quote:
Originally posted by Loser:
The way I see it, every 1,000,000 block of population is it's own arcology, that's why it weighs so much (ha!). It produces enough food, clothes, entertainment, and pharmaceuticals to keep it going. They produce their own power and are so big on recycling that they can keep going in cargo holds in space.
Well, if you do the math, 1M population = 5kT; 5kT = 10,000,000lbs; 1 person (alien) = 10lbs. And that's just the people
However, that is a good way of thinking about it on planets. The standard belief about population on cargo ships is that they're cryo-frozen, so they can't exactly reproduce on the ship, and don't take up as much space as "living" people (aliens) would take up.