StarDestroyer.Net BBS

PainRack wrote:Just to show how Saxton figures are off....

The typical population density for suburban areas of modern cities on Earth are of an order of magnitude about 10,000 or 20,000 persons per square kilometre (taking the comfortable Australian city of Perth* as an example). (Readers who would prefer a USA example could consider New York county, with a 1999 population of 1,551,844 persons, an area of 28 square miles = 72.5km², and a population density of 21,107 persons/km² after metric conversion. Reputedly the densest urban population centre on Earth, Hong Kong, had 98,000 persons/km² in 1999 and remains less built-up than Coruscant by some orders of magnitude

Sources from answers.com and wikipedia give New York as 10 thousand people/km^2.

Both Hong Kong and Singapore have a population density of 6k/km^2.

Obviously, Saxton figures must had ignored something.

You're right, something's screwed up. Kwun Tong has above 50,000 people/km2 though, so I believe the point remains vaild. But the calcs have to be remade.

Illuminatus Primus wrote: But you still have to move planetary-relevant quantities of water.

Not real tricky, a small nudge to an Oort body and plenty of it will come in. Even a tiny 2 km one will give you over 4 billion tons of ice. I won't all be water obviously, but enough will. Frankly the fact that Tatoonie is a desert world is utterly retarded - just hire one of those ships in mos eisley to land on a couple comets and give them a bump. Break it up before hand or have a ship lower them with a tractor beam or something. Or hell, evacuate the 200,000 people and let them hit. Return in a generation. World now has plenty of water.

You have to move enough raw material and organic substrate to equal the land mass area of a terrestrial planet. Somehow I doubt these resources are just floating around in every system with easy access.

I strongly disagree. Lets figure that we are making a circular station with the land area of earth, and it is 1 meter thick, and features 1000 mile tall walls ala the ring world. Its made of steel, and inside the land is your standard enriched silicon dioxide with a density of ~2500 kg/m^3 aka dirt and is 100 meters deep.

Total mass is just under 1*10^20 kgs. Which is about 10% of the asteroid belt's total mass. Which is all just sitting there - hell, in theory we could do this kind of megaengineering in the future. I've read ideas of us using hydrogen balloons and diamondoid materials to create bubble cities that would float on a gas giant for farming. Maybe that's how they do a lot of these agriworlds.

Somehow hyper-shipping all that shit is easier than just hyper-shipping the crop products, instead? Their global climate/weather control is doubtlessly fine enough to extract maximum possible yields from existing terrestrial planets.

It's not how they do it, but it's not like its tremendously difficult either. Particularly with their level of tech. Frankly, I regard the fact that we don't see more stuff like this as evidence that authors don't get the scale of a single star system, much less a galaxy.

Lets see. I'd say the simplest plan would be to clear away the orbital defenses, then call for their surrender.

If they refuse, just have fleet engineers figure out what amount of energy is needed to collapse both layers of shields, and then c-frac the planetary shields. Toss just enough high speed mass at them to collapse each layer seperately (2 waves of projectiles should do it, one for each layer) but without causing significant harm to the planet underneath. It'd have to be a very carefully calculated operation, but I don't see any reasons it couldn't be done.

Ender wrote:Not real tricky, a small nudge to an Oort body and plenty of it will come in. Even a tiny 2 km one will give you over 4 billion tons of ice. I won't all be water obviously, but enough will. Frankly the fact that Tatoonie is a desert world is utterly retarded - just hire one of those ships in mos eisley to land on a couple comets and give them a bump. Break it up before hand or have a ship lower them with a tractor beam or something. Or hell, evacuate the 200,000 people and let them hit. Return in a generation. World now has plenty of water.

Tattooine's main value comes from its location (as opposed to serving production needs) and the majority of its economic input from traders and criminal elements which have a vested interest in keeping it from being developed. The locals are a kind of local economy around serving the temporary residents, which provide the incentive for even the meager development which exists. Since all the needs of the planet's inhabitants can be met with shipping, it is presumably unnecessary to terraform the world due to cost and time. Its better to rely on shipping now than to bother paying to make the planet self-sufficient. To say nothing of the problems associated with encouraging investment in megascale engineering projects like towing Oort Cloud Objects into the inner system (I'm guessing at sublight) which will be very very energy expensive or take a very, very long time.

If you're going to hyper-ship the materials, than it begs the question since once you jump into hyperspace you stay in hyperspace, why not just ship crops directly from a planet (perhaps dozens of light years away) which is more or less ideal for raising crops from the outset? They have the technology - I'm not disputing that. What I am disputing is the economics of bothering to do that when you have hyperdrive and travel across the galaxy is both trivial and brief. Why not just develop already balmy terrestrial planets for agriculture?

Ender wrote: Total mass is just under 1*10^20 kgs. Which is about 10% of the asteroid belt's total mass. Which is all just sitting there - hell, in theory we could do this kind of megaengineering in the future. I've read ideas of us using hydrogen balloons and diamondoid materials to create bubble cities that would float on a gas giant for farming. Maybe that's how they do a lot of these agriworlds.

All of them seem to be terrestrial worlds in SW. If that's what the evidence gives us, and hyperdrive economics makes it more worthwhile in most cases than megascale engineering projects, why bother postulating them?

Ender wrote:It's not how they do it, but it's not like its tremendously difficult either. Particularly with their level of tech. Frankly, I regard the fact that we don't see more stuff like this as evidence that authors don't get the scale of a single star system, much less a galaxy.

I'm interested in seeing if its possible to actually develop any conclusions about the economics of macroscale engineering for the purposes of developing fabric of habitation, agriculture, etc. - and also how it relates to the economics of hyperdrive trade. My preliminary observations and conclusions can be found in my astrography essay. What are your thoughts?

nightmare wrote: You're right, something's screwed up. Kwun Tong has above 50,000 people/km2 though, so I believe the point remains vaild. But the calcs have to be remade.

As I said, I believed Saxton figures were derived from such calculations like these, based off residential areas.

These figures can't be used to extrapolate popluation for Coruscant because they ignore other uses of land such as environmental and industrial. Coruscant isn't just a planet full of houses, its a working city planet.

IMO, it would be better to use population density from city states as opposed to just residential areas. As such, any population estimate for Coruscant range from hundred trillion to ten of quadrillion as an upper limit.
Saxton figures however use tens of thousand and twenties of thousand as a normal, under-urbanised base to extrapolate from and then scaled it up to Coruscant standards. Working from there, he gets hundred quadrillion as the norm.....

Tokyo, one of the world most densely populated cities have a population density of 13k/ square kiliometer for example.

