Generation Ships

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

We have no idea if that's true or not, because we don't understand what sapience is or how it works. It might be something innate to biology, it might not, we just don't know.

Unless you attribute some religious significance to intelligence, then it would take some serious evidence that it is somehow innate to carbon based wet biology. If it can evolve, it can be created.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Of course, the OP isn't about this senario. Its about TL 8, or in other words:

"what does a generation ship look like if you take away genetic engineering, and AIs, and all that other "transhuman" (in the original meaning) stuff?"

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that once the ship is put together and you have a quarter million people headed off to alpha centari (or where-ever), the ship will have to run itself and I'm guessing you started off with a rational bunch of people. I am going to say self preservation will see the colonists to their destination. They might not want to get off the ship afterwards, but thats a different matter.

If it's built at TL8 or probably even TL9, it'll more likely be a case of, "We made it! Let's get off this thing before it falls apart completely." TL 10 or higher might be another matter.

One problem for a slow genship is that you don't have to posit FTL for them to find their target star already colonized. Let's sa a genship sets out for Alpha Centuari and averages 0.001c, so they'll arrive in 4500 years. That's a lot of time for technical advancements, even a 0.01c genship would be ten times faster and get there in just 450 years. That's still long enough to need a genship (assuming normal humans), but they can beat the first ship there as long as they launch within four thousand years of the launch of the first ship.

If our hypothetical second genship launched 1000 years after the first, the first would arrive to find the target star had been settled for 3000 years.

Of course, a third ship might be able to make .1c, cover the distance in 45 years, and now the same generation that started out can settle the target star, so the second ship might also find itself facing settled land.

There's nothing in physics to suggest any reason to doubt .01 and .1c vehicles are possible. They aren't even utterly beyond our engineering concepts today. We can't build them yet, but no superscience at all is involved.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Unless you attribute some religious significance to intelligence, then it would take some serious evidence that it is somehow innate to carbon based wet biology. If it can evolve, it can be created.

But we don't know if it can be created in any medium other than carbon and water, either. That's just the point, we have no evidence at all, either way. From a scientific POV, one is just as probable as the other, since the subject matter is a black box.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Sunrunners_Fire

The discussion also (at least originally) mentioned that it was a TL8 genship. TL8 medicine doesn't have that capability; on the other hand, it does have the capability of selective breeding.

I thought I would just briefly mention the reasons I consider the TL8 genship a total non-starter.

There isn't enough loose money in a TL8 world like ours to manufacture the components, launch them into orbit and assemble them there. Look at what we've spent on the dinky little ISS.

To look at some numbers from Spaceships a SM+15 vessel that might hold 20,000 to 40,000 in habitants supported by agriculture in Open Space modules (6-12 spaces) would mass 3 million tons and would require approx. 20,000 launches of a Saturn 5 in heavy lift configuration. You'd still only be in low orbit too.

Second is that there is no propulsion system that could be built before TL9 rolled around that would produce usable speeds. Even just the technical minimum of providing the 26 miles per second of Delta-V needed to achieve solar escape velocity is somewhere beyond merely impractical.

About the only TL8- tech that looks even marginally attractive is agriculture and even there there are serious long-term issues involving soil nutrition and replenishment that make looking at TL9 bio-tech atttractive. Certainly Biosphere 2 couldn't do anything like keeping its' soil fertile for a century or two.

So this is why I generally don't bother talking about TL8 technologies

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Unless you attribute some religious significance to intelligence, then it would take some serious evidence that it is somehow innate to carbon based wet biology. If it can evolve, it can be created.

Sure, but unless we can escape the fact that any attempt to get things cheaper requires an understanding of the principles behind intelligence that requires a violation of the uncertainty principle, we're going to be disappointed. Human intelligence is poor at grasping human methods of intelligence. We're not perfect, but nor do we know what is better than our standard intelligence level

[Flyndaran]

I'm leery of anyone throwing around uncertainty principles or really anything to do with quantum mechanics when talking about anything not directly related to quantum physics.
Intelligence is a macroscopic tool toward achieving goals by self-aware entities. I see no need for quantum anything in that.
It smacks too much of squeezing biochauvenistic religion in the back door.

But this all too close to the THS threads and off topic.

For this thread all that matters is what, if any, type(s) of A.I.s are available for the ship.

[Icelander]

I'm not saying we're perfect.

Just that perhaps human spirits might do wrong.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Icelander

I'm not saying we're perfect.

Just that perhaps human spirits might do wrong.

Could you rephrase that, please? I'm not quite following.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Could you rephrase that, please? I'm not quite following.

We might we waiting forever, or at least waiting for what some characer thing is righgt. He might have been wrong.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

I thought I would just briefly mention the reasons I consider the TL8 genship a total non-starter.

There isn't enough loose money in a TL8 world like ours to manufacture the components, launch them into orbit and assemble them there. Look at what we've spent on the dinky little ISS.

To look at some numbers from Spaceships a SM+15 vessel that might hold 20,000 to 40,000 in habitants supported by agriculture in Open Space modules (6-12 spaces) would mass 3 million tons and would require approx. 20,000 launches of a Saturn 5 in heavy lift configuration. You'd still only be in low orbit too.

Second is that there is no propulsion system that could be built before TL9 rolled around that would produce usable speeds. Even just the technical minimum of providing the 26 miles per second of Delta-V needed to achieve solar escape velocity is somewhere beyond merely impractical.

About the only TL8- tech that looks even marginally attractive is agriculture and even there there are serious long-term issues involving soil nutrition and replenishment that make looking at TL9 bio-tech atttractive. Certainly Biosphere 2 couldn't do anything like keeping its' soil fertile for a century or two.

So this is why I generally don't bother talking about TL8 technologies

I'm with you here. The only logic in a TL8 starship is to flee the Earth's solar system. If you need to do that, society isn't going to hold together long enough to build a viable starship, period. Generation starships, without either supers, mages, or something else of that order, can't exist before TL9 or probably TL10.