Generation Ships--- Can we build one now?

Hussar · Feb 14, 2019

Umbran said:
Then it cannot be done at all.

Humans *do not* stay static. No society on Earth has stayed static for so long, and we should not suspect it here. Yes, abject failure is catastrophic, but *the people know that*. Their situation, and the fact that hard vacuum is just outside, is not lost upon them.

Maybe not for so long, but, there are numerous societies that have stayed, more or less, static for centuries. And, to do so, created societies that were, by modern human rights standards anyway, shockingly repressive.

On the flip side, once you are hurtling through space... you just keep hurtling through space. The interstellar void is filled with a whole lot of nothing, and a whole lot of nothing people on the ship have to do other than regular maintenance, and you probably have wiggle room on exactly when that happens.

While there is potential of failure, that's *always* the case in space. *ALWAYS*. People die in space. Space is dangerous. If you're not up to taking on some risk of failure, don't start.

It's not a risk when it's a virtually guaranteed certainty. We can afford change and changing societies, even ones that murder 1/4 of their population (Cambodia) because the amount of "wiggle room" we have is enormous. On a space ship, you cannot have that degree of wiggle room.

Umbran said:
Or, forced contraception measures, and working the occasional extra kid into your long term plan. We are talking about decades and centuries of travel time - the plan is long term population control, not "OMG, we have one extra kid, we are DOOOOOOooooooOOOOOmed!" If you have one unplanned kid, you just cut down on the planned births next year, and it evens out.

Your approach to this seems... always catastrophic. We have centuries to work with, not minutes.

For everyone who gets on board to start with, it is entirely voluntary.

For people who are born in flight - they are taught from a young age exactly what the stakes are. They can be taught the plan, and about population dynamics. They can understand that population growth needs to be controlled. And note for most of these people, it isn't that they *cannot* have kids. It is a question of when, and how many. And, if we are smart, some of that will be negotiable, and we can plan around it. If one couple doesn't want kids, that's cool, another couple that does want them can have more.

So, everyone in subsequent generations must be forced into a single culture and way of thinking because any deviation from the baseline isn't possible. And this is a morally justifiable position? Because, it's not just "understanding" that population growth needs to be controlled, it's "You have zero choice in this. We are going to control your reproductive rights (as well as a host of other personal rights) from birth whether you agree or not"

Or, can people choose to disagree?

I think you're failing to note how that we here on this board are, for the most part, highly privileged people. Most of the population of the planet you are standing on still aren't. Humans are already born into cultures they cannot control, many with aspects we think of as human rights violations, and they have no way out of them either. You are speaking as if the ship failing to be a utopia is somehow a major failing.

Umm, having basic human rights is hardly what I'd call a "utopia". Being able to choose when and with whom I have a baby is hardly a utopia. Being able to choose what kind of job I'd like to do for the rest of my life is hardly a utopia. Being able to disagree with policies is hardly a utopia.

Your bar for utopia is pretty darn low.

And, you claim that there is no way out for them. That's not true. They can, and often do, flee countries. Not everyone, true. But, that is an option. And, note, while they might suffer under these regimes, many of these regimes do change over time. So, the horribly repressive dictatorship of today becomes tomorrow's free democracy. It's a painful process, to be sure, but, it does happen. As you say, societies are rarely static.

MarkB · Feb 14, 2019

Shasarak said:
Yes, unless you have any further evidence.

Further than what? We're having a discussion, not citing sources. If you want to dismiss extremely difficult engineering challenges as just routine legwork, feel free.

Umbran · Feb 14, 2019

Hussar said:
Maybe not for so long, but, there are numerous societies that have stayed, more or less, static for centuries. And, to do so, created societies that were, by modern human rights standards anyway, shockingly repressive.

With respect, most societies on Earth (including both static and not-so-static ones) prior to, say, the 19th century, were, by modern human rights standards anyway, shockingly repressive. So I don't think you can really pin that on them being static.

