beccaelizabeth (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
beccaelizabeth) wrote2014-02-10 09:42 pm
beccaelizabeth) wrote2014-02-10 09:42 pm
Woke up thinking about Stargate traffic patterns
How many people can you fit through a Stargate? I have thought about this before http://beccaelizabeth.dreamwidth.org/2319899.html . Last time I figured 1 per second forwards, in 4 columns cause that's the most we've seen SG1 do. 4*60=240 people a minute; in a 30 minute gate opening that's 7200 people. 30 because they need to open it, check it's the right place, get people moving, and leave a margin for stragglers and that thing where everyone hesitates the first time. So it could be slightly more, but, basically, 7200.
But that's figuring from a guess that it took a second each. Today I woke up thinking it's a simple matter of how far a human can walk in half an hour times average spacing between humans. So average human walking speed is apparently 5km per hour. Half an hour is 2500m. If one person per m, then 4*2500 = 10000 people per half hour. But I also found a site about ticket gates that reckoned people go through at 0.8m spacing, so that would be 3125 people per column, or 12500 people per half hour.
Only when I woke up I was trying to figure it in yards and miles, because I've been reading GURPS. That required more brain and more numbers my brain don't got.
... average walking speed 3.1 miles per hour, 1760 yards in a mile (really? why so weird? ... googles says because Romans and conversions, and I don't really need this factoid anyway...) , ((3.1/2)*1760)=2728 people per half hour, *4 for columns makes 10912. So that's like in the middle of one person per m or per 80cm. And a yard is 90 cm. So it's the same, just with unreasonably complicated math.
Between 10,000 and 12,500 people can get through the stargate in a single opening if they form 4 orderly lines and keep moving.
That looks like a large number until compared to, say, Wembley Stadium, with 90K capacity. Even Norwich is over 27K. Total traffic to another world couldn't fill a stadium. Unless there's more than one gate opening to the same place in a row, obviously. But I'm still left wondering what a Stargate is really good for, if planet to planet traffic is going to be so limited. Also, consider the fraction of the planet than can get through the gate. Can it keep up with the birth rate? First google result says 255 worldwide births per minute, so that's 7650 in half an hour. So yes, we can ship out more people than we create. That's nice.
How many gate openings per day? It wouldn't be (24*60)/38, or 39 for dialling time, because humans aren't that efficient. But if it was it would be slightly short of 38 gates per day, which is tidy.
If you have people walking through it all the 38 minutes then it's between 12,666 and 15,833 , depending on spacing.
So I guess it's between 10,000 and 15,833 people per gate opening, depending on margins of time and space.
Next I want to figure out how much freight can fit through, but there's too many variable numbers in that. Like, I think I figured standard shipping containers might (but probably won't) fit through sideways, but it depends on how you move them. Plus, any way of fitting containers through quickly could be filled with people, who would then go more quickly too.
If people are carrying it all in those giant backpacks, it's going to be walking speed with heavy encumbrance, and it'll depend on how much they can carry each, which GURPS has rules for but which varies a lot person to person. Like, 10K people carrying an average of 200lbs would, assuming an average ST 10, be crawling along at their maximum encumbrance but would make easy math. However, if they're all military, their average ST is unlikely to be 10. Which would mostly mean they move quicker. Or at all. I poked at military loads for combat and they start around 50lbs for fighting in and go up to nearly 150lbs for 'emergency approach march', but if you're only walking for half an hour I guess you could carry more.
Still, 10K * 150lbs as everything the whole colony can carry to a new planet could get interesting...
Wheels are still more likely though. And then, assuming they make sure in advance it fits and have drivers who can keep it straight and steady threading the needle, it's again a question of how far they can travel in half an hour and vehicle spacing. 13.6m long lorry? That's interior on a curtain sided trailer, great big lorries like you see on the road. The whole lorry has to fit through the 4.74m square in the middle of the gate. 2.45*2.7m width*height, trailer is no problem, but what's the outside of the driving bit? Up to 4m tall of cab is the EU rule apparently, that should fit. Ah, articulated lorry on wiki, UK sizes... wait, should I be looking up US if it's their Stargate? I'll check both. UK: a coupled tractor unit and trailer will have a combined length of between 50 and 55 feet (15.25 and 16.75 metres). US... gets complicated because they put more than one trailer on the back. Really? Big road corners they have there.
Right then, 16m of lorry. HGV limited to 90 km/h ... personally I wouldn't want to thread the needle at any speed, but I'm sure someone would. It could be set up as a nice straight line anyway, and though you'd have to fiddle a bit to get the approach to be flat you probably want to do that because otherwise angles make math complicated. It's the driving into a blank shimmering glow that would bother me. 45000/16=2812.5 , but you'd want to leave gaps. Two second rule at 90km/h says one vehicle-length for every 8 km/h which is 180m, so effectively every truck is 196m long, so 229.5 trucks. But if you're going crawl along at 8 km/h then each truck is 32m long and you get 125 trucks through without the heart attacks. 16km/h, each truck needs 48m, 166 artics. 24 km/h, each truck needs 64m, back one travels 12000m in half an hour, 187.5 trucks. 32 km/h, each truck needs 80m, back one drives 16000m, 200 trucks in half an hour. Tidy maths. And that's still like 20 miles per hour, nice and slow for a driving speed. No need to rush.
As for weight, website for driving intermodal containers on lorries says shippers should usually be able to load up to 26,000 kilos of cargo. 57,320 lbs ? Decimal is much better.
200 trucks, 26,000 kilos each, 5,200,000 kilos, 5,200 metric tons, through the gate at one dialling. And 200 truck drivers. How many people can fit in a lorry cab each? More than two, if it's brief and they're tidy. Four or six hundred colonists, with 8666kg to 13000 kg of equipment each, plus the container lorries, which are a substantial resource in themselves.
A Humanitarian Daily Ration pack weighs 850g, or presumably the content does, since it also says 11kg for a case of 10. 36.5 cases for one year of emergency food, or 73 for two people, which is more likely than everyone breaking a box. 36.5*11 = 401kg each for a year of food. That wouldn't fit on your back but it's easy enough with a lorry along.
I'm so bored these numbers are interesting.
But, if you were packing for another planet, and shelter is all going to be the shipping containers and their contents, what 8000 kg of stuff would you take with you?
... I wonder how much my stuff actually weighs?
... actually, simpler and just as crucial to figure, will it all fit in the one removal lorry? You could be driving one lorry each to the new world.
A 200 person new world is pretty small though. Which 200 people would you bring?
But that's figuring from a guess that it took a second each. Today I woke up thinking it's a simple matter of how far a human can walk in half an hour times average spacing between humans. So average human walking speed is apparently 5km per hour. Half an hour is 2500m. If one person per m, then 4*2500 = 10000 people per half hour. But I also found a site about ticket gates that reckoned people go through at 0.8m spacing, so that would be 3125 people per column, or 12500 people per half hour.
Only when I woke up I was trying to figure it in yards and miles, because I've been reading GURPS. That required more brain and more numbers my brain don't got.
... average walking speed 3.1 miles per hour, 1760 yards in a mile (really? why so weird? ... googles says because Romans and conversions, and I don't really need this factoid anyway...) , ((3.1/2)*1760)=2728 people per half hour, *4 for columns makes 10912. So that's like in the middle of one person per m or per 80cm. And a yard is 90 cm. So it's the same, just with unreasonably complicated math.
Between 10,000 and 12,500 people can get through the stargate in a single opening if they form 4 orderly lines and keep moving.
That looks like a large number until compared to, say, Wembley Stadium, with 90K capacity. Even Norwich is over 27K. Total traffic to another world couldn't fill a stadium. Unless there's more than one gate opening to the same place in a row, obviously. But I'm still left wondering what a Stargate is really good for, if planet to planet traffic is going to be so limited. Also, consider the fraction of the planet than can get through the gate. Can it keep up with the birth rate? First google result says 255 worldwide births per minute, so that's 7650 in half an hour. So yes, we can ship out more people than we create. That's nice.
How many gate openings per day? It wouldn't be (24*60)/38, or 39 for dialling time, because humans aren't that efficient. But if it was it would be slightly short of 38 gates per day, which is tidy.
If you have people walking through it all the 38 minutes then it's between 12,666 and 15,833 , depending on spacing.
So I guess it's between 10,000 and 15,833 people per gate opening, depending on margins of time and space.
Next I want to figure out how much freight can fit through, but there's too many variable numbers in that. Like, I think I figured standard shipping containers might (but probably won't) fit through sideways, but it depends on how you move them. Plus, any way of fitting containers through quickly could be filled with people, who would then go more quickly too.
If people are carrying it all in those giant backpacks, it's going to be walking speed with heavy encumbrance, and it'll depend on how much they can carry each, which GURPS has rules for but which varies a lot person to person. Like, 10K people carrying an average of 200lbs would, assuming an average ST 10, be crawling along at their maximum encumbrance but would make easy math. However, if they're all military, their average ST is unlikely to be 10. Which would mostly mean they move quicker. Or at all. I poked at military loads for combat and they start around 50lbs for fighting in and go up to nearly 150lbs for 'emergency approach march', but if you're only walking for half an hour I guess you could carry more.
Still, 10K * 150lbs as everything the whole colony can carry to a new planet could get interesting...
Wheels are still more likely though. And then, assuming they make sure in advance it fits and have drivers who can keep it straight and steady threading the needle, it's again a question of how far they can travel in half an hour and vehicle spacing. 13.6m long lorry? That's interior on a curtain sided trailer, great big lorries like you see on the road. The whole lorry has to fit through the 4.74m square in the middle of the gate. 2.45*2.7m width*height, trailer is no problem, but what's the outside of the driving bit? Up to 4m tall of cab is the EU rule apparently, that should fit. Ah, articulated lorry on wiki, UK sizes... wait, should I be looking up US if it's their Stargate? I'll check both. UK: a coupled tractor unit and trailer will have a combined length of between 50 and 55 feet (15.25 and 16.75 metres). US... gets complicated because they put more than one trailer on the back. Really? Big road corners they have there.
Right then, 16m of lorry. HGV limited to 90 km/h ... personally I wouldn't want to thread the needle at any speed, but I'm sure someone would. It could be set up as a nice straight line anyway, and though you'd have to fiddle a bit to get the approach to be flat you probably want to do that because otherwise angles make math complicated. It's the driving into a blank shimmering glow that would bother me. 45000/16=2812.5 , but you'd want to leave gaps. Two second rule at 90km/h says one vehicle-length for every 8 km/h which is 180m, so effectively every truck is 196m long, so 229.5 trucks. But if you're going crawl along at 8 km/h then each truck is 32m long and you get 125 trucks through without the heart attacks. 16km/h, each truck needs 48m, 166 artics. 24 km/h, each truck needs 64m, back one travels 12000m in half an hour, 187.5 trucks. 32 km/h, each truck needs 80m, back one drives 16000m, 200 trucks in half an hour. Tidy maths. And that's still like 20 miles per hour, nice and slow for a driving speed. No need to rush.
As for weight, website for driving intermodal containers on lorries says shippers should usually be able to load up to 26,000 kilos of cargo. 57,320 lbs ? Decimal is much better.
200 trucks, 26,000 kilos each, 5,200,000 kilos, 5,200 metric tons, through the gate at one dialling. And 200 truck drivers. How many people can fit in a lorry cab each? More than two, if it's brief and they're tidy. Four or six hundred colonists, with 8666kg to 13000 kg of equipment each, plus the container lorries, which are a substantial resource in themselves.
A Humanitarian Daily Ration pack weighs 850g, or presumably the content does, since it also says 11kg for a case of 10. 36.5 cases for one year of emergency food, or 73 for two people, which is more likely than everyone breaking a box. 36.5*11 = 401kg each for a year of food. That wouldn't fit on your back but it's easy enough with a lorry along.
