Comments on: More thoughts on generation ships

By: Waterbug

Waterbug — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 18:04:15 +0000

Yes. And as people made repairs time after time they could get better and better. There could be great beauty in making the perfect bolt.

I think the ship would have to have a hierarchical structure. I can’t imagine humans putting huge resources into a project and then not having someone in charge. Of course this concept as been visited before when the underlinings get tired of being bossed around. But still, the logic would need to be addressed.

Another concept missing on most generational ships stories are the poor in between bastards. The people who signed up for this would have already lived a lot of their lives and knew what they were getting into. The generations born to just repair and reproduce might not be too happy with Mom & Dad. We aren’t monarch butterflies! Although it might be interesting if the mulit-generational migration monarch butterfly gene were introduced into humans for this trip. Otherwise there would have to be a way for in between generations to live a fulling life.

By: Bernie Crowshit

Bernie Crowshit — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 17:28:17 +0000

this makes me think of Star Trek the next generation? shit, is that what it was called?, the one with Picard and Riker and Data and Worf and everyone, there was a whole city on there wasn’t there? The speed of the enterprise was much faster than you’re talking, but some of the concepts are there.
Would a culture able to create a generational ship be cut off from contact with it? I would imagine it to have scheduled broadcasts to and from the home planet, maybe giant time delays in sending/receiving messages?
The nanotechnology angle, perhaps would be limited to the main crew with those responsible for normal day2day functions, like food growth or recycling, would not have full abilities with the ship, maybe they would just have access to the ship marketplace or ship news?

And how many people would be on the ship to maintain and replenish it with their generations?

By: admin

admin — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 13:09:58 +0000

That’s an excellent idea. The way I see the citizens communicating with the ship is through something similar to what people are working towards now- a small device that reads brain waves and then sends them out via a radio signal.

So, these people might have small bacterial machines encoding into their DNA (much like how stomach bacteria is encoded into our DNA) that allows them to control the ship through thought (much like a psychic would…)

The interesting point here, though, is that even though the machines exist you still have to train your mind in order to use them (eg, like creating code and running it), so these techno priests would be in charge of that…

By: Adam Weber

Adam Weber — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 00:31:53 +0000

Good post. My two cents is that a society like that would most likely have to be a communistic structure (a true communist society). As time went on and the inherent greediness of people may lead to some interesting conflicts. Add in the tendency of humans to need to rationalize things and I could see after several generations the people elevating the machinery they work with to a technological godhood. Hmm. perhaps a caste system with tech-priests who “speak” to the computer godhead?