Humans Will Sail To The Stars 399
oddsheep points to an "article on BBC news from the AAAS Expo in Boston about how researchers are discussing spreading the human race across the galaxy in solar sailing ships. Not a new idea of course but the social implications discussed are great: what the hell do the volunteer colonists (and their descendants) do for the hundreds of years it would take to get anywhere? Cue "Are we nearly there yet?" from the back seats ad infinitum and the longest game of 'I Spy' in history..."
what they do (Score:2, Insightful)
What the hell do the volunteer colonists (and their descendants) do for the hundreds of years it would take to get anywhere?
Same thing they do here. Go to work every day, come home & watch tv, sleep, repeat, breed on weekends and have a war to reduce the population every so often.
Re:what they do (Score:4, Funny)
MECHAN 5 (Score:2)
Once again, few people will get that.
I Spy a star (Score:4, Funny)
"I Spy.... A star."
"Hey, thats what I was going to say!"
I think it would be a pretty short game, personaly.
Re:I Spy a star (Score:4, Funny)
"I spy with my little eye, something that is gaseous!"
Uranus?
Re:I Spy a star (Score:4, Funny)
I spy, with my little eye, something starting with the letter S... Stars
I spy, with my little eye, something starting with the letter M... More Stars
I spy, with my little eye, something starting with the letter E... Even More Stars
But it was only supposed to be... (Score:2, Funny)
How Solar Sails Work (Score:4, Informative)
Well, yeah, but, well, no... (Score:4, Interesting)
You've gotta decelerate if you don't want to just shoot through the other system.
However, there are some tricks you can pull to slow yourself down faster than you get started, and thereby spend more time going faster and get there sooner. For example, you can use a big loop of superconducting wire to transfer your momentum to charged particles. Space isn't all that empty, and you can get drag in an imperfect vacuum if you try hard enough. You might even manage to scoop up propellant to finish braking maneuvers.
Another trick: imagine two mirrored sails forming a right angle. Now imagine that light is coming from both sides equally. Aim the point of the wedge at the destination star, and the light from it will be redirected to the sides, while the light coming from the departure star will be reflected straight back, resulting in a net gain of momentum towards the destination star. With this system, you can get forward acceleration about up until the light from the destination is double the light from the departure point. You can up that by bringing the sails closer to parallel, but you lose area as you do that.
Such a trick might not be worthwhile, of course, since light intensity drops off pretty quickly with distance. You'd get most of your boost early on. As a double-whammy, as your velocity increases, your driving light will red-shift, reducing its pressure, while your braking light will blue-shift, increasing its pressure.
However, as the pressure reduces, you might be able to increase sail area by reprocessing structural support into sail surface.
Maybe some nice people back home will let you leave a system of mirrors (or perhaps solar-pumped lasers?) to focus the sun's light on you as you go, and keep the pressure from dropping off. If you can do that, you can have almost constance acceleration for the trip, which is really nice for space travel. OTOH, how much do you want to trust the people of Earth not to redirect your system for their own transportation or power generation?
It's a thoroughly interesting topic.
forward history (Score:5, Interesting)
It would seem that the people on the ship would have a lot stronger sense of forward history. Say, generation two of ten, for a long voyage, they'd understand the critical nature of conservation, preservation, and making sure that their children's lives aren't for naught.
There are many science fiction stories about "people born on the way," in ark-like ships of this sort.
What strikes me is the sense of drama and tragedy if the on-ship culture panics or corrupts itself before it reaches the goal. Does anyone know of any stories that focus on that? Where generation eight of ten finds that they need to scrap the historic goal, due to some miscalculation or some unforeseen hardships, or merely a decadent generation five?
Re:forward history (Score:4, Informative)
I can think of a few:
- Robert A. Heinlein's Universe short story.
- Michael Cassut's The Longer voyage (which, interestingly enough, deals with a spaceship voyage gone wrong even before it even sets out from orbit).
- Ian R. McLeod's "Starship Day".
- Robert Reed's "Chrysalis".
There's a lot more, but those are the ones I remember right now.
Re:forward history (Score:2)
Series
Exiles [1]
1 Exiled from Earth (1971)
2 Flight of Exiles (1972)
3 End of Exile (1975)
I have it in one book.
Re:forward history (Score:3, Informative)
David Brin and Gregory Benford's Heart of the Comet has a group of people try to colonise a comet to bring it back to Earth to mine it, but find their original goal becomes increasingly more remote.
Re:forward history (Score:3, Interesting)
When the ship finally gets to the (unexpectly sucky) planet, the crew decides they've gotten the short end of the stick, and decide to rule the planet with the colonists are their vassels. So they thaw them out one by one, tell them what the new order is, and chuck them off that habital plateaus which are the only places to live on the planet.
The book takes place after several generations of this, and also involves psychic powers, a revolutionary movement, sleep inducers, organ cloning, what it's like to live on a planet with a tiny habitable area, and a bunch of other cool stuff. And what happens when you light up a colony ship's fusion drive on a planetary surface. About my favorite book ever from when I was 11.
Works great as an anti-apartied metaphor, although I didn't pick up on that parallel at the time. It was an evocative expression of the horrors in living in a totalitarian state, and of running one. Much more politically sensible than most of Niven's later collaborations with Pournelle.
It's one of the early entries the Known Space series. 100% Kzin free, as I remember.
How about this variation. . . (Score:2)
100 years into their journey, faster than light travel was worked out by the techies back home.
Never seen that idea before.
Also. . .
Here's another idea nobody ever seems to contemplate:
What would prevent aliens from using generation ships to come here? This is possible right now without the need for 'magic' space travel tech.
Hmmm. . .
-Fantastic Lad
Re:How about this variation. . . (Score:2)
Can't remember which story exactly, but this has been explored in fiction.