Illuminatus Primus wrote: If you're going to hyper-ship the materials, than it begs the question since once you jump into hyperspace you stay in hyperspace, why not just ship crops directly from a planet (perhaps dozens of light years away) which is more or less ideal for raising crops from the outset?

Planetary bodies aren't ideal for raising crops. Any life evolves for optimun growth along very specific limits, as set by its homeworld. Conditions on a planet will always vary, ranging from the amount of radiation, water, nutrients, space, weeds and parasites.

In space, such conditions are under direct control by humans, as opposed to fickle star and environmental conditions. Humidity, radiation, soil moisture, all of these are easier to control in a space body than a equivalent planetary body.

Of course, one could also set up greenhouses on planetary bodies to duplicate such control, but for an advanced spacefaring civilisation like Star Wars,

They have the technology - I'm not disputing that. What I am disputing is the economics of bothering to do that when you have hyperdrive and travel across the galaxy is both trivial and brief. Why not just develop already balmy terrestrial planets for agriculture?

Even in our modern day of globalisation, countries do build up local industry and agriculture for purposes of self sufficency and to develop niche markets.

PainRack wrote:IMO, it would be better to use population density from city states as opposed to just residential areas. As such, any population estimate for Coruscant range from hundred trillion to ten of quadrillion as an upper limit.
Saxton figures however use tens of thousand and twenties of thousand as a normal, under-urbanised base to extrapolate from and then scaled it up to Coruscant standards. Working from there, he gets hundred quadrillion as the norm.....

Except, you mean, if you actually read his site?

Dr. Saxton wrote:Of course Imperial city is not inhabited in the same way as Perth. These suburbs consist almost entirely of single-level buildings and generous gardens around each family dwelling; Imperial City is composed of spires averaging two miles tall, with hundreds of floors, and very few residents ever set eyes on the soil of their planet. The population density of Imperial City is certainly at least several hundred times that of Perth. The total population of Coruscant must be at least of the order of several thousand trillion (1,000,000,000,000,000 [i.e., several quadrillion], and certainly no less than several hundred trillion.

He treats 1E14 as an absolute realistic lower limit, and 1E15 as a better lower limit. You treat 1E15 as an upper limit and 1E14 as a lower limit. What factors or evidence has you used, and what methodology that prevents the population from exceeding several quadrillion? I'd really love to see how your guesswork has produced a more accurate estimate and narrower range than Saxton's math. What do you know which makes it impossible for Coruscant to have >1E15 people living there? That's what you need to show to establish an upper limit.

To say nothing of the fact that he never gives "hundreds of quadrillions" (1E17-1E18) as a realistic middle-ground estimate. You just pulled it out of your ass. In fact, in his Galaxy appendix to the Astrophysical Concerns page, he lists the galactic population with a lower limit of 100 quadrillion (1E17).

The idea that the enviromental and life support systems must occupy an inordinate amount of space relative to the habitation is suspect to me. Life support and enviromental systems aboard large space craft like Executor-class battleships or the Death Star are unnoticably small. Compared to the volume of the atmosphere and/or the surface area of the planet, I suspect that Coruscant's systems are comparably compact, and possibly more so, as the extreme conditions under which a starship's life support must function are not shared by Coruscant's environmental machines. Furthermore it is not economical to do heavy industry on Coruscant's surface. Why make your environmental machines work harder when space-based factories and industry on dead worlds doesn't have to share air and living space with organic beings, and we know they don't have problems with just hyperspace trade. SW does not have autarkial planetary economies.

Modern nation-states comprehend much of their economy and industry and mining and farming and open spaces. Coruscant does not. Coruscant is supported by billions of unsettled mining systems, organs of commerce and industry which trivially claim ownership over thousands to millions of systems each easily, and which have entire worlds light-years away dedicated to the sole purpose of producing foodstuffs to feed its and other non-self-sufficient worlds' citizenry. This is clearly not comparable to modern nation-states.

PainRack wrote:Planetary bodies aren't ideal for raising crops. Any life evolves for optimun growth along very specific limits, as set by its homeworld. Conditions on a planet will always vary, ranging from the amount of radiation, water, nutrients, space, weeds and parasites.

You're moving the goalposts and arguing dishonestly. I like how you grant your "I just made it up, but they SHOULD be able to have space farms" 'theory' arbitrarily fine and economically efficient control over ecosystems, but deny terrestrial planets radiation shields, arbitrary use of pesticides/herbicides/etc. and genengineered crops. Your supposition gets any toys or guesses it needs to be plausible and my argument - based on canon evidence - doesn't get the benefit?

You have to supply ALL the dirt equal to the planet's land surface area to compete with the planet for your space farm. On the existing planet, I can tweak the amount of dirt, land, and sea level arbitrarily, and this will always be a tiny fraction compared to having to move the entire mass for an artificial fabric. Not to mention we have EVIDENCE of ocean-moving in the canon. None for your space farms.

PainRack wrote:In space, such conditions are under direct control by humans, as opposed to fickle star and environmental conditions. Humidity, radiation, soil moisture, all of these are easier to control in a space body than a equivalent planetary body.

There are enough planets in the galaxy where you'll find enough pretty naturally habitable ones easy. And since hyperdrive trade is cheap, its easier to tweak existing worlds than it is to assemble totally artificial ones.

You and Ender seem to be claiming I'm saying its impossible. I'm not, I'm saying who is going to invest in a space farm complex equal to the land mass of a naturally habitable world where all that dirt, water, organic material, etc. must be synthesized/acquired and then moved and assembled along with the frame - when the same investor or agricorp can just ship a little water off world to increase the land mass, build a few mirrors, mass-use pesticides, etc.? The marginal cost of tweaking an existing natural biosphere is always going to be MUCH cheaper than building an entire one from scratch. Its possible, but its probably not very economically competitive in most cases. Naturally-occuring habitable planets are probably the lion's share of agriworlds. Not to mention that's actually backed up by the canon, unlike your speculation.

PainRack wrote:Of course, one could also set up greenhouses on planetary bodies to duplicate such control, but for an advanced spacefaring civilisation like Star Wars,

You'll have to collect your thoughts in coherent/complete sentences in order for me to be able to reply to them intelligently.

PainRack wrote:Even in our modern day of globalisation, countries do build up local industry and agriculture for purposes of self sufficency and to develop niche markets.

Sure, that's true. There are small niche retailers even though Wal-Mart is dominant. That doesn't mean if you were to wisk Wal-Mart away that overnight you wouldn't eliminate a huge part of the retail market. The U.S. has domestic oil production, but that doesn't mean if you cut it off from the outside world its fuel economy wouldn't collapse.

We've seen industry in SW - megascale engineering like planet-enveloping space stations at Kuat, secret naval projects that outmass moons, building artificial worlds.