I'm so bored these numbers are interesting.
But, if you were packing for another planet, and shelter is all going to be the shipping containers and their contents, what 8000 kg of stuff would you take with you?
... I wonder how much my stuff actually weighs?
... actually, simpler and just as crucial to figure, will it all fit in the one removal lorry? You could be driving one lorry each to the new world.
A 200 person new world is pretty small though. Which 200 people would you bring?
200 containers, 5 slots each.
Cargo Hold, 5 tons, cost negligible
Steerage Cargo, controlled environmental conditions, 5 tons, $100K
Control Room, 2 seats, $200K
Comm/Sensor arrays, $200K
Factory, $5M
Mining: $100K
Refinery: $100K
Solar Panel Array, $500K, one per factory, mining, or refinery unit.
Cabin, bunkroom, cells or cages, $100K
Briefing Room, $100K
Office, $100K
Passenger Seating, $30K
Sick Bay, $100K ... the first time the price makes sense. Honestly, stocking it with medical equipment from the Biotech book would nudge it around rather. Not having a price premium to distinguish a surgery from a cabin is a bit foolish, but the life support makes them all expensive.
4 cryo chambers, $100K ish, but see Bio Tech p147, they call the kind you can revive from Hibernation Chambers at TL9 or Suspended Animation Capsules at TL10. Freeze tubes seem more like it, not just slowed metabolism. $50,000 each, for $200K room of 4. However at TL8 they're most likely salvaged alien equipment, and it's hard to put a money value on them.
Two slots together can contain:
Luxury cabin, $200K
Establishment, $200K
Lab, Biology, $1M
Lab, Chemistry, $1M
Lab, Physics, $10M
Lab, Science!, $30M
10 identical Offices, Sick Bays, or Labs, gives an improved skill bonus, as you can fit shinier equipment in it. 100 identicals of those types would give an even higher bonus.
conclusion: Using the Starships price makes sense for everything except cabins. Those seem excessive because all the cost there is secretly life support equipment. But with heating, air con, some kind of solar panel arrangement for your daily power needs, kitchens, bathrooms, and then all the furniture etc you do need them to be pricier than they may appear. More like buying a house than stocking one. So keep the numbers, when estimating total worth of the colony.
Re: 200 containers, 5 slots each.
need 200 cabins, maybe 400 for luxury cabins.
100 offices
100 labs... of a particular type. 300 for the 3 sciences then? Or will they subdivide smaller, and need 100 to get a bonus to geology? GM's choice, so I say no. 300 labs.
100 sickbay seems excessive if you're only treating 200 people, but if they're setting up to trade medical knowledge, that's more interesting.
... 100 offices, 300 labs, 100 sickbays, would they need 500 staff to get those bonuses? Because, you know, only brought 200 so far. Though those 200 cabins could fit 800 people in...
400
100
300
100
Leaves 100 cabins for cargo, or establishments, or briefing rooms, or whatever. So it is possible to make it a science colony.
For increased money, and greater compatibility with the Stargate universe, it could be a Science! colony. 100 labs of that would take up much less space, but cost $3,000,000,000. That's three billion. Even for Tony, that's a bit much.
Of course $1,000,000,000 is also non trivial. What kind of research would need that? Atlantis style power generator research, or advanced weapons, of course.
... I just looked up the USA R&D spend in a year. Many, many billions. Like, $125 billion just from the government, and twice that on private stuff. For the entire country, sending three billions off to another world might seem drop in the ocean...
Wow, looked up NASA, the Apollo program had an annual budget of nearly $18 billion. And they didn't even stay on their ball of rock.
Okay, so I need to think bigger. Yes, this colony would cost billions, but apparently that's the done thing...
So a Science! colony with an on world hospital would work out at:
400 luxury cabins $80,000,000
100 offices, $10,000,000
100 Science! $3,000,000,000
100 Sickbay, $10,000,000
200 unallocated, could be cargo, bars, shops, briefing rooms, but also needing to be mines, refineries, factories, control rooms, sensors and solar power.
