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Author Topic:   Children on Unity ???

DJ RRebel posted 11-28-98 10:31 AM ET
I'm sure you guys dicused this in the old forum, but I was curious ...
Would there be children on the Unity ???
Think about it, if not, then there would be about a 20 year gap between the 0th generation and the 1st generation !!! And this trend would continue (to a less extent) for a few generations !!!
what kind of effects would the cryosleep have on growing children ???
In fact, aside from a hand full of leaders and teachers, you would think that most of the people on the Unity would be between 20 and 35 or so !!!
Do you think they would send actual families to AC to help keep human social values and a semblance of family life ???
What do you guys think ???
Yo_Yo_Yo_Hey posted 11-28-98 01:02 PM ET
I doubt too many children would be on board the Unity. Children are just a burden. They eat a lot & take up space, without doing too many effective things for the new colony. The Unity only has limited space, I think they'd fill them mostly with males & female age 18-35(excluding some of the older leaders, & scientists), because they're the effectives who will get the early work done fast. After that gets done, well then children can start getting born.
Children might possibly get damaged in cryo-cells, because their bodies aren't as tough, & matured as the older ones.
They might send some families, but just a wife & husband family, no children. That way they could get early children into the colony, & keep up some of the family values. But people will get married on Chiron, so there's not much of a worry there.
Your faithful & hell-bent NIMadier general,
YYYH
DJ RRebel posted 11-29-98 11:39 AM ET
hmmmn .. It seems to me that with 1000 people about per faction, that they will have to do alot of "mingling" to help "stimulate" the gene pool !!! I'm not an expert on this though, so I could be wrong !!!
YYYH, but you realise that if there are no kids, that 19 years after arrival on the planet, there won't be anyone between the non-frozen ages of 18 and 36 !!! That's one huge gap if you ask me !!!
Nobody else has an opinion on this ???
WAS posted 11-30-98 02:08 AM ET
DJ this is a very interesting question. I would think there would have to be children of all ages, to help the continuation of human life. As to the affect of cyro-sleep on there bodies, I would imagine chidren would probably come through it better than the adults. If there had been more children as the crew aboard the Unity, then Ct. Garland would not have as much to worry about!
YYYH you said "the children might get damaged in the cyro-cells because their bodies aren't as tough & mature as the older ones." I have to disagree with you there. Kids bodies are tougher then adults hands down. Have you ever seen a kids head bounce on the concrete and all they get is a bump on their head. Or a kid in a neo-natal intensive care and they grow to be normal, healthy children. Children are extremly resilient, more so then adults.\
WAS

MikeH II posted 11-30-98 08:08 AM ET
We had a discussion about this before the old forum collapsed and I think the concensus was slow steady growth at the maximum sustainable rate at first to get a decent gene pool followed by controlled growth for survival. (Except those hive maniacs of course)
DJ RRebel posted 11-30-98 02:33 PM ET
WAS ... lol .. did your head bounce off the sidewalk when you were a kid ??? (That would explain alot ... lol)
The perspective I was thinking about more was growth though ... freezing ones body for 40 years can't be good while your body is still growing ... even if it is frozen !!!
What was the exact procedure for freezing anyways ???
Have any theories been developed as to how to thaw people ???
Back to the kids, YYYH, don't you think society would be messed up if there were a 20 year age gap at some point ???
BoomBoom posted 12-02-98 10:52 AM ET
I suppose the freezing would be at a temperature where no cellular functions are maintained (otherwise you would still grow old), I wonder how they stay alive though. As for thawing, I'd say little by little. Slowly get the cells going again. And supply with a lot of metabolites and all that.
As for the children part, I think they might have frozen foetuses somewhere. Or maybe artificial wombs as in Space:Above and Beyond. When they'd have grown to a reasonable size, freeze them down agian.
And the genepool, I'd assume they took sperm and egg samples with them to Chiron from earth. And you could always increase the mutational rate by exposing to genatalia to radiation. Hell, a forty yar spaceflight made them all sterile, wonder if the people at FIRAXIS have thought of that. Then just about the first advancement you'd have to get is cloning.
