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Old 01-31-2018, 07:07 PM   #41
Johnny1A.2
 
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Default Re: Will the Space Colony children be the Startravelers?

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So, barring information against it, generation starships are possible if problematic. Thus the original question of this thread, "Would 2nd and later generation space habitat colonists be the ones to man generation starships?" is valid.

As the THS setting has highly successful stable space habitats and generation starships are, at base, space habitats with propulsion systems. So the issue of what needs improvement to make generation starships viable is valid in the THS setting.
It depends on how long you have to get there. The THS tech is on the edge of being able to build a viable genship, but it would take a long time to get anywhere. The faster you want to get there, the harder it is (naturally). To get to Alpha C in a century, for ex, you need to average .045c, which would be very, very hard for THS tech on something the size of a genship.

OTOH, a genship might take 1000 years, which requires averaging .0045c, which would be...very, very hard for a big genship using THS tech.

Honestly, using THS tech, suspended animation looks like a better bet to me than generation ships. It's already canon possible, and it allows your starting crew to arrive, so they really are 'star travelers'. I don't know how long THS2100 nanostasis is good for, was a time limit ever given?

With nanostasis, you could make do with a much, much smaller ship, which makes reaching .01c or .045c much easier. It would still be a huge project, but vastly easier to accelerating something like an Island Three to such velocities.

So if you see biological-crewed starships leaving the Solar System in the period immediately after 2100 in THS, suspended animation looks more likely.

But both suspended animation and genships face one huge inescapable danger: that subsequent generations at home, with more powerful tech, will send out ships that catch up and pass them, so by the time they arrive they find the target systems inhabited. It doesn't do any good to depart on a .01c ship in 2020 if somebody in 2200 sets out for the same star at .2c.
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Old 02-01-2018, 12:38 AM   #42
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Default Re: Will the Space Colony children be the Startravelers?

A common reason for going to other stars is to lay claim to the planets there. So why would space habitat people want to go if they are happy to live in space habitats? Wouldn't planet dwellers be more inclined to go to all this trouble?
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Old 02-01-2018, 03:39 PM   #43
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Default Re: Will the Space Colony children be the Startravelers?

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A common reason for going to other stars is to lay claim to the planets there. So why would space habitat people want to go if they are happy to live in space habitats? Wouldn't planet dwellers be more inclined to go to all this trouble?
In the canonical THS setting, laying claim to asteriods and comets is important too. Dwellers in space habitats might prefer a star system with the mass in asteroid sized chunks rather than locked away useless in the form of planets. Claiming the system as a whole or extractive rights to key resources would be more likely to be the name of the game.
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Old 02-01-2018, 05:59 PM   #44
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Default Re: Will the Space Colony children be the Startravelers?

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A common reason for going to other stars is to lay claim to the planets there. So why would space habitat people want to go if they are happy to live in space habitats? Wouldn't planet dwellers be more inclined to go to all this trouble?
Yeah, but there are more resources than just planets. For ex, a habitat in a 'nationalist/expansionist' mood might well want undisputed access to more asteroidal material than the Solar System offers. ('Undisputed' being the key word, not the total material available.)

Or somebody might want to engage in projects that their Solarian neighbors find objectionable for ideological or practical reasons. I can think of several semi-plausible possibilities for such off the top of my head.

Or somebody might by afraid that Somebody Else is out to get them for whatever reason, rational or not, and want to get away.

People are people, and that's just as true in the future as it was in the past..
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Old 02-01-2018, 06:09 PM   #45
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Default Re: Will the Space Colony children be the Startravelers?

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Yeah, but there are more resources than just planets. For ex, a habitat in a 'nationalist/expansionist' mood might well want undisputed access to more asteroidal material than the Solar System offers.
The problem with generation ship, though, is that (a) it doesn't benefit the person paying for it, only their distant descendants, and (b) let's say I make a ship that can reach a nearby star in 1,000 years. How do I know that in a hundred years someone won't make a ship that can reach the same star in 800 years, and then beat me there by a hundred years?

Both of these factors generally discourage options that take more than a few decades (if tech in THS were stagnant the second factor would be less of a worry, but it would be hard to justify not being worried at the current rate of tech progression in the setting).
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Old 02-01-2018, 09:29 PM   #46
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Default Re: Will the Space Colony children be the Startravelers?

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The problem with generation ship, though, is that (a) it doesn't benefit the person paying for it, only their distant descendants, and (b) let's say I make a ship that can reach a nearby star in 1,000 years. How do I know that in a hundred years someone won't make a ship that can reach the same star in 800 years, and then beat me there by a hundred years?

Both of these factors generally discourage options that take more than a few decades (if tech in THS were stagnant the second factor would be less of a worry, but it would be hard to justify not being worried at the current rate of tech progression in the setting).
I agree about 95%, as I noted above. That's why I said above that suspended-animation looks like a better bet than genships for the first starships in the THS world (setting aside the infomorph problem for the nonce).
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Old 02-02-2018, 06:59 PM   #47
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Default Re: Will the Space Colony children be the Startravelers?

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The problem with generation ship, though, is that (a) it doesn't benefit the person paying for it, only their distant descendants, and (b) let's say I make a ship that can reach a nearby star in 1,000 years. How do I know that in a hundred years someone won't make a ship that can reach the same star in 800 years, and then beat me there by a hundred years?

Both of these factors generally discourage options that take more than a few decades (if tech in THS were stagnant the second factor would be less of a worry, but it would be hard to justify not being worried at the current rate of tech progression in the setting).
But the Generation Starship is always meant as choosing the future over the present. Those committing to a generation starship assume that the future represented by the voyage ia the Real value.
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Old 02-02-2018, 07:13 PM   #48
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Default Re: Will the Space Colony children be the Startravelers?

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But the Generation Starship is always meant as choosing the future over the present. Those committing to a generation starship assume that the future represented by the voyage ia the Real value.
Not a lot of people actually behave that way, and in any case, it doesn't address the second problem.
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Old 02-02-2018, 08:28 PM   #49
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Default Re: Will the Space Colony children be the Startravelers?

It's also a massive amount of resources leaving the system. That would probably irritate people that wouldn't otherwise care about the project in principle.
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Old 02-02-2018, 08:45 PM   #50
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It's also a massive amount of resources leaving the system. That would probably irritate people that wouldn't otherwise care about the project in principle.
As long as it's paid for I doubt they'd care. The problem is finding anyone willing to pay for it.
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