Generation ships and aging.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

I don't picture conscripts doing that; they will simply take over as soon as possible.

The only ones I can picture doing a generation voyage are ideologues. That way the parents can raise the children in a duty to continue the quest. Such things have been done before in colony ventures.

But they rarely work well, because it's difficult to pass on fanaticism/determination across generations. The very fact that the second, third, etc. generation is raised differently than the starting generation means they look at things differently.

Now a genship is a special case. If there's not enough delta-V to head back, or change course, the subsequent generations are pretty much committed to the founding premise. But that doesn't mean they'll do on arrival anything like what the founders intended.