IF aliens did come here, how would we ever know? (Score:2)
Think about this, If aliens do come to earth, do you think they'd announce it? Do you think our government would annouce it? DO you think our scientists would have the guts to even look for aliens?
Face it, Aliens may already have come here, its not like we are trying to stop them, or even looking for them. We even give them maps with DNA.
IF aliens are a few thousand or millions of years ahead of thus they'd be so advanced they'd be like gods to us, we wouldnt even see them unless they allowed us to, nothing we have could detect them, hell they could prolly control our every thought like we control some mechanical device like a computer or a robot.
Think about it, do we really want to deal with aliens at our stage of development? It would be like throwing a small child or baby into the jungle filled with wild animals. This is why I think it was utterly stupid of us to give our DNA up and Maps to earth, inviting any hostile alien to come claim our planet.
Even the native americans were smart enough not to go to europe with a map to America and give them the ability to blend in.
I mean with DNA, Aliens could come here as humans and you'd never know it.
Hilarious Quotation (Score:4, Funny)
clever people have been chipping away at the problem, and now we think it could be possible without breaking the laws of physics' - I presume as opposed to how people used to think it was possible only *with* breaking the laws of physics...
What to do?! (Score:2, Interesting)
what the hell do the volunteer colonists (and their descendants) do for the hundreds of years it would take to get anywhere?
Do what people do now to kill lots of time: play games or hack on the next open source project.
Re:What to do?! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:What to do?! (Score:3, Funny)
Sure, it might be risky. But there would be few things more satisfactory than pulling a hack to, say, get the computer to announce "Arrival" 200 years early.
Centuries-long voyages? (Score:5, Interesting)
a) A digital collection of the complete works of art of Humanity (you know, something to read in the way), and
b) A laser-link or something similar to give them fresh news (inasmuch as 50 or 60 years old news can be considered "fresh").
What I would be concerned is to how to convince their descendants to continue the work started by their parents. No matter how sophisticated the ship's systems may be, there's always gonna be the need for knowledgeable people to keep them in shape, or as backups, or something.
"But I really want to be a... ballerina!",
"Shut up, John, you'll be a cooling system engineer just like your father was, and his father before him, and so on".
Of course, we could end up with something similar to Robert Heinlein's "Universe", where the descendants are so remote from the original colonists that they don't even know they're on a spaceship.
Re:Centuries-long voyages? (Score:3, Interesting)
This thought intriges(sp?) me. As the only perspective I have to offer on this subject is the Anthropological one, here's a go:
Much of what we take for granted is a matter of being presented to us by our enculturation into American (or British, or Russian, of !Kung) upbrining. People grow up to be lawers in large part because they are taught that it is important to make money and that lawers make lots of money. Or they are taught that being a lawer is a prestigious occupation. Or they learn that lawers can be of great help to people and that helping people is desireable.
However, a member of the !Kung would not feel that being a lawer is desireable. Certainly, there has been contact with lawers, but can a lawer kill a giraffe (or any form of game)? What good would a lawer be to the !Kung. Therefore, !Kung children are not taught about becoming lawers. They may hear about them in fairy tales, but they will not be taught to want to be lawers.
By the same token, children on a generation ship would likely be taught how to be engineers, specialists in gardening in space, or doctors. Different professions would no doubt have different levels of prestige, but if children are never taught that they could have been lawers, the thought is unlikely to occur.
I know that I am not doing a very good job of explaining myself, but take a moment to stand back from your own culture. Examine why it is that you believe what you believe. Do you worship a god or gods? What profession do you feel is desireable or prestigious? What do you feel makes an atractive mate? What do you consider art? And most importantly, how have these ideals been shaped by your upbringing; by your parents beliefs; your teachers, friends, and relatives beliefs?
Now, if possible, isolate yourself from that upbringing and imagine a universe defined by the inside of a multi-generational colony ship. You would likely be taught that the preservation of the colony is supreme. Your entire ethical and moral systems would revolve around this ideal.
Therefore, I don't think that the children of the children of the children of the first people to board the ship would have any problems continuing on their mission. They are likely to actually be more comfortable in the ship than thei parents, as they would grow up in the environment of the ship, never knowing a sunny day or a spring breeze. The question is: would they want to disembark when they reach their destination?
wear and tear (Score:3, Insightful)
Asteroids, Interstellar Dust, Maser Sails (Score:5, Interesting)
Dust and micrometeorites are a much bigger problem, especially since they are distributed throughout space, and the further your mission travels, the more material you will inevitably sweep up. There is an interesting solution here, though. Although the article refers to laser-pulsed sails (in the visible range), it is also possible to use masers (in the microwave range). Since a "good" reflector need only be smooth to within a wavelength of light, a maser sail would only have to be smooth to within a few mm or cm. Not only would this enable you to save greatly on the mass of the sail by using a conducting "spiderweb" sail, which would be mostly empty space, but the sail would also be greatly resiliant to many small dust impacts.
Whether such a design is actually feasible for an actual mission is not immediately clear. However, the distribution of dust sizes in interstellar space is well-known to astronomers, so it would be very straightforwards to study the "damage" done to a sail, as a function of the speed of the vessel. (I'm sure someone has done this...)
Bob
Re:Asteroids, Interstellar Dust, Maser Sails (Score:2)
Bob
Sociological complications of such an endeavour (Score:2, Interesting)
Even if such a voyage were possible and volunteers do (which is bound to happen), we must seriously examine how mentally flexible they are and how adaptable would they be to a hostile environment with no longer the comforts of yellow sunlight bearing down on them, and fresh air carrying the scent of flowers around. More so, how comfortable would they be with co-existing with each other, since it is imperative that in a situation such as this, the common good far exceeds the individual benefits accrued.
Geeks as the perfect volunteers (Score:4, Funny)
Used, and perhaps even comforted by the lack of sunlight and fresh-air, the Slashdot Geek presents advantages over other subespecies of the human animal for such an endeavor.
