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Large-Scale Interplanetary Evacuations, or, Dan Wastes a Sunday Afternoon
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by MinutiaeMan: [QB] Most of us probably are already familiar with the evacuation capabilities of the [i]Galaxy[/i]-class starship, thanks to the TNG:TM's excellent and detailed specs on that subject. (For those not in the know: 15,000 people total, up to 1,250 people per hour, using all transporters and shuttlecraft.) But as I was browsing one site about older TOS-era fandom ships this afternoon, I came across this very strange reference. Because it's from the description of the [i]Mann[/i] class, I assume that it's a quote from the "Spaceflight Chronology." [QUOTE]"...the largest spacelift in Federation history, where the over ten million inhabitants of Bayard's Planet were successfully evacuated."[/QUOTE]What the heck? How could this kind of massive migration be possible, even in a not-quite-urgent time scale (say, a month before the planet's core completely disintegrates or whatever)? Even if there were a suitable Class-M planet only 5 light-years away (an optimistic assumption under some circumstances), that seems like a pretty massive undertaking! If we started with a [i]Galaxy[/i]-class starship as a baseline, here's what we'd get: [list] [*]1.2 days, one-way travel at Warp 9 (TNG scale) over 5 light-years [*]12 hours to bring evacuees aboard, at 1,250 people per hour and 15,000 person limit [*]7.14 hours to deposit evacuees on receiving planet, at 2,100 people per hour (using one-way ship evacuation transporters at an additional 850 people per hour [/list] That gives us a total round-trip figure of 3.2 days, for a single [i]Galaxy[/i]-class starship. But... what about the TOS era? Based on what we've seen in TOS, they required more people to run a smaller-sized ship. And based on FJ's deck plans ([URL=http://www.originaltrek.com/tech/techarchive.htm]conveniently available online[/URL]), there may not be as much space that can be set aside for evacuees. I'm going to go with the (IMO generous) assumption that a starship in Kirk's time could evacuate up to 7 times its crew complement (as opposed to the [i]Galaxy[/i]'s 15). That means that a [i]Constitution[/i]-class starship could evacuate up to 3,010 people per trip. Let's go back to those statistics I gave earlier, shall we? [list] [*]3.6 days, one-way travel at Warp 8 (TOS scale) over 5 light-years [*]1.9 hours to bring evacuees aboard, at 1,560 people per hour and 3,010 person limit ** [*]Less than one hour to deposit evacuees on receiving planet (using one-way ship evacuation transporters at an additional 3,960 people per hour [/list] **Assumptions:[list] [*]The ship's four 6-pad personnel transporters can handle one transport load every minute, for a total of 1,440 people per hour. [*]The ship's 6 shuttlecraft can each carry an overload of 10 people at a time, making a round trip in 30 minutes, for a total of 120 people per hour. [*]The three 22-person one-way evacuation transporters can handle a load every minute, for a total of 3,960 people per hour. [/list] That gives us a round-trip figure of approximately 3.75 days for a single [i]Constitution[/i]-class starship. But, considering the [i]Constitution[/i]'s much lower evac capacity, it would take 5 trips to match a [i]Galaxy[/i]'s capabilities. Then I remembered FJ's [i]Ptolemy[/i]-class tug with the double passenger pods. In that configuration, it would have an evac capacity of 8,540 people (3,500 in each pod, and 1,540 in the [i]Ptolemy[/i] itself), and they could move an additional 4,320 people per hour with each pod's six independent personnel transporters. That would require 1.35 hours to beam everyone up (no shuttlecraft available), and again less than an hour to beam everyone down (since the evac transporters can again be employed, and there's access between each of the pods and the tug). So, a [i]Ptolemy[/i] so configured would only require 2 round trips to match a [i]Galaxy[/i]'s capabilities. With the same round-trip figure of 3.75 days (assuming that a [i]Ptolemy[/i] can maintain Warp 8 with two overloaded transport containers, but just accept that for the moment) would mean 7.5 days to move 17,080 people. Now, if we're moving a total of 10 million people, that will [b]still[/b] require a total of 589 separate runs, back and forth to move everyone! Because I have nothing else to do on this lazy Sunday afternoon, I'm going to work out the various combinations of ships: [b]Time Required to Evacuate 10 Milllion People[/b]<pre style="font-family: Monaco, monospace; font-size: 0.8em;">Ships # Runs Total Days 1 589 2209 d (6.05 y) 2 294.5 1104 d (3.02 y) 3 196.33 736.25 d (2.02 y) 4 147.5 552.2 d (1.51 y) 5 117.8 441.75 d (1.21 y) 6 98.17 368 d (1.01 y) 7 84.14 315 d (10.5 mo) 8 73.625 276 d (9.20 mo) 9 65.44 245 d (8.17 mo) 10 58.9 221 d (7.36 mo)</pre>Now, I think we can all agree that having the [i]Ptolemy[/i]s perform the evacuation may be extremely unlikely under certain circumstances. And that doesn't even account for the fact that this 10-million-person evacuation probably took place in the 2210's or so, almost fifty years before the [i]Ptolemy[/i] came into service. Therefore, even with a whole raftload of ships, even if they had similar evacuation capacities and warp speed capabilities, it would take an incredibly long time to complete that evacuation! Does anyone have any more about this "Bayard's Planet" incident they were talking about? I ran a quick search on Google, and the only reference I found was in Alex Rosenzweig's non-canon timeline, which gives a date of 2197 and attributes the reason for evacuation to a supernova shockwave ([URL=http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992311]a real-life threat[/URL]), which certainly could give the ships sufficient time to evacuate. But, conversely, the ships would need to take the evacuees a LOT farther away to escape the supernova's shockwave. (Confusingly, that timeline also says that the Zakdorn had to evacuate their [b]homeworld[/b], which had to have had a MUCH bigger population than just ten million! Yeesh, that's why I'm not fond of most fandom works... except the ones I like, of course. ;) ) At any rate, this seems like a case of sci-fi hyperbole taken to an illogical extreme. Or am I just screwing up my calculations? Alternative opinions would be appreciated. [/QB][/QUOTE]
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