While we await further installments of the Frontiers Saga, I decided to attempt a theoretical exercise to see whether I could create a plausible history for a hypothetical colony. For the purpose of the exercise, I decided to name my colony Ashalla and placed it on a hospitable habitable super-Earth in a star system approximately 600LY from Earth.
Ashalla has the rare distinction of being settled by an expedition of evacuees escaping the Bio-Digital Plague whose exodus from Earth and the Core began as a normal, preplanned mission intended to colonize a planet in the Fringe instead of one of the hastily assembled evacuation flights. When the Plague occurred, the colony administrators and the commander of the colony ship made the bold decision to abandon their planned destination in the Fringe and proceed further out into deep space in the hopes that sufficient distance would ensure their survival.
While only properly provisioned for their planned 10Y/50LY voyage at 5x light, the expedition was nonetheless launched with the colonists held in stasis and the crew awakening at regular intervals to maintain the ship and conduct the search for a new suitable planet to colonize. The search took 120Y.
Ashalla was deemed a super-Earth because of its size and environmental similarities to Earth. The planet possessed an oxygen-based atmosphere, ample surface land in the form of archipelagos, edible indigenous vegetation that was compatible with human biology, vast oceans, and temperate climates. These conditions made the planet ideal for human colonization.
An initial settlement, named Beacon, was established on the coast of one of the larger archipelago islands in its northern hemisphere. Settlement occurred in the local year of 1PL (Post Landing) with January 1st of 2492 becoming January 1st, 1PL. Because of extensive preplanning on the part of its administrators, the colony prospered in its initial years. In subsequent decades, the colonists branched out into other areas of the planet to establish more settlements elsewhere and eventually Beacon would come to serve as the colony capital rather than its sole settlement.
In the end, once the planet had been properly settled and sufficient industrial capacity had been established to support it, the colonists extended themselves out into their new star system around 100PL (2592). In the next 50Ys, outposts and settlements were established on two other terrestrial planets, several moons, and numerous asteroids.
Furthermore, deep space observation and telemetry detected a higher than average number of planets in neighboring systems that were both inhabitable and hospitable to human colonization. Subsequent settlement in the decades following their discovery would make Ashalla the center of a "new core" by 250PL (2742) with "daughter" colonies established initially on the planets of Kanbarra, Castra, Viotia, and Anacona. For the next 200Ys, Ashalla and her colonies thrived and prospered while new colonies were settled in an ever increasing sphere around them.
Until 452 PL (2944) when the unthinkable happened. The scourge of the Bio-Digital Plague returned. The origin of its resurgence was never discovered, but the BD Plague spread through Ashalla and her colonies. The death toll rose exponentially in the outer colonies and in the Core. As it had been on Earth and her colonies, there was no cure.
Billions were dead when the virus had run its course and entire colonies were rendered uninhabited. In the end, only those with a natural immunity survived. Ashalla possessed the highest number of survivors while Castra possessed the lowest. Rescue missions were hastily mounted and survivors were resettled.
The next 500Ys would see slow, but steady recovery and the resettlement of many of the former outer colonies while the Core planets repopulated.
Then in 952 PL (3444) a new threat emerged: the Kamchatkan Empire. From an adjacent sector of space, the Empire began to expand into the Ashalla Sector. There was no attempt at communication. The Empire mercilessly destroyed everyone in its path and claimed their former planets as their own.
With no other option, Ashalla and her now independent colonies formed a cooperative partnership to counter the new threat, beginning a military buildup. But, in 970PL (3462), a brilliant physicist experimenting with multilayer shielding would discover an anomalous reading in a test of a ship mounted with her prototype shield system. The physicist would spent the next 10Ys studying the anomaly until a discovery was made that could possibly tilt the balance in the inevitable war with the Empire.
So, that's the rough history of my hypothetical colony. I welcome constructive criticism on it.
How many initial colonists? you would need 10,000 initial colonists with an average generation growth of 2.5 (ie every one couples off and has 5 children or an average of this) to have billions of people (for said death of billions) in 452 years (if still Solar Years)
The multi layer shielding required to make a jump drive requires specific types of shields failing in a certain type of way. That the same shield types with the same failures happened in two different attempts is a stretch (but possible) What I like about Dr Sorenson's project is that he spotted the error in a previous experiment and figured it out. It could just as easily have been a ship tearing itself apart as jumping. And why would anyone follow up on that arisen...
The BD Plague doesn't strike me as something that should be able to travel well (unless downloaded and held on an inactive datapad and reactivated at a later date(risk of corruption of non active data)/ a colonist in suspended animation was a carrier (why would the colonists have held people in suspended animation that long)). In fairness the systems/people it infects generally die.
