[TML] 20mm cannons and bulky aliens

[Brad Murray]

On Jan 23, 2008 1:30 PM, Stuart Frew <stuart at frew.net.nz> wrote:
> They also have cultural and social values which may prevent them doing
> this.
> Since they are fairly xenophobic, iirc, then it may be a point of pride that
> they are so different from the despicable meat eaters.

Well, cultural and social values don't prevent anything -- those are
rarely more durable than a generation if there's selection pressure
against it.  That pressure could be economic or military.  I mean, if
starfaring is economically useful and if a company can get a
three-fold efficiency improvement on moving cargo by violating a
taboo, you can bet they are going to dominate the market.

> Also following your argument the human space ships would have no bunk rooms,
> kitchens etc. Probably not even a bridge.
> Just put every one in something the size of a coffin with a control panel
> with food piped in and shite piped out and drug them up so they don't care.

If the selection pressure is there to get those last few cubic meters
out of a ship, I expect that that is what the result would be.  These
things are trade-offs though -- you can use technology to improve
efficiency, but technology costs money too.  But going from 2x3m dual
occupancy staterooms to 20x30m staterooms is not just a blip in
efficiency, whereas humans going from 2x3m to 2x1m is on any ship of
interesting size.

If we insist on immutably claustrophic K'kree then it seems likely
that their point-of-efficiency for starship size will be much larger
than humans and their vessels will feature greater automation in order
to reduce crew sizes.  That is, if a 600dton K'kree vessel is only
capable of hauling the same amount as a 200dton human vessel, then the
point at which K'kree vessels become economically viable might be at
more than 10 times that size.

-- 
Brad Murray (halfjack)