RE: Colonize Atlantis!

Billy Brown (bbrown@conemsco.com)
Thu, 4 Mar 1999 13:26:48 -0600

Anders Sandberg wrote:
> Hmm... check, check, check, check. Got all four (but not in the era
> when the colony ships were originally sent, except for some of the
> latest colonies).

Well, this leads into something I've observed before about the difficulty of sublight space travel. Simply put, interstellar colony ships are much, much harder to build than most people seem to realize. I would argue that they are only possible if you already have very advanced automation, including free-roaming robots. You also need a huge energy source (either antimatter, advanced fusion & Bussard ramjets, or really huge laser arrays back home). In the real world, I expect this combination will actually be harder to achieve than basic nanotech.

Mind you, I've ignored these problems myself a time or two in the interests of a good game concept. As you pointed out, its kind of hard to hang a story on a fast exponential curve.

Billy Brown, MCSE+I
bbrown@conemsco.com