Heckler posted 12-02-98 11:44 AM ET
Nope they were frozen solid, no cumulative copying errors in the spermazoa, minimal radiation damage to tissue due to the cryogel (liquids absorb radation like a sponge), main problem I can see would be psychological for the males (anyone ever take a really cold shower? )
As for kids the problem freezing them would be the possibility of damage due to hormonal imbalance caused by the slow shutting down of bodily functions in preperation for freezing, though this is fairly minor the hormones and dosages nessecary for development are fairly well known now.
As to HOW they freeze them my best guess would be to slow the bodily functions (ala pre H&L machine heart transplants) and then supercool the body to avoid crystal construction (there are a couple chemicals you can introduce to stop crystal formation also, look into crickets in New Zeland.) If no crystals form then reheating is a smaller problem as you can reintroduce the chemicals that stopped crystal formation in the first place and then heat the body to normal tempertures. The big problem would be the brain as though the heart, lungs, and digestive systems are semi automatic, concious thought might not do well for complete shutdown over a period of 40 years (btw that time frame to AC means an (average) speed of .1 c anyone know how they dragged along enough fuel to keep it going?)
Heckler
p.s. Anyone having trouble waiting for AC go out and buy Fallout 2 you won't notice the real world for days.
DJ RRebel posted 12-02-98 12:14 PM ET
Exelent points guys !!!
I never thought about them bringing sperm and feotuses, you are right in assuming that should be automatic !!!
In fact, those would probably be the responsibility of Lal, so the PKs could have a very high growth rate like the Hive !!!
henriks posted 12-02-98 12:16 PM ET
Physiological problems, right :-)
One guy asked the other: "So you went for a swim. How cold was it?"
"Minus three inches."
BoomBoom posted 12-02-98 12:22 PM ET
Oops, Heckler you're right, that was a bit stupid of me. And me being a geneticist
I do wonder about the psychological FX of freezing though. If you're being frozen, you basically die, and the brain doesn't take kindly to a death experience.
The fuel thing is explained by launching the Unity from orbit (therefore you'd need about 70% (or something like that) less fuel to escape the earths gravitional field. Then combine with a Deep Space 1 style propulsion system (assuming it works ) and you should be able to get to .1 or .2c. Then you'd just need a large amount of fuel to brake.
And you're right about Fallout 2. i got it last weekend, and when i'm at work i'm planning what I am going to do with my character. (I accidentally became a slaver, and now people don't like me)
The Thomas A Stobie posted 12-02-98 02:34 PM ET
I would like to point out that if I was planning a distant colony, I would take stable families, adults and children, to help produce a stable colony.
So I would expect some children to have been frozen with the colonist. Probably not exceeding 1/3 the total number of colonists.
Imran Siddiqui posted 12-02-98 05:06 PM ET
Boom Boom, you became a slaver!! tsk-tsk. Oh well, I'm a champion of good. A rep of 522. I like being a good guy. Fallout 2 is a great game.
Imran Siddiqui
Patriot
Tom posted 12-02-98 06:21 PM ET
OK, Earth is falling apart all around you.
Riots are breaking out in every major city
all over the globe. A nuclear World War III
seems to be a very real possibility.
Wouldn't you want to get your kids to safety?
Say, bribe some UN officials to hide them in
a cryocell in Cargo Bay 99?
I LOVE BIG BRO
PAX!
DJ RRebel posted 12-03-98 05:19 AM ET
Bribe them with what ???
Money is irrelevant at armegedon !!!
Could someone give me a description of Fallout2 ??
I haven;'t seen it yet !!!
DJ RRebel posted 12-07-98 06:34 PM ET
I can't beleave you people !!!
This is a good on-topic thread !!!
To the people who complain that all the threads are off-topic >>> POST HERE !!!!
Mortis posted 12-07-98 07:36 PM ET
I think that kids would be just too big a burden, sepecialy when setting up a colony.
I think that there will be a bigger gap, they need some time to get settled in, they need to be thinking about survival, rather then some little kid saying their board.
The Thomas A Stobie posted 12-07-98 07:43 PM ET
I would expect the majority of children to be 6 and above, capable of performing some work tasks. No one would escape work. Children would be given time to go to school and study, but they would also have their work assignments 2-4 hours per day.
