IMAX L5 First City In Spase.

--- In spacesettlers, "levi1_ca" wrote:

> In figuring out the numbers game we can no go with theory as other
> forces apply to rate of growth - you only need one city if that is
> all you have population for - I could build a house every few months
> but what would be the purpose? The main function of the first city
> is to make enough money to ensure that people want to come up - then
> you make your competition.

Well, I suggested in my review (which still has not shown up at IMDb)
that politics or water scarcity or whatever could make the doubling
time five years instead of three. But really, even if we double it to
six, that means that in thirty years there should be thirty-two
cities. Hells bells, even with a doubling time of TEN years, you
should have eight of them.

You are absolutely right in that the job of the First City in Space is
to make enough money to attract additional capital, including more
settlers. But if it take THIRTY YEARS to do that, and if the First
City in Space sits around for THIRTY YEARS before the Second City in
Space is finally built, then this would suggest that the First City in
Space has been something of a failure for, well, for THIRTY YEARS.

You mention that you could build a house every few months but why
should you. You, as an individual person, almost certainly should
not. There would be, as you suggest, no purpose to that. But if you
run a house-building company, you probably finish several houses a
*day,* with several others being started each day. You may well have
dozens of houses in various stages of construction at any given time.