Its lack of social skills might be problematic, of course, but taking into account that most of them barely leave their rooms if given a network connection, human contact and its unfortunate consequences can be minimized.
Co-existence will be limited to posts and flamewars, and provided sufficient sources of electronic boards, sophomoric pseudojournalism and porn all violence would be confined to the network.
Ensuring reproduction of each generation, however, could present a bit of a challenge...
Another approach (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Another approach (Score:5, Interesting)
What do we care if the Van Neumann machine is a more efficient AND effective method of colonizing the universe?
The humans on those planets will not be "us". They will never have had direct contact with Earth, and probably would be quite different from what we consider human unless we provide very strict controls... and hope they work 300 years and some light-years away with no intervention.
Why do we care about interestellar travel at all? It's not really to spread mankind through the universe; we already have seen how much enthusiasm we have even for a measly solar system.
We care because WE WANT TO BE THERE. Personally, if possible. Symbolically, at least, through direct descendants that we can see growing and becoming "us". At the very, very least, we want to give ourselves the illusion that we're part of the trip by climbing on a ship and going away.
The Van Neuman machine has all the romanticism of the postal service, therefore people won't care, therefore no decent resources will be assigned to such a project. It may be the intelligent solution; so was automated exploration of the solar system.
No, what we're currently doing does not count as systematic exploration of the solar system anymore than your high-school chemistry lab is doing serious research.
Re:Another approach (Score:2)
You might be surprised how ambitions, convenience, and laziness disappear when they are no longer efficient behavior.
Re:Another approach (Score:2)
How do you deliver Humanity and not simply humans? In this case humans == mold or virus.
Re:Another approach (Score:2)
communicate (Score:5, Funny)
I like how they talk about earth english and space english. We already have ebonics english, British English, and the English that my foreign professors have that is completly different then the english I speak. We could always use another English...
I say if you want to go to another solar system, go for it. I would rather stay here and respond to slashdot articles.
Re:communicate (Score:2)
Well, looks like they forgot about space engrish [allyourbase.net].
Sorry to burst your bubble here ... (Score:3, Insightful)
So, it's maybe a good idea for low-cost space probes, but it won't work for manned spacecraft.
And I think before worrying about linguistic problems (space English and Earth English, WTF?), we should first find a way for humans to even survive for an extended period of time on our front porch, i.e. interplanetary space.
Hmmm. Yet another clueless highly modded post. (Score:4, Interesting)
It would appear that this poster didn't even take the time to read the article. In fact, the term "solar sail" is somewhat misleading, because the scientists quoted proposed using directed pulses of light from lasers to propel the interstellar craft. The 1/r^2 law is only true for isotropic radiation -- not for a directed laser beam, which can remain well-collimated over great distances.
This idea is not at all new -- I recall reading essentially the same notion as a high school student in the mid-1980s in a book on solar sails. Some futuristic plans included building a massive bank of lasers on the far side of the moon. While we are still very far from realizing such dreams (as we will need the infrastructure in place to support such a lunar base first), I always thought that such ideas were intringuing, and provided a physically viable mode of transporting large payloads, to say, Mars, and the outer solar system.
Lastly, I should also point out that it appears that this author doesn't even understand the basic physics of conventional solar sails. Solar sails use light pressure from the sun, not the solar wind itself. The pressure from the hot plasma streaming from the solar wind is orders of magnitude smaller than the light pressure. Light pressure is also tiny, but since your net velocity is proportional to the time exposed to the source of light, you can build up significant velocities over weeks or months. A great number of people extend the "sail" analogy a bit too far.
Bob
Re:producing your own wind (Score:5, Informative)
Re:producing your own wind (Score:2)
Re:producing your own wind (Score:2)
Re:Sorry to burst your bubble here ... (Score:2, Interesting)
And once you get outside of the solar system (say one light year from the sun) you actually have the galactic wind exerting pressure towards our sun.
As for the radiation, yes the earth does a pretty good job. You could use an artificial magnetosphere to shield against the solar wind, but power failures do happen, and you still have cosmic radiation (which is the bigger problem). Our atmosphere is equivalent to 13 feet of concrete WRT shielding cosmic radiation.
One thing is clear: long-range manned spacecraft are going to be big and heavy.
OTOH, solar sails could make for very low-cost, light-weight probes (without chemical or ion engines and fuel tanks). And they could still be useful in giving an initial boost to manned ships.
Re:Sorry to burst your bubble here ... (Score:2)
If you were going to build an artificial magnetosphere, you would probably use permanent, not electro, magnets, in which case power failures don't happen.
Not necessarily (Score:2)
The real beauty of the light sail system is that you don't have to carry the fuel. If you're carrying fuel, you have to have more fuel to accelerate the heavy spacecraft, which means you need more fuel to accelerate the extra fuel . . . :)
Hibernation (Score:4, Insightful)
Not to mention the problem of what to do if your intendid destination proves unsuitable for habitation. Like they're going to go back to a planet they've never been on and a culture they've never been exposed to?
The best system would involve cryogenically frozen embryos and artifical wombs with a small crew in hibernation. Due to the absolute zero temperatures of deep space, little energy would have to be expended on keeping the embryos frozen for the trip as well.
Robotic probes would detect if an approaching system could sustain life or decide to move on to it's next potential target. If it was on the iffy side, the crew could be woken to make the judgement call.
In the end however, until we can develope some form of FTL propulsion, most people are not going to be satisfied with the 'casting seeds' approach to extra-solar colonization because of the dubious chances of return on investment and the enormously long travel times. Everyone on Earth involved with such a project would be long dead before any kind of information could come back from these expeditions.
In the days of instant messaging, cell phone calls to anyone on the planet and relatively fast air travel to any destination, we are fundamentally incapable of grasping and backing the idea of a multigenerational investment of this scope with our current cultural outlook.
