Whistle blower says non-human bodies recovered from crash

[UngainlyTitan]

I wonder what takes longer: finding an alien biome that could support your species, or altering a "close" one to fit.

Not sure that finding an alien biome that could support a species is likely. Unless all life in the cosmos comes from a common origin or there are only one atomic and stereoisomeric pathway to life it is highly unlikely that any alien biome is compatible with another. As for terraforming PBS Spacetime has a interesting video on terraforming Mars

Convincing civilizations that have spent a hundred thousand years aboard a generation ship to leave it and settle on a semi-hostile planet.

This, in my opinion may well be the biggest obstacle.
If you have the tech to get there you may have no need of planets.

 

[Reynard]

If it's traveling between starts without FTL (which is a better bet than anyone traveling through FTL), it had better be, or they're not getting very far.

I don't think so. Stars are something like an average of 10 light years apart. Accelerating at 1g gets you to 90% c in just over a year. If we say we can top out at say 10% c due to energy requirements, you have a century or so between stars. If you don't aim for one that is more likely than not to have a place to land, you are probably doing it wrong. If you have to travel for thousands of years you might as well just colonize your solar system.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I don't think so. Stars are something like an average of 10 light years apart. Accelerating at 1g gets you to 90% c in just over a year. If we say we can top out at say 10% c due to energy requirements, you have a century or so between stars. If you don't aim for one that is more likely than not to have a place to land, you are probably doing it wrong. If you have to travel for thousands of years you might as well just colonize your solar system.

OK. So that gets us to a handful of stars, but after that -- assuming any of this is possible -- it's decades or more in the generation ship.

So, amend my statement to "convincing societies that have spent decades or more aboard a generation ship to leave it and settle on a semi-hostile planet."

Humans routinely panic and say it's impossible for them to do much smaller societal changes than leaving the cocoon that they and their parents were born and grew up in.

 

[Reynard]

OK. So that gets us to a handful of stars, but after that -- assuming any of this is possible -- it's decades or more in the generation ship.

So, amend my statement to "convincing societies that have spent decades or more aboard a generation ship to leave it and settle on a semi-hostile planet."

Humans routinely panic and say it's impossible for them to do much smaller societal changes than leaving the cocoon that they and their parents were born and grew up in.

If the thing is perpetually stable? Sure. I agree. I wouldn't expect that to be the case though. And if it was I would agree with @UngainlyTitan and say those people wouldn't need a planet anyway.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I don't think so. Stars are something like an average of 10 light years apart. Accelerating at 1g gets you to 90% c in just over a year. If we say we can top out at say 10% c due to energy requirements, you have a century or so between stars. If you don't aim for one that is more likely than not to have a place to land, you are probably doing it wrong. If you have to travel for thousands of years you might as well just colonize your solar system.

Accelerating for 1g for a year is a non trivial exercise and I believe that colonising the solar system is an easier exercise. What happens if you hit something the size of a basketball at 0.9c. Not to mention the effects of the incoming radiation.

 

[MarkB]

I wonder what takes longer: finding an alien biome that could support your species, or altering a "close" one to fit.

Even if altering a life-bearing world is possible, factor in that you're also committing to perpetrating multiple genocide against the existing species there, since every change you make will be a change away from some species' ecological niche.

Of course, that's equally true of terraforming a planet without life, since you're effectively establishing and then overwriting successive biomes as you draw incrementally closer to an Earth-like one.

 

[Reynard]

Accelerating for 1g for a year is a non trivial exercise and I believe that colonising the solar system is an easier exercise. What happens if you hit something the size of a basketball at 0.9c. Not to mention the effects of the incoming radiation.

You are probably using a hollowed out asteroid or comet so you have some radiation shielding already. Of course, the more massive the object the harder it is to get moving, but you could use nuclear or anti-matter propulsion. The biggest danger might be the systems for slowing dsown breaking down over the centuries in the void. What then?

 

[Nikosandros]

I don't think so. Stars are something like an average of 10 light years apart. Accelerating at 1g gets you to 90% c in just over a year.

If you could manage 90% c, you would also shave off almost 60% of your traveled distance, due to Lorentz contraction.

 

[Ryujin]

You are probably using a hollowed out asteroid or comet so you have some radiation shielding already. Of course, the more massive the object the harder it is to get moving, but you could use nuclear or anti-matter propulsion. The biggest danger might be the systems for slowing dsown breaking down over the centuries in the void. What then?

Hope that Kirk and company find you before you auger into the planet you wanted to colonize?

For the world is hollow, and I have touched the sky.

 

[Umbran]

Convincing civilizations that have spent a hundred thousand years aboard a generation ship to leave it and settle on a semi-hostile planet.

Becky Chambers - Record of a Spaceborn Few.