|
|
|
|
Interstellar Colonisation, The Economics of |
Interstellar colonisation is an ancient dream, as early as the 20th century c.e. visionaries debated how to reach the stars. But the practical achievement of interstellar colonies had to wait several centuries more, and remained a highly uncertain venture for almost two millennia afterwards. Even today, with ten millennia of experience and technology the ancients would not have dreamt of, interstellar colonisation remains an expensive and sometimes controversial venture.
Despite the occasional interstellar probe and the high-resolution imagery from space telescopes, the first interplanetary age the later interplanetary age produced a handful of colonies - Nova Terra and Penglai being among the few successful ones. The reasons for the dearth of interstellar colony attempts were both technical: starships of sufficient speed, reliability and colony capacity could not be built, and economic: the megacorps and interplanetary powers were far too busy exploiting the solar system and its resources to waste money of blue-sky projects. The first realistic chance of interstellar colonisation was achieved in the 400s, the short so-called "Nanotech Window" where nanotechnology enabled the construction of ships with sufficient power, size, repair capability and construction ability to make attempts of reaching another solar system technically possible.
Despite the technological feasibility, colonisation was still not a highly prioritised subject. The megacorps recognised the interest from many groups, but could themselves see only limited benefits from interstellar colonisation: each venture would be a multi-century investment, that would involve creating a new economy at a remote world from scratch and then only lead to very limited trade income (interstellar transports being extremely slow and costly, and with enormous communications delays). Most analysis suggested that as technology advanced future ships would become faster and better, and it would be a smarter strategy to wait a few decades and reap the benefits of the fast economic growth of the nanotech age before funding interstellar colonies. At the same time large social segments systemwide believed interstellar colonisation was the key to freedom and a future they were in charge of. Hence many of the governments began to ponder the possibility of doing interstellar colonisation for political reasons. Enhancing civic pride, getting rid of many of the would-be troublemakers and getting their chums the megacorps happy by big pork-barrel projects. Slowly the colony projects gained momentum, and a number of highly publicised (and controversial) colony projects were launched outwards.
The Nanotech Window was closed in the Collapse, and only re-opened in the First Federation era. This time the reason for interstellar colonisation were stronger. The solar system was experiencing a major economic and social boom, but it was clear that resources were running out, habitat space not growing fast enough and the population booming. The strict limitations of nanotech use instituted by the Federation were hampering the solution of these problems as well as the market growth. Hence many organisations sought interstellar colonisation as a way of both gaining access to resources and to exploit the potential of technology more freely. Other strong reasons for colonisation was safety - many feared the return of a new dark age - or getting away from the fierce competition of the solar system.
The new colonisation ventures had profound political effects. One was the gradual dissolution of the Federation as more and more activity went on outside the solar system and hence was uncontrollable and Federation laws were unenforceable. Another effect was the immense broadening of corporate timescales. The AI-supported hypereconomy was stable and to a large extent predictable, and the colony projects would lead to multi-decade planning horizons. While a long range plan of the information or first interplanetary era could have been five years, now 50 or 100 years became a rational planning timescale. By putting more and more decision making and management power into the hands of the immortal and reliable AIs, corporations could manage even multi-century operations without any risk of loosing control. Also, company policy could not be allowed to change too quickly, or the projects would go haywire due to communications lags. This was the first step along the road which eventually led to the Age of Empires and the transformation of the megacorps into hereditary houses.
The selection of colonisation targets were based on several factors: distance, the presence of suitable asteroid/kuiper belts and the presence of habitable/terraformable planets (in that order). Distance limited the response times of the organisation, early 0.1c spaceflight involved decades-long turn-around times for even the most nearby systems. Easily accessible orbital resources was the reason systems such as Lalande 21185 and Barnard quickly became important, while Wolf 359 and Ross 128 languished (also, the lack of volatiles at Barnard eventually led to its decline). As for habitable planets, terraforming had to compete with tweak adaptation in the initial era. Terraforming was a good long-term investment, but adapting tweaks or exploiting the bewildering array of clades of the solar system proved to give a much faster benefit (as Gordan Salam, a Jupiter Transsystem executive famously remarked, "Whatever the environment, you will find that someone once had the idea to tweak their children to live there for whatever ridiculous reason. Let's hire them!").
The introduction of faster spaceflight changed the pattern, turning up the interest for terraformable planets around sun-like stars and making distance less essential. Terraforming rose to prominence, but still required ever longer timescales of planning. Terraforming has never been a fast process unless done with extreme amounts of expensive technology. Low-tech terraforming can take many centuries, the nanotech "InstaPlanet" systems of the First Federation could act within a few decades and the most dramatic (and uneconomical) picotech "Genesis" systems of the early Imperial era within a few years. The main limitations were energy, coordination and heat dissipation, and it was soon found that advanced AI was necessary to make the process economical.
Terraforming investments in the late First Federation proved to be one of the most profitable forms of long-term investments ever. By sending a terraforming team to a planet a nearly worthless chunk of rock could be turned into prime colonisation and economic growth territory within a century or two (by now an ordinary investment horizon for corporations and long-lived individuals). The value of the planet would in turn increase nearly exponentially - apparently forever. Terraforming and colonisation funds became funds of choice, and accelerated the colonisation process as they in turn invested in more colonisation ventures.
The introduction of wormholes in the late first federation era led to the drastic change in colonisation strategy. Previously colonisable systems had to be selected carefully, a colonisation fleet sent out and centuries could pass before the colony would bear profit. Now a linelayer ship could be launched and distribute wormholes along a route, enabling the fast access of highly skilled colonisation, terraformer and marketing professionals to the system once access had been achieved. While before joint-venture colonisation was common, now ownership of whole systems could be claimed. This in turn led to the emergence of the Empires (as well as other factors): groups controlling the colonisation process gained tremendous direct political, economic and informational influence over their colonies, enabling the formation of the empires. During this era Cygexpa, the Taurus Nexus and the Conver Ambi emerged as the logical result of mergers between the Terraforming Funds.
Over time colonisation began to develop a stable dynamic. A vast wave of exploration and surveying probes expanded at near lightspeed outwards, relaying their information back to their owners through encrypted message packages. Interesting systems were visited by linelayer ships and attached to the wormhole nexus. Many systems were selected as wormhole outposts with receiver arrays just to keep near to the information front (a delay in receiving a tip about a good system could mean that a competitor got there first). The linked systems were then developed as before, but by now the technologies were standardised and routine. One result was the tree-like spread of empires, with wormhole networks radiating away from Weylforge systems into the frontier. Large volumes were left untouched as being too far from any suitable linelayer or too uninteresting; in these volumes other empires and independent worlds sometimes appeared.
Related links:
