Generation Ships--- Can we build one now?

Morrus · Feb 9, 2019

Hussar said:
Only problem with that is, 200 years won't get us anywhere. When talking about generation ships traveling between stars, we're talking about 2000 years - anything that big would be far, far to massive to accelerate to any appreciable degree of C. Which then means that genetic drift becomes a serious issue. Never minding linguistic drift. What happens when the crew can no longer read their technical manuals or labels on the reactor?

Although, to be fair, insects as a source of protein would likely be the easiest way to go.

They continue to update them, just like how we don’t read 1066 manuals for steelmaking. Why wouldn’t they?

Shasarak · Feb 9, 2019

tomBitonti said:
If we can get past what particular label best fits, certainly, the lives of ship dwellers would be extremely constrained. Though, this seems to be an ethical/moral issue rather than a feasibility issue. As a related issue, one of the ways to manage the community would be to flat out lie.

But, what if the ship dwellers didn’t have to work: The ship might be highly automated. They would have a lot of leisure time, which they can pursue as they choose, within the scope of what is possible in the ship.

When I consider this question, I find myself led to three questions: Can we build a ship that stays functional for the necessary duration, which is likely thousands of years. (I don’t think this is yet demonstrated.) Can we build an ecosystem that can be maintained for the same duration? (Our current durations seem to be measured in single digits of years.). Can we keep passengers crew sane and focused on the mission? (This I have no idea.)

I also find myself asking a stronger question: Could a generation ship ever be built? There might be basic problems, say, limits on material reliability, or limits on error free transmissions, which make this impossible.

Thx!
TomB

I think that it would be a mistake to over automate the ship. If the ship ended up being like the one from the Wall-e movie then how much good are the colonists going to be when the ship arrives at the new planet? I think that you would need at least 6 to 8 hours of work each day even if it was just cleaning or maintaining the infrastructure of the ship.

I also think that it would be impossible to maintain a cohesive community based on a lie without it falling into a catastrophic failure. Obviously it is hard to tell exactly what kind of resources will be available but I would say that there would be some very hard line rules against damaging the ship and gross negligence at maintaining the ship. I would imagine psychological monitoring would be an important tool in helping maintain the community.

Hussar · Feb 9, 2019

Morrus said:
They continue to update them, just like how we don’t read 1066 manuals for steelmaking. Why wouldn’t they?

Does that include rewriting the entire operating system for every single automated or computer controlled element of the ship? Flawlessly every time so that not only can people still understand it, but, it also functions without error?

How's your Cobol these days? Or your Fortran?

Shasarak · Feb 9, 2019

Umbran said:
If you are forced to labor, you are a slave. On the generation ship, can you choose to pursue your own vocation as you see fit, or choose to not work at all? If not, you're in some form of servitude to the polity of the ship.

Having to work is just a normal part of being alive. Unless you have someone else working hard enough to be able to support themselves and you as well and is that the kind of useless life that anyone aspires to? No, it is just like being a child eventually you have to grow up and become independant. On your second point I would imagine that there would be vocations that you could study for and that the crew would choose the people best suited for those vocations. I dont think that there would be a choice about being able to work or not, everyone would need to work together as a team. But in any case there is a large large difference between being a servant and being a slave.

Other things that may need to be done on a generation ship will seem like an abrogation of other rights - forcing you to donate your gametes to make children, for example, isn't slavery, but would likely count as an invasion of the right of privacy to an American.

I can not see a generation ship running some kind of eugenics program. Within a fixed community you would just have to be careful about the amount of inbreeding that you get over the generations and we already have, if not laws, then societal restrictions on marrying your cousin. You would especially have to be aware of any resessive gene combinations but that happens now anyway.

An arranged marriage, in and of itself, is not a problem, so long as it is consensual for all parties. If, upon considering refusing, threats or coercion are applied to *make* people marry, that's forced marriage, and is not legal.

At least one person is claiming that an arranged marriage is slavery. But then if having to work to live is also slavery then I guess everything is slavery all the way down.

Hussar · Feb 10, 2019

Wow, [MENTION=94143]Shasarak[/MENTION], who claimed that arranged marriage is slavery? Not me.

I claimed that as part of the slavery of the subsequent generations, just like slaves, they would be forced to lose reproductive rights. Never said anything about marriage.

But, yeah, if you are forced into a specific job in society, your reproductive rights taken away, forced to conform to extremely rigid behavior, and not given any actual choice, I don't really care what you call it. I call it slavery. But, hey, feel free to consider yourself technically correct if that's what floats your boat.

After all, that's the absolutelest most important kind of correct.

Good grief, talk about missing the bloody point.

Shasarak · Feb 10, 2019

I think it is wise to come up with ideas that would not work so that we can get down to something that would actually last a thousand years.

