Generation Ships

[Sindri]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Of course. I just meant that today's westerner can have foods from all over the globe nearly 365 days a year. Never eating another banana, or favorite fish would become the go to complaint from grumpy guses even if they can have 5000 styles of chicken and tuna. :)

While I would vaguely dislike the idea of not being able to eat a whatever ever again there are a lot of foods that I could never have access to again and not really notice. Even better they will probably carry the genetic information for them along so if I really want to have one I could grow it. Of course realistically everyone is going to have to deal with at least some reduction in easy access to one of the foods they like. Plus there are all kinds of interesting new things you can do with foods that hasn't been explored yet. Also having things to grumble about might be good for a society.

Originally Posted by nondescript handle

A generation ship will have an accessibility of mission critical equipment more like a cruise ship (there are children on board after all) than a warship (and there is sanctioned alcohol consumption on present day warships, at least those under German flag).

So I really can't see the drunkenly-pressed-the-"self destruct"-instead-of-the-"flush toilet"-button scenario.

A generation ship will mostly have an accessibility of mission equipment like a generation ship. I at least think it's important for the whole population to be engaged in maintenance &c if only for mental well being.

Originally Posted by jeff_wilson

TL8 can't make a self-contained human-suitable biosphere that will last more than a few years if that. The canonical GURPS generation ship treatment is in BIOTECH for 4/e.

Meh. I happen to disagree but it's not really relevant. Like I said suppose whatever TL you find necessary. Besides that... Generation ships are mentioned in Space and Ultra-Tech mentions regenerative life and there is Spaceships of course but where (aside from Draconis.) are generation ships mentioned in Bio-Tech?

Originally Posted by malloyd

This pretty much needs to be true for everything. Trying to run a society as a total command economy where everything has to be perfectly right all the time or we all die is not going to work for years, let alone generations. You absolutely need some margin in everything or you are going to have a disaster. At absolute minimum, you need to set things up so something going wrong only means some of us die, and we have redundant people we can afford that.

Well you want some margin for the things that lead to collapse and that can be achieved through stored supplies rather than overproduction. It makes sense to overproduce food since it helps the variety, can be used in things like alcohol, and is easily convertible to more food. In general though yeah it's important for there to be some slack.