I can see it now... (Score:3, Funny)
"If you two don't stop it right now, I'm just going to have to turn this spaceship around right now! Do you want me to have to do that?!?"
Why get off once you're there? (Score:5, Interesting)
So why bother going back down and living on a planet again? Any other star system will have enough comets, meteors, and other matter to provide plenty of resources for the colonists to live. Why go back down to a planet to live in a gravity well and have to deal with all those scary wide-open spaces?
TheFrood
Re:Why get off once you're there? (Score:2)
Generation Ships (prob) Can't Work - Here's Why (Score:2)
Here's (one) major problem: skills. Each successive generation after the first will be born and raised shipboard. All the teaching they receive on planets and planet life will be academic at best.
Does an education absent of any form of direct experience make for good pioneers? Especially given that there is no possibility of help from back home?
My guess it probably not...
Re:Generation Ships (prob) Can't Work - Here's Why (Score:2)
It would take 160 colonists for a viable colony (Score:3, Interesting)
However, there could be a slight problem with inbreeding. From the article:
"The decrease in genetic variation is actually quite small and less than found in some successful small populations on Earth," he says. "It would not be a significant factor as long as the space travellers come home or interact with other humans at the end of the 200 year period."
Re:It would take 160 colonists for a viable colony (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It would take 160 colonists for a viable colony (Score:2)
My evil minions spread through space, muhahahaha.
Overpopulation? (Score:4, Funny)
"Naturally, they would breed prodigiously, eh? There would be much time, and little to do."
So we build... (Score:5, Funny)
(If you don't get it, don't moderate it)
Re:So we build... (Score:2, Funny)
"You mean you've got a hold full of frozen hairdressers?" he said.
"Oh yes," said the Captain, "Millions of them. Hairdressers, tired TV
producers, insurance salesmen, personnel officers, security guards, public
relations executives, management consultants, you name them. We're
going to colonize another planet."
Ford wobbled very slightly.
"Exciting isn't it?" said the Captain.
"What, with that lot?" said Arthur.
"Ah, now don't misunderstand me," said the Captain, "we're just one
of the ships in the Ark Fleet. We're the `B' Ark you see. Sorry, could I
just ask you to run a bit more hot water for me?"
Arthur obliged, and a cascade of pink frothy water swirled around the
bath. The Captain let out a sigh of pleasure.
"Thank you so much my dear fellow. Do help yourselves to more drinks
of course."
Ford tossed down his drink, took the bottle from the first officer's tray
and refilled his glass to the top.
"What," he said, "is a `B' Ark?" "This is," said the Captain, and swished
the foamy water around joyfully with the duck.
"Yes," said Ford, "but
"Well what happened you see was," said the Captain, "our planet, the
world from which we have come, was, so to speak, doomed."
"Doomed?"
"Oh yes. So what everyone thought was, let's pack the whole population
into some giant spaceships and go and settle on another planet."
Having told this much of his story, he settled back with a satisfied grunt.
"You mean a less doomed one?" promoted Arthur.
"What did you say dear fellow?"
"A less doomed planet. You were going to settle on."
"Are going to settle on, yes. So it was decided to build three ships, you
see, three Arks in Space, and
"No, no," said Ford firmly, "it's fascinating."
"You know it's delightful," reflected the Captain, "to have someone else
to talk to for a change."
Number Two's eyes darted feverishly about the room again and then
settled back on the mirror, like a pair of flies briefly distracted from
their favourite prey of months old meat.
"Trouble with a long journey like this," continued the Captain, "is that
you end up just talking to yourself a lot, which gets terribly boring
because half the time you know what you're going to say next."
"Only half the time?" asked Arthur in surprise.
The Captain thought for a moment.
"Yes, about half I'd say. Anyway - where's the soap?" He fished around
and found it.
"Yes, so anyway," he resumed, "the idea was that into the first ship,
the `A' ship, would go all the brilliant leaders, the scientists, the great
artists, you know, all the achievers; and into the third, or `C' ship, would
go all the people who did the actual work, who made things and did
things, and then into the `B' ship - that's us - would go everyone else,
the middlemen you see."
He smiled happily at them. "And we were sent off first," he concluded,
and hummed a little bathing tune.
The little bathing tune, which had been composed for him by one of
his world's most exciting and prolific jingle writer (who was currently
asleep in hold thirty-six some nine hundred yards behind them) covered
what would otherwise have been an awkward moment of silence. Ford
and Arthur shuffled their feet and furiously avoided each other's eyes.
Unrealistic (Score:5, Insightful)
That thought is likely to limit our voyages at any given time to a radius that can be reached in probably about a decade or less with current technology.
In the meantime, they'll be pushing the limits harder with unmanned probes that can endure tremendous accelerations.
And until such probes provide proof that there is an inhabitable world at the end of the journey, I find it extremely unlikely that anyone will put together a space city and launch themselves into the unknown for an unknown number of centuries toward an end that's more likely to be a massive destructive event (either external or internal) than an accidental discovery of Earth II.
For once, let's not. (Score:2, Insightful)
Why? The human desire to expand its territory is insatiable, but I believe that until we resolve our problems here, we shouldn't go polluting new worlds with our inevitable conflicts, waste, and all the other byproducts of humanity. Perhaps someday, when humans get over selfishness, the tendency to war, violence, and competition, traveling to these distant places will be a good thing. But I can't imagine for now, that if we were to go, these planets would turn out to be anything but Earth all over again, with poverty, suffering, and human strife.
It's romantic to believe that some great future will be opened to us when we become capable of traveling to the nearest star, but the cynical side of me says that people forget fairly quickly, and degenerate into their innate ways. As I say, perhaps we'll be ready someday, but I don't think that'll be any time soon...