And as Hussar says slavery just is not going to cut it.

tomBitonti · Feb 10, 2019

Tonguez said:
That question of sanity is what makes the lives of ship dwellers more than just an ethical issue and raises it to a fundamental issue of survival. Even more so if the the crew are largely leisure focused. DO we get excessive drug and alcohol consumption? what happens if a person steals or if there is a fight and somebody is killed?

It takes only one person to become aberrant for the whole structure to crumble - so do you have a totalitarian system where aberrant behaviour is eliminated immediately? Do you encourage compliance and opiates What happens to political dissent?

WHat happens when two tribes go to war?

I agree that having to live in a highly constrained society would likely cause all sorts of problems. I don’t know if they are unsurmountable. People are adaptable and resilient. I worry more about long term stability. Gradual drifts into failure modes.

Also, I agree that social management by misinformation is, at the least, very risky. But, a lot of stories put this in as a feature.

To address another point, eugenics might not be necessary. Everyone could be born from stored, frozen embryos. (But how long can those be stored? Maybe that wouldn’t work.). Doing so would help stabilize the population to “known stable” genotypes. There would be much selection going into the choice of the folks on the ship, and in any frozen assets.

With today’s technology the ship would be stuck with the machinery and computer resources that it started with. We can 3D print some stuff, but rebuilding a large proportion of the ship seems unlikely. What might work would be to a whole lot of backups in deep freeze.

Thx!
TomB

Umbran · Feb 10, 2019

Hussar said:
Does that include rewriting the entire operating system for every single automated or computer controlled element of the ship? Flawlessly every time so that not only can people still understand it, but, it also functions without error?

Of course you rewrite it! You do it in new languages as you make them up, just like we do today. The problem you see with cobol and fortran is systems that weren't updated in a timely manner, rather than ones that were updated. If you constantly keep the systems fresh with current lingo, they don't get to a point where nobody understands them.

Just as the people on a generation ship are born, live, and die, so must technologies be born, live, and die.

And, guess what - you don't have to do it flawlessly. There is no such thing as flawless software of such complexity*. You instead build it redundant, and have human oversight, so that you can manage when software flakes out.

You seem to be speaking as if somehow we have to make this risk-free. That's not an option - we cannot make crossing a basic street risk-free, or our current space exploration risk-free. You can't make great gains (like reaching another star) without taking on some risk.

*Literally - as in, it has been proven that it is not possible to know with certainty if software of the complexity of even Microsoft Word is bug free. You don't aim for "flawless". You aim for high level of confidence that flaws can be dealt with.

Mustrum_Ridcully · Feb 10, 2019

Regarding the slavery issue - I read that there is a fellow in India that is suing his own parents for having giving him life. He wasn't asked if he wanted to live, and there would have been plenty of children they could have adopted instead. Interesting idea.

But fundamentally, parents always make decisions about their children. Starting with that they decide to have them, but also by where they live. And the children will have to somehow integrate into society. Sure, they could at some point decide to leave the current home, city or nation, but hey always have to live somewhere, and they will always end up having to "work" to keep living, and if it's hunting wild animals or collecting berries, or begging for food or whatever. If that counts as slavery, then we are already all enslaved right now. But I think slavery is usually reserved for something much more specific than that.

Hussar · Feb 10, 2019

Umbran said:
Of course you rewrite it! You do it in new languages as you make them up, just like we do today. The problem you see with cobol and fortran is systems that weren't updated in a timely manner, rather than ones that were updated. If you constantly keep the systems fresh with current lingo, they don't get to a point where nobody understands them.

Just as the people on a generation ship are born, live, and die, so must technologies be born, live, and die.

And, guess what - you don't have to do it flawlessly. There is no such thing as flawless software of such complexity*. You instead build it redundant, and have human oversight, so that you can manage when software flakes out.

You seem to be speaking as if somehow we have to make this risk-free. That's not an option - we cannot make crossing a basic street risk-free, or our current space exploration risk-free. You can't make great gains (like reaching another star) without taking on some risk.

*Literally - as in, it has been proven that it is not possible to know with certainty if software of the complexity of even Microsoft Word is bug free. You don't aim for "flawless". You aim for high level of confidence that flaws can be dealt with.

Couple of problems with your example though.

When Windows crashes, I lose my essay. When your life support system crashes, people die. There is a bit more at stake here. And, again, we're talking about computer systems that are running an entire environment. A very, very large environment. As you say, the problems are when some systems aren't updated in a timely manner.

Are you saying that every generation would update their systems in a timely manner every time, generation after generation? Nothing would get overlooked? Because overlooking this system over there can result in all sorts of badness. Hope everyone works at 100% efficiency with no mistakes over thousands of years.

Yeah, good luck with that.

It's not about being risk free. It's about recognizing that a "risk" over a long enough time span is virtually guaranteed to occur and so many of these risks are catastrophic. Particularly when the chances of these risks rely on people.