Generation Starships

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Keiko

That's seems reasonable though keeping things under wraps past a certain might be very difficult.

True enough, but the shock of an advanced project might lead to more and more intense drama.

[Keiko]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

True enough, but the shock of an advanced project might lead to more and more intense drama.

True, being the security team/department of undercover ops and dirty tricks in charge of keeping this underwraps for as along as possible could be a fun role.

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

After all, given the vast volume of the solar system, a shipyard that claims to specialise in advanced low maintenace drives and deep space habitats, could probably escape notice while doing most of what it takes to build a Generation Starship.

This would have to be an actual concern rather than just a front, because you'd need to have ships and hab crews visibly coming and going to keep appearances.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Given both the vastness of the solar system and the threat of terrorism, someone might try to arrange to build a Generation Starship in secret. After all, given the vast volume of the solar system, a shipyard that claims to specialise in advanced low maintenace drives and deep space habitats, could probably escape notice while doing most of what it takes to build a Generation Starship.

It's hard to spend Vast Quantities of Money without someone noticing that something is going on.

[johndallman]

There is a way to do it that allows greater secrecy, and possibly lower cost, although it will take a lot longer. It may even be good for the odds of success.

You don't buy in components. You make everything that goes into the ship yourself, by printing where possible, or whatever industrial process is necessary. This includes building a set of manufacturing facilities that you take along, which have enough redundancy that you can use them to replace any reasonable combination of breakdowns among the manufacturing tools in time to be able to repair whatever's gone wrong with the ship. You take nothing material with you that you bought, except for artworks, fine wines and the like. Everything else was bootstrapped.

If you plan to do it this way, you effectively start your journey by sneaking into the outer system, capturing a bunch of comets and rocks, and settling down for a generation or so of secret ship-building. You may wish to fake a really bad accident to explain why you've vanished and have secret contacts in the inner system who can route people to you who really want to join.

Of course, there's a scam to be run by pretending this is happening and you're the secret agent for it, and taking the money of people who want to join. You can even get them to pay for their own nanostasis, and just not awaken them.

[Keiko]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Of course, there's a scam to be run by pretending this is happening and you're the secret agent for it, and taking the money of people who want to join. You can even get them to pay for their own nanostasis, and just not awaken them.

That could make a great scam for the PCs to try and uncover or perpetrate if they're less than ethical.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Keiko

That could make a great scam for the PCs to try and uncover or perpetrate if they're less than ethical.

Or the reverse. People could fight it thinking it's a scam.

Or paranoia makes groups think it can't possibly be something so innocent as an idealistic generation ship. So it must be something truly hideous.

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by johndallman

There is a way to do it that allows greater secrecy, and possibly lower cost, although it will take a lot longer. It may even be good for the odds of success.

You don't buy in components. You make everything that goes into the ship yourself, by printing where possible, or whatever industrial process is necessary.

That's implicit in my answer to Astro above. You establish a real shipyard building real ships from real components that are seen to leave on real missions, and when inspected have everything they are supposed to have, and nothing they are not. But there's enough slack among all the projects to outfit the genship (or your shipyard's share of it), and it remains hidden under the shipyard, since there's no stealth in space. When you're ready to go, a diversion near (but not too near) the mined-out shipyard body is sprung, and your genship modules departs for assembly with a hab crew, because it is part of a hab. Probably a deep, deep hab, because you want to be far enough out that no one can catch up with a high gee drive when you light the doubtless slow candle to take you across the gulf.

Of course, we settled that the only do-able propulsion options would be obvious, unhideable WMDs like lasers powerful enough to kill ships anywhere in the system and antimatter stockpiles several times larger than the current solar system supply....

[Flyndaran]

Or ginormous multi stage fusion drives which would be obvious from a sheer size standpoint.

[cptbutton]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Or the reverse. People could fight it thinking it's a scam.

Or paranoia makes groups think it can't possibly be something so innocent as an idealistic generation ship. So it must be something truly hideous.

Well, one obvious way to avoid the whole problem of more advanced people beating you there would be to find some way to kill everything in the solar system when you leave.