Unfortunately, if it does become possible, it will be done, that's one thing I'm sure of. Don't count on people to have restraint, you can be fairly certain. Asking scientists to be responsible and not contribute to such a project doesn't work -- someone *will* do it, or work for those who want to have it done. It's just a matter of time.
What you're asking (Score:5, Insightful)
You want people to stop being selfish, solve all the world's problems, and in general, become angels.
Since this will never happen, your goal will insure that we will never pollute the universe with our evil selves.
Here's a point: the very things that make us "evil", such as greed, lust, territoriality, warlike tendency, aggresssion -- all of that -- are precisely the qualities that make a species dominant over others in the evolutionary sense. And given that, if we do go to the stars, and meet others, I'd guarantee that those others will be selfish, paranoid, violent and warlike. A species without those traits would not have survived the test of time. If we go to the stars as Zen Buddhist monks, those colonists will be annihilated by the locals - even if the locals are bloody non-sapient crytals. Life is hungry and pitiless.
As for a great future for humanity among the stars: by your logic, Europeans should never have left their continent. Instead, they should have stayed home and perfected their societies.
Well, think of this. If there had been no Canada or United States, what do you think would have happened to world civilization after World War I or II? The Western Hemisphere was critical - CRITICAL - in defeating a thousand years of twisted nationalism, and in rebuilding the shattered nations in the aftermath. If Europeans had not left their homes and travelled to the New World, the Old World would have shattered into a new iron age, and would not have recovered for centuries -- if ever. New worlds create opportunity for those who would want to leave, and create resources that can be used to shore up those left behind, even heal them and advance them.
The fallacy is the basic Zero-Sum game. The idea that there is a finite ulimate prize to human endeavor will concentrate human social toxins, and ultimately kill us all. We need the IDEA of new horizons, even if we don't have them yet.
Re:What you're asking (Score:2)
Re:What you're asking (Score:4, Insightful)
Well why not (Score:2)
Send humans who arent selfish, violent and who actually care about the enviornment.
you send ignorant people, you create an ignorant world,
Now, as far as if it can bee done having it being done is nott the same thing.
Economics controls all of this, it wont be done until it benifits corperations, the government, etc.
Right now it doesnt benifit those people, it will benifit those people a few hundred years from now when the economy crashes because its burned out.
One Possible Problem (Score:2, Interesting)
I have a theory. We Americans are the descendents of the people too screwed up to make it in Europe (my anscestors were expelled from Britain for participating in a political revolt). So you have a bunch of crazy Americans living on the East Coast. Some of them were too screwed up to make it there, so they went further and further west. Which is why California is so fucked up.
Think of how reckless and dumb you'd have to be to get on board one of those ships. Do you really want to populate the galaxy with people like that?
That brings us to our possible problem. Do reall you want to populate the world with the kind of people that are reckless and dumb enough to get on board that ship? I don't think so.
Steve
What would be the point? (Score:2)
Personally, I think we should sit down and figure out how quickly our interstellar travel rate has been increasing over the past few millenia, do some min-maxing calculus, and figure out the optimal time to send the first ship. Heck, if the technological advances come at a rate constant enough to be predicted, we could rig it so they all get there at the same time.
Look at Millenia? Not fair... (Score:2)
I'd go (Score:3, Insightful)
I would be willing to give up quite a lot to go even 1/4 of the way to another world.
They'll probably solve the suspended animation problem by then. In that case I'd get to go on the whole trip.
In fact I hope they solve the suspended animation problem soon as I'm sick of listening to the kids go at it in the back seat.
I know what I would do (Score:4, Funny)
Most likely though, after sixty years of fruitless effort I would throw in the towel. I would spend the remainder of my time drunk in my cabin: a bitter, broken lonely man, shunned by my shipmates.
Upon my death, friendless, my body would be unceremoniously dumped into the biomass recycler.
Re:I know what I would do (Score:2)
The first generation choose to go, but do they have the right to deprive their children of the choice not to go?
I'll sidestep this one and comment that nobody gets to choose where they're born.
Generation Starships: Books (Score:5, Informative)
1.Brian Aldiss' "Nonstop" a.k.a. "Starship" [Criterion, 1959; Signet; Avon]
2.Edward Bryant & Harlan Ellison "Phoenix Without Ashes" [Fawcett Gold Medal, 1975] based on Harlan's concept and teleplay for the TV series "The Star Lost"
3.Molly Gloss' "The Dazzle of Day" [Tor/Tom Doherty, 1997] reviewed by Gerald Jonas in the New York Times, 22 June 1997; the deteriorating "Dusty Miller" is on a 175-year voyage initiated by Quakers. Descendants create a "gentle utopia" based on governance by consensus, with thriftiness, cooperation, and ecological awareness as virtues. But they are not sure that this can be transferred if they settle on the destination planet. Should they land or not?
4.Harry Harrison's "Captive Universe" [Putnam, 1969; Berkley]
5.Robert Heinlein's "Universe" [Dell, 1951] a.k.a. "Orphans of the Sky" [Putnam, 1964; Science Fiction Book Club; Signet; Berkley]
6.Murray Leinster's "Proxima Centauri" [???]
7.Harry Martinson's "Aniara" [Knopf, 1963; Avon] and the famous Opera adaptation
8.Clifford Simak's "Target Generation" [???]
9.E. C. Tubb's "The Space-Born" [Ace, 1956; Avon]
10.Don Wilcox's "The Voyage that Lasted 600 Years" [???]
As with almost anything you need to know in Science Fiction, this was in The Ultimate Science Fiction Web Guide. Go to http://magicdragon.com then click on "Science Fiction."
