[Woolie Wool]

You saying Earth doesn't have a fleet? With all it's industry and resources?
If only 1 fighter made it trough and took a shot - goodbye dome city.

No, that would be a war crime. You do NOT attack civilian populations. The general trend in history has been towards more protection of civilians. What makes you think Earth would bomb a habitat and murder thousands of people?

Granted, your'e right that Earth is fragmented, so that complicated things... But I still doubt you can synthesize food..
That would mean direct energy->matter conversion which is WAAAAY over FS2 tech.

Uh, what energy to matter conversion? You could alter organic compounds into forms that people can eat. This process is how we make plastics, you know--by stringing together organic compounds into polymers.

[Snail]

Ever thought the dome cities may be made out of something other than glass? Say, Molybdenum or Tungsten Carbide?

[Woolie Wool]

Well, neither of those two materials would allow sunlight in, but the Terrans and Vasudans seem to have developed very strong transparent materials as shooting windows on a Fenris doesn't immediately blow them out.

[Snail]

Don't need sunlight. Besides, sunlight would be far too hot in some instances, like on the Moon or on Mars where there's no atmosphere to stop the UV rays and whatever.

These domes would be much more sturdy than what TrashMan thinks.

[TrashMan]

No, that would be a war crime. You do NOT attack civilian populations. The general trend in history has been towards more protection of civilians. What makes you think Earth would bomb a habitat and murder thousands of people?

You don't have the shoot the city..you cna shoot the dome that hold the manufacturing plants...or organics farms. Force them to surrender by destroying their food and resources...

Uh, what energy to matter conversion? You could alter organic compounds into forms that people can eat. This process is how we make plastics, you know--by stringing together organic compounds into polymers.

Still you'd first need a whole LOT of organic materials... Doubt that would be enough ot feed them all...especialyl it wouldn't be enough to keep htem happy when they have to eat some tastless paste while ppl on Earth eat REAL food.

Don't need sunlight. Besides, sunlight would be far too hot in some instances, like on the Moon or on Mars where there's no atmosphere to stop the UV rays and whatever.

These domes would be much more sturdy than what TrashMan thinks.

Maby...but still much more vulnerable than any city or structure on Earth. Even a small crack can depressurize the whole thing.

[Woolie Wool]

No, that would be a war crime. You do NOT attack civilian populations. The general trend in history has been towards more protection of civilians. What makes you think Earth would bomb a habitat and murder thousands of people?

You don't have the shoot the city..you cna shoot the dome that hold the manufacturing plants...or organics farms. Force them to surrender by destroying their food and resources...

Mix different purposes together to make it impossible to launch strikes without causing unacceptable civilian casualties, and intercept the Earth fleets before they reach your cities. The United States has been defeated by militarily far weaker powers like Vietnam because those powers made the political consequences of continuing the war not worth it.

Still you'd first need a whole LOT of organic materials... Doubt that would be enough ot feed them all...especialyl it wouldn't be enough to keep htem happy when they have to eat some tastless paste while ppl on Earth eat REAL food.

Astronauts can tolerate nasty preprepared food. People can tolerate many things if there are no alternatives. What are you going to do, starve? Commit treason?

Maby...but still much more vulnerable than any city or structure on Earth. Even a small crack can depressurize the whole thing.

An armored dome would be far, far less vulnerable than an Earth city, as traditional cities are composed of unarmored buildings while the theoretical armored dome would be built to withstand bombardment, like ships are. The ships would have to batter on these armored domes while taking fire from the colonial fleet, orbital weapons platforms, surface-to-space missiles, bombers, etc. Also, air would leak out of a tiny crack in such a large space relatively slowly, giving them time to patch the dome before all the air gets out.

[Mars]

Some of the colonies have more access to raw hydrogen... without expending their water supply.

