Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to Other world colonization shouldn't be too hard.

Maybe harder than we think...

Your remarks carry some weight because you have obviously thought this through. But, in my opinion, problems will definitely cascade for the colonists. More important than providing them with robust tools thant will last a long time will be the skills needed to adapt to more primitive technologies. An early twentieth century technology already had electricity, internal combustion, highly advanced steam engines, piston and turbine, and a sophisticated chemical industry. The technologies were simple, but the human skills needed to manage them were just as sophisticated as ours are. These items may not have been accessible to the average citizen, but they made up the infrastructure needed to provide simpler, 19th century articles, like cotton gins and weaving looms, which in turn would provide fiber and cloth. And how many engineers today know how to make a shirt, given cloth, thread and needles? Could someone whose grandparents were computer engineers and spacecraft propulsion specialists be trained into these "primitive technologies" when no practical examples existed except as e-books?

Yoru comment on the follow-up ship suggests a great idea for a science fiction novel. The original colonists would want to scavenge the new ship for spare parts and laborers for the farms and factories they'd set up. The new arrivals would feel technologically superior and more intellecually advanced and in no mood to give up their creature comforts and technical professions to planting rice barefoot in the paddies for first-wave overlords. It's a recipe for conflict.

We not only need to to design down-scalable technologies, we also have to engineer cultures which will adapt to these conditions.

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