For the definitive book (fiction, nonfiction, illustrations) on Solar Sails, see:
PROJECT SOLAR SAIL, edited by Arthur C. Clarke, David Brin, and me (Jonathan Vos Post), New York: Roc Books (Penguin USA), April 1990
* Jonathan V. Post and Ray Bradbury, "To Sail Beyond the Sun: A Luminous Collage", pp.33-39, in Project Solar Sail
* Jonathan V. Post and Chauncy Uphoff, "A Rebel Technology Comes Alive", pp.95-104, in Project Solar Sail
* Jonathan V. Post, "Solar Sail with Integral Acoustic Monitoring for Particle Distribution Survey of Lagrange Points", in Lt.Gen. Thomas P. Stafford Et.al., America at the Threshold: America's Space Exploration Initiative, Report (to the President of the United States) of the Synthesis Group on America's Space Exploration Initiative, May 1991; full text of study
includes 6 proposals submitted via Rand Corp. to NASA's Project Outreach, 6 August 1990 by Jonathan V. Post
They play GemStone III (Score:2, Funny)
and other great online multiplayer games at http://www.play.net [play.net] of course!
That is assuming we've got the range cranked up on 802.11 to reach deep space by then. Wonder what the latency would be like?
Dear Customer Service,
Z.No Fair! I got disconnected while we were air braking around Jupiter and when I logged back in I was dead! I demand satisfaction!
(This note brought to you by the Committee to Increase Game Designer Salaries across the world)
I recall a Discovery Channel special.. (Score:3, Interesting)
The group of people would also have devloped their own completely different culture, and may have decided not to go to the star system afterall.
You also need to consider what if you were a person born on that ship? Why should you be forced to go there, not knowing what you'll find (if anything) and never see your native planet in your lifetime? Sounds like something that would stink to be forced into.
Will we understand them? (Score:2)
My brother and I grew up together on the West coast and I can barely understand him because he now resides in rural West Virginia, practicing a style of speaking I struggle to interpret!
Will they be laid back like Californians due to abundant leisure time or busybody New Yorkian.
Will they develop a strong sense of community like aboriginal tribespeople or will they be fiercely independent like Old West Americans?
Backwards Nonsense (Score:5, Interesting)
Not even the ultra skeptical Nasa believs this solar sail stuff, which is why they are working on the REAL way that people will colonize the stars, with next generation propulsion systems. [nasa.gov]
These new systems are to chemical rockets as the sails of sea ships are to the jet; profoundly differnent and unpredicted by the "scientists" and sailors of old.
What would we... (Score:2, Funny)
Prisms (Score:4, Interesting)
Thus it is of my opinion that sending people to the stars without a warp drive does little to preserve a culture or way of life which when it comes down to it is the only real difference between any of us. Spaceborne cultures would not resemble anything we've seen here on Earth specifically because they weren't born there. If a decendant of some space colonist were to meet a human from Earth they would be as alien to them as anything else dispite the similarity of their DNA and maybe even the fact they share a common ancestor. It wouldn't matter what you did to prepare people for the rigors of a generations long journey into space they would become wholly alien to anyone back here.
As for the technical feasibility of enormous solar sails propelling people to stars that is 99.99% bunk. The people envisioning such systems disclaim their theories by saying "if we could only find a way..." which usually requires something along the lines of changing the physical laws of nature. I'm sorry but even the magical properties of carbon nanotubes isn't going to solve any inherent problems in using a giant physical structure to capture photons. I groan every time I see this idea rehashed. The key factor in sails all of all sorts if the ratio between the sail surface area (for much force is can use for propulsion) to that of the overall mass of the craft (how much force it needs to get going). While a giant solar sail might work fine for sending a ship to Mars (albeit a small one), getting megatons of personnel and equipment outside the solar system is another matter entirely. The sail needed for a colony ship would be stupendously large which means increased mass and you guessed it needs more force to get it moving. The bigger they are the bigger they need to be to have the energy to get them going. Say the ship is heading to the other side of the galaxy and a solar sail ship is doing about 10% lightspeed by some means. Relative to the rest of the universe not doing 10% lightspeed the vessel would have to survive 600,000 years worth of cosmic travel without something going HCF. Even with relativistic time dialation which would only save you about 2,390 years ship relative off of the 600k that is still quite the feat. Humans not frozen, kept in some form of stasis, or otherwise inert would have evolved into a completely alien species by then. Shit it'd been only recently the last of the other monkeys in our genus died out. Wake me when we hit
Polynesian Models (Score:3, Insightful)
If convenient objects are just a quarter light year or so apart, then the journeys do not have to be so long.
Just make sure to bring along a whole lot of cheese doodles. we'll be sending GW with you. (smile)
Which brings up the question of who should we send as the the first people to travel?
Increase Survival of the Race (Score:2)
Some obvious planetary disasters might include racial stagnation, meteor strike, sudden climactic change, intentional NBC warfare, unintentional destruction of the planet through scientific experimentation that goes wrong, and destruction by the Vogons.
The scariest thing about all this is, we should have been visited already if it was that easy to spread to the stars. So I hope we get as far from Earth as possible quickly, just in case the reason for the quiet is that a soon-coming scientific development tends to wipe out races when they are real young.
Put it this way, we are going to eventually move out, or we are going to stick where we are. SETI types grade a civilization by how much energy it can use, and you have to be off the planet to just get in the front door. But considering how long communications would take, it seems much more likely that we will succeed at making other planets in our system habitable before we get to the stars.
Obviously nanotech is going to be the major tool. My hope is that we can develop it soon enough and safely enough that we can get off-planet cheaply. About the same time or sooner we ought to have telescopes large enough to tell us if there is anywhere interesting nearby.
Sails are already understood to be a great tool in doing all this stuff, and we can have it soon. We would send robotic explorers first obviously, but in our first human wave I could totally see travelers kept in a crystalline stasis as nano-stabilized solids which would require little energy to maintain. Conceivably the explorers might not even age so much if relativity comes into play.