DHE_X2 posted 12-07-98 07:52 PM ET
Basically, kids could be put to work to do semi usefull tasks as early as ten, though they wouldn't be able to do anything very usefull until they are fifteen. It would probably take 25 years fir a scientist to really start cranking stuff out. I believe that they would HAVE to take sperm samples in order to diversify the genepool and impregnate the women, simply to produce enough humans(doesn't sound right, humans shouldn't be produced) to keep the colony going. Remember, the birth rate must be higher than the mortality rate for a colony to survive, and mortality rates on chiron are going to be pretty damn high.
Octopus posted 12-07-98 10:29 PM ET
I'm not so sure that bringing kids along would be a good idea. Before people reach adulthood you can rarely get a good feel for what jobs they are good at (look at the number of people who switch majors in college). If there are only 10,000 slots on the Unity, it seems to me to be a dubious proposition to fill some of those slots with people who may or may not be helpful in the key first few years after planetfall.
osric posted 12-07-98 11:26 PM ET
There was talk before the collapse about cloning solving the growth problem. That would meet well with some of the factions and really tick some of them off.
I agree that the family unit would be benificial to the colony, but if survival of the species is important, they'd only take just enough men (or samples thereof) to ensure diversity.
Shining1 posted 12-07-98 11:40 PM ET
With only about 1000 people per faction to start with, it would seem that selective breeding (i.e arranged marriage, etc) is an essential part of A.C culture, merely in order to avoid damage to the wider gene pool.
Some biologists estimated that the minimum number of individuals reqiured to build a sustainable colony is around 250; lower numbers making the entire population vunerable to disease or similar environmental threats. 1000 is not hughly greater than this.
Is this one of the possible Idealistic/Ruthless options available?
Vanilja posted 12-08-98 08:02 PM ET
Hi...started to post this yesterday, but found out I'd been bumped off (have been away from my computer for a while!). Anyway...have to say I don't think children were on Unity. Personally, I get the feeling children were among the first massive waves of casualities during the wars, famines, etc. on Earth.
My primary reason, however, is that this is an adult mission...space was at a severe premium on the ship...only experienced, diverse adults would have been the allowed passengers. (Children's biological systems are really not that strong...they are far more fragile biologically than adults).
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Author	Topic: Children on Unity ???
DJ RRebel	posted 11-28-98 10:31 AM ET I'm sure you guys dicused this in the old forum, but I was curious ... Would there be children on the Unity ??? Think about it, if not, then there would be about a 20 year gap between the 0th generation and the 1st generation !!! And this trend would continue (to a less extent) for a few generations !!! what kind of effects would the cryosleep have on growing children ??? In fact, aside from a hand full of leaders and teachers, you would think that most of the people on the Unity would be between 20 and 35 or so !!! Do you think they would send actual families to AC to help keep human social values and a semblance of family life ??? What do you guys think ???
Yo_Yo_Yo_Hey	posted 11-28-98 01:02 PM ET I doubt too many children would be on board the Unity. Children are just a burden. They eat a lot & take up space, without doing too many effective things for the new colony. The Unity only has limited space, I think they'd fill them mostly with males & female age 18-35(excluding some of the older leaders, & scientists), because they're the effectives who will get the early work done fast. After that gets done, well then children can start getting born. Children might possibly get damaged in cryo-cells, because their bodies aren't as tough, & matured as the older ones. They might send some families, but just a wife & husband family, no children. That way they could get early children into the colony, & keep up some of the family values. But people will get married on Chiron, so there's not much of a worry there. Your faithful & hell-bent NIMadier general, YYYH
DJ RRebel	posted 11-29-98 11:39 AM ET hmmmn .. It seems to me that with 1000 people about per faction, that they will have to do alot of "mingling" to help "stimulate" the gene pool !!! I'm not an expert on this though, so I could be wrong !!! YYYH, but you realise that if there are no kids, that 19 years after arrival on the planet, there won't be anyone between the non-frozen ages of 18 and 36 !!! That's one huge gap if you ask me !!! Nobody else has an opinion on this ???
