Realistic population of the colony?

What would be the realistic size of a 50 years old colony? Earth like planet, but a bit colder

Would be the first colony in another star system. It would then lose contact with the earth.

How big is the initial wave of settlers? Is it known and planned around that there will be psoradic if any contact with the mother planet, or were they cut off by some unforeseen circumstance?

Depends, how easy was it to move people in the first place. After 50 years people would have been procreating so probably about 1.5x whatever seems reasonable for a seed colony, therefore Im gonna say 600 on the inside, 1300 on the outside.

You need to have 50-100k people to establish a more or less self-sustaining colony. And the population can easily double-triple in that time.

You'd need to start out with at least 500 people who are not related to each other in order to maintain genetic diversity. So if your colony was started with a number smaller than that, then your colonists should start having a significant number of genetic mutations popping up. Like cancer, cleft palate, club foot, facial deformities, down syndrome, autism, blindness, deafness, strange birth marks, fucked up spines, etc. etc. etc.

A few tens of thousands. And it was very abrupt, the wormhole had collapsed.

Pretty easy. It only took some time.

According to GURPS Space and with an average roll, 130~150K.

Realistically, pretty small. People in developed countries don't have babies and people in underdeveloped countries don't build spaceships.

You can make do with far less...

Settlements in the New World could thrive with only a few hundred people, and modern technology and automatization can make this even more feasible. Gene banks even allow the foundation of a healthy and sustainable population without further influx.

Yes, but if people in developed countries do colonize another planet, they might start reproducing faster out of necessity.

They won't be a "Developed country" anymore, they'll be an undeveloped space colony.

Maybe, but some of the biggest factors are things like religiosity, education, gender equality and birth control, which wouldn't change. Unless it's like a Mormon colony or something.

How about migration?

If colonies were a global initiative, there could be incentives for the global poor to emigrate - free land, better infrastructure, chance to start a new life, etc.

That's ridiculously incorrect. Permanent, self sustaining human settlements with populations of

You clearly have no clue what you're talking about. Single families can sustain themselves with good farming technique.

Those are at a hunter-gatherer tech level tho. Maintaining a first-world level of tech takes several thousand, so does maintaining a gene pool.

A fully sustainable polity capable of maintaining, recreating, and building on its own tech base probably can't be smaller than 10 or 20 million.

Well, if you have a plan for regular contact with Earth, the settlers aren't likely to setup massive industries for things that they could more easily import from earth. Depending on your tech levels, this sudden loss of contact could be either catastrophic or merely annoying.


Assuming it's more in the annoying range, using a badeline of neutral countries in Europe from 1900-1940, you're probably looking at about 7.5% population growth per decade. An advanced economy with modern medicine (and consequently low mortality rate) and a near bottomless demand for labor is going to produce a LOT of bodies.

If it is a catastrophe, you're probably looking at significant population loss, not gain.

I think in some way humanity is subconsciously reacting to the already massively overpopulation we have on Earth. But anyway, an interesting question might be: how long is the fertile age for woman in this brave new world? We have spaceship, something to spice up fertility clinics should be almost assured.

Yeah, but they need shit like cars, telephones, doctors, fertilizers. In this scenario some might be avaible by interstellar trade. If not I'd settle for no less than 10,000 people heavily selected at the start. 100.000 seems more reasonable if possible.
OP seems to imply that the planet was to be connected to earth (or whatever) easily with the wormhole. It depends on how much easy it would've been to transport goods and people.

No.
Living standards might drop, but you don't magically need more people because technology advanced.
Also a big no on the gene pool thing, there are hundreds of human examples that prove that wrong.
As in,literally every fucking island population before modern times, idiot.

are you forming any kind of population control?
two kids per family will maintain population and genetic stability, but three or more will increase the growth ratio.

are there test tube babies or are they all natural births?

are there any LGBT+ couples? if so, are they supposed to donate genetic samples to aid in the population growth via surrogate pregnancies?

>two kids per family will maintain population
Nope.
Accidents happen, not all breed, etc.
2,14 was the stable rate in western countries last time I checked, but it's better to slowly grow if you want stability than to try for stagnation.

Not huge. Probably less than a thousand, but gearing up for growth in the near future.

The most efficient package for a colony is a few hundred people with redundant but necessary skills, and a gene bank of frozen fertilized eggs. While on-planet breeding will certainly happen, the plan is to weave in eggs from Earth over time to increase genetic diversity.

The big limiting factor is sustainability. What do they have room for, and what can they feed? The initial colonists all fit on the ship and presumably can be sustained by its resources or ecosystem for a time. But population growth depends entirely on what the planet itself can be made to yield.

This is a problem. Even if you managed to find a fucking perfect planet with an already breathable atmosphere, you have one of two issues.

The first is that the rock is effectively barren. Nothing has ever grown there before. Its just rock. This is a problem, because what you consider common dirt has actually been processed by microbes for billions of years. You can't just plop down Earth crops on a sterile rock shelf and get plants. Manufacturing dirt will be a task that takes generations.

The second problem, an already existing planetary ecosystem, is much harder to deal with. That shit is poisonous.
No, shut up. EVERYTHING on that planet is poisonous. Its all the result of a totally different path of evolution with differently balanced biochemistry. Every plant will have organic compounds your body isn't prepared for. Every microbe is an invasive species your body has no immunity for. Your body will have allergic overreactions to things that should be harmless, and be totally unable to recognize actual dangers for what they are even as your brain turns to pus from the inside out. Hell, all that needs to be different is for their average Ph to be up or down a peg and touching skin would be enough to cause harm.

>How many colonists were in the first wave?
>Have there been any aditional waves?
>What was the male-female ratio? How many of them had how many kids?
>What was the infant mortality rate like?
>Is everyone from the seed colony still alive? How many of them died from what?
>Are they still bottled up in the first settlement or have they spread out?

>you don't magically need more people because technology advanced
His number might be off depending on other factors, but a high tech industrial society is a lot more complicated than a hunter gatherer clan. Most fields of knowledge can't be transferred by books alone (or even video).

Everything from a nuclear powerplant to a pencil requires a massive supply chain to produce.

Even with star trek replicators, you'd need a vast field of human experts to keep a high tech level going, plus redundancies to train, research, replace, etc.

Otherwise your colony slips back to 19th century tech, or less.

...

It is estimated that for a sustainable and healthy genetic diversity over the generations you need at least 497 genetically divergent individials. 50 genetically diverse humans in isolation would last about 2,000 years before inbreeding did them in, while 500 or more stand a chance of lasting indefinitely so long as all of them reproduce and no major disasters wipe out a significant part of the gene pool during that time .