I am working with the research conclusions made in this study that human fetal growth is mainly limited by the metabolism of the mother. And assuming a device that could produce sufficient cooling, oxygen, nutrients, and some sort of neurological stimulation, that humans babies would grow at the same rate as an elephant. For my story purposes, children in an artificial womb actually receive a holographic engram from a "mentor". Essentially, a person that whoever set up the apparatus would like the child-to-be to emulate in ability and muscle memory skill.
If we look at normal baby growth, we see a some odd hiccups during development that don't make it a smooth curve. I am assuming those are the points where the logistics of one human being having to compete with her own offspring for metabolic activity starts to become an issue.
Elephants and Whales are massive compared to their offspring. And they happily have multi-year pregnancies that produce offspring that weigh tens or even hundreds of kilograms. I'm going to use the Elephant as my upward model of fetal growth. Assuming an Indian elephant, they gave an 18 month gestation period that produces a calf that has a mass of 77 kg on average. I am also assuming that even though growth is a power law, there is an exponential decay in growth as the existing tissues also start to demand sustenance to maintain life.
I start the model at 10 weeks of pregnancy, and assume is has the same mass of 35 g of a human embryo. It starts with a 30% per week growth rate, and I decay the rate of growth by 32.399999999999984 per week. And after 80 weeks of growth, I have a fetus with a mass of 78 kg. Run the process to 90 weeks, one could have a fetus of over 100kg.
I am assuming that the facilities to produce a fully-grown artificial life form are a recent invention (as of the events in Project Gilgamesh.) My main character was built with an earlier process that could only get her and her contemporaries to a mass equivilent of a child of 5 or so. We'll say 20kg. That would have taken about 52 weeks.
Natural Development | Artificial Development | ||||
Week | Mass (g) | Rate | Mass (g) | Rate | |
10 | 35 | - | 35 | 0.3 | |
11 | 45 | 0.285714286 | 46 | 0.29028 | |
12 | 58 | 0.288888889 | 59 | 0.28087492799999997 | |
13 | 73 | 0.25862069 | 75 | 0.2717745803328 | |
14 | 93 | 0.273972603 | 96 | 0.2629690839300173 | |
15 | 117 | 0.258064516 | 121 | 0.25444888561068474 | |
16 | 146 | 0.247863248 | 152 | 0.24620474171689855 | |
17 | 181 | 0.239726027 | 189 | 0.23822770808527102 | |
18 | 223 | 0.232044199 | 234 | 0.23050913034330825 | |
19 | 273 | 0.224215247 | 288 | 0.22304063452018508 | |
20 | 331 | 0.212454212 | 352 | 0.21581411796173108 | |
21 | 399 | 0.205438066 | 428 | 0.208821740539771 | |
22 | 430 | 0.077694236 | 517 | 0.20205591614628243 | |
23 | 501 | 0.165116279 | 622 | 0.19550930446314288 | |
24 | 600 | 0.19760479 | 743 | 0.18917480299853706 | |
25 | 660 | 0.1 | 884 | 0.18304553938138446 | |
26 | 760 | 0.151515152 | 1046 | 0.1771148639054276 | |
27 | 875 | 0.151315789 | 1231 | 0.17137634231489177 | |
28 | 1005 | 0.148571429 | 1442 | 0.16582374882388928 | |
29 | 1153 | 0.147263682 | 1681 | 0.16045105936199527 | |
30 | 1319 | 0.143972246 | 1950 | 0.15525244503866664 | |
31 | 1502 | 0.138741471 | 2253 | 0.15022226581941384 | |
32 | 1702 | 0.133155792 | 2592 | 0.14535506440686483 | |
33 | 1918 | 0.126909518 | 2968 | 0.1406455603200824 | |
34 | 2146 | 0.118873827 | 3386 | 0.13608864416571173 | |
35 | 2383 | 0.110438024 | 3846 | 0.13167937209474267 | |
36 | 2622 | 0.100293747 | 4353 | 0.127412960438873 | |
37 | 2859 | 0.090389016 | 4908 | 0.12328478052065353 | |
38 | 3083 | 0.078349073 | 5513 | 0.11929035363178436 | |
39 | 3288 | 0.066493675 | 6170 | 0.11542534617411455 | |
40 | 3462 | 0.052919708 | 6882 | 0.11168556495807325 | |
41 | 3787 | 0.093876372 | 7651 | 0.10806695265343168 | |
42 | - | - | 8478 | 0.1045655833874605 | |
43 | - | - | 9364 | 0.10117765848570678 | |
44 | - | - | 10312 | 0.09789950235076988 | |
45 | - | - | 11321 | 0.09472755847460494 | |
46 | - | - | 12394 | 0.09165838558002774 | |
47 | - | - | 13530 | 0.08868865388723485 | |
48 | - | - | 14730 | 0.08581514150128844 | |
49 | - | - | 15994 | 0.08303473091664669 | |
50 | - | - | 17322 | 0.08034440563494734 | |
51 | - | - | 18714 | 0.07774124689237505 | |
52 | - | - | 20169 | 0.0752224304930621 | |
53 | - | - | 21686 | 0.07278522374508689 | |
54 | - | - | 23264 | 0.07042698249574608 | |
55 | - | - | 24903 | 0.06814514826288391 | |
56 | - | - | 26600 | 0.06593724545916647 | |
57 | - | - | 28353 | 0.06380087870628948 | |
58 | - | - | 30162 | 0.0617337302362057 | |
59 | - | - | 32024 | 0.059733557376552636 | |
60 | - | - | 33937 | 0.05779819011755233 | |
61 | - | - | 35899 | 0.055925528757743634 | |
62 | - | - | 37907 | 0.05411354162599274 | |
63 | - | - | 39958 | 0.052360262877310576 | |
64 | - | - | 42050 | 0.05066379036008571 | |
65 | - | - | 44180 | 0.04902228355241894 | |
66 | - | - | 46346 | 0.047433961565320565 | |
67 | - | - | 48545 | 0.04589710121060418 | |
68 | - | - | 50773 | 0.04441003513138061 | |
69 | - | - | 53027 | 0.042971149993123875 | |
70 | - | - | 55306 | 0.041578884733346665 | |
71 | - | - | 57606 | 0.04023172886798623 | |
72 | - | - | 59923 | 0.03892822085266348 | |
73 | - | - | 62256 | 0.03766694649703718 | |
74 | - | - | 64601 | 0.03644653743053318 | |
75 | - | - | 66955 | 0.03526566961778391 | |
76 | - | - | 69317 | 0.034123061922167706 | |
77 | - | - | 71682 | 0.03301747471588947 | |
78 | - | - | 74049 | 0.031947708535094654 | |
79 | - | - | 76414 | 0.030912602778557587 | |
80 | - | - | 78777 | 0.029911034448532322 | |
81 | - | - | 81133 | 0.028941916932399874 | |
82 | - | - | 83481 | 0.028004198823790117 | |
83 | - | - | 85819 | 0.02709686278189932 | |
84 | - | - | 88144 | 0.026218924427765782 | |
85 | - | - | 90455 | 0.02536943127630617 | |
86 | - | - | 92750 | 0.02454746170295385 | |
87 | - | - | 95027 | 0.023752123943778146 | |
88 | - | - | 97284 | 0.022982555127999734 | |
89 | - | - | 99520 | 0.022237920341852544 | |
90 | - | - | 101733 | 0.021517411722776523 |