It's not a risk when it's a virtually guaranteed certainty. We can afford change and changing societies, even ones that murder 1/4 of their population (Cambodia) because the amount of "wiggle room" we have is enormous. On a space ship, you cannot have that degree of wiggle room.

Not so much as to kill off a quarter of the population, no. But goodness, dude, there's a middle ground in there!

So, everyone in subsequent generations must be forced into a single culture and way of thinking because any deviation from the baseline isn't possible.

No. They are forced to meet some standards of results for their culture, like having a pretty stable population. Note, it isn't like they must have *exactly* X people alive at any given moment - they just need to be generally stable. They can make changes in how they achieve that stability - they can monitor the results over some years and alter what they are doing if they see significant deviation from what is needed. But, historically, absolutely free reproduction leads to growth, so that's probably not an option unless the population has fallen low, and then only for a while.

And this is a morally justifiable position?

I think it was a strawman, invented position that overstates a need by a large degree. As such, I disregard it, rather than try to classify its moral quality.

Or, can people choose to disagree?

Disagree... with what? With the fact that, in this scenario, thousands will die and the mission will fail if they blithely disregard the physical limitations of the situation in which they find themselves? That's kind of like disagreeing that the world is round, or that if you dump too much carbon into the atmosphere, the world will warm up*. I mean, you can do it - you can disagree. But you'd just be wrong, and in severe cases, risk hurting many people with your willful denial of reality.

Disagree with how we implement limits on population growth and decline? There, we have some room to negotiate. There are several ways to get to the same results.

By the way, this is another reason to take a large population - if the population is large, you get to have kids with who you want, and statistics will take care of the details in the long run.

And, you claim that there is no way out for them. That's not true. They can, and often do, flee countries. Not everyone, true.

Teaching your grandmother to suck eggs, dude. My folks fled the Soviets.

I am also very, very aware that most people did not have the option to flee from the Soviets back after WWII. My close family was lucky, my extended family was not, and I accept that. Those who can flee are generally a minority.

So, the horribly repressive dictatorship of today becomes tomorrow's free democracy.

Well, no. Today's repressive dictatorship is tomorrow's civil-war battlefield, and in a decade maybe it is a free democracy. The changeover, historically, isn't very quick.

*I mean, you probably want to think about that, really deeply. You, and I, and pretty much everyone reading EN World, already live on what is to first approximation a very large, but still closed, environment. We are apt to have to accept, within our lifetimes, some major changes to how we do things if we are to allow our grandkids and beyond to live some semblance of a decent life. How much restriction of your lifestyle are you willing to put up with for that mission to succeed? Are your personal freedoms more important than the conditions under which future generations will live?

And, by extension, are we repressive in making those changes, even if some folks don't agree with them?

Maxperson · Feb 14, 2019

Umbran said:
Well, no. Today's repressive dictatorship is tomorrow's civil-war battlefield, and in a decade maybe it is a free democracy. The changeover, historically, isn't very quick.

And often just ends up with another repressive dictatorship.

Hussar · Feb 14, 2019

Ok, couple of points.

1. The Moral Issue

People have made points that because some people are born into repressive regimes, it's okay that others are born into repressive societies. I'm not quite sure I agree with that, but, that's not the real issue.
[MENTION=177]Umbran[/MENTION], your folks fled the Soviet Union. Ok, now, did they choose to go back? And, if they did choose to go back (for whatever the reason) could it possibly be morally justifiable that they would decide that the next thirty generations of their offspring would continue to live in the Soviet Union, accepting Communism as the only possible way to live?

Of course not.

And that's the issue here. Sure, the first generation chooses to go on the ship. Fair enough. But, it's morally reprehensible to think that that decision is acceptable for the next twenty to thirty generations. And that's what you are condemning the later generations to. That one decision made by your great, great, great, great ... great grandfather is still dictating how you live your life.

