Generation Ships

[Sindri]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

I'm not sure the technological advancement is your prime concern. For me, the most puzzling question was what sort of proportion of various professions and workplaces is required for a reasonably stable canned society.

That's also interesting thus my questions about the economy and averting boredom. What do you do after you are done maintaining the ship? I could engage in hobbies and learning things only for a long time but not everyone can and a certain amount of activity is probably required for maintaining a technological society. A generation ship is probably not going to be expanding it's population much and once everyone has the stuff they want repairing and replacing things doesn't take much work.

However while I do prefer my threads to serve as general resources for people with similar questions in my case the generation ship lies in the past and I wonder what influences this will have on it's technological ability.

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Very tight selection of inhabitants can easily shape the micro society. Heck, agoraphobes might even like the idea.

Repair facilities and robust training for nearly everyone to know how to deal with breakdowns from aging equipment. Genetic engineering facilities to deal with small population bottle necking.

That's quite true. People will be selected carefully. Of course their children will start to diverge.

Yeah that's what I'm thinking about. Those kinds of technologies are more relevant to a generation ship life than others.

Originally Posted by Gold & Appel Inc

Sex: If they're firing those poor bastards off into space in a closed habitat with limited food supplies and no means of birth control reliable enough to keep the population exactly where they want it, no amount of WoW is going to keep things from getting ugly pretty fast...

Booze: If this bird is really TL8 (suspending disbelief for the sake of discussion), it's going to be pretty fragile to careless mishaps and everybody needs to be on their game 24/7. If I was writing the rules, they'd read like: "Possession gets you days in solitary equal to all cumulative offenses, per offense. Building and operating a still (without a permit for industrial uses) gets you spaced. No judge. No trial. Spaced. Any questions?"

Thanks for suspension. The culture might have times and places for some of the population at a time to not be on their game.

Controlling the population is incredibly important for a generation ship and given the circumstances I think reliable birth control is quite necessary.

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

A lot more like martial law than democracy. Freedom and slow decision making would lead to the death of everyone.

In important things that's true for the most part. Arguing over minor political matters might be a good way to occupy people and blow off steam.

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Wow, I guess you see drinking as a lot more destructive than I do... and I lost a family member to a drunk driver.
I think prohibition proved that removing alcohol from a society is impossible. And constantly murdering your crew might have an adverse effect on morale.

Removing alcohol from that society was impossible. The thing is that a heavy drinking society doesn't mix well with the necessity for the society to be on game all the time. Light drinking is probably fine.