Tavia said:
As it is, however, these things all fail, and the escape comes down to There must have been some women transported to Cygnus Alpha otherwise the colony wouldn't have survived. I don't know what ratio you'd need for viability, though. Judging by Victorian family sizes, 15--20 children in a reproductive lifetime wouldn't be unusual but I'd estimate a 50% child mortality rate, so you'd probably want at least 10 or 15% fertile young women for a viable colony ?
It depends on how the Federation viewed Cygnus Alpha--whether the objective was to colonize the planet, in which reproductive ratios would be crucial--or merely to get undesirable persons off Earth without actually executing them, in which case the survival of groups of prisoners, or the planet itself, is optional.
-(Y)