[Eishtmo]

Colonies on Mars and the moons of Jupiter and elsewhere will most likely HAVE to be self-sustaining.  Shipping food from Earth to Mars could take as little as 6-9 months or as long as a couple of years (before the invention of subspace flight, so hang on a second).  In the end, these colonies would develop their own ways of production of materials and food.  The moon is more of an issues since it is right next door, but why shouldn't it use the advances on the other colonies to make itself self-subistant?

So not only would these colonies develop reasonably independent economies, but also independent political systems.  As Earth tries to enforce it's dominance over these colonies, they basically tell the Earthers to bug off, and the revolutions start.  Subspace brings everyone much closer, so the fighting gets more intense.  The Unification War is the final result.

[Flaser]

The greatest advantage of the asteroids and the Jupiter belt is, they aren't sitting at the bottom of a gravity well - taking stuff up into orbit takes a lot of resources.

IMHO it's more likely that stuff will be imported from the belts, as it virtually doesn't need any fuel - you just nudge them in the direction of Earth and let gravity of Sol take care of the rest.

...and as Eisthmo said: they HAVE to be self sufficient, as exporting things out there takes a lot of money.
Micro electronics, nanotechnology, genetic material, information - probably done.
Raw materials, heavy machinery? Not likely.

[TrashMan]

The greatest advantage of the asteroids and the Jupiter belt is, they aren't sitting at the bottom of a gravity well - taking stuff up into orbit takes a lot of resources.

IMHO it's more likely that stuff will be imported from the belts, as it virtually doesn't need any fuel - you just nudge them in the direction of Earth and let gravity of Sol take care of the rest.

...and as Eisthmo said: they HAVE to be self sufficient, as exporting things out there takes a lot of money.
Micro electronics, nanotechnology, genetic material, information - probably done.
Raw materials, heavy machinery? Not likely.

It takes a lot of money NOW...but we're talking about a future where making colonies and sending MILLIONS of people in space if very common, so in comparison the price of transporting other stuff should be low too.

Allright, to you having fully self-sustaining colonies this early in FS universe and on non-terrestrial planets sounds perfectly belivable? Fine...
To me it sound like a fairy tale.

But this discussion ir really useless nayway....better to waste energy on making the campaign than replaying here

[Snail]

Allright, to you having fully self-sustaining colonies this early in FS universe and on non-terrestrial planets sounds perfectly belivable? Fine...
To me it sound like a fairy tale.

Why?

[Eishtmo]

I'd like to know as well. 

[Hades]

Thirded.

[Topgun]

look at the ad on this topic *lol'els*.
and no, they will not be self sustaining.
EDIT: I got sugerdaddy.com

[Polpolion]

Where do you grow food on Mars and Jupiter?

Where do you do anything on Jupiter?

[Hades]

Jupiter is a Gas Giant.Made of ****ing gas.It cannot be colinized.

[Admiral Nelson]

Where do you grow food on Mars and Jupiter?

Where do you do anything on Jupiter?

Nobody remembers the palm tree filled floating continent on Jupiter?

[TrashMan]

Why?

Becouse so many people (I belive it's said that the population on colonies is the same or bigger than opulation on Earth) require MASSIVE ammounts of food. Abslutely massive!
It's hard to produce that much food even on Earth and its HUGE farms..let alone in some bio-dome on Mars or Pluto...

[Snail]

Hmmm... True...

[Woolie Wool]

Where do you grow food on Mars and Jupiter?

Where do you do anything on Jupiter?

You do things on its moons, it has 18 of the damn things, some of which are the size of Mars.

Why?

Becouse so many people (I belive it's said that the population on colonies is the same or bigger than opulation on Earth) require MASSIVE ammounts of food. Abslutely massive!
It's hard to produce that much food even on Earth and its HUGE farms..let alone in some bio-dome on Mars or Pluto...

People need massive amounts of the foods we find in supermarkets. You could synthesize MRE-type food and feed people with several times less volume of food, because it has far more calorie density. The average soldier eats over 3,000 calories a day. Do you think he has a great big feast to get those calories? No, he eats food out of little MRE packets that contain an obscene amount of nutrients and energy.