However it happens, as soon as we expand our reach beyond planet Earth we are going to start thinking in terms of much larger distances and lengths of time. It will be interesting to see if we can hold something resembling our society together as we develop autonomous off-planet settlements.
We aren't going to kill ourselves (Score:2)
Sir, your logic is flawed. You assume, first of all, that there has been or is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe - and I don't care how many statistics you can juggle, I side with Clemens and say that statistics aren't proof. The idea that we haven't been visited because everyone else blew themselves up is, to be honest, absurd. How many inventions on Earth have been made by a relatively small group of people? What technologies would we still have if all these people had bought it? I'm sure we'd have the wheel, spears, and mud bricks, but how about gunpowder? Antibiotics? Atomic Weapons? The internal combustion engine?
The "tech tree" of an alien species could be entirely different from ours. They may feel spears are perfectly adequate for killing each other with, and see no need to develop further. They might have religious prohibitions against high technology. They might be sentient but...erm...not all that bright.
They might not even exist.
But sir, *we* are not going to kill ourselves off, despite what other species may or may not have done. Nobody really wants us all to be dragged into that good night.
Einstein (Score:2)
If we, like Einstein, imagine riding on a sunbeam the trip to _anywhere_ takes no time at all. Of course, travelling at the speed of light takes infinite energy (and the g-force of the prior acceleration could be lethal), so we'd have to settle for a bit less. Still...
sdrawkcaB (Score:2)
From this page [duke.edu], for example: The following chart shows the perceived travel time for the particle moving at 0.9999999999999999999999951c from different locations in the universe: Alpha Centauri 0.43 milliseconds
Galactic nucleus 3.2 seconds
Andromeda galaxy 3.5 minutes
Virgo cluster 1.15 hours
Quasar 3C273 3 days
Edge of universe 19 days
For a better understanding, consider the following. If you set out on a ship from earth moving at the velocity of the above proton, and travelled to the edge of the universe and back, you would perceive being gone for 38 days (19 days out and 19 in). However, when you arrive back on earth, 34 BILLION YEARS would have elapsed! The earth probably won't even be here by then. That time is twice as old as many speculate the universe is.
The world is stranger than you think. Next week perhaps I'll tell you about quantum mechanics ;)
Re:sdrawkcaB (Score:2, Interesting)
Either I've been suckered by an elaborate multi-person troll, or you're both arguing the same thing: travel fast and the people back home are a hell of a lot older than you when you get back, but you aren't much older at all.
Although I was under the impression that teh Edge of the Universe was defined by photons travelling at the speed of light away from the big bang, and that it is therefore impossible to ever catch up to them...
--
Benjamin Coates
Let's move the Earth (Score:2)
growing up on one of these voyages... (Score:2)
"mommy, how the hell could you leave earth and put us on this god forsaken ship??"
But seriously, the social implications for something like this are very astonishing. And what happens when space debries break through your 300 mile solar sail 300 million light years from earth? I doubt anyone's going to be able to help you.
But they would have plenty to do..... (Score:2)
My bet is that after generation two or three they would have plenty of screaming and crying to do as warp drive ships caught up to them, laughing as they screamed by to get to the same destination a few hundred years sooner.
Then again, if you never build a ship to go because you are waiting for the next big breakthrough....
Offtopic: idea for detecting intelligent life (Score:2)
lets say that there is an intelligent species that's about a billion years older than the human species. Then we can assume a few things.
a) their populations would likely have exponential growth like our's always has.
b) their technology will likely have had exponential growth like ours has
c) their societies would likely need to accomplish "big" projects like ours has to accomidate social changes like with the pyramids, the great wall of china, the hoover dam, and our big cities, which have distinctly changed earth's in a non natural way forever.
d) this would likely mean that at their stage of development they would be intefering in planetary orbits, star orbits, and possibly galactic orbits, and perhaps even creating artificial super-novas to achieve engineered goals.
e) human beings would be able to look for these changes (in the stars) that would be allowable by physics, but almost impossible in a natural un-tampered setting. From these we would be able to deduce the existence of intelligent life, know their level of development and resource needs, and the goals they were trying to accomplish and perhaps even develop a strategy for contact.
Billions of years? (Score:2)
They wouldnt be alive in the same physical world we are, i'd think after billions of years their technology would be so great that they'd create their own universe for themselves and be traveling through dimensions.
If we ever did have contact with them we'd prolly worship them as God because they'd be so much more advanced than us that they could prolly destroy our universe in an instant.
Maybe you should think of an alien species a few thousand years or even a few million years ahead of us but not BILLIONS of years.
A species THAT advanced would be Godlike, I mean in a few hundred years we will be able to completely control matter, perhaps live a few hundred years longer, and travel at beyond light speed and we have only been around maybe a few hundred thousand years, maybe a million tops.
A billion years, is 1000 times longer, meaningg they'd have 1000 times the technology of us, be 1000 times more evolved mentally, socially, and physically, they may not even need physical bodies anymore they may be that evolved.
The reason we cant find life in space is because we may be too stupid to find it, other species may be so far ahead of us that we are like single cell organisms to them.
If we were a single cell organism we wouldnt notice a human even though a human is like god to a singlee cell organism. Bacteria is used by us like a tool, while it can be dangerous, we treat it like a tool, Aliens more advanced than us would treat us like a tool if they were millions of years older than us, thousands of years older than us and they'd treat us like a pet, hundreds of years older than us and they might enslave us, our only chance is to find aliens below us, or exactly on the same level, because those are the only aliens we'd be smart enough to detect.
As far as aliens billions of years older than us, they wouldnt even notice we exsist, and even if they did, they could prolly wipe out our entire universe if we pissed them off in the slightest.
Likely outcome - (Score:2, Interesting)
It's kind of like imagining what would happen to a family who got lost on a small self-supporting island (a family who could not make radios out of coconuts) during the late 1800's, and being found by GPS or satellite photos somewhere in the 1980/1990's.
