Sustainable Tech Levels?

[Timerover51]

At the core of it, Timerover

Would you kindly use Timerover51?

 

[Straybow]

SO. I've been reading Jared Diamond's 2011 book on societal collapses, and it's been bouncing all around the Traveller parts of my brain.

Greenland, for example.

Here we have a Norse population trying to maintain themselves as culturally and technologically European in the most remote European settlement of its time, barring Vinland. Ultimately, their unwillingness to dispense with their cattle and their sheep leads to destruction of their soil, total loss of their trees, total loss of the ability to produce metal... their insistence upon participating in trade with Europe (rather than self-sustainability) meant that weeks better spent on nurturing their marginal hayfields were spent walrus and bear hunting for ivory and furs for export, to trade for iron and luxuries.

Their pressures wouldn't have been as deadly if they were as close to Europe as, say, the Faroes - which were as barren but close enough to import everything they needed.

First, I haven't read Diamond's book. I have studied a bunch of other stuff. Greenland colonies perished because the ecology changed at the end of the MWP. It didn't matter what the colonists did, the climate became too cold to maintain their pasture land and lumber/firewood. Yes, transition to a fishing economy could have allowed them to persist for some time, but the Little Ice Age would have pushed them off the island anyway. They still wanted to be Norsemen, and therefore live at least partly off their cattle and crops.

So I'm wondering about non-industrial Traveller worlds with technological levels dependent on industrial production. For example, the TL 13 world with a population of forty thousand, or five thousand. Or three hundred.

In order to maintain that technology, how close does that world have to be to a population 7+ world of TL 13 or better?

Suppose you've got one little TL15 world with a population of 300 or so, and within 10 parsecs there's one TL 11 industrial world and a mess of other systems between TL 5 and 9.

Do you just handwave it all, and say yep, that's a TL 15 world?
Is it a TL 11 world with a few TL 15 gadgets?
Those Norse Greenlanders did everything they could to avoid behaving like the Inuit. Apparently they didn't even eat fish, not even when they were still able to keep boats afloat. That's akin to our TL 15 enclave refusing to adopt nearby TL 9 methods when their own gear fails - are those non-industrial enclaves just lining up to die off?

The rules say TL is their production capacity. A TL 7 world might still have high tech stuff in general use, entirely dependent on imported spare parts.


I understand that there are no LCD/LED TV/tablet/smartphone screens produced in the USA, but that doesn't mean we're stuck with CRTs. Our supply lines, in terms of transit times and delays, are probably as long as a low TL planet a few jumps away from the nearest high TL producer.

And another thing. Supposing that the TL13 world with population 2 has a type A starport.
Can those few hundred people still build my starship?

Yes. It has a robotic shipyard. Its tonnage per year might be rather low, and there may be a waiting list before your project gets started.

 

[aramis]

My screen name is Timerover51, not timerover. Use that again and I will assume a deliberate, calculated insult.

[m;]Don't go that way[/m;] - it comes across as being far ruder than the informal shortening.

It's not an insult, but a normal human reaction to a compound name.

No one will be, nor has anyone been (to my knowledge), dinged for using partial sets of people's usernames, at least not when it's a discernible chunk of a compound.

Being excessively prickly about such things has gotten people infractions. Why? Because it's more rude than the objected to behavior. It's an ad hominem attack, even when it's not an ad hominem fallacious argument. And it's a detriment to the board.

 

[Carlobrand]

Would you kindly use Timerover51?

My apologies, I will in future.

 

[Old School]

My screen name is Timerover51, not timerover. Use that again and I will assume a deliberate, calculated insult.

If you’re going to insist on such precision on an internet message board, you should at least get your own screen name correct. Your screen name is timerover51, not Timerover51.

 

[Carlobrand]

So, moving back to the subject of the thread ...

I recall some discussion about considering the starport staff as being distinct from the planetary population. Trade volume's based on the local pop - except there might also be pass-through traffic. One of the systems had a process for calculating starport staff and construction tonnage. Anyone recall which book one that was in?

 

[kilemall]

So, moving back to the subject of the thread ...

I recall some discussion about considering the starport staff as being distinct from the planetary population. Trade volume's based on the local pop - except there might also be pass-through traffic. One of the systems had a process for calculating starport staff and construction tonnage. Anyone recall which book one that was in?

Kansas City is that way for railroads- it handles over a billion tons of rail traffic per year but most of it is pass-through and neither originates nor terminates there.

 

[Old School]

So, moving back to the subject of the thread ...

I recall some discussion about considering the starport staff as being distinct from the planetary population. Trade volume's based on the local pop - except there might also be pass-through traffic. One of the systems had a process for calculating starport staff and construction tonnage. Anyone recall which book one that was in?

I believe that was GURPS Far Trader.

 

[Carlobrand]

So, if I understand GURPS correctly, the nature of that Class A starport on that 200-pop TL13 world would be dictated in part by its neighbors. If it happened to be between two worlds that were putting out a lot of trade, it could have a very busy starport with lots of ships passing through. It's just, for one reason or another, there's little interaction between the port and that tiny population, or at least little interaction that might affect the population size. Maybe it's a bunch of snobs living in a gated community, with strict laws about settlement by outsiders.

 

[Condottiere]

The minimum sustainable civilization would have a technological level eight industrial base, since with early fusion you have relatively free energy, that can be used for all sorts of uses and projects.

You'd also need to have a work force that can maintain, understand and expand it.

It's also one prototype stage off technological level nine factor one jump drives, that with some risk will allow continued interstellar links.

 

[whartung]

The minimum sustainable civilization would have a technological level eight industrial base, since with early fusion you have relatively free energy, that can be used for all sorts of uses and projects.

Wait, you don't consider Ancient Egypt to have been a sustainable civilization?

 

[Condottiere]

You have to pay for all that slave labour energy.

Then, someone suddenly gets religious.

 

[aramis]

You have to pay for all that slave labour energy.

Then, someone suddenly gets religious.

Egypt wasn't a major user of slaves. Paid craftsmen.

 

[Condottiere]

You still have to feed them.

And now they're increased operating costs, rather than a capital investment.

 

[atpollard]

Wait, you don't consider Ancient Egypt to have been a sustainable civilization?

History indicates that it wasn’t.
Are the Pharos still around and governing their grain empire?

 

[coliver988]

History indicates that it wasn’t.
Are the Pharos still around and governing their grain empire?

it did last about 3000 years...3150BC to 20BC according to what I read...and it lasted until the Romans came.

Of course, that may depend on what we consider the Egyptian empire I suppose.

 

[Carlobrand]

So, what are we defining as sustainable, given that all three Imperiums eventually fell?

 

[Condottiere]

I thought the implication was on a local or planetary level.

Early fusion means you don't have to use up all your available oil deposits, and for more remote areas, solar, wind and wave alternatives.

 

[mike wightman]

Ever think that the reason for many worlds being low TL is the green lobby?

At TL9 it is economically feasible to move all resource exploitation, refining and manufacturing into space. The environmentalist green lobby could finally get their wish and all polluting manufacturing could be moved off world.

All that would be left on the mainworld is a low TL idyllic agrarian existence, all be it with every mod con and machine you can think of to make your life easy, and unlimited energy beamed down from power satellites.

 

[nobby-w]

it did last about 3000 years...3150BC to 20BC according to what I read...and it lasted until the Romans came.

Or at least until Cleopatra sold out to them to get Arsinoe off the throne.

I might have said that to an Egyptian chap once.