Cool concept / but very much ripping details from FS and rewriting them to have happened elsewhere.
@four-islands The number of initial colonists was 125,000 (93,000 adults and 23,000 minor children). We don't know the size of the colony ships in use at the time of Bio-Digital Plague, but I would assume a ship purpose built for the task would be capable of holding that many people in stasis.
Admittedly the idea of similar shields failing in a similar anomaly that would led to the discovery of a jump drive is a stretch, but more often than not there are many roads that could lead to the same destination. It could happen even though the odds are probably extremely low.
In another post in these forums, Mr. Brown himself speculated on the idea that the Twister virus (the digital side of the Bio-Digital Plague if you remember) could have been dormant in the mainframes of the evacuating colony ships. A computer virus doesn't decay and while it there is the possibility that it could become corrupted it can also remain dormant for an indeterminable amount of time before being awakened.
While the initial concept of an unknown empire being a threat and indirectly leading to the creation of a jump drive does mirror the beginning of FS, you really can't label it as "ripping details" unless you know the story that comes of the premise. And I'll admit that I'm slightly offended by the accusation. But, thank you for your thoughts.
Actually that did come across adversarial, Jason, and I'm sorry about that. I guess I was focusing more on what was the same with your outline then what was different. I liked everything about what you wrote but maybe it would be better if say the jump drive was delivered by Captain Dubnicks cohort. Surely Colony ships heading out of system would have been tracked to some degree, and the only man who was alive at the time may have known where to look.
That's one thing I do not understand, why was Dubnick not sat down in front of a star chart and told to mark colony ship routes that he knew of, suspected, or would have expected (at least from his section of the sector)
I cannot get over the fact that Ships would have been that big for colonization efforts especially since seeing the one Dubnick was on. I got the impression that it would hold maybe a couple of hundred people. (I get that it wasn't exactly a first rate colonization ship more a converted cargo hauler)
Yip if a ship big enough to carry 125,000 people were to drop off a colony then in five or six generations we would be looking at a million people. I see it as a very fortunate occurrence to find a world with immediate habitability such as you described, but a planned colony voyage would have access to the most up to date planetary mapping available. (perhaps not as far as 600 Light years but still helpful.) Its also worth knowing that certain stars will generally have certain types of planets and that will have helped guide them.
Jason,
Pretty good write up. My question is the military build up. The computer data they have is 500 years out of date, and as it is a "colony expedition" they really would not have access to Top secret military files/plans or tools. Granted the ship and ship crew would have some defense weapons but marginal at best. I would also go as far as a small defense group to protect from new critters. So their whole military build up would have to be done from scratch and everything to be tooled up new. this would make construction of ships take even longer unless high amounts of automation were used.
I would have changed the BDP to some sort of cosmic issue such as asteroid swarms or something like that to bring that different for the story.
@four-islands The idea of Dubnyk bringing the jump drive to the Ashallans wouldn't work. The Ashalla discover the jump drive before he has even been revived by the crew of the Aurora. In fact, they discover it before the Aurora has even left the OAP to conduct her first test of her own jump drive. And I doubt that Dubnyk would know the outbound flight path of every colony ship fleeing the Core. You have to remember that the evacuation flights were happening from every planet in the Core and the sheer number of LYs that separated each of those systems meant no one could know the route of each ship.
As for the size of the ship, you said it yourself. Dubnyk's ship, the Jasper, wasn't intended as a colony ship. It was a decades old freighter that had been built to make the Earth to Alpha Centuari run at 2.5x light and did so for 60 years before being decommissioned and eventually sold to Dubnyk. Dubnyk, in my opinion, was a manipulative opportunist that took advantage of weak minded, desperate people willing to most likely pay him an enormous sum to transport them to a new world in a time of disaster.
A purpose built colony ship on the other hand we need to be a much larger vessel to carry the necessary supplies to sustain a colony that couldn't expect immediate resupply because an FTL journey between Earth and their new world would a roadblock.
It is rather convenient that the crew of the colony ship I described was able to immediately locate a habitable world. In that instance, I'll admit to fudging things a little. You are correct however that certain types of stars will have certain kinds of planets, I believe. If I remember correctly, K, G, and F type stars are the most likely to have hospitable habitable planets around them.
@mike Thank you. I agree that the computer data carried with the colonists would be well out of date by the time of the military buildup to deter the Kamchatkan Empire. I also agree that a colony expedition wouldn't have access to the classified military files and equipment like those stored in the Data Ark. I would say that my expedition chose to purchase the best legally obtainable military hardware available at the time purely with an eye toward colonial security. But, once they had begun expanding to other star systems nearby they started their military capabilities as well.
