What if anything is known about "the Federated Territories" besides the size of its population?

Question

In Luc Besson's 1997 The Fifth Element (IMDb, Wikipedia) actor Tommy Lister Jr. (IMDb, Wikipedia) plays President Lindberg of the Federated Territories.

He is announced as such in the linked clip below where he's in voice contact with a military ship and hesitantly allows the commander to fire weapons at the dark, planet-sized object entering the solar system.

Question: What if anything is known about "the Federated Territories" besides the size of its population?

at 01:44 (set in "New York City Headquarters")

Lindberg: Your theory is interesting Father but we don't have time to go into that right now.

Cornelius: Time is of no importance Mr. President, only life is important.

Lindberg: You're right, that's exactly what we're going to do, we're going to protect the lives of some two hundred billion of my fellow citizens.

Answer 1

The official novelisation gives us a little more information about the United Federated Territories:

Not all of its members are human.

The President of the United Federation, elected guardian of 200 billion souls, both human and otherwise, studied the man who had forced himself into his circle of attention.

Earth is the 'home planet' of the UFT.

Light years away, in a remote sector of the galaxy, a mile-long starship was speeding toward Earth, the home planet of the United Federation.

America still exists with the United Federation.

A giant of a man, President Lindberg had, like Lincoln (an ancient leader of one of the constituent political entities of the United Federation), poor posture.

The UF's headquarters are in Manhattan, NY

“We lost the signal,” said the general who stood by his side, speaking by direct FTL link to the United Federation headquarters in Manhattan, New York, Earth.

The United Federated Territories maintains its own armed forces in the form of an Army (comprising various ships and military personnel).

“Three reasons,” said General Munro. “One— as a member of the Elite Special Forces unit of the United Federation armed forces, you are an expert in the use of all weapons and spacecraft needed for this mission.

The space military is commanded by a UF Space Command who are, in turn, subordinate to the UF Central Command, and who all report to the civilian elected leadership offered by the President as apparent Commander-in-Chief.

A captain, wearing the colorful uniform of the United Federation Space Command, stood on the bridge, studying the crossed lines with a worried air. The control screen was his only view out of the ship, since the windows of the bridge were opaque by a protective energy shield.

Moving buoyantly in the temporary gravity, General Staedert of the UF Central Command entered the bridge.

The borders of The United Territories appear to encompass a significant portion of the Milky Way Galaxy (noting that Mr Shadow appears from an "unmapped" portion of the galaxy, implying that the rest of the galaxy is "mapped")

A screen lit up at one end of the room, like a doorway to the far reaches of the galaxy; as indeed it was, since it showed the bridge of a distant star-ship, where an identical screen was opening to show the President’s office.

This is confirmed in the original screenplay where the Federated Territories is referred to synonymously as "the Federated Galaxy"

The MONDOSHAWAN spaceship zips across the Federated Galaxy. But it is not alone: Two black warships seem to be dogging it.

We also know that the Mangalores and the Mondoshawan aren't members. The Mangalores were attacked by the UT and made homeless and the Mondoshawan don't live especially near to the borders of the Federated Territories, but are known to Earth.

Answer 2

Short Answer:

I can tell you a little bit about the volume of space occupied by the Federated Territories.

According to my rough estimate of factors in The Fifth Element (1997) combined with more precise scientific factors, I calculate that if the Federated Territories occupies a spherical volume of space, that volume should have a radius between about 73.71 and 737.3 light years.

But my faith in the ability of the makers of The Fifth Element (1997) to avoid contradicting themselves about scientific factors and "galactogrphy" (the geography of outer space) is very slight, and it is quite likely that the movie contradicts itself about the size of the Federated territories.

Long Answer:

If there are exactly two hundred billion citizens, if all of them live on planets, and if the average planet has between ten million and Ten billion citizens of the Federated Territories, then there should be between twenty and twenty thousand major inhabited planets in the Federated Territories.

If you assume that the citizens are all Earth human beings, or all have the same environmental requirements as Earth human beings, then all the major inhabited planets of the Federated Territories will planets habitable of Earth humans. if you assume that all of the inhabited planets in the Federated Territories are naturally habitable for humans and not terraformed to be habitable, then you need to find an estimate for how common naturally habitable for humans planets are.

Unfortunately, most recent estimates of how common habitable planets are, consider all planets with liquid surface water to be potentially habitable for at least some liquid water using lifeforms. And on Earth there are many parts of the biosphere where somelifeforms flourish but unprepared and unprotected humans would swiftly died. Obviously planets naturally habitable for humans are a smaller subcategory of planets naturally habitable for various types of liquid water using lifeforms.

