, Mercury would deserve a decent surface population. - Gas giants have no orbital population? That's weird. There should at least be some people in low orbit, shouldn't it? And if we include all orbital population, the free-floating habitats and smaller asteroids would probably have a significant population. The same applies to Sol, in fact. - There is no-one on the surface of Earth? Not even some archaeologists and such? In fact, I would expect a big effort underway trying to revert Earth, probably by dumping massive amounts of anti-greenhouse compounds in the atmosphere (high-albedo gasses and particles, for example). This would also require some people at the surface. - How can the outer planets and moons (Pluto, Erys, Triton...) have so much surface population? Walking on frozen nitrogen is generally not a good idea ( only slightly colder example), and building entire metropolis on those sounds like a receipt for chronic disaster. Most of the population should be orbital, with cold-adapted and cold-running robots doing most of the work on the surface. |
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Post by jonen on Nov 6, 2016 0:52:58 GMT
There is one big unknown, though: what about all the population not on one of the listed bodies? Sun-orbiting habitats, smaller asteroids or Kuiper objects. I would even expect efforts to colonize the Oort Cloud, be it by using passing comets or possibly by sending long-endurance colonisation ships/habitats/asteroids directly. Even without consistent STL interstellar colonisation ships (though unmanned probes is probably well within their industrial capabilities), Oort Cloud colonisation could slowly leak to other stars a few millennia down the line. I don't expect Oort efforts to be particularly advanced so far though: with the claim about ruling the entire Solar System and all of humanity, the Oort Cloud will probably end up too far to be ruled by a Solar System-based power. However, the Sun-orbiting dispersed populatoin could be significant, and even a majority depending on the details. I'd agree with most of this, but given the proportionality of surface to Orbital population in the rest of the system, the population on smaller bodies is unlikely to be particularly high per body. Depending on the number of populated bodies, they may affect the total somewhat. In particular Solar orbital, and possibly the orbital populations of the gas giants. Of note - most of the significant population centers have something like 90+% of their population on the body, and often less than 5% of it in orbital population - which tracks fairly well to the population spread between the major planetary systems and the minor ones (dwarf planets and asteroids). Callisto is the most populated of the Galileans, and the spread between orbital and planetary population does map to the major population centers (97-3 spread). It's possible that the planetary populations on Ganymede (91-9 percentage spread surface-orbit) and Europa (92-8 percentage spread) are burrowed deep - possibly even underwater - for cheap radiation shielding... But then there's a significant orbital population that don't have the advantage of kilometers of ice to hide under (so maybe expect less people in orbit for those worlds?). Io has a 80-20 percentage spread between surface/orbital population. If it's a penal world, then the ratio of prisoners to total population of Sol is worse than the US - though there'd probably be guards and prison staff and the like... Still, would imply that the USTA (at least I assume they're the majority owners) have a significant prisoner population. Mining operations would be most likely. And I do assume they're completely bonkers. Guess there's a reason the USTA was a superpower. Agreed - though since I'm assuming it's census data, it's possible that while there are (at least) semi-permanent installations on the surface of both worlds, maybe there are no permanent residents? Aye. It's a couple of big question marks. I'll note that I also found a couple of Saturnian moons or moonlets with no population: Polydeuces, Methone, Anthe, Aegaeon. Except for those four, the Four Gas Giants and Sol, all other bodies modeled in the game have a population and/or orbital population. Oh, and there's a moonlet of the asteroid Kleopatra - Cleoselene - that has no population. And only Mercury, Venus and Earth have only Orbital populations. Small worldlets with no orbital pops are fairly common. That's 114 bodies modeled in the game, 101 of which have a population. 74 of the 114 have orbital population. See my note on census for Mercury and Venus - probably no permanent residents - kind of like Antarctica today? Most of the operations would probably be manageable from orbit, with teleoperation if necessary, though. I'm assuming mining stations turned into habitats after they've dug down a bit, to shield against cosmic radiation and the like. It is probably notable there are more people on the surface of Pluto than there are in orbit of Mercury, though. And Pluto has a 86-14 percentage split between orbital and planetary population. For Plutos moons: Charon 89-11, Styx 94-6, Nix 80-20, Kerberos 86-14, Hydra 78-22. Plutonian system population splits: Pluto: 72%, Charon 27%, and about half the remaining one percent on Hydra, followed by Nix, Styx and Kerberos in order. Eris, on the other hand has something like a 92-8 split. Dysnomia has about 5% of that systems population in a 94-6 split. |
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Post by wafflestoo on Nov 7, 2016 5:23:38 GMT
I was having a conversation with another fella about Mercury. We speculated that there could be permanent settlements at the poles on-or-near the terminus. Just about everything else would likely have to be mobile.