We've seen mining in SW - billions of high-metallicity systems owned by mining consortiums.

We've seen farming on SW - thousands of planets tweaked and modified to be nothing but endless stretches of farmland.

Coruscant doesn't do any of those, therefore, on a scale which is meaningful by SW standards.

There may be supplementary economies and suppliers on Coruscant. Ender and your argument seems to be, "well, technically with their technology they COULD have an entirely autarkial economy and infrastructure to support Coruscant, so it could hold out really, really long." Unfortunately this does not bare resemblance to the economy and infrastructure as laid out in canon, leaving your argument mere supposition. I granted from the start that perhaps Coruscant can hold out for a few weeks. Maybe longer during the depths of the Galactic Civil War - taking into account what we know about the interdependent and spread-out galactic economy and infrastructure, and the known precedent of the post-Operation SHADOW HAND evacuated Coruscant - the most parsimonious answer is Coruscant of the Thrawn Trilogy is probably below economic equilibrium population, and a combination of therefore lower sustainability requirements and freed-up space for supply stores allows them to hold out unusually long for an entirely developed and support-dependent city-world. It is not more parsimonious to suggest a massive autarkial infrastructure and economy that is not only nowhere to be found in the canon, but also implicitly contradicting the model in the canon of seperate terrestrial agriworlds and mining/industry planets.

To say nothing of the fact that in order for a blockade by Ackbar's meager fleet in Wedge's Gamble to be credible as an option and declined not for infeasability but because of the resultant ethical cost in the Coruscanti population, the Empire must either have no ships whatsoever or Coruscant at its height is only a couple days max from capitulating from hunger and supply shortages.

Illuminatus Primus wrote: Except, you mean, if you actually read his site?

Yes. And more.
Perth as a city has a population density of 274.4 per square kilometer.
(Population of 1.5 million over 5,386km square.)

Its obvious that Saxton figures are from just counting residential areas only, in the case of Perth.

He treats 1E14 as an absolute realistic lower limit, and 1E15 as a better lower limit. You treat 1E15 as an upper limit and 1E14 as a lower limit. What factors or evidence has you used, and what methodology that prevents the population from exceeding several quadrillion? I'd really love to see how your guesswork has produced a more accurate estimate and narrower range than Saxton's math. What do you know which makes it impossible for Coruscant to have >1E15 people living there? That's what you need to show to establish an upper limit.

I used the same methodoloy as Saxton, scaling off from population density and increasing proportionally for urban space, as calculated by buildings height.

The difference is the population base. Saxton used highly inflated figures, whereas I used population density for an entire city.

The idea that the enviromental and life support systems must occupy an inordinate amount of space relative to the habitation is suspect to me.

Wrong again. I suspect that Saxton figures are inflated because the population density he's using are probably calculated from residential areas. A good example of this would be the New York estimation.

He uses the population of New York County, which gives a 20k population density. However, the city of New York has a population density of 10k ONLY.

The city of Hong Kong? 6k, in his figures,98k.

Looking it over, its obvious that he's left out the environmental systems of a modern day city and other parts which expand the area used.

Despite this being explained to you countless of times, I fully expect you to ignore this.

Modern nation-states comprehend much of their economy and industry and mining and farming and open spaces.

Right, that's why I used Singapore, urbanisation of 94%, comparable with Saxton 90%. And Singapore is the city state with the second highest population density, with Hong Kong edging in slightly higher by a few hundreds.

You're obviously just knee-jerking.

Coruscant does not. Coruscant is supported by billions of unsettled mining systems, organs of commerce and industry which trivially claim ownership over thousands to millions of systems each easily, and which have entire worlds light-years away dedicated to the sole purpose of producing foodstuffs to feed its and other non-self-sufficient worlds' citizenry. This is clearly not comparable to modern nation-states.

Except that all of this is irrelevent to population estimates.
Again, Saxton figures...

New York County(note the word, COUNTY), population density of 20k. New York City, a more equitable comparison to a city planet, 10k. Hong Kong and Singapore, modern day city states, 6k.

Hell, New York County is just the single island of Manhatten. Why on earth would population estimates based off that be of more use than the city of New York, which also incorporates Manhatten?

Illuminatus Primus wrote: You're moving the goalposts and arguing dishonestly. I like how you grant your "I just made it up, but they SHOULD be able to have space farms" 'theory' arbitrarily fine and economically efficient control over ecosystems, but deny terrestrial planets radiation shields, arbitrary use of pesticides/herbicides/etc. and genengineered crops. Your supposition gets any toys or guesses it needs to be plausible and my argument - based on canon evidence - doesn't get the benefit?

I split the posts because of the difference in content and methodoloy.

First of all, I'm claiming you made it up for the food supplies, not agricultural stations. Again, modern day city states have a week of supplies on hand, there is no reason to assume that Coruscant would have LESS supplies. We also seen examples of Coruscant lasting longer under blockade. And unless you're arguing that tens of trillions of people died or relocated off Coruscant in the 5 years past Endor, Thrawn example holds.

Space stations are another thing altogether. We AREN"T arguing about whether space stations are possible in the SWU.

That portion of the debate has been rightly shifted to pure speculation, similar to speculation about SW power generation abilities. Its now along the lines of exploring canon, not stating that space stations form the bulk of the SW civilisation food supply in canon.

You have to supply ALL the dirt equal to the planet's land surface area to compete with the planet for your space farm. On the existing planet, I can tweak the amount of dirt, land, and sea level arbitrarily, and this will always be a tiny fraction compared to having to move the entire mass for an artificial fabric. Not to mention we have EVIDENCE of ocean-moving in the canon. None for your space farms.

No, you don't. Again, not all land on a planet is suitable for agricultural activities. For example, it is estimated that only 10-30% of China territory is suitable for agriculture, and most of these land are being eaten up by industry and desertification.

Secondly, there is no evidence to suggest that tweaking the amount of dirt, land and sea level is cheap. If this was so, the Bothans would had simply terraformed a world for the Camasi. If such terraforming abilities were cheap, why did Borsk claim that to alter a world to look like the Camansi homeworld would be staggeringly expensive and bankrupt the Bothans?

There are enough planets in the galaxy where you'll find enough pretty naturally habitable ones easy. And since hyperdrive trade is cheap, its easier to tweak existing worlds than it is to assemble totally artificial ones.

There is no reason to presuppose that you need an entire world to sustain one. After all, the Nile sustained a large population base on its own using relatively primitive methods.

There may be supplementary economies and suppliers on Coruscant. Ender and your argument seems to be, "well, technically with their technology they COULD have an entirely autarkial economy and infrastructure to support Coruscant, so it could hold out really, really long."

You're confusing the two. The argument about space stations is only localised to the industry and infrastructure of the SW civilisation.