-----------

But, there is the larger issue here as well. In order to create a generation ship, you need the technology to create a self sustaining biosphere in a closed system. Note, the Earth is NOT a closed system - we have a sun that injects LOTS of energy into the system. Nor are human societies closed systems either.

In any case, if you can create a self sustaining biosphere, why would you bother with a generation ship? What's the point? To travel to a new world? Why? We can create self-sustaining biospheres, we don't need a new world. We can make them. Take a nickel-iron asteroid, drill into the center and fill it with water. Detonate a very large nuclear device inside and poof, you have a nice hollow world with a nice thick skin to keep out all those nasty cosmic rays.

Spin the sphere in the direction of its axis so that "north" is the direction you are headed and you've got a nice gravity well. Place your fusion reactor somewhere near the center of the hollow sphere and poof, you've got a world, depending on how big your sphere is, with enough living space for millions or billions of people.

Wash rinse and repeat as needed to increase the solar system's population. Hang these asteroids in orbit somewhere about a 10 light minute radius from the Sun and you've got enough real estate that population is pretty close to unlimited. Or at least as unlimited as you need it to be.

That's the primary problem with generation ships. Once you have the technology to create one, you don't need to anymore because everything you could need is more cheaply found within the solar system.

Umbran · Feb 14, 2019

Hussar said:
But, it's morally reprehensible to think that that decision is acceptable for the next twenty to thirty generations.

You want to be very, very careful with that logic. It has wide-reaching implications. I wish to avoid politics, but let us just say that the culture you live in right here and now is not, by those measures, particularly clean. Then, there are platitudes about splinters in eyes, pots & kettles, glass houses and stones, that then apply to your position. Not a good look.

Also, it would seem to me that this is a choice that each person boarding the ship gets to make for themselves. I don't think you get to sink the project because you have no stomach for the moral implications. You get to choose not to go yourself, and that's fine.

But, there is the larger issue here as well. In order to create a generation ship, you need the technology to create a self sustaining biosphere in a closed system. Note, the Earth is NOT a closed system - we have a sun that injects LOTS of energy into the system. Nor are human societies closed systems either.

Yes, the sun injects a lot of energy into the system.

You want energy injected into the system? We can do that - use a Bussard ramscoop. You set out a network of superconducting cables around the ship, and run current through them to produce a magnetic field. That field scoops up interstellar hydrogen. Voila! Fuel!

In any case, if you can create a self sustaining biosphere, why would you bother with a generation ship? What's the point?

That sun is going to die, you know. And it will take us with it if we are not elsewhere.

To travel to a new world? Why?

I noted previously that every single habitable continent on this planet was colonized by humans *long* before population pressure made it necessary. Exploring new places may not be your cup of tea, but it is a things humans do.

But, perhaps there's no romance in your soul. So, let us look at socioeconomic benefits. You are asking, writ large, the same question as those who wonder why we have NASA. Why we bother having an ISS, or going to the Moon, or Mars, or asteroids.

1) there is *massive* economic benefit to be gained in the development needed to make the trip possible. The technologies created for the trip have uses groundside, but we likely wouldn't come up with them if we didn't have a lofty goal.

2) There's a massive amount of stuff to be learned about the universe we live in. And that, again, will often have applications back home. Yes, there's a long distance call back, but it gets here eventually.

3) There is a strong argument that a society engaged in expansion gains major economic and sociological benefits - jobs, reduced crime, and all that. Great undertakings fire up human imagination and creativity in ways that merely continuing to exist does not. By what you are saying, you may not actually understand that last, but that's okay. We don't need *you* to go. Just stay out of the way.

We can create self-sustaining biospheres, we don't need a new world. We can make them. Take a nickel-iron asteroid, drill into the center and fill it with water. Detonate a very large nuclear device inside and poof, you have a nice hollow world with a nice thick skin to keep out all those nasty cosmic rays.

Yep. I've read the same pieces. Slap an engine on it, and you're pretty good to go!

