GSV population density speculations

I've sometimes wondered about the feasibility of the huge General System
Vehicles populations claimed in the books. I have no problems with
Orbitals with billions and billions of people on them, but GSVs with
hundreds of millions?

So I did some speculation and calculation.

A typical GSV is less than 100 km long, but rarely much less. Let's say
80 km.

Its width is much less than its length. A typical width might be 20 km.

Its height is much less than its width. A typical height might be 4 km.
However, my understanding is that only the upper 25% are for habitation,
with the rest being bays, factories, non-ship storage, propulsion,
power, life support, and so forth

So we have 80 km x 20 km x 1 km

But is the inside of a GSV just a space with a 1 km ceiling? I've gone
with the assumption that stories are 25 m tall, leaving plenty of room
although far from as spacious as I originally imagined (then again, I've
never had an at all clear mental image of what the insides of a GSV
looks like).

So we have 40 "floors", each of which is 1600 square kilometres, or
64'000 square kilometres in all.

How many people live in a GSV? As in being awake and active, rather than
stored, and keeping in mind that people who are genetically Culture
sleep only a few hours per night. I seem to recall a figure of 250
million, from somewhere, but let us go with 100 million instead.

100 milion divided with 64k km2 gives a population density of 1562.5
people per square kilometres, unless I've mis-calculated somewhere.

To compare, Denmark is about 125 people per square kilometre, and that
is a country blessed with lots of habitable land. There are a few swamps
and bogs, but no mountains, so the result is that pretty much all of it
can be utilized.

I looked up the population density of UK or England - not sure which one
- a month or two ago, and it was more than twice that of Denmark, on top
of which not all the land can be put to use, since they've got mountains
and stuff over there. I don't remember if it was formally twice as high
as Denmark's, or 2.5 times a high, but it was much higher, and
informally (effectively) it is much higher again.

A country like Norway probably has a low calculated population density,
but again lots of land is mountaineous to the point where it can't be used.


Still, a bit more than 1500 pr square kilometre... It strikes me as too
dense. And that's with a ceiling height of 25 m. I don't think it would
trigger claustrophobia, but my expectation would be that the Culture
would want much more room.

In one of the novels, IIRC "Player of Games", the term "cabin brat" is
used about a girl who grew up on a GSV. Are GSV's ship-like, rather than
habitat-like? With cabins and corridors, rather than open spaces with
plants and (some small) wild animals?

Later in "Player of Games", the GSV on which Gurgeh travels sounds
rather spacious. "Use of Weapons" gives the same impression. "Consider
Phlebas" shows only ship-like elements, but it also shows only very
little of the ex-GSV Ends of Invention. Besides, that ship is oversized,
being triple height (although probably not much longer or wider than
usual), so it could well be roomier than the average GSV.

Not directly pertinent to GSVs, but the female protagonist in
"Excession" reacts strongly to the cramped conditions about the VFP she
is to travel on, because she is used to having lots and lots and lots of
room on her home Rock, Phage. But does that mean that Rock are
habitat-like? I'd assume that Rocks are ship-like, or at least were that
originally before the Culture figured out how to create artificial
gravity without rotation. But being ship-like doesn't rule out having
very large, very roomy cabins. You can go 3 stories with a ceiling
height of 25 m, and still have very large rooms.

One could calculate the number of cubic metres available to each person
aboard a GSV, if one wanted to. But we're not a zero-gravity species,
and neither are Culture humanoids, so that strikes me as a bit pointless.

It might be more useful to find or calculate the population densities of
cities such as Copenhagen, London, Berlin and New York, and compare that
with the 1500/km2 figure.


The question remains: Are GSVs ship-like or habitat-like?

--
Peter Knutsen
sagatafl.org
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