Coruscant ability to sustain itself is based off modern day city planning. Again, city states like Hong Kong and Singapore retain food supplies for a WEEK. Why would Coruscant, with more space, technology and industry to sustain itself have less food supplies? Especially in this context, where it knew that it could be subjected to war and blockade? Especially since the canon show examples of large food supplies on Coruscant, including a long blockade by Thrawn, as well as the scavenging of food and something noted to be grayweave on Coruscant? Why is the RPG blurbs about Coruscant maintaining large food supplies as well as agriculture to sustain itself ignored?

Unfortunately this does not bare resemblance to the economy and infrastructure as laid out in canon, leaving your argument mere supposition. I granted from the start that perhaps Coruscant can hold out for a few weeks.

Which makes one wonder why you're harping on about this, when the topic has shifted to SW industry and infrastructure, not the capability of Coruscant sustaining itself.

To say nothing of the fact that in order for a blockade by Ackbar's meager fleet in Wedge's Gamble to be credible as an option and declined not for infeasability but because of the resultant ethical cost in the Coruscanti population, the Empire must either have no ships whatsoever or Coruscant at its height is only a couple days max from capitulating from hunger and supply shortages.

At this point in time, the Rebels held a clear naval advantage in the Core area surrounding Coruscant. Issard ursurption of the Empire has clearly lost her the support of rival warlords as well as loyal Imperialists.

PainRack on Coruscant:

PainRack wrote: Yes. And more.
Perth as a city has a population density of 274.4 per square kilometer.
(Population of 1.5 million over 5,386km square.)

Its obvious that Saxton figures are from just counting residential areas only, in the case of Perth.

I guess you're not literate. Your "hundreds of quadrillions" (1E17-1E18) strawman was never stated by Saxton or anyone else. He set lower limits - an absolute lower limit of 1E14-1E15, and a general lower limit of 1E15-1E16. In fact, his galactic population figures deny the plausibility of your strawman.

PainRack wrote:I used the same methodoloy as Saxton, scaling off from population density and increasing proportionally for urban space, as calculated by buildings height.

The difference is the population base. Saxton used highly inflated figures, whereas I used population density for an entire city.

I understand that his absolute bottomed-out lower limit (1E14-1E15) is your general lower limit and why. But he doesn't have an upper limit because he doesn't have any evidence as to the practical limit of habitation on Coruscant. So where did you get your upper limit from? A "gut feeling" that above a few quadrillion would just be too high? That's a little nebulous.

What piece of evidence are you cracking and using to conclude that the population cannot possibly exceed 1E15-1E16?

PainRack wrote:Wrong again. I suspect that Saxton figures are inflated because the population density he's using are probably calculated from residential areas. A good example of this would be the New York estimation.

How much of a given building must really be environmental and recycling and sustainability support? 10%? There's no way the filmic evidence can be reasonably said to suggest that the industrial sectors comprise more than a limited minority of area.

PainRack wrote:Looking it over, its obvious that he's left out the environmental systems of a modern day city and other parts which expand the area used.

Whatever you smarmy asshole. I'm looking for at least educated guesses and figures since you keep repeating it, rather than vague "its industrial and enviromental!!!" Y'know, numbers.

Why don't you figure out the average acrage of sewage treatment and water pumping per capita in an industrialized country and compare it to the volume of Coruscant's cityscape. Its your claim, I'm not doing your homework for you.

PainRack wrote:Despite this being explained to you countless of times, I fully expect you to ignore this.

Fuck you. I'm not the idiot that thinks a mathematical upper limit is derived by squinting real hard and being like "that sounds like more than enough." I asked for the precise limitation on population density that let you set the bar at 1E15-1E16 and physically no larger. Because, y'know, that's the definition of an upper limit.

You just keep bleating that there's environmental hardware and strawmanning me by criticizing Saxton's premises. Well that's all good and nice, but still doesn't place a physical limitation on population density. Since you found a more accurate (narrower range) description of likely population density than Saxton could figure out, I want to see what defined your upper limit.

PainRack wrote:Right, that's why I used Singapore, urbanisation of 94%, comparable with Saxton 90%. And Singapore is the city state with the second highest population density, with Hong Kong edging in slightly higher by a few hundreds.

You're obviously just knee-jerking.

No, because if you could read I've kept saying that I don't think a week is unrealistic. But you still have account for SW, not benchmarks based IRL, and that means, how could the supposed blockade proposed in Wedge's Gamble work if it requires weeks to see fruition?

Here, I'll help you out with logical organization...

PainRack on his imaginary space farms, and a little on Coruscant:

PainRack wrote:First of all, I'm claiming you made it up for the food supplies, not agricultural stations. Again, modern day city states have a week of supplies on hand, there is no reason to assume that Coruscant would have LESS supplies. We also seen examples of Coruscant lasting longer under blockade. And unless you're arguing that tens of trillions of people died or relocated off Coruscant in the 5 years past Endor, Thrawn example holds.

Why not? We know the population for those figures are WAY down for the EU, but we also know during the Clone Wars and PT from direct observation that Coruscant was fully-inhabited. Supposing its way below its typical and equilibrium population (observed in the PT) is a fine way to explain at least part of the discrepency with the post-ROTJ population values. My explanation retains more evidence in some fashion, whereas you're arguing to simply ignore it and assume that population is at maximum AND they have a month of supplies.

And for the last time, I said that wartime Coruscant could have a week of supplies, stop arguing against things I'm not saying.

Space stations are another thing altogether. We AREN"T arguing about whether space stations are possible in the SWU.

PainRack wrote:No, you don't. Again, not all land on a planet is suitable for agricultural activities. For example, it is estimated that only 10-30% of China territory is suitable for agriculture, and most of these land are being eaten up by industry and desertification.

Yeah, which has everything to do with 21st century economies and technology being forced to share space with the evironment. It has nothing to do with SW technology. Are you going to tell me its cheaper to build a space station of similar area than to simply manipulate the weather and add water to reduce or eliminate deserts? I never said the agriworlds had to be totally natural. I expect them to be highly artificial in many or most cases, actually. I don't see how irrigating the Sahara Desert would be more difficult than building an equal land mass artificially maintained constantly in space from scratch. Again, you're allowing yourself all these fancy technologies to keep Coruscant fed and warm even over long blockade, and to feasibly construct totally artificial space farms and habitats, but somehow I'm stuck with 21st century fucked up China, and don't get to use any of those tools? It's always going to be easier to manipulate an existing world than to create one anew. The cost of going from desert -> farmland is cheaper than empty space -> farmland aboard space station.

You're being dishonest, granting your own theories all this technology mostly from supposition. I'm shoring up WHAT WE SEE in the canon with common sense. If those toys are available, they can optimize agriworld planets just as controlling space farms.

