Population fail @ disco

[Blodo]

Planet Manhattan (and many other Sirius capitals) has every square inch of land covered with cities (at least, that's what I read). An entire planet with the population density of a modern city- that's at least ten billion people on Manhattan alone.

Will people stop with this misconception and read the bloody infocard? It does NOT say Manhattan is completely covered with cities (it's not), it says it is DOTTED with cities. That is a vast difference and one that needs to be emphasized and taken into account. The population of Manhattan is 220 million, which seems reasonable enough assuming a focus on growth which the colony government would likely have, and an exponential population growth. Any higher than that and the explanation for the unbelievable growth needs to become unnatural.

Remember, exponential growth needs to build up momentum in order to grow really fast. Humanity doubled its population in the last fifty years, from 3 to 6 billion. The amount of colonists that landed on Manhattan was something around 50,000. You do the math.