WAS	posted 11-30-98 02:08 AM ET DJ this is a very interesting question. I would think there would have to be children of all ages, to help the continuation of human life. As to the affect of cyro-sleep on there bodies, I would imagine chidren would probably come through it better than the adults. If there had been more children as the crew aboard the Unity, then Ct. Garland would not have as much to worry about! YYYH you said "the children might get damaged in the cyro-cells because their bodies aren't as tough & mature as the older ones." I have to disagree with you there. Kids bodies are tougher then adults hands down. Have you ever seen a kids head bounce on the concrete and all they get is a bump on their head. Or a kid in a neo-natal intensive care and they grow to be normal, healthy children. Children are extremly resilient, more so then adults.\ WAS
MikeH II	posted 11-30-98 08:08 AM ET We had a discussion about this before the old forum collapsed and I think the concensus was slow steady growth at the maximum sustainable rate at first to get a decent gene pool followed by controlled growth for survival. (Except those hive maniacs of course)
DJ RRebel	posted 11-30-98 02:33 PM ET WAS ... lol .. did your head bounce off the sidewalk when you were a kid ??? (That would explain alot ... lol) The perspective I was thinking about more was growth though ... freezing ones body for 40 years can't be good while your body is still growing ... even if it is frozen !!! What was the exact procedure for freezing anyways ??? Have any theories been developed as to how to thaw people ??? Back to the kids, YYYH, don't you think society would be messed up if there were a 20 year age gap at some point ???
BoomBoom	posted 12-02-98 10:52 AM ET I suppose the freezing would be at a temperature where no cellular functions are maintained (otherwise you would still grow old), I wonder how they stay alive though. As for thawing, I'd say little by little. Slowly get the cells going again. And supply with a lot of metabolites and all that. As for the children part, I think they might have frozen foetuses somewhere. Or maybe artificial wombs as in Space:Above and Beyond. When they'd have grown to a reasonable size, freeze them down agian. And the genepool, I'd assume they took sperm and egg samples with them to Chiron from earth. And you could always increase the mutational rate by exposing to genatalia to radiation. Hell, a forty yar spaceflight made them all sterile, wonder if the people at FIRAXIS have thought of that. Then just about the first advancement you'd have to get is cloning.
Heckler	posted 12-02-98 11:44 AM ET Nope they were frozen solid, no cumulative copying errors in the spermazoa, minimal radiation damage to tissue due to the cryogel (liquids absorb radation like a sponge), main problem I can see would be psychological for the males (anyone ever take a really cold shower? ) As for kids the problem freezing them would be the possibility of damage due to hormonal imbalance caused by the slow shutting down of bodily functions in preperation for freezing, though this is fairly minor the hormones and dosages nessecary for development are fairly well known now. As to HOW they freeze them my best guess would be to slow the bodily functions (ala pre H&L machine heart transplants) and then supercool the body to avoid crystal construction (there are a couple chemicals you can introduce to stop crystal formation also, look into crickets in New Zeland.) If no crystals form then reheating is a smaller problem as you can reintroduce the chemicals that stopped crystal formation in the first place and then heat the body to normal tempertures. The big problem would be the brain as though the heart, lungs, and digestive systems are semi automatic, concious thought might not do well for complete shutdown over a period of 40 years (btw that time frame to AC means an (average) speed of .1 c anyone know how they dragged along enough fuel to keep it going?) Heckler p.s. Anyone having trouble waiting for AC go out and buy Fallout 2 you won't notice the real world for days.
DJ RRebel	posted 12-02-98 12:14 PM ET Exelent points guys !!! I never thought about them bringing sperm and feotuses, you are right in assuming that should be automatic !!! In fact, those would probably be the responsibility of Lal, so the PKs could have a very high growth rate like the Hive !!!
henriks	posted 12-02-98 12:16 PM ET Physiological problems, right :-) One guy asked the other: "So you went for a swim. How cold was it?" "Minus three inches."
BoomBoom	posted 12-02-98 12:22 PM ET Oops, Heckler you're right, that was a bit stupid of me. And me being a geneticist I do wonder about the psychological FX of freezing though. If you're being frozen, you basically die, and the brain doesn't take kindly to a death experience. The fuel thing is explained by launching the Unity from orbit (therefore you'd need about 70% (or something like that) less fuel to escape the earths gravitional field. Then combine with a Deep Space 1 style propulsion system (assuming it works ) and you should be able to get to .1 or .2c. Then you'd just need a large amount of fuel to brake. And you're right about Fallout 2. i got it last weekend, and when i'm at work i'm planning what I am going to do with my character. (I accidentally became a slaver, and now people don't like me)
The Thomas A Stobie	posted 12-02-98 02:34 PM ET I would like to point out that if I was planning a distant colony, I would take stable families, adults and children, to help produce a stable colony. So I would expect some children to have been frozen with the colonist. Probably not exceeding 1/3 the total number of colonists.
