SETI again

On Jul 22, 2006, at 9:53 AM, Douglas May wrote:

> If the energy supply is disrupted,
> the colony breaks down through entropy into a less energetic state.
> Not necessarily all the way back down to the stone age, but to
> whatever state the available energy supply can maintain.

I guess I could pose a question here:

If a colony with perhaps a few thousand people in a hostile solar
system were forced to revert to a lower energy state (lower
technology state), how difficult would it be with their reduced
technology/ infrastructure and their severe labor shortage to re-
ignite themselves into a type II civ? Would they prove incapable of
even surviving without all their type II technology? Will the
complexity of an interstellar spacecraft doom any travelers that
can't maintain their energy/tech level? Should we plan on designing
interstellar spacecraft with contingency plans in case future
generations become more primitive than the initial travelers?

Presumably, these things won't be as big an issue for a type III civ,
but so far we have no evidence for any type III civs, which you would
think we would, since they would have to use massive amounts of
energy. Either they don't exist (in this galaxy), they are very good
at cloaking their energy fingerprints, we're not looking right, or
they've only been type III a few thousand years. At present we don't
know if type III civs are even possible. In fact, we don't even know
if a type I civ is possible since the only civ we know (us) is not
quite there yet.

Like I said before: There's plenty of room in this solar system.
Where can I buy a ticket to Saturn? Nowhere. Dang! Guess I'll build
my own spaceship. Is the Saturn-Titan L1 within Saturn's radiation belt?

doug