Re: Generation Ships
 

That doesn't matter in essence, all it does it move the range of choice.

The laws of physics still press you toward the smallest ship and crew that can carry out the mission, with an acceptable margin of error. Ever extra gram of payload implies fuel and reaction mass to accelerate it, more fuel and reaction mass to decelerate it, plus the mass of the engine and propellant themselves to be accelerated.

Likewise, materials strength considerations mean that a bigger ship is harder to build, harder to hold together, etc.

If the ship is not a rocket, you still have to pay for that kinetic energy somehow, physics may let you get away on the straightaway but it'll still catch you on the bends.

Re: Generation Ships
 

A very good point, but it just shows that we don't really have any good prototypes.

The warship and polar science outpost don't even try to be permanent communities. The people are there for a few years, and then they return to a larger society. There are no children, no very old people, and very little forming of families.

The monastery is long-term, often for life, but it relies on importing its population. It has a very strong sense of community purpose and doesn't admit people who don't share it. Members who fall out with the community can leave.

The isolated oasis community and the hunter-gatherer tribe live in environments that are harder to mess up than a generation ship, and often have mores that favour marrying outside the tribe; they usually have some contact with other groups.

Brian Aldis' Non-Stop is a good SF exploration of a generation ship whose planned society collapsed.

Re: Generation Ships
 

That would be a good scene in a film.

Re: Generation Ships
 

They'd need to be careful about how they recycle (both to prevent prion infections and for the psychological comfort of the crew/passengers). But if the ecosystem is large enough, people won't think of it as recycling; just like Earth. Yes, the vast majority of human bodies have been recycled by Earth's ecosystems.

Re: Generation Ships
 

That doesn't make any sense. The larger the ecosystem in terms of sheer biomass the more difficult it is for a problem to eliminate all of it. The larger it is in variety the more it can resist a problem. If the farmers are capable of having a bad "season" that throws the whole balance off in a generation ship then they are totally incompetent. Even if you don't have a chance to recover sometimes many big machines don't have a chance to recover at all which still puts an ecosystem up.

Of course I don't have any examples. I never implied I had any.

It won't include any pumps if it can get away with it. Artificial sunlight just means that the ship will have to rely on other machines. An ecosystem that can repair some damage is still tougher than a machine that can't repair any damage.

One approach is limiting sex to avoid explosions but as you said it's "psychologically and culturally explosive." Which suggests that the cultural explosiveness could be reduced.

It seems to me that it would be better to engineer a culture that likes to spend it's time learning new skills and in hobbies like roleplaying than relying on fake work. You can still get cross training if you let people learn about other skills because they are interested.

I'm not sure about a shorter childhood. With people spending a lot of time on their skills there is a lot of backup for the society. It can afford to have a generous childhood, especially since extended adolescence is useful for teaching people the basics of many areas and letting them try many ideas before they join the society as a whole.

The generation ship of the thread is defined as having the time for research. Especially since research is a good way to keep people's skills from rusting. Limited margins for practical application of theoretics doesn't mean that people wouldn't be interested in developing the theories. Plus Dr. Hajou can reduced that to only a single ton &c.

Or a democracy with a dictator. (Note that my posts use dictator in it's Roman use by default.)

So what? "Human nature" is generally defined as that which cannot be changed. Of course it can't be changed. There is still substantial changes in a culture that can be accomplished with education and other methods.

I do agree that fairness and possibly awareness are questionable virtues on a generation ship.

Those examples are helpful, thanks.


That's a great idea!

I don't know if the environments are harder to mess up. You trade a reliance on artificial sunlight often for all the natural disasters and bad weather in general. The environment itself is tougher but the environment in a form that can support people seems about equal.

Re: Generation Ships
 

All societies limit sex (defined broadly to include marriage bonds and other social activities built around it), they have to. Rich, safe, stable societies can get away with more than those poorer and closer to the edge.

Some of the traditional considerations governing such things would not apply to a genship, but others would. For ex, the number of kids each couple could have would by necessity be limited. OTOH, the genship might well require that every female have 'x' number of children to ensure population size. A genship culture might not recognize females as full adults until they've had their quota, for ex.

If genetic quality is an issue (and in a high-rad environment it might be, especially with a limited breeding pool), some people might be disqualified from reproducing because of genetic damage of some kind. This would make them second-or third choices in the marriae lottery, and could become explosive (again).

Jealousy never goes away, either. On a genship, a divorced couple can't get all that far away from each other, I would not be at all surprised if a genship found it necessary to limit divorce to extreme circumstances with lots of limitations.

The relatively easy-going, relatively egalitarian nature of modern western society is made possible by powerful governments, enormous social safety nets, it's an effect of wealth and security, and historically anomalous.

People would have to keep learning new skills throughout their lives, the 'short childhood' would refer to the limited margin for freedom and lack of responsibility. Again, the long adolesence of modern Western societies is anomalous historically, it was made possible by wealth and security. The genship would need to keep the young busy, and to make use of every hand, one would never stop learning but the working life and family life would probably begin in the mid-teens (at the latest). On a genship, it's like that by the time you're 14 or 16, you're expected to be mostly or completely an adult.

(Not that unusual historically, but not how the modern West does things.)

Re: Generation Ships
 

I meant limiting sex to an above average degree. In the context of a generation ship societies are discussed in terms of artificial cultures which may be different from extant cultures. If something is said to be true of all societies it should be true of all plausible societies as well. Thus I disagree that all societies limit sex.

It seems that an artificial quota system would be more problematic then a culture that stressed stability of population and socially pressured others to having less or more children depending on the current population.

Jealousy never goes away but what people are jealous about and to what degree does change.

I'm aware of the historically anomalous nature of western society. That said... It doesn't matter. A generation ship is not made more plausible by maximally resembling the average of historical cultures. A generation ship has a powerful government and far greater social safety nets than western society.

It still doesn't matter that it is historically anomalous. A generation ship has access to significantly more labour than it needs for psychological reasons. It can keep them busy before a transition to adult life. It has no need to put children to work early so all that needs be considered is whether a modern western childhood is beneficial or detrimental. I think that a prolonged period of freedom and lack of responsibility is a useful way to let off pressure in a very rigid society and help maintain a decent minimum of understanding of a modern societies technological and scientific knowledge before they decide what to do as their first primary job. Learning throughout life is helped significantly by introducing people to areas enough that they get what is involved in them so they can see if they are interested in them.

Re: Generation Ships
 

I don't believe you can get away without any pumps. Water will still run downhill and have to get back up some how. Air needs to be circulated too and is unlikely to go where you want on its' own.

Also, your "ecosystem" is going to be an ecosystem of _farms_ with maybe a park or two. There's no way you can have enough spare growing space to have significant amounts of wilderness. Wilderness ecosystems can crash non-retrievablely too. The Sahara was grasslands during the early Roman Empire.

You're going to start out with a chunk of vacuum and import _everything_. There isn't going to be anything "natural" about the results.

Re: Generation Ships
 

You can simply declare it a given and that's fine, but the longest lived self-contained animal-supporting ecosystems I know of are the shrimp/algae/bacteria globes that last up to 10 years with a median of 2-3 years, while Hoover Dam's lasted 76 years.

Re: Generation Ships
 

Compartmentalize then. If the farm in one area breaks down restart it. Even if the farms break down every other year, you just need say... 30 and you'll have an average of a few hundred million years before a catastrophic failure where every farm system goes down.

Of course, Hoover Dam is maintained by people. Its lasted for 76 years because people repair it.