Mike wrote: > Alot depends on what state those who are to get them, want them in and > have paid for them? > > A colony on the edge with no or limited food supply, is happy to get > anything not tasting of MREs or like rations.. > > Mike > Alaska
Hello Mike, it seems improbable to me to transport living animals just to slaughter and eat them at the destination. In that case, send frozen steaks. But as Pournelle pointed out in the CoDominium series, trucks turn into rust heaps over time, while horses make more horses. If you assume that there is no cryosleep technology, or that it is too difficult -- a hospital is required for revival -- then you can ship live herds or perhaps a few animals plus frozen embryos. It is questionable if such an animal-powered colony is realistic (compare Cyteen by CJ Cherryh), but there is some wriggle room: - How earthlike is the world? If it is a perfect garden world, animals are more likely than in a poisoned hell. - How early do you want the colony to be self-sufficient? A thousand people and a thousand horses may be less efficient than a dozen people with high-tech combine harvesters, but they have a larger gene pool. - Also in the lifeboat scenario, you can re-invent tractors from a few books, but it needs advanced gene technology to 'reinvent' horses ... - Is shipping people the means to a colony or the purpose? If you want to exile some people, no need to make their colony efficient, just survivable. And finally, if you look at this week's freighter, it has to carry a few cows at some point :-) Regards, Onno _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