Fortunately, there is an estimate of how common planets which are naturally habitable for humans are. Habitable Planets for Man, Stephen H. Dole, 1964.

https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/commercial_books/2007/RAND_CB179-1.pdf

In table 18 on page 104 the number of stars with naturally habitable planets per cubic parsec of space (a cubic parsec is equal to 34.695734 cubic light years) is estimated at about 4.03 times 10 to the - 4th power, or about 0.000403, in the neighborhood of the Sun.

Thus there would be one natural human habitable planet in every 2,481.3895 cubic parsecs, or 86,093.63275 cubic light years. So 20 to 20,000 natural human habitable palnets would be found in a volume of 49,627.79 49,627,79 to cubic parsecs, or in a volume of 1,721,1872.655 to 1,721,872,655 cubic light years.

Those are incredibly vast volumes of space, but very tiny compared to the vast size of the Milky Way Galaxy. Using those figures, and an estimated volume of the galactic disc, Dole calculated on page 103 that:

Since the Galaxy has a volume of about 1.6 times 10 to the 12th power cubic parsecs, this means that the total number of habitable planets in the galaxy is about 600 million.

So 20 to 20,000 habitable planets should occupy about 0.000000033 to 0.000033333 of the Milky Way Galaxy; the Milky Way Galaxy is about 30,000 to 30,000,000 times as large as the volume of space which should contain 20 to 20,00 naturally habitable (for humans) planets.

Table 19 on page 105 lists the number of naturally human habitable planets which would be found within a sphere centered on the Sun with various radii.

1 within a radius of 27.2 lightyears.

2 within 34.2 light years.

5 within 46.5 light years.

10 within 58.5 light years.

50 within 100 light years.

So if the Federated Territories has 20 inhabited worlds, it should have a volume twice that of a sphere with a radius of 58.5 light years. Since the cube root of 2.00376 is 1.26, there should be 20 habitable palnets within a radius of 73.71 light years.

If the Federated Territories has 20,000 inhabited planets, that would require a volume of space 400 times as large as a volume of space with 50 habitable planets. The cube root of 400.8046 is 7.373, so 20,000 naturally human habitable planetswould be found within a radius of about 737.3 light years.

The Federated Territories could fit within a spherical volume of space with a radius somewhere between about 73.71 and about to 737.3 light years. At least it would fit into such a volume of space to the degree that Dole's calculations sixty years ago are correct. By comparison, The galactic dsic has a radius of about 50,000 light years.

Of course, as Dole pointed out, only some types of stars are suitable for having naturally habitable planets. Most of the famous stars whose names an audience might be familiar with are not, repeat not, suitable for having naturally habitable planets. Even before Dole, science Fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein had learned that main sequence spectral class G stars were the ones most likely to have habitable planets, mentioning that fact in Starman Jones (1953) and Time For the Stars (1956).

But even after Habitable Planets for Man was published in 1964, many "space opera" type science fiction stories, television programs, etc. continued to depict some of those famous stars as having habitable planets. Fans of those space operas can only suppose that those those planets of unsuitable stars were terraformed to be habitable by advanced civilizatins sometime in the past.

And I strongly supect that The Fifth Element (1997) is one of those space operas which name drops unsuitable famous stars as having habitable planets, which would mean that The Federated Territories could occupy an even smaller volume of space that calculated.

And i also suspect that there may be statements in The Fifth Element (1997) that contradictorily indicate that the Federated Territories is much larger than I calculated.

Valorom's answer quites a statement in the screenplay indicating that the Federated territories might include the entire Milky Way Galaxy.

The MONDOSHAWAN spaceship zips across the Federated Galaxy. But it is not alone: Two black warships seem to be dogging it.

Fans who want to consider The Fifth Element (1997) as plausible as ossible, might claim that things mentioned in the screenplay but not said or shown onscreen are not canon. Or they might claim that "The Federateed Galaxy" means those parts of the much larger Milky Way Galaxy which are ruled by the Federated Territories.

I supect that if Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen ever learn or care about my opinion of their knowledge of "galactography" they will use one or both of the above to defend themselves from the charge of contradicting themselves.

I don't trust the makers of space opera science fiction tv shows and movies to have more than the most basic knowledge of what could be called "galactography" or to make even the most basic calculations about their fictional settings to avoid contradicting themselves.

Valorom's answer quites a stte