I’d like to say no for the second one, too, but there’s a practical aspect to it. Suppose each shuttle fails on its tenth flight? Nine times 30 times 3 is 810 people. The last survey, combining cryptos and those of us among the warm, totaled eight thousand who want to go planetside and three thousand who want to stay aboard. A lot of people will have to wait. I suspect the numbers will become more manageable after the first shuttle wipeout, though.

(I wonder how the statistics will change once we start settlement. Some people undoubtedly will step out of the airlock, take one look at how far away the horizon is, and jump back into the shuttle. That happened to about one out of fifteen New New tourists who went to Earth, deepseated agoraphobia.

On the other hand, if the people working planetside are successful and happy, the more timid, but not agoraphobic, may change their minds.)

4. Should we concentrate on developing one site, or try several small settlements in different areas?

I was almost alone in opting for the latter. But then most of these people have lived in one biome all their lives (two, if you count subzero desiccation!) and don’t see any virtue in a variety of locations. I pointed out that some local danger might wipe out one place and not affect the rest—like Roanoke Island, the first British colony in America, which disappeared and left not a trace while its ship was on a resupply passage to Britain. Probably plague or a raid by autochthones. (French and Spanish settlements to the north and south were unaffected.)

Of course nothing so mysterious would happen to our pioneers. They’d have an audience.

It’s another one of those questions that’s not answerable until we see what the planet looks like. There may not be that much variety. Which leads to:

5. What do we do if Epsilon turns out to be uninhabitable?

Well, we could ram it out of spite. I didn’t suggest this.

Some of the scientists got huffy and said it was a nonquestion; if we hadn’t been sure that Epsilon was Earthlike, the mission wouldn’t have been launched. Son Van Duong pointed out that “Earthlike” circa spring 2085 would include a mutated virus wafting around that killed everybody within a few years. To the response “that was because of a war,” Son shrugged. So the war became part of the ecology.

The real question is, how much would we tell the people, how soon? Some before the others?

I think on general principles we ought to tell everybody everything, and just brace ourselves for a lot of unhappiness. A few thousand would probably be relieved, of course. (And what would the others do, leave?)