Generation Ships

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Gold & Appel Inc

...
If I was a crewman on that ship and found out that somebody was wasting food to produce alcohol, I'd murder them myself.

Having food production so tightly controlled and regulated for every gram of efficiency that even the handful of ketchup packets it takes to make bad prison alcohol would be noticed sounds a lot more depressing than having a voluntary drunk tank.

[Sindri]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Having food production so tightly controlled and regulated for every gram of efficiency that even the handful of ketchup packets it takes to make bad prison alcohol would be noticed sounds a lot more depressing than having a voluntary drunk tank.

Not to mention being a neon sign asking for disaster. I think it's reasonable for there to be excess production of food.

[Gold & Appel Inc]

Originally Posted by Sindri

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.

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.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Sindri

Not to mention being a neon sign asking for disaster. I think it's reasonable for there to be excess production of food.

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.

[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.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Sindri

...
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.

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. :)

[nondescript handle]

Originally Posted by Gold & Appel Inc

[...] or passively (by not hitting the wrong button during off hours). The only way I'd even remotely consider it is if there was a designated "beer pen" where you essentially have your "keys" taken away until you can blow 0.00%, [...]

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.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

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

That's not what I meant. (Also, I'd point to The Culture and Beta Colony as cases where canned societies exist without martial law.) But I meant things like how mane teachers per 1k people, how many navigators, how many janitors, how many doctors, how many law enforcement officers. And the there's the issue that not all professions are equal - you can't maintain 50 élite SWATs per 1k pop, because they're much more expensive in terms of 'maintenance' than 50 janitors.

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by Sindri

I don't think there is anything that keeps TL 8 from doing a generation ship but alright suppose whatever TL you desire. The question is, what kind of technological areas would be a priority for a generation ship?

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.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Sindri

Not to mention being a neon sign asking for disaster. I think it's reasonable for there to be excess production of food.

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.