Yeah, maybe I should use something other than the BD Plague. It might work better with an indigenous virus that went undetected at first.
A local star going nova could have detrimental effects in large groups of people on planetary surfaces a great distance away, it would be hard to warn people it was coming as no ship would be able to survive space flight in its direct path. Say a star 15 light years way. The magnetic field of a planet might offer some protection but the radiation would cause cancers.
Just a thought.
One question: Where does Ashalla's oxygen come from?
Seems like a stupid question, but O2 is a very reactive substance that tends to react with all kinds of materials before it amasses in the atmosphere in any measurable amounts. Which means that it needs to be created by something. Usually something living. 😉
@four-islands I'm no astrophysicist, but in my limited understanding of the concept I believe that a supernova relatively close to an inhabited planet (even several light-years away) would result in that planet being irradiated in a massive burst of gamma particles. Such a burst would render the planet uninhabitable.
@olympe Ashalla's oxygen comes from its ecosystem. I direct your attention to my summary and the mention of "edible indigenous vegetation that was compatible with human biology". The planet had a robust ecosystem before colonization. It just didn't have higher life-forms such as humans.
No colony ship would carry so many people. It is not necessary, and it's a huge cost as well as a waste of space. And the more colonists you carry, the more consumables, supplies, and equipment you need to care for them until the new colony can become somewhat self-sufficient. Something along the lines of a few hundred people, along with sperm and egg banks, would make far more sense. That way, you'd have more room for cargo. The idea that you need a large amount of 'breeder stock' is false, and is a hold-over from when we didn't know much about genetics.
A well-planned expedition (one that launched before the plague) wouldn't be trying to get an instant population boom. They'd start small, and plan follow-up expeditions carrying increasing numbers of colonists as the settlement grew and became able to support them. They'd also have a destination that was nearby, so as to facilitate the immigration of additional settlers in the future. (Unless they wanted to be distant for some religious or political reasons, which would necessitate an entirely different mission design.)
Now, an 'unplanned' expedition, or even one that started out as planned but turned into an urgent need to escape the plague, might not be so well equipped. Such an expedition would only have the basics. It would be hastily put together, and would be unlikely to have anything but the basics. It might have larger numbers of colonists as well, as people pay and cargo does not. It all depends on who owns the ship and why are they agreeing to dedicate it to this mission.
Any ship departing after the onset of the BD plague would likely reload its computers from a clean backup to ensure a clean system. In fact, even a ship departing before the onset of the plague would probably take similar steps to ensure a clean system before departure. So I have a hard time buying the idea that the BD plague would spread. Although I admit that anything is possible. (One smart phone that didn't get checked would be enough.)
The further out the expedition settled, the less likely they would be to have advanced to the point of space travel. Such requires considerable infrastructure, and such infrastructure requires massive populations and economies. And it's not just about popping out babies. Growth has to be controlled so as to not outpace infrastructure expansion. The result of this is a technological 'stall', during which very little R&D (if any) is accomplished. Eventually, if they brought complete enough databases, they could begin to pickup where technology had left off, however due to lack of diversity in their industrial infrastructure (which would have been focused on immediate needs) much of what was in the databases would be unusable to them.
The societies in the PC were a well-planned, well-equipped expedition composed of a series of ships, and funded by a consortium of nations. The first few waves departed prior to the release of the BD plague. So they had a leg up. They also had nearly 1,000 years to develop and grow. A lessor equipped mission, spending 500ly in transit, would be hard pressed to become an advanced, space-faring civilization, all in the course of 5 centuries, even if they did start with 125,000 people.
While I'm sure we will see some advanced colonies out there, I think most of them will be less advanced.
I do like the idea of clusters of backwards civilisations out there. But it I's nice to see 3 big space faring groupings. Well two really the Ta'akarans need a little work at the moment.
Ashalla’s oxygen comes from its ecosystem. I direct your attention to my summary and the mention of “edible indigenous vegetation that was compatible with human biology”. The planet had a robust ecosystem before colonization. It just didn’t have higher life-forms such as humans.
Define higher life forms. Most of Earth's vegetation consists of higher life forms - like trees, flowers or grasses. Personally, I consider anything beyond bacteria as higher life forms. (Anything with endosmybionts, really.)
Earth as far as I know has ~20% Oxygen in its Atmosphere. Much more then that and you start fires and explosions by flicking on light switches. You need a gas that is more inert like Nitrogen to keep things ticking over(~80% of Earths atmosphere)