Hussar · Feb 14, 2019

Umbran said:
You want to be very, very careful with that logic. It has wide-reaching implications. I wish to avoid politics, but let us just say that the culture you live in right here and now is not, by those measures, particularly clean. Then, there are platitudes about splinters in eyes, pots & kettles, glass houses and stones, that then apply to your position. Not a good look.

Also, it would seem to me that this is a choice that each person boarding the ship gets to make for themselves. I don't think you get to sink the project because you have no stomach for the moral implications. You get to choose not to go yourself, and that's fine.

Now that I'm going to disagree with. I think that it's perfectly acceptable to sink the project when someone's decision effectively condemns generations to institutional slavery and massive human rights violations. And, you can talk about glass houses all you like, there is always the significant difference on Earth that if we're wrong, we can make changes to fix the problem. Vastly more difficult in a closed system with very limited resources.

IOW, just because our cultures might not be utopian, doesn't mean that we can't look at others and say, yup, that's worse.

Yes, the sun injects a lot of energy into the system.

You want energy injected into the system? We can do that - use a Bussard ramscoop. You set out a network of superconducting cables around the ship, and run current through them to produce a magnetic field. That field scoops up interstellar hydrogen. Voila! Fuel!

Hard to eat hydrogen.

Unless we're going the route of completely magical science and we now have replicators and the like. By that point though, we might as well have FTL drives because, well, it's all handwavium by that point anyway.

That sun is going to die, you know. And it will take us with it if we are not elsewhere.

Again, at that point, we're hundreds of millions of years in the future. Presuming that our species should live so long, by that point, the gloves are completely off. Science will virtually unrecognizable to our cave dwelling selves. I mean, by that point in the future, we're closer in time to Homo Habilis than we our to our far, far distant offspring.

I noted previously that every single habitable continent on this planet was colonized by humans *long* before population pressure made it necessary. Exploring new places may not be your cup of tea, but it is a things humans do.

Couple of points though.

1. The exploration done on Earth required very, very little resource from the sponsoring country. Four or five boats and a couple of hundred men? Yeah, that's not exactly breaking the bank. We're talking many, many orders of magnitude more resources required to build a single generation ship.

2. The exploration done on earth was not really done out of "curiousity". It was done out of necessity/search for resources. Whether you want to talk about those coming across the land bridge to North America, or Magellan, it doesn't really matter. No one explored the continents nor colonized those continents because they wanted to know "what's over there". America and Australia were dumping grounds for malcontents and convicts as well as giant sources of wealth.

But, perhaps there's no romance in your soul. So, let us look at socioeconomic benefits. You are asking, writ large, the same question as those who wonder why we have NASA. Why we bother having an ISS, or going to the Moon, or Mars, or asteroids.

1) there is *massive* economic benefit to be gained in the development needed to make the trip possible. The technologies created for the trip have uses groundside, but we likely wouldn't come up with them if we didn't have a lofty goal.

2) There's a massive amount of stuff to be learned about the universe we live in. And that, again, will often have applications back home. Yes, there's a long distance call back, but it gets here eventually.

3) There is a strong argument that a society engaged in expansion gains major economic and sociological benefits - jobs, reduced crime, and all that. Great undertakings fire up human imagination and creativity in ways that merely continuing to exist does not. By what you are saying, you may not actually understand that last, but that's okay. We don't need *you* to go. Just stay out of the way.

You get the exact same thing building and populating habitats in the Solar System for far, far less cost. Good grief, why bother sending a ship to Alpha Centauri? With that level of technology, I build an orbital telescope array and actually LOOK at those planets long before waiting a thousand years for some generation ship to get there and tell me.

Look, it's not that I don't have romance in my soul. And I totally agree with the notion of space exploration benefiting Earth. Totally down with that. But, I also recognize that the F in SF is equally important. Generation ships are a plot device, not a practical idea.