PainRack wrote:Secondly, there is no evidence to suggest that tweaking the amount of dirt, land and sea level is cheap. If this was so, the Bothans would had simply terraformed a world for the Camasi. If such terraforming abilities were cheap, why did Borsk claim that to alter a world to look like the Camansi homeworld would be staggeringly expensive and bankrupt the Bothans?

The Bothans were also short on cash, and if you read the BDZ descriptions, it calls for destroying a world so thoroughly that it would be easier to terraform a dead world than to restore the damaged one.

And I never said it was cheap on absolute terms. But there's no way assembling a fabric from scratch in space is cheaper than turning existing desert into farmland. We can do that NOW for fuck's sake.

PainRack wrote:There is no reason to presuppose that you need an entire world to sustain one. After all, the Nile sustained a large population base on its own using relatively primitive methods.

I never said it was a 1:1 ratio. I'm explaining the existing agriworlds.

PainRack wrote:You're confusing the two. The argument about space stations is only localised to the industry and infrastructure of the SW civilisation.

Yeah, and we already know about agriworld planets. Your theories must accomodate or explain it, and certainly not privilege space farms you made up with no backing in evidence whatsoever.

PainRack wrote:Coruscant ability to sustain itself is based off modern day city planning. Again, city states like Hong Kong and Singapore retain food supplies for a WEEK. Why would Coruscant, with more space, technology and industry to sustain itself have less food supplies? Especially in this context, where it knew that it could be subjected to war and blockade? Especially since the canon show examples of large food supplies on Coruscant, including a long blockade by Thrawn, as well as the scavenging of food and something noted to be grayweave on Coruscant? Why is the RPG blurbs about Coruscant maintaining large food supplies as well as agriculture to sustain itself ignored?

Oh, I grant those. But then you must grant the canonical population figures, and the most parsimonious explanation is this post-Krytos Trap Coruscant is greatly depopulated from war and plague compared to the Prequel Trilogy Coruscant. There's no reason they must have identical population and support infrastructure. Furthermore this is after Coruscant was on the front lines of war since the Clone War, and after it has been swept with a highly virulent biowarfare agent. Its hardly unreasonable at all, and parsimonically resolves apparent issues between The Last Command and Wedge's Gamble, as well as the RPG population figures with that of the observed occupation density of the prequels.

Those descriptions and evidence go hand-in-hand with a reduced population canonically. You are asserting they could ALSO maintain a hundreds of trillions population (PT) for the same duration with reduced space. The explicit evidence backs me, not you.

PainRack wrote:Which makes one wonder why you're harping on about this, when the topic has shifted to SW industry and infrastructure, not the capability of Coruscant sustaining itself.

Which is why you just "harped" two posts back about Coruscanti sustainability? Are you criticizing me for NOT double-posting like you, and keeping things at least partially situated around TOP?

Moreover, your infrastructure arguments are based on supposition on your part, and mine are based on canon. We know that foodstuffs are supplied by agriworld planets. We have two examples, including Chandrilla. We know they include terrestrial worlds. We don't have any evidence of your suppositions, which makes them subordinate to the canon evidence. My interpretation explains the evidence which exists. Yours does not and is therefore useless.

PainRack wrote:At this point in time, the Rebels held a clear naval advantage in the Core area surrounding Coruscant. Issard ursurption of the Empire has clearly lost her the support of rival warlords as well as loyal Imperialists.

Bullshit. They didn't slowly surround Coruscant. They snatched a world hundred light-years away and made their assault from there with a pitifully small fleet. We know they have the fleet resources in the Empire to oppose such an assault.

Not to mention the canon explicitly describes most factions remaining loyal to Isard's Regency, including the Pelleaonian faction of the Navy, failing to respond to oppositionist movements like the Central Committeee of Grand Moffs' attempted usurpation and the surviving Grand Admirals' forces. We know they have just recalled BLACKSWORDCOM and discounting the forces seized by the Yevethans, comprehends at least more than a standard SECTGRU and at least two Executor-class battleships.

There is not a shred of evidence that the New Republic had either a quantitative or qualitative advantage in military materiel deployed near the Core Worlds region. Not to mention such is immaterial anyway, as any Imperial task force between Coruscant and the Outer Rim should be able to respond within the day (ref: the Open Circle Fleet in ROTS). To say nothing of the fact that a rival faction to Isard snatching Coruscant from the clutches of a New Republic assault would be the most powerful political victory possible. Every faction in the galaxy (except Isard - perhaps working at the occulted Emperor's behest) has every reason to try and take Coruscant. And the New Republic doesn't know about Isard's plan, so that can't go into the fact that Ackbar thought his fleet resources could execute a successful blockade, but Mothma wouldn't tolerate the collateral costs in the civilian population.

The evidence actually suggests that the Empire still retains stronger naval forces, but is hampered by warlordism and its great territory. Nevertheless, the New Republic couldn't count on the fact that the great fleets would not show up if their blockade lasted more than a day or two. Evidence strongly supports that Coruscant was not capable of shrugging off a blockade for a whole week as of Wedge's Gamble.

You can pout that this shouldn't be or isn't the intention, but its hard to see an alternative when one takes into account the stunning agility of response by the Republic in ROTS (by a very large armada deployed in aggressive campaigning on the Outer Rim) to the CIS sneak-attack (which incidentally outmassed and outgunned the New Republic's assault fleet by orders of magnitude).

Concerning the food-supply of Coruscant, maybe they got this thing

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/ ... i_80856220

working (sorry, its the only article in english I could find).

FTeik wrote:Concerning the food-supply of Coruscant, maybe they got this thing

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/ ... i_80856220

working (sorry, its the only article in english I could find).

The article is unusual. I don't know about pig skyscrapers.

But advanced agriculture could be compact relative to the number of people supported, if such is worthwhile. With up to 24 hour illumination, carbon dioxide enrichment, and other optimized factors, as little as about 44 square meters of plant growing area per person is possible in the real world, with another 5.1 square meters per person having been estimated for average animal area.

Hydroponics, genetic engineering, and other techniques might reduce the preceding area requirements further, particularly since they involved producing a half-dozen times as much biomass as the food eaten by people, due to inefficiencies. Even cultured meat, compact chemosynthesis chambers producing most animal feed, or abiotic synthesis of some food additives like sugars may be possibilities.

However, let's just continue here with a random illustration for agriculture based solely on existing plants and animals.

For example, if compact space is a goal, optionally there can be several shelves of growing plants, one above each other, even in a room of 3 meters height, using artificial illumination. Illumination requirements would not be more than at most 44 square meters times the solar constant of 1366 W/m^2 per square person. But illumination needed would actually be far less.

