Colonization

[Talondor]

Hello all...long time lurker, first time poster.

In the early days of European colonization of America and elsewhere, it was relatively simple to start a colony. You just go somewhere, cut down some trees, build some log cabins (and maybe a stockade), dig a latrine, plant some wheat and a cash crop like tobacco or sugar, and bam, you got yourself a colony. (Yes, I know that is over-simplifying things, but you should get the general idea). You could probably follow this pattern until the early 20th century, except if you were in the western U.S., it would have been a boom-town with a mine instead of a cash crop.

Now in the Federation, a few hundred years into the future, colonists might expect things like power, running water, sewage, etc.,and things that go along with it like computers and instant communication.

Does anyone know of anything on how the Federation starts and builds a colony? Does each house have it's own generator, or is there a central power source? And if a central power source, do they use cables to run electricity or use some sort of Tesla-like system of energy through the air. How do they run water to each house and building, and how do they dispose of waste? Is there a general store or do they liberally use replicators? It seems like colonies get set up quite quickly, as I assume they use some sort of pre-fabricated buildings.

Also, there have been mention of colony ships, but I have seen no pictures or specs, here or elsewhere.

Thanks.

[Graham Kennedy]

Welcome to the forums!

There's very little detail about the colonisation process. But one or two nuggets, off the top of my head...

First, it seems that in the early years at least, it wasn't unusual for anyone who could get themselves a ship to simply set off into the unknown and start a colony. Many such efforts seemed entirely independent, and many seemed to be specifically intended to let the colonists be independent of Earth. Often Earth didn't seem to much care about them, often they even forgot about them - Moab IV, Bringloid, etc.

Sometimes Earth seemed to have some sort of official stake in the colonies - Terra Nova, for example. Once colonised, Earth wanted to send subsequent waves of colonists, which the original colonists objected to. One wonders if Earth perhaps provided some of the funding for Terra Nova, which made them think they had the right to send more people along afterwards?

By TOS, colonies still seemed to be pretty independent affairs but with some government support. So for example part of the job of Kirk's Enterprise was to check up on colony worlds like Sandoval's Omicron Ceti III colony in This Side of Paradise.

Even in the TNG era there were what seemed to be independent colony efforts and "lost colonies" - the SS Santa Maria was such a project in DS9's "Paradise", originally headed for Gemulon V in civilian ships.

But then in the TNG era, we also see that the Enterprise-D itself was out helping to found colonies. The ship had just established a colony in "Justice", and was assisting a new one in "Silicon Avatar".

My take on that is that in pre-Federation time, Earth's government was largely indifferent to colonisation - no surprise, since with travel times in the years any given administration will probably not survive to see any return from funding a colony. So all colonies were just a bunch of people who got together, acquired a ship, and headed out into the unknown/

With the NX class and warp 3+ civilian ships coming into service by the 2150s, Earth forces began to visit colonies and those worlds started to recieve support from Earth, eventually leading to many of them joining with Earth in the Federation.

As time went on, the founding of independent colonies continued - Yar's world, Turkana IV, was a Federation colony gone bad, and the fact that the Federation allowed that to happen is further proof that at least some colonies are independent of Earth and the Federation as a whole.

But there were also what one might call official colonies. An official colony is probably a world discovered by Starfleet; the government decides to colonise it, and Starfleet provides transport and material support along with labour, etc. These are the ones that are likely to see massive infrastructure built in from the start - in Silicon Avatar we see Melona IV, a brand new colony the E-D is helping out... and they are discussing building a hospital, a school, and an arts centre. If they're building an arts center then they're really not "roughing it" in any way. I'd expect such a colony would have a fusion power plant and perhaps food replicators in the houses, etc.

The best example to demonstrate that there are such "Official" colonies is a unique twist on the idea, Nimbus III - "The Planet of Galactic Peace". Stated, IIRC, to have been officially founded by the Federation government along with the Romulans and Klingons. Turned out to be a rather crappy planet and the governmetns put no serious effort into it, but it does demonstrate that the Federation founds such "official" colonies at least sometimes, and then advertises for people to go live on them. I imagine Numbus III was probably originally founded by Starships from all three powers establishing infrastructure, etc.

The Survivors gave us an example of a colonist's dwelling on Delta Rana :



Not exactly a log cabin, is it? Contrast with the sorts of dwellings the Sandoval colonists had :



So where Sandoval's colony seemed to be an independent one, I imagine Delta Rana was probably an officially supported Federation government colony. Do note that Kevin and Rishon didn't have a replicator, though, so they didn't have all THAT much support. Although it may well be that they had access to some local replimat prior to the destruction, which was lost in the bombardment. Or maybe they did have one originally, and Kevin just got rid of it after everyone else died.

Anyway, that's my take on it.

[McAvoy]

Makes sense to have official colonization efforts and the commercial/private funded colonization.

You will have a lot of reasons too ranging from resource claiming, the thrill, expansion and even ideology. Such as that colony in DS9 led by that nutjob lady

[Mikey]

There is explicit evidence from TNG that these "official" colonies had access to UFP terraforming, as well.

[Graham Kennedy]

Good point.

[00111010 01000100]

Been looking for a place to ask this or see if anyone else can clear it up. It the episode Silicon Avatar, when the entity starts sucking up plants, animals, and stuff. It disrupts the atmospheric conditions which the Enterprise D picks up on the way to the planet. What gets me is the distance factors and scanning abilities here. The dialogue is as follows;

WORF: Captain, sensors indicate a disturbance near the outpost on Melona Four.
PICARD: What kind of disturbance?
WORF: I cannot tell. We are still too far away. It could be an electrical storm.
PICARD: See if you can contact the colony.
WORF: Aye, sir. Captain, there is no response from Melona colony, but the disturbance in the atmosphere is increasing.
PICARD: How far are we?
WORF: At current speed, twenty seven hours.
Blah blah to engineering and laforge repeating worfs comment about sensors detecting issues on the planet. So how fast were they going? Unknown but then Picard says, “Ensign, increase to warp eight”.
Okay so now we booking it to the planet but it’s the time to the planet that keeps bugging me. Enterprise D - sensors are reading the planets atmosphere from a really far off distance. But then, it gets really far. At warp 9, how fast can a ship travel in 6 hours? Well, that’s how far away the ship was when she finally increased speed. How far was she before that but still able to pick up a planets weather from millions of miles away?

WORF: Still no response, sir.
PICARD: Increase to warp nine. How long, Mister Worf?
WORF: Six hours.

6 hours away at Warp 9..
warp 9 is = 1516 times the SOL.

How good are the enterprises sensors to pick up the weather from that far away?

[Captain Seafort]

In the absence of any specific statement, I think it's reasonable to assume that they were initially traveling at Warp 6 standard cruising speed. If we assume that Warp 6 is the long-term sustainable cruise Data used to estimate the journey back from J-25 in "Q Who?" (~2700c), that would put them almost 8.5 ly from the planet. If, on the other hand, Data's "Q Who?" estimate was based on traveling at Warp 9 (or rather, max cruise of Warp 9.2, but close enough) that would put them a bit under 2 ly out.