Yep. I've read the same pieces. Slap an engine on it, and you're pretty good to go!

That would be cool.

Zardnaar · Feb 14, 2019

Umbran said:
You want to be very, very careful with that logic. It has wide-reaching implications. I wish to avoid politics, but let us just say that the culture you live in right here and now is not, by those measures, particularly clean. Then, there are platitudes about splinters in eyes, pots & kettles, glass houses and stones, that then apply to your position. Not a good look.

Also, it would seem to me that this is a choice that each person boarding the ship gets to make for themselves. I don't think you get to sink the project because you have no stomach for the moral implications. You get to choose not to go yourself, and that's fine.

Yes, the sun injects a lot of energy into the system.

You want energy injected into the system? We can do that - use a Bussard ramscoop. You set out a network of superconducting cables around the ship, and run current through them to produce a magnetic field. That field scoops up interstellar hydrogen. Voila! Fuel!

That sun is going to die, you know. And it will take us with it if we are not elsewhere.

I noted previously that every single habitable continent on this planet was colonized by humans *long* before population pressure made it necessary. Exploring new places may not be your cup of tea, but it is a things humans do.

But, perhaps there's no romance in your soul. So, let us look at socioeconomic benefits. You are asking, writ large, the same question as those who wonder why we have NASA. Why we bother having an ISS, or going to the Moon, or Mars, or asteroids.

1) there is *massive* economic benefit to be gained in the development needed to make the trip possible. The technologies created for the trip have uses groundside, but we likely wouldn't come up with them if we didn't have a lofty goal.

2) There's a massive amount of stuff to be learned about the universe we live in. And that, again, will often have applications back home. Yes, there's a long distance call back, but it gets here eventually.

3) There is a strong argument that a society engaged in expansion gains major economic and sociological benefits - jobs, reduced crime, and all that. Great undertakings fire up human imagination and creativity in ways that merely continuing to exist does not. By what you are saying, you may not actually understand that last, but that's okay. We don't need *you* to go. Just stay out of the way.

Yep. I've read the same pieces. Slap an engine on it, and you're pretty good to go!

Age of exploration was because the ye olde traditional benefits of trade with Asia via the silk road were lost with the collapse of the Byzantines.

Columbus was trying to get to Asia, the Portugese went around Africa to get to Asia. Constantinople fell in 1453, within 100 years European ships were preying on Muslim shipping in the Indian Ocean. They knew where silk came from, they knew what direction it was in in in broad terms they knew how to get there due to Marco Polo. They were all trying to get to the richest country in the world of the last 1800/2200 years. The gold at the end of the rainbow was spice, textiles, silk, porcelain etc.

Exploring for the sake of exploring mostly came later.

Morally you would probably have to have some form of oppressive society on a generation ship. We might have to start making decisions like that in the next 50 odd years, for example shooting refugees at the border or let them in and ultimately create more problems or doom more people long term. In extreme survival situations being able to do what you want doesn't work.

Morally wrong right now, sure. Morally wrong in 50-100 years who knows. I'm a cynic I bet on violence, its the human thing to do and we're really good at it.

Hussar · Feb 14, 2019

Sorry, [MENTION=6716779]Zardnaar[/MENTION], but, morally wrong is just morally wrong. Full stop. It doesn't become morally right because we have to do it. It's just that that's the choice - abandon morals or not.

Although, not to get too far into politics, but, it's extremely doubtful refugees are going to be much more of a problem in 50 years. At least, no more or less than they are now. It's just that the current population of most first world countries have forgotten that, not that long ago, about 10% of their populations were foreign born. Give or take. It's only in the post war era that we saw such a drop in immigration and mobility.

Maxperson · Feb 14, 2019

Umbran said:
That sun is going to die, you know. And it will take us with it if we are not elsewhere.

Nah. It's not going to take us with it. Long before the sun dies it will expand and simply take us out.

Generation Ships--- Can we build one now?

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