The reason ordinary plants appear green is because they reflect most green light, not absorbing or utilizing it. Indeed, as suggested by the enormous difference between the spectrum of that 1366 W/m^2 versus the absorption spectra of chlorophyll, only a fraction of the 1366 W/m^2 is visible light, as opposed to infrared or ultraviolet, and only a further limited portion of the visible light is much absorbed and utilized. Let's just approximate the amount of artificial illumination needed as on the order of 10 kW per person or less, for efficient light fixtures designed for optimized spectra, like 1000 megawatts per 100,000 people. Under 10 petajoules a second per trillion people is almost nothing in an universe where a single Star Destroyer utilizes on the order of 30,000,000,000+ petajoules in a single hyperjump.

In some cases, one could need to consider waste heat radiation too, except that again wouldn't be much by GFFA standards.

With shelving to several meters height with artificial illumination, agricultural area needed is not more than on the order of 10 square meters (~ 100 square feet) per person, or no more than several times that without shelving. For perspective, the average American today lives in an apartment or house with several tens of square meters to hundreds of square meters area. The conclusion is that less space is needed for advanced agriculture than for housing.

What about mass requirements? As one illustration, if the average nutrient solution (water) depth relative to shelf area is X millimeters and if the shelves mass as much as Y millimeters thickness of aluminum, then the mass for the preceding is under X * 40 billion-tons and Y * 100 billion-tons respectively per trillion people. The preceding is superficially a lot due to the astronomical number of people being supported, but it is actually proportionally not much. For some general perspective, the mass of oceans on earth is 1,400,000,000 billion-tons, 1.4E18 metric tons.

Of course, there are more minimum mass requirements than water and shelving alone, but the preceding illustration gives an idea of the overall picture in regard to space and mass requirements.

Alternatively, one could skip assuming shelving or artificial illumination, and the result would still be relatively small agricultural size and mass relative to the population supported.

The capabilities allowable by advanced agriculture were interesting to consider. But the point here isn't to say what is Star Wars canon or to say what is the system for Coruscant in particular. Few if any authors would come up with something like the preceding. What I think or calculate is different from what the average person would think. Besides, in regard to the blockade option in the opening post, the technical possibility of food for Coruscant indefinitely after a blockade would not mean that is actually the case, depending upon economic and political factors, a little like the U.S. in real life technically could be independent of imported oil for a small fraction of military spending per decade yet remains dependent. And there is more than food affected by a blockade. In the opening post, no particular required timeframe is specified, so a blockade would tend to work sooner or later.

On the other hand, particularly if one has the resources of the rest of the galaxy available, one may be able to produce variants of world devastators to convert a proportionally miniscule but sufficient mass of raw resources into attack craft. For example, in the case of 0.1-kg miniature antipersonnel missiles or drones, even with non-lethal weapons options when appropriate, mass requirements are 100 billion tons per quadrillion drones, superficially large but proportionally not much in context, nothing like world devastators consuming a planet massing ~ 6,000,000,000,000 billion tons.

A potential reason to go to the trouble of sending down swarms concentrating upon each region of the global city before zooming onto the next is for humanitarian concerns and to add a mostly intact population to the galactic state. In terrestrial history, sometimes cities under siege have resisted to the point of much of their population dying, though in this scenario the population's degree of motivation and what led the situation to become war rather than negotiation in the first place is uncertain. If they instead surrender readily, then a blockade could be bloodless.

********************

Ender wrote:Lets figure that we are making a circular station with the land area of earth, and it is 1 meter thick, and features 1000 mile tall walls ala the ring world. Its made of steel, and inside the land is your standard enriched silicon dioxide with a density of ~2500 kg/m^3 aka dirt and is 100 meters deep.

Total mass is just under 1*10^20 kgs. Which is about 10% of the asteroid belt's total mass. Which is all just sitting there - hell, in theory we could do this kind of megaengineering in the future.

In the case of simply agriculture, even a lot less would also be an option. For example, meter-thick hulls are good for radiation shielding for people, but, outside of major solar flares once every few years, the relatively penetrating ~ 16 rems/year galactic cosmic radiation is undesirable for people but not at all lethal to crops, only a few times more than some regions of high natural background radiation on earth.* Even atmospheric pressure can be much less than 1 atm, with an optimized composition like proportionally high CO2. For many agricultural units of moderate individual diameter, a hull of metal/glass/plastic a few millimeters thick could be used for such, and thousands of times less mass than having 100 meter deep soil could be sufficient, such as a few centimeters of soil or even soil-free hydroponics.

I'm not disagreeing with you but just wanting to add another illustration.

* Besides, shielding may be an alternative anyway, like magnetic shielding with superconductors reaching excellent performance in the real-world under some technological and design possibilities, particularly if the goal isn't to stop more than a certain majority of the space radiation.

Illuminatus Primus wrote: I guess you're not literate. Your "hundreds of quadrillions" (1E17-1E18) strawman was never stated by Saxton or anyone else. He set lower limits - an absolute lower limit of 1E14-1E15, and a general lower limit of 1E15-1E16. In fact, his galactic population figures deny the plausibility of your strawman.

Correction. The problem here is based off your "quadrillion" being a plausible population figure.

Where is the basis for that? Saxton extrapolation based off of current population figures.

I understand that his absolute bottomed-out lower limit (1E14-1E15) is your general lower limit and why. But he doesn't have an upper limit because he doesn't have any evidence as to the practical limit of habitation on Coruscant. So where did you get your upper limit from? A "gut feeling" that above a few quadrillion would just be too high? That's a little nebulous.

The upper limit as extrapolated from current human residence and the increases in urban space.

Is it fixed? Nope. Advances in technology would certainly change this. However, your fixation that Coruscant has a quadrillion as a norm is something that is incongruous with the facts.

Again, the contention is with your quadrillion as a lower limit.

How much of a given building must really be environmental and recycling and sustainability support? 10%? There's no way the filmic evidence can be reasonably said to suggest that the industrial sectors comprise more than a limited minority of area.

Red herring. My contention is that Saxton figures IGNORE other uses. Again, why is New York county a much more useful base for extrapolation than the city of New York?

Whatever you smarmy asshole. I'm looking for at least educated guesses and figures since you keep repeating it, rather than vague "its industrial and enviromental!!!" Y'know, numbers.

No you dumbass. The contention here is why the FUCK is Manhatten Island a more useful base for extrapolation than the City of New York? Why is it that the population figures for Hong Kong should use a restricted examination of residential areas rather than the entire city premises? Kow Loon is NOT Hong Kong.

Why don't you figure out the average acrage of sewage treatment and water pumping per capita in an industrialized country and compare it to the volume of Coruscant's cityscape. Its your claim, I'm not doing your homework for you.

