Why sailing ships?
I cannot accept the proposed answer. An ocean vessel is a different kind than a sailing ship. Sailing ships are fragile, unreliable, slow. I cannot think of sailing ships as a mean of transportation after the invention of space travel. That is ridicoulus. --Nuntius 08:51, 19 January 2014 (EST)
- I think the answer, as well as the notion that building sailing ships is ridicoulus, misses an important point: The colonists had apparently fled in a hurry from Kobol. Although they got from Kobol to the Colonies in advanced space ships, probably carrying a lot of high-tech gadgets, they likely didn't bring much to produce such things, or the things that power them. So they had to start mostly from the bottom, using whatever was available. Even though they had the knowledge of how to mine for ore, how to turn it into pure metal and how to build things out of metal, getting that process up and running would take some time. Until then, wood would be the only available material for building vehicles, and the most readily available power source would be the wind (sailing) or man-power (rowing). Even once they got metal production going, they might have choosen to use the metal primarily for basic needs, such as axes, saws, hammers, plows and so on, as well as expanding their industrial capacity, and stick to wood where they could do so for the time being. Caldumidoan 18:44, 24 January 2014 (EST)