The technology of any offworlders we send out into space will be obsolete a year after they have left, let alone generations. So is there any point in sending people until the travel time is negligable ?
What do you think they'd do? (Score:2)
Hahahaha (Score:2)
Well then we'd just have to kill them and start over! Muahahahahaha!
Parental issues... (Score:2)
I don't get the language development issues. Surely they'll have both every book and DVD ever made on the ship, and communication channels to earth. That puts a pretty big stabilizer on language development.
Hey, it worked for the Bajorans!!! (Score:2)
Re:Just say NO to Irresponsible Inc. propaganda. (Score:2, Insightful)
Get a Clue
Just some random scientist
Re:Dreamers and reality (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Dreamers and reality (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Dreamers and reality (Score:2)
Um, no. Von Braun's dreams were within reach of the science of his time, but not the technology. He (and a great many other brilliant people) worked long and hard to use the science they had to create the technology they needed to realize their dreams. The analogy with solar sails and skyhooks is quite exact. We understand the basic science needed, and have in fact built small demonstration projects using well-understood principles, in the same way as early pioneers of rocketry such as Goddard had built vehicles which were the direct technological predecessors of the V-2 and ultimately the Saturn V. With an effort of national (or international) will similar to that which landed men on the Moon, we can produce the technology, just as Von Braun et al did.
Whether or not this will actually happen, of course, remains to be seen. But people with attitudes like yours really add nothing meaningful to the debate.
Re:Dreamers and reality (Score:2)
*Sigh* indeed (Score:2)
In another post you make the argument that "Just like the fusion research and colliders (aka Big Science) are siphoning funding from real science with no real promise of delivering anything useful anytime within the next few decades." You are not a big fan of mathematicians or theoretical physicists, are you? Mathematics is a good example of a field that is doing fundamental research. Just because you are not researching something that is immediately transferable into a product, does that mean that it is wasted? For example, the important fields of complex analysis and hyperbolic geometry was developed way before anyone could think of a use for them. Since when is the foundations of physics and fundamental research not important? The theory of relativity was basically completely useless and unverifiable for a long time. Does this mean that it should not have been published? What possible use did you have for Murray Gell-Mann's quarks and the invention of QED? How do you propose that we search for the Higgs boson without particle accelerators? Do you have any alternative way of testing the GUT's without particle accelerators?
Also, your claim that solar sails and space elevators are irrelevant dreaming, does not impress me much. True, they are not feasible with todays technology. That is why you develop new technology. Grand ideas of what to do with it is an incentive. I don't care if you feel that whatever it is that you do is an underfunded area - research into solar sails is hardly a big strain on the science budget. Leave it to companies to research products with commercial potential on the horizon (they won't mind). State funded research have through all ages been mostly about knowledge for knowledges sake. Don't you have any curiosity left? Don't you wonder, even just a little, about the implications of these ideas?
Re:Just don't take Eric Cartmen (Score:2)
"You know what? Screw you guys, I'm going home..."
Re:Strange idea ... (Score:3, Funny)
So what you're saying is that we should load a bunch of Windows users on a space sailship, give them Linux only computers, and by the time they have figured out how to surf for intergalactic porn, they'd have reached their final destination?
This is a stupid idea (Score:2)
This idea is almost as stupid as the idea of sending our DNA and other junk out into space for potential hostile aliens to use against us.
Now we are worried about what will happen to the sun billions of years from now? In another couple thousand years we will have technology so advanced that the solar sail idea would have been a complete waste of time and resources.
At the rate of development we will be a type 3 civilization within thousands not millions of years.In a hundred years or so we will have the ability to use nano technology and completely control matter, extend life with genetic technology, and use warp drives, anti matter could provide the energy source.
With Nano technology we could create our own planets if we want to. As far as the sail technology goes. Think of it this way, we can send a sail out into space, but it would be like creating a hot air balloon knowing that next week you'll have a MACH6 speed jet plane which will surpass the air balloon in a few hours.
What we should be doing right now, is gathering information with probes, exploring planets like mars, and developing nano technologies. With a wormhole we could literally fold space itself if we had the energy of a star, so yes its possible for us to create a worm hole in space, and that idea sounds better than solar sail because a worm hole can get from point A to point B instantly regardless of the distance.
IT does make since to live in ships in space, because theres only so many planets in the solar system, and we may not have the technology before the earth over populates but really and honestly, these people are way too optimistic about humanity actually being over populated, theres aids, theres wars that will happen, i dont think we will need to popular other planets for serveral thousand years because thats how long it would take for us to socially evolve to the level where we are beyond war. We may however have the technology to teleport or travel through worm holes within the next hundred years, just because the technology exsists doesnt mean we'd use it, we have technology now to let us run our cars on air itself, on water, on sunlight and so on and we dont. Its not about technology, its about when society is ready.
If we survive another hundred years then i think we'll be advanced enough to travel at beyond light speed, maybe even teleport via quantum entanglement, otherwise we will have destroyed ourselves, or we will be dominated by corperations and government who will be conservative and not want to mess up the economy by investing in such matters (kinda like the situation now, kill enviornment and save the economy says Bush.)
Re:The Secular Eschatology (Score:2)
And when the possibility of life in this dimension ends, we go to another one, not to mention with Nano technology and the ability to harness anti matter energy we could create our own stars.
Dont forget other aliens in the universe far smarter than us wouldnt allow all the stars to just burn
However, I dont think solar sail technology is the way, currently it seems NASA is a joke, they send junk into space with our DNA on it and now want to send even more of it, I think after we have a hostile situation with some aliens, we will be sending most of our probes on missions to get back the little time capsules with our DNA and maps to our planets in them. However by then Earth would have been taken over by aliens and we will have been pushed off into space.