Already that's
$3,100,000,000
with the vast majority of that being spent on the Science!
Put it back down to biology, chemistry, and physics, and $1,200,000,000 is still the vast majority of a $1,300,000,000 colony. Science labs are far, far more expensive than sick bays. Though the biology and chemistry ones are quite likely to be related to sick bays.
Each container has 5 slots, so you can't have 3 luxury cabins, only 2 luxury cabins and one from cargo, briefing room, office, or passenger seating. The others all need to be in sets.
A container would be dedicated to mining or refinery.
1 control room, two mining, two solar panels
or
1 control room, two refinery, two solar panels.
Because a control room has two seats, a mine or refinery needs one seat each, and also one power each.
100 Sick Bay would be 20 containers, but they'd also need some room for cryo. Owen's cabin, office, lab and cryo would be his container. Additional to the hospital, because the cryo chambers are his personal stuff so far.
20 containers per subject of labs.
100 of cabins, if they're luxury.
I have no idea what I'd need 100 offices for. What do people do in offices? I can't see very much of it being useful in a new colony.
But also consider: Office, briefing room, cells, cells, cells. That's the jail, with room for 2 law enforcement people in the office and 8 more deputies at the briefings. Cell capacity maximum 12 people.
Offices are useful for Intelligence Analysis and Strategy tasks. So give them 10, or 2 containers, as the ops center.
100, 20, 20, 1, 1, 2
144 so far
Factories would go 2 factories, 2 solar panels, 1 office.
The local bar would be 2 establishments and 1 cargo storage area, for 40 people to use at once.
There only needs to be the one of that.
145, leaving 55 to divide between mining, refinery, and factories.
Mining can process 1/3 of refineries, so you'd have 3 mining containers to 1 refinery container.
40 of them? 30 mining and 10 refinery?
15 factories. Factories are figured in $ not tons though, so you can't figure them by ratios. Just, half as many factories as mines seems like a lot.
Hmm, I forgot things like a nursery, or shops, or people that don't want to live in 'luxury' while sharing 'their' container with someone.
There's a lot of factors to juggle.
Re: 200 containers, 5 slots each.
I can't imagine how to bolt containers together to make an actually useful hospital though.
But I guess they're used as building materials even how, so, maybe possible?
Lab access one end, lots of doors to rooms in sickbay out the other?
So it wouldn't be 20 containers of lab, it would be 25, with 25 sickbays in them. Leaving 75, or 15 containers, of just sickbay on its own. Which, yes, greatly resembles two sets of 20 containers, but the layout is distinct.
Also, would the lab people want sickbays, or would they rather have offices? Because that might mean lab needs 25 and sickbay still needs 20.
Re: 200 containers, 5 slots each.
Oh, establishment: Baths. Because even in a luxury cabin, that's like 20 ft long, they could fit my bathroom in but it's not exactly luxurious. 20ft out of 50ft? How long did I figure these containers are? No, it's more like 16ft by 8. Still my bathroom fits, but, 12 ft left for things that are not bathroom. Like a kitchen. And dining room. Somehow I can't see this working.
Establishment: Cafeteria. Seats 20. ... with all these lab people around, and a generally kind of like a university vibe, how many of them can actually cook? Possibly they need more than 20 seats...
Re: 200 containers, 5 slots each.
100 labs, 2 per container, 50 containers of labs, plus an office each. 50 offices already.
100 sick bays, 5 per container, 20 containers of sickbay.
Another 50 offices... would be scattered around many subjects. 2 containers to be Intelligence Analysis and Strategy, 10 offices. 40 other containers with an office on the end.
50+20+10+40= 120 containers implied in just the 300 places to get bonuses.
80*5 plus 40*4 things that are not offices, sick bay, or labs.
That's only 120 luxury cabins. So there is not in fact room for everyone to live in luxury. Unless they mostly cohabit.