True on the slaughter at the end, but didn't that what they did c.1860, but they had no refrigeration then.
So why keep live adult animals alive, when you can send embreyos and like? One live mother and alot of sperm? or send a few females and alot of different sperm? so even if one cow dies, there is others to go forward and breed? Then might as well have a gene splicers and recombiner that takes the raw minerals and makes a egg/sperm or like? The tech is almost here, to be able to not have to send a living being, but just a program and machine to make the being on the other end, but then how to train them and like? Polar Bear mothers, with a Grizzly Bear father, surviving on land, deep inland especially is not as likely to survive, since all she knows is the arctic ice and not the inland life forms and how to track, deal with and eat them. Same goes with humans, why send a whole colony, other than the old traditional way, since they are the product or the investors. Product, such as labor on the other end? Might make for a book of sci-fi where the crew comes on a planet of humans, but they are not human or not earth human, or they are of earth origin but some where in the ancient past someone took them from earth or sent them from earth to colonize and .... Many elements on colonization and why, can be found in human history. Freighter, average cargo likely to make a profit and ease of maintenance and keep up, minimal need for crew/fellow stock holders in the ships needs/life, and ease to get one from some junk yard or .. like in the US Military you have a DRMO, it handles surplus military vehicles and like, priority being federal agencies, states, city and then private people. Cash on hand to purchase, no credit. Mike ----- Original Message ----- From: Onno Meyer Sent: 06/06/12 09:31 PM To: The GURPSnet mailing list Subject: Re: [gurps] Space Freighter Memes 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
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