# Known Universe EConomy ## Federation Economy Let us take some considerations about the KU, and talk about the core of the economy: feeding people. Lets begin by making a basic defintion, the Food Unit (FU). The FU is created by a Replicator, and represents 1/3rd of a persons required daily food intake. Three FU make one Daily Food Unit (DFU). We can then say the food requirements of any particular place is defined as: (Number of People (NumPop) * DFU) = 1 day of a locations food requirement. The specifics of the food are not particularly relevant. The replicator will break the various input goods down into the base chemical components, and then build up what is essentially a flavourless paste with the required FU of nutrients and calories in it, flavored and presented in a format of the consumers choosing. Because of this, what we really care about is how many Agricutulral Resource Units (ARUs) it takes to produce a FU, how many Raw ARU's (RARUs) can be grown per square meter under optimal condition (and what those conditions are), how many ARU's are produced per RARU, and how many ARU's fit per Ship Unit of transport space (1x1x1 meter cubed) aboard a ship. Let us assume one can get 3 FU per 1 ARU, or 1 DFU = 1 ARU. Let us also assume a rate of 1 ARU per 2 RARU. Let us also assume that under optimal conditions 5 RARUs can be grown per 1 meter squared. Finally, let us assume that 1 ARU is 10cms by 10cms by 10cms, including packaging, thus 1 SU can hold 100 ARU's. Now let us image a planet with 100 billion people on it. Each SU of ARU's will feed 100 people, thus the planet will need at least 100 million cubic meters of shipping capacity a day to provide it with the ARU necessary to replicate its food supply, at minimum. With a 2% margin of error, that is 102 million cubic meters for food alone. Consumer goods, which would take up substantially more space, or even just the raw resources which would have a higher transport cost due ot their greater weight, at the scales being discussed here such things would likely become relevant. Saving even a marginal improvement by reducing the costs to bring fuel from even a small number of high gravity mining planets for raw mineral resources could bring huge savings to a company. Furhter, tghat 102 millino ARU will require, at an amazing rate of 2 RARU per 1 ARU, 204 million RARU. Assuming our growing rat eof 5 RARUs per 1 meter, means some 40.8 million meters squared will be needed grow the required food for 1 city world a twentieth the population of Courasaunt. (2 trillion according to wikipedia, 4 trillion RARU, or 800 billion square meters of agricultural land.) For reference, Canada, the second largest country on Earth, is almost 10 million kms square, and so could easily feed the 100 billion populatin planet. Coursant would require 800 million square kilometers of agricuturla space to feed it. Earths total surface area is somewhere around 510 million square kilometers, with about 150 million being land. It would thus take almost two earths total surface area to feed coursant in the Known Universe. Nevermind the insane shipping requirements.