Space Cowboys

[Captain Midnight]

So Jafarr made his post a couple of weeks ago about high-tech items in a low-tech setting, and mentioned that he was thinking of creating a setting where a corporation had acquired the rights to settle a previously undeveloped world for the purpose of ranching some sort of animal (unspecified -- I think he was still working out details in his head) for food. He said he was a big fan of westerns and of SF, and wanted to try combining the two. It seemed to me like he was more interested in a sort of steampunkish "Traveller Meets The Wild West"... which has some possibilities, if you ask me. I think I'd prefer to go a little different way with it myself, but that's why they make more than on flavor of ice cream, y'know?

So, my thought was to examine the idea, and see what such a colony might look like if you're not trying to avoid higher-tech solutions. There's not likely to be much in the way of onworld production of anything complex (though I'd expect food to be produced locally), but it's not like you're going to be going years without resupply from offworld, either. If you were going to set up a sustainable operation for long-term ranching of meat animals (let's call them "cattle", though it seems unlikely that bovines of Terran origin would be used), and you weren't trying to horribly oppress your workers (due to bad PR and possible damage to the business), what would such a colony look like?

My first thought was that you'd chip the cattle, much like people have started doing with pets these days. GPS collars would be useful as well, to deal with finding strays. Instead of horses, grav bikes. Radio communication, cheap basic comsats, and a GPS constellation would seem useful. A collection of ranch houses and assorted outbuildings made from prefab materials could be handy. Electrical power could come from small power plants; I seem to recall some small units in the 5 MW range in some supplement for MegaTraveller, but cannot lay my hands on it; GT:Starships lists a "power plant slice" that produces 20 MW and costs 100 KCr.

I started thinking about how you'd handle a cattle drive, and then realized it might make sense to have smaller locations to handle the slaughtering and processing more locally; after all, it's not like you have to build railroad tracks and a dedicated facility if a cutter can just land and swap out modules. (OK, I know that regular cutter modules aren't "hot-swappable", but the theory is the same; a "roll-on, roll-off" type of solution would be easy.) I'd expect robots could handle butchering and packaging, so you can cut down on staffing needs.

You'd still want sentient hands for handling routine chores, and the weird situations that come up when not-so-bright animals get themselves in trouble. Still, you ought to be able to get along with a staff reduced somewhat from the historical equivalent, though there would be some additional infrastructure costs. You're going to have to import workers under Jafarr's concept of a formerly-uninhabited world anyway, so you'll want to keep that cost at a minimum. Workers may come on contracts of fixed length, or you could provide a different deal if you want to encourage settlement; however, that might pose governmental difficulties down the road if you get a permanent population.

I'm going to open this up now for further discussion or comments, with one strong request: any scenarios should refer to the hypothetical corporation running this enterprise as "Pompatus Ranching", and I hope you all get the joke.

 

[BlackBat242]

There is always the classic of space-faring ranching...
Norstrilia, by Cordwainer Smith.

http://www.cordwainer-smith.com/norstrilia.htm
(exerpt from site)
" THEME AND PROLOGUE

Story, place, and time—these are the essentials.

1 The story is simple. There was a boy who bought the planet Earth. We know that, to our cost. It only happened once, and we have taken pains that it will never happen again. He came to Earth, got what he wanted, and got away alive, in a series of very remarkable adventures. That's the story.

2 The place? That's Old North Australia. What other place could it be? Where else do farmers pay ten million credits for a handkerchief, five for a bottle of beer? Where else do people lead peaceful lives, untouched by militarism, on a world which is booby-trapped with death and things worse than death?

Old North Australia has stroon—the santaclara drug—and more than a thousand other planets clamor for it.

But you can get stroon only from Norstrilia—that's what they call it, for short—because it is a virus that grows on enormous, gigantic misshapen sheep. The sheep were taken from Earth to start a pastoral system; they ended up as the greatest of imaginable treasures.

The simple farmers became simple billionaires, but they kept their farming ways. They started tough and they got tougher. People get pretty mean if you rob them and hurt them for almost three thousand years. They get obstinate. They avoid strangers, except for sending out spies and a very occasional tourist. They don't mess with other people, and they're death, death, death inside out and turned over twice if you mess with them.

Then one of their kids showed up on Earth and bought it. The whole place, lock, stock, and underpeople.

That was a real embarrassment for Earth.

And for Norstrilia, too.

This is the only novel that Cordwainer Smith wrote. I usually recommend it to people as an easy introduction to his works and an engrossing story in its own right. It was pulled together from various tales, as the introduction by Cordwainer Smith scholar Alan C. Elms explains."