Actually, I already have. Depending on the terrain and level of urbanisation, 4% seems to be the figures. This is certainly the case for Singapore and Malacca.

The contention of course skips you. Why on earth would examing a single city district be better than using the entire city for comparison? Again, why is the City of New York and the City of Hong Kong and the City of Tokyo and the City of Singapore not taken as the basis for extrapolation? Why should we examine a single county, or the suburbs of Perth, or a single street district of Hong Kong? Why is it that the surrounding areas aren't included in the area and thus the population density?

To make things simpler for you to understand, why should we conclude that the City of Coruscant would be more similar to aspects of the city of New York and Hong Kong? We should be using the ENTIRE city as a base, not portions of it.

Fuck you. I'm not the idiot that thinks a mathematical upper limit is derived by squinting real hard and being like "that sounds like more than enough." I asked for the precise limitation on population density that let you set the bar at 1E15-1E16 and physically no larger. Because, y'know, that's the definition of an upper limit.

You mean other than urban space? You know the math. Extrapolate population density based off of current density of modern cities, multiply by increases in urban space as estimated from building height. We are told that Coruscant buildings are multi-km in height. That implies a mere hundred to thousand increase in urban space only. Why should we assume that Coruscant is suddenly able to cram more people into a certain space?

They may very well be able to, but without evidence of this, there is no reason to assume otherwise. Increase in urban space does not neccesarily lead to an increase in population density.

No, because if you could read I've kept saying that I don't think a week is unrealistic. But you still have account for SW, not benchmarks based IRL, and that means, how could the supposed blockade proposed in Wedge's Gamble work if it requires weeks to see fruition?

There is a reason why I split the posts, because comments for one aren't meant for the other.

There is not a shred of evidence that the New Republic had either a quantitative or qualitative advantage in military materiel deployed near the Core Worlds region. Not to mention such is immaterial anyway, as any Imperial task force between Coruscant and the Outer Rim should be able to respond within the day (ref: the Open Circle Fleet in ROTS). To say nothing of the fact that a rival faction to Isard snatching Coruscant from the clutches of a New Republic assault would be the most powerful political victory possible. Every faction in the galaxy (except Isard - perhaps working at the occulted Emperor's behest) has every reason to try and take Coruscant. And the New Republic doesn't know about Isard's plan, so that can't go into the fact that Ackbar thought his fleet resources could execute a successful blockade, but Mothma wouldn't tolerate the collateral costs in the civilian population.

Except that historically, warlordism has always prevented a strong military response to defend the capital. Chiang Kai Shek expedition to the North, even Rome in the ending days of Empire, all this show historical correlation to the Republic invasion of Coruscant and the inability to marshal strong forces to defend it.

PainRack wrote:Correction. The problem here is based off your "quadrillion" being a plausible population figure.

Where is the basis for that? Saxton extrapolation based off of current population figures.

Correction? You claimed Saxton was promoting "hundreds of quadrillions" figures. In fact, its higher up on this very page.

PainRack wrote:Saxton figures however use tens of thousand and twenties of thousand as a normal, under-urbanised base to extrapolate from and then scaled it up to Coruscant standards. Working from there, he gets hundred quadrillion as the norm....

That is a flat-out lie. Quit shifting the goal posts. That is what I am taking exception to, so stop repeating this crap about Saxton's presumptions.

PainRack wrote:The upper limit as extrapolated from current human residence and the increases in urban space.

Uh, show me the math. Where is there a LIMIT imposed by environmental requirements? So far you've made a point that generally Saxton overestimated his bare-bottom lower limit figure by using incorrect assumptions and discounting the volume requirements of environmental, industrial, and recycling gear. That does not establish an upper limit.

First of all, do you even know affirmatively how tall the skyscrapers are? I don't know how you are able to limit to available habitation space when you don't know exactly how tall the average building is.

PainRack wrote:Is it fixed? Nope. Advances in technology would certainly change this. However, your fixation that Coruscant has a quadrillion as a norm is something that is incongruous with the facts.

Show me where I said a quadrillion is the norm. You yourself gave it as an upper limit (without defining what - as in mathematically - limits it at that figure, which I've been trying to get you to post). I am not interested in your fiat that it is just so. I have been correcting your strawmen about Saxton's estimates, and demanding proof and work for the rather exact claims you've been making. Justify them or retract them. They're not my claims. Do your homework.

What facts? You haven't put a shred of math down defining how much environmental and life-support gear is required per unit of habitation volume, so there is no limit. Its your claim, justify it.

PainRack wrote:Again, the contention is with your quadrillion as a lower limit.

I never made this claim. I corrected your bullshit about what Saxton actually said. Namely, he never gave a hundreds of quadrillions norm.

PainRack wrote:Red herring. My contention is that Saxton figures IGNORE other uses. Again, why is New York county a much more useful base for extrapolation than the city of New York?

Stop strawmanning me. YOU ARE ASSERTING MATHEMATICAL LIMITS ON CORUSCANT'S POPULATION, FROM EVIDENCE LIKE ENVIRONMENTAL REQUIREMENTS. Show the math proving your inferences or shut up. Fiat doesn't pass for an argument. I've already supplied you with a possible yardstick for lower limit comparison.

PainRack wrote:No you dumbass. The contention here is why the FUCK is Manhatten Island a more useful base for extrapolation than the City of New York? Why is it that the population figures for Hong Kong should use a restricted examination of residential areas rather than the entire city premises? Kow Loon is NOT Hong Kong.

A claim I never made. Do I look like Curtis Saxton? Did I write the Tech Commentaries? No. However, Dr. Saxton in a couple cases did not present figures as you misrepresented him. Also, you are arguing for even more precise data (a more narrow range with a definite upper limit), so I want you to justify it with the work. Not telling me the work works out. Its your argument. You show the work.

PainRack wrote:Actually, I already have. Depending on the terrain and level of urbanisation, 4% seems to be the figures. This is certainly the case for Singapore and Malacca.

Well crunch that vs. the observed characteristics of Coruscant and the height of the skyscrappers and present it.

PainRack wrote:The contention of course skips you. Why on earth would examing a single city district be better than using the entire city for comparison? Again, why is the City of New York and the City of Hong Kong and the City of Tokyo and the City of Singapore not taken as the basis for extrapolation? Why should we examine a single county, or the suburbs of Perth, or a single street district of Hong Kong? Why is it that the surrounding areas aren't included in the area and thus the population density?

I never made this argument, for the umpteenth time. You're making a more precise and well-defined argument, which requires justification. Simply howling about Saxton's premises is not evidence for your more narrow range and upper limit.

