Generation Ships

[Sindri]

Originally Posted by Gold & Appel Inc

I'd try to emphasize hobbies that consume minimal resources, and discourage others. Sex and gaming are probably a great place to start - they contain enough variety to keep me obsessed for over two decades now, at any rate. We're all biased, of course, but I envision RPGs being especially popular because they require very little equipment and can change drastically every time you play. Playing a musical instrument is a good one, also: You can do it alone or socially, and it only adds a small amount of cargo once.

Yeah and selecting for people who can do something like roleplaying for decades is useful but I think that it would make sense for there to be backups in case the next generations diverge significantly and produce a lot of people who just aren't satisfied if they don't feel they are making a difference or something.

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

The first generation will whine about what food isn't on the ship. But the future ones will only know what they have, and won't miss what they never had.

Well there is probably a necessary amount of food diversity but I meant that only producing enough food to feed everyone is problematic if something goes wrong and reduces the food production or the population increases or something. It makes sense to be paranoid when designing a generation ship.