Can we build a world in 1,000 years?

We have a fleet of sub-light speed generation ships and associated engineering devices/ships. Their original world can no longer support their species, and they must move to survive. The fleet of course cannot support its inhabitants forever. There is therefore a need to populate a new, self sufficient, home world.

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The only feasibly reachable planetary system they've identified is very much like our own Solar System, but there's no Earth, no Mars, no Venus - just a wide gap where the Goldilocks zone is.

For the sake of simplicity, I'll call these planets after their Earth solar-system equivalents.

There's a larger asteroid belt, but it's close to the Jupiter whose gravitational forces has prevented the formation of a planet.

What would it take to create a new home planet out of the resources available in the other planets and whatever engineering the fleet has brought with them? This should be earth-like, capable of sustaining a breathable atmosphere and plant-life to support life as we know it.

Salient facts: Population of the generation-ships - One million homo sapiens equivalents. There is an ark of breeding stock for plants and animals.

Resources - We make the assumption that these people understand the mechanics of doing what they want and have brought some necessary equipment - some of the ships are modular in construction so that engines/power generators/whatever else can be separated and combined/used in different ways.

Limit of resources - the fleet can support the species for the next 1,500 years (counting from when they reach their new home system).

I couldn't find any questions that actually built a world, so I'm hoping that we can make this one work.

Scope Guidance

So, I'm looking for a high scale plan with some time estimates for each stage and roughly what would be involved for each stage. Alternative solutions are also welcome.

The end result should be a self-sufficient environment which would support and nurture this species until they decide to kill each other off or otherwise ruin yet another world....

posted about 7 years ago

System‭

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