PainRack wrote:You mean other than urban space? You know the math. Extrapolate population density based off of current density of modern cities, multiply by increases in urban space as estimated from building height. We are told that Coruscant buildings are multi-km in height. That implies a mere hundred to thousand increase in urban space only. Why should we assume that Coruscant is suddenly able to cram more people into a certain space?

Your argument, your math.

PainRack wrote: Except that historically, warlordism has always prevented a strong military response to defend the capital. Chiang Kai Shek expedition to the North, even Rome in the ending days of Empire, all this show historical correlation to the Republic invasion of Coruscant and the inability to marshal strong forces to defend it.

Which has jack to do with the observed fact that several Executor-class battleships and at least one oversectorial combined combatant command exceeding the scale of a sector group was available in the Core. Every piece of evidence in SW suggests response time within a day or two. Even the Galactic Alliance as of the end of the YV War could marshal an assault across the galaxy inside the span of a day. Not to mention this IS a civil war, on all counts. The Clone War example is an example of response time during civil war. Your handwaving about China and Rome doesn't dispell DIRECT EVIDENCE that military materiel was available and that response times do not exceed a week, even during the height of civil war. The idiosyncracies of modern day ground armies have not the slightest resemblance to the strategy and responsiveness of hyperdrive-equipped warships in SW.

Nice diversion, but it doesn't hold up.

It occurs to me - do we actually know that the agriworlds are actual worlds? We know that such megastructures are not unknown, to the extent that Palpatine gave them out to his favorite underlings in the court (If Herrar were all that important in the court or inImperial politics we would ahve heard a LOT more about him). In fact, IIRC Bevel Lemish was let out to studty the propulsion system of the world craft. That would indicate that its the fact that the thing can move (and take with it an artifical sun) is what makes it special.

Painrack is spot on when he cites the difficulties with optimizing food production on a planet. Weather control to the extent the books or other scifi series suggest is even more unrealistic then FTL travel honestly. I read an essay once of a climatologist cutting loose one it, basically pointing out that what youd have to do to aid a small area (IIRC the example was making Flordia always sunny) would cause MASSIVE reprocussions in other parts of the world. And even then, such a thing could not be sustained for ong before you started wrecking the area you were trying to fix. (I wish I could find that again, but google brings me no joy this time).

An artifical world structure would solve that. Completely idle speculation of course. But interesting to consider.

Ender wrote:It occurs to me - do we actually know that the agriworlds are actual worlds? We know that such megastructures are not unknown, to the extent that Palpatine gave them out to his favorite underlings in the court (If Herrar were all that important in the court or inImperial politics we would ahve heard a LOT more about him). In fact, IIRC Bevel Lemish was let out to studty the propulsion system of the world craft. That would indicate that its the fact that the thing can move (and take with it an artifical sun) is what makes it special.

Painrack is spot on when he cites the difficulties with optimizing food production on a planet. Weather control to the extent the books or other scifi series suggest is even more unrealistic then FTL travel honestly. I read an essay once of a climatologist cutting loose one it, basically pointing out that what youd have to do to aid a small area (IIRC the example was making Flordia always sunny) would cause MASSIVE reprocussions in other parts of the world. And even then, such a thing could not be sustained for ong before you started wrecking the area you were trying to fix. (I wish I could find that again, but google brings me no joy this time).

An artifical world structure would solve that. Completely idle speculation of course. But interesting to consider.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Agriworld

All the known examples are terrestrial worlds. And I'd like to see some specific citations on how hard climate control really is (I have my doubts that it is really more fantastic than FTL travel or stellar-output reactors aboard typical starships).

Illuminatus Primus wrote:http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Agriworld

All the known examples are terrestrial worlds.

I'm going to be generous and assume the cretins who wrote the wiki have actual gaming stats for those planets. Not to cast doubt on you or the counterpoint you provide, but lets be honets - wiki writers are, as a general rule, pretty damn close to the bottom of the intellectual barrel.

And I'd like to see some specific citations on how hard climate control really is (I have my doubts that it is really more fantastic than FTL travel or stellar-output reactors aboard typical starships).

As I said, I can't find the article/rant now, (And the closest I come to another source requires an academic registration) but basically it comes down to the fact that while FTL travel is at least mathmatically possible in some models, such fine weather control that all the major population centers all have sunny cloudless days with low humidity and a mild temperature are flat out impossible by things as simple as the hydrodymanic cycle - in short order you'd generate an ecological calamity that would make global warming or an ice age look like a scrapped knee. You want to give a city a cloudless day? That's nice, what are you going to do with all the moisture in the air that is already there, moves in, or gets generated in the day. Shift it somewhere else and it will result in a change in temperature, and over a span of time will result in something analogous to el Nino. Try it for a world and you are fucked.

One can do things like encourage very minor changes over the span of a several hours to days, or even global scale shifts over the very very long term, but the idea that someone sitting in a control booth can dial up or delete a rainstorm in minutes by clicking a few buttons is simply impossible.

Ender wrote:I'm going to be generous and assume the cretins who wrote the wiki have actual gaming stats for those planets. Not to cast doubt on you or the counterpoint you provide, but lets be honets - wiki writers are, as a general rule, pretty damn close to the bottom of the intellectual barrel.

Alright, we know Chandrilla and Ukio are certainly farm worlds. That's all the examples of significant scale farming in the canon. That's 2 terrestrial worlds, 2/2 large farms, as opposed to 0 megascale farms. There's simply no evidence for your supposition and all the evidence of the evidence for terrestrial worlds.

I don't have my Coruscant and the Core Worlds or Galaxy Guide with me.

Ender wrote:As I said, I can't find the article/rant now, (And the closest I come to another source requires an academic registration) but basically it comes down to the fact that while FTL travel is at least mathmatically possible in some models, such fine weather control that all the major population centers all have sunny cloudless days with low humidity and a mild temperature are flat out impossible by things as simple as the hydrodymanic cycle - in short order you'd generate an ecological calamity that would make global warming or an ice age look like a scrapped knee. You want to give a city a cloudless day? That's nice, what are you going to do with all the moisture in the air that is already there, moves in, or gets generated in the day. Shift it somewhere else and it will result in a change in temperature, and over a span of time will result in something analogous to el Nino. Try it for a world and you are fucked.

One can do things like encourage very minor changes over the span of a several hours to days, or even global scale shifts over the very very long term, but the idea that someone sitting in a control booth can dial up or delete a rainstorm in minutes by clicking a few buttons is simply impossible.

I know. But also we don't know if there are simply enough mild climate planets requiring minor maintanence and stabilizing just lying around which are suitable for farming, and enough to sustain an enormous civilization, that there's not enough incentive to make artificial ones. Some recent data suggests Earths may be relatively common throughout the galaxy.