Imran Siddiqui	posted 12-02-98 05:06 PM ET Boom Boom, you became a slaver!! tsk-tsk. Oh well, I'm a champion of good. A rep of 522. I like being a good guy. Fallout 2 is a great game. Imran Siddiqui Patriot
Tom	posted 12-02-98 06:21 PM ET OK, Earth is falling apart all around you. Riots are breaking out in every major city all over the globe. A nuclear World War III seems to be a very real possibility. Wouldn't you want to get your kids to safety? Say, bribe some UN officials to hide them in a cryocell in Cargo Bay 99? I LOVE BIG BRO PAX!
DJ RRebel	posted 12-03-98 05:19 AM ET Bribe them with what ??? Money is irrelevant at armegedon !!! Could someone give me a description of Fallout2 ?? I haven;'t seen it yet !!!
DJ RRebel	posted 12-07-98 06:34 PM ET I can't beleave you people !!! This is a good on-topic thread !!! To the people who complain that all the threads are off-topic >>> POST HERE !!!!
Mortis	posted 12-07-98 07:36 PM ET I think that kids would be just too big a burden, sepecialy when setting up a colony. I think that there will be a bigger gap, they need some time to get settled in, they need to be thinking about survival, rather then some little kid saying their board.
The Thomas A Stobie	posted 12-07-98 07:43 PM ET I would expect the majority of children to be 6 and above, capable of performing some work tasks. No one would escape work. Children would be given time to go to school and study, but they would also have their work assignments 2-4 hours per day.
DHE_X2	posted 12-07-98 07:52 PM ET Basically, kids could be put to work to do semi usefull tasks as early as ten, though they wouldn't be able to do anything very usefull until they are fifteen. It would probably take 25 years fir a scientist to really start cranking stuff out. I believe that they would HAVE to take sperm samples in order to diversify the genepool and impregnate the women, simply to produce enough humans(doesn't sound right, humans shouldn't be produced) to keep the colony going. Remember, the birth rate must be higher than the mortality rate for a colony to survive, and mortality rates on chiron are going to be pretty damn high.
Octopus	posted 12-07-98 10:29 PM ET I'm not so sure that bringing kids along would be a good idea. Before people reach adulthood you can rarely get a good feel for what jobs they are good at (look at the number of people who switch majors in college). If there are only 10,000 slots on the Unity, it seems to me to be a dubious proposition to fill some of those slots with people who may or may not be helpful in the key first few years after planetfall.
osric	posted 12-07-98 11:26 PM ET There was talk before the collapse about cloning solving the growth problem. That would meet well with some of the factions and really tick some of them off. I agree that the family unit would be benificial to the colony, but if survival of the species is important, they'd only take just enough men (or samples thereof) to ensure diversity.
Shining1	posted 12-07-98 11:40 PM ET With only about 1000 people per faction to start with, it would seem that selective breeding (i.e arranged marriage, etc) is an essential part of A.C culture, merely in order to avoid damage to the wider gene pool. Some biologists estimated that the minimum number of individuals reqiured to build a sustainable colony is around 250; lower numbers making the entire population vunerable to disease or similar environmental threats. 1000 is not hughly greater than this. Is this one of the possible Idealistic/Ruthless options available?
Vanilja	posted 12-08-98 08:02 PM ET Hi...started to post this yesterday, but found out I'd been bumped off (have been away from my computer for a while!). Anyway...have to say I don't think children were on Unity. Personally, I get the feeling children were among the first massive waves of casualities during the wars, famines, etc. on Earth. My primary reason, however, is that this is an adult mission...space was at a severe premium on the ship...only experienced, diverse adults would have been the allowed passengers. (Children's biological systems are really not that strong...they are far more fragile biologically than adults).