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Post by argonbalt on Nov 7, 2016 5:27:07 GMT
What a fascinating thread. I think this completely re shadows the UFP's war as one entirely based around aggressive expansionism more than their weak excuse of resource cut off and radioisotope deficiencies. They certainly seem to have the manpower to spare with such an edge in population wise. I think the rarity of gas giant populations is especially odd given the plentiful atmospheric resources. Building a lower orbit collection and refinery site with pop blocks for families of the miners would seem like an obvious ideal on many of the outer giants. Automatically Antilia came to mind.   I am curious though, how bad is the radiation zone of Jupiter? i know it has the largest magnetic field outside of the Sun, and that it's core is the largest as well. But what about it causes issue? Magnetic fields themselves don't directly react with the human body, is it a combination of solar wind generating secondary particles? |
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Post by jonen on Nov 7, 2016 7:01:50 GMT
Magnetic fields channel solar wind. Creates zones of concentrated death, more or less.
And then there's the fact that Jupiter is huge and Scary.
Anyone wanna bet the USTA have tapped into the Io Electric Generator?
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Post by argonbalt on Nov 7, 2016 7:44:25 GMT
Im going to bet that whoever controls Jupiter controls a ridiculous amount of energy and resources, next only perhaps to Mercury's potential solar collectors and Mars's mineral grounds.
Now correct me if im wrong, but it seems like with all this energy flying about(including the lethal kind) shouldn't some of it be capturable and perhaps converted into a shield for potential colonies?
Passive shields like lead and heavy water barriers would always be viable, but couldn't an active shield, like a localised magnetic wave? Perhaps even build a large magnetised station and create a mini dynamo with relation to Jupiter?
Also i don't get this Jupiter is scary meme. To an Ant a basketball, beachball and watermelon are all gigantic, we are basically the same to the gas giants and it's not like the others are any less smaller.
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Post by thorneel on Nov 7, 2016 12:01:10 GMT
The magnetic field of Jupiter is 20000 times as strong as the magnetic field here on Earth, and our Van Allen belt is already considered unsafe for crewed (and even some uncrewed) vehicles. As far as I understand, the main problem is that plasma trapped in the belt is impacted by relativistic electrons moved by the magnetic field, causing nasty secondary radiation. In addition to solar wind, volcanic activity from Io sends lots of gas in Jupiter orbit, that is soon ionised and makes the radiation belt even worse. To quote this article, "NASA has estimated that if astronauts were to ever venture as close to Jupiter as did the Voyager 1 spacecraft, the astronauts would receive a dose 1,000 times greater than the lethal dose." The Juno probe had to be made specially radiation-proof to have a chance to operate there. Also apparently Ganymede has its own magnetic field that protects its equatorial regions, though I can't tell if it would be enough to be human-safe.Hardened robots are largely feasible by the USTA, but given the massive (in both ways) investments required for human-rated environments, I am still surprised to find dozens of millions of people living on Io, where the constant volcanic activity will make long-term installations and underground shelters extremely challenging. And again, even Europa and to a lesser extent Ganymede should be less heavily populated, if only due to the extra difficulties to move around in massive armoured shuttles as soon as they have to dip back into the radiation belt. While we're at it, the Jovian radiation belt would probably deserve an implementation in-game as crew hazard (I am not sure how radiation-hardened remote control systems are), forcing either the use of drones or hardened ships or crew compartments. |
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Post by wafflestoo on Nov 7, 2016 14:05:06 GMT
NASA was unprepared for the intensity of the Jupiter Van Allen radiation when they sent the Galileo mission and that poor little probe was pretty well cooked by the time they decided to end the mission.
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Post by jonen on Nov 8, 2016 16:48:55 GMT
Going back to the subject of the population in Solar orbit - the fact that it's basically big empty ought to suffice to keep population down - on the other hand it's the big big empty so ...
The exception would likely be the various Solar lagrange points - in particular the Sol-gas giant ones. The Trojans and the Greeks are likely fairly populated (for asteroids - I don't expect either group to manage many millions).
Speaking of, would Lagrange point colonies be considered to be part of the orbital pop of one of the bodies involved? Or both? Either (multiple choice in census questionaire)? Neither?
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Post by argonbalt on Nov 9, 2016 0:13:34 GMT
You could probably chalk it up to the larger body involved being the critical one, but a joint name is also reasonable.
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Post by xenophon13 on Nov 15, 2016 21:18:07 GMT
Doesn't Ganymede get completely nuked at the end of the campaign? If so, that's 7% of the human population, which might be the worst genocide in human history. |
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