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What kind of gear does a new Colony need to be successful?

Kamen Rider Blade

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Assuming you and a group of Colonists want to start a new "Colony" on a suit-able M-Class Planet that is Previously Un-Inhabited according to all StarFleet scans.

Said Planet was outside of UFP Territorial space, but there were no known dangers nearby at the time.

What do you need to bring to make a successful thriving Colony?

Any ideas?

I know this is a fairly broad topic, but I'd like some input.

All equipment should be coming from Vintage Late 24th century to Early 25th century UFP level tech.
 
Force fields and a weather station.
Definitely, you don't want random Wild Life to come wrecking your Settlement along with any sort of Catastrophic Weather Events or Attacks from Off-Planet Random Bandits / Alien Invaders.

A Weather Station would be nice with a Local Satellite Cluster watching the entire planet and learning it's Weather Pattern and starting to catalog historical Weather Data for you to locally process.

With 24th century tech, that should be easy enough to setup.


Industrial Replicators and a sustainable energy source.
You'd probably need Androids and/or people to sustain the processing of local raw material into it's base elements to feed the Industrial Replicators.
Remember, making raw base elements itself is incredibly energy intensive vs local sourcing existing elements and breaking them all down to base feed-stock.
That could potentially be a giant industry in itself.

As for local sustainable energy source, various forms of Nuclear Fission & Fusion would be easy enough to setup, just getting the Green Energy to help process the raw fuel to help the main Reactors for the BaseLine energy source for the Power Grid would be important.
 
Buildings designed to look like mid-twentieth Century American farmhouses.

One subspace radio, but not necessarily anyone who knows how to fix it.

Livestock and crop starters. You do want biological resources available in case replicators go on the blink.


--Alex
 
It'd be good to have a few redshirts available, for security and sacrificial purposes. :angel:
 
One of the things that you bring with you beyond the "Industrial Replicator" is several "Pre-Fab" buildings that are ready to deploy once you pick your colonization site and create a relatively large open flat secure (recently installed) concrete base to start the building of cities and setup the initial "Base of Operations".

I was thinking of a ship like the fan designed "Insignia-class" where the Saucer Modules can be Pre-Loaded with whatever the colonists needed and deployed Planet-Side via Anti-Grav units and parked on the surface.

There could be 9x 30° Saucer Slices that can deploy & detach from the parent ship down to the planet on a "Permanent Basis".

Each Saucer Slice has 2x side- Pop-Out structures, similar to RV Pop-Outs, so that the internal volume would effectively double from 30° to 58° wide structure.

Each Saucer Slice building would be on deployable landing jacks that are at least one-floor above ground with a deployed simple 'Cylinder Structure Access Base' that contains a Spiral Stair-case / Turbo-Lift on the ground to get colonists up to their temporary facilities for shelter or projects while they establish a new city from the ground up on the new Colony Planet.

What do you think of the idea of having Deployable "Pre-Fab" buildings ready to go to help speed up Colonists building Civilization & Cities from the ground up on new Planets?

Instead of having to live in tents, they can have "Pre-Fab" Quarters setup, ready to go while they plan out the building of their new civilization & cities / towns.
 
Just based on what we've seen, I'd bring:

Prefab buildings. maybe just small huts that you can beam down, after which you can set about building homes and the structures from more traditional materials. No sense in wasting replicator energy when you can hew logs with a hand phaser and build some pretty decent wood frame buildings lickety split!

Probably something like the Argo vehicle, and some shuttles or shuttle pods. You'd want them for in atmosphere and short range space transport, and doing things like lifting stuff helicopter style (see USS Voyager swapping out warp coils here).

Livestock & crops. For some reason so many colonists are farmers, possibly because the Earth Utopia isn't conducive to agriculture's harsh realities? But probably a good idea for energy conservation, and maybe even mental health reasons. What else is there to do on the frontier but farm?

Obviously the usual compliment of phasers, tricorders, and communicators would be insanely useful. Although I might opt for older, simpler to maintain options in this regard. Probably you'd just require settlers to bring their own and leave the choice up to them.

A shield for the colony would also be good, for both defense and environmental control. Although really I think you'd prefer to go someplace Earth like if you can help it (makes filming easier ;)). Ideally the shield doesn't need to be up all the time, just when danger is near (saves on energy that way).

Everything else I think depends on the type of colony you are setting up, with different sorts you would need different equipment, and equally how far out on the frontier matter too, although I'd assume for plot reasons were are talking the far frontier where you've got minimal Federation support. I feel like new colonies attract the sort of people who want to rough it, such that even though by the 25th century tech is starting to border on magic, they'd still want to do things simply and in a slightly old fashioned way.

Incidentally, I suspect people who have been flung forward in time would actually be ideal settlers. By virtue of not being born in the 24th century they would be able to live comfortably without a lot of the things 24th century people feel they need, and a sort of freer and less developed society would not only need their talents but be more tolerant of their essentricities. To most 24th century people we'd probably seem like dumb, bigoted hicks from the stupid ages before they invented taste, but we already live with resource scarcity that would bring the typical Federation citizen to their knees (or tentacles). That 1980s stock broker guy might not fit well in 24th century society, but out on the frontier where resources are scarce and you need to trade with other species, he'd make a great negotiator. He's probably wind up being the Governor eventually, and stinking rich to boot!

I guess my point is that you'd also really need to bring the right people along with you to make a colony. And that those people probably are quite different from Starfleet, or civilian scientists, or other utopia dwellers we often see on Earth or at Star Bases and the like. You'd want a bunch of hardy, brave, and like minded people, much like many of the settlers that we see in the show. And you'd probably also get a bunch of anti-social, rough around the edges types like the Maquis too. In any case, it's clear that the success of a colony early on depends on picking good settlers almost more than anything else.
 
The real problem is the initial exploration of said planet. As time goes on, the level of competence for doing the initial exploration will rise.

Just remember one thing: it means nothing.

The real question what will eat you?

Bacteria? Yes. The local wildlife, yes. The plant life? Maybe.

So what does this add up to? Test articles. Volunteer groups, small hamlets scattered around to see just what happens to the test articles. Then after ten years or so larger groups expand the number of people allowed on the planet.


Colonists who aren't truly paranoid are going to end up dead, or worse.

This is where a practical Tricorder comes in handy. Something with enough brains to get you out of trouble.
 
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