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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

> love that most of those designs give bigger houses to people in a spaceship than modern houses in the UK on planet earth

Would such a project be particularly volume constrained?

> doubt democracy would get them through more than 250 days, let alone 250 years

I don't. You'd be selecting for extraordinary individuals and educating them. These sorts of societies propagated for hundreds or even thousands of years in antiquity just fine.

The colonists be in a life-or-death system in a community small enough that everyone knows of everyone else personally. To the extent humans are almost uniquely exceptional at one thing as a hominid, it's exploration and colonization--I woudn't be surprised if this group winds up more functional due to scratching an underlying human need to explore and push boundaries.

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>Would such a project be particularly volume constrained?

It would be mass constrained because of the sheer cost of getting it all into orbit, even with advanced tech such as space elevator. And more volumne = more mass.

There is a saying in aerospace design along the lines of 'weight breeds weight'. Heavier components necessitate stronger, and therefore heavier, supporting structures.

Are you telling me a country is more constrained by space than a spaceship?

As for democracy "These sorts of societies propagated for hundreds or even thousands of years in antiquity just fine" - I don't know of any that practised the consensus driven democracy that almost all these proposals use. Ant if you're reaching into antiquity then not even normal democracies. Unless you're talking about a Athens with their slaves and adult male citizen population having a vote. In which case sure, I can get behind that but that's not what those spaceship designs propose. They all assume all decisions will be unanimous and no one will ever break the law.

In actual fact history proves the opposite and all exploration and conquest is driven by strict hierarchical organisations and the idea that you can fly a spaceship across light years without a captain who can condemn people to death is laughable.

> a country is more constrained by space than a spaceship?

At the point that we're building 60 km spaceships, yes, I think that's a possibility.

> you're reaching into antiquity then not even normal democracies

The further back we go the more consensus-driven small societies get. I'm also reaching back due to familiarity. There are plenty of small island communities that did fine for generations on their own.

> They all assume all decisions will be unanimous and no one will ever break the law

Sorry, I missed this in the winning design. Where does it say that?

> all exploration and conquest is driven by strict hierarchical organisations

If you need to bring an army, yes. I don't think we know how hierarchical Polynesian settlers were.

> Sorry, I missed this in the winning design. Where does it say that?

I didn't notice any prisons included in the design, so that assumption seems fair.

> didn't notice any prisons included in the design, so that assumption seems fair

Does it?

You don’t need dedicated prison space as you won’t have a permanent prison population. (Depending on labour requirements and resource availability this may not be a choice.) Nothing about not having a prison implies no hierarchy. And you don’t need prisons to “condemn people to death.”

I guess Vatican could be ?

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