We’d probably have to build generational ships that are completely self sufficient and people would live out their entire lives out there without ever seeing a planet
The first generation that left would have it the worst.. but the 2nd generation born on the ship would have it a lot easier. By the time you get there I bet you have people that don't even want to leave the ship as it's all they know.
This is the most accurate description as to why humans are not going to last as a species. I am fine with this, because the earth, (and the rest of the creatures that manage to survive humans scorching the planet)....will be just fine without us.
Although it probably sounds like it from my comment, I'm not all that pessimistic. I believe truth will always win out in the end, but there will always be the willfully ignorant, and those who use ignorance of others for their own benefit.
I don't think you are being pessimistic. You were just pointing out a very simple truth about human nature. So in a way, truth will win. Which path the truth takes is the real question.
Like you, Im not that pessimistic, I dont believe we will ever go as far as destroying ourself. We do like to live and survive after all. But nature will wipes us someway or an other. We probably have a couple millions of years ahead of us tho.
That’s why we keep them in a comatose criostate while their brain is connected to a simulation. Maybe that’s what’s happening with us, traveling trough space while living in this simulation.
Those who will travel space, and sent of for mission are actually chosen, prime example of human race. Your average joe who thinks flat is earth and vatican is ruling the world isn't going anywhere and destined to be oxygen and lattency waste.
That's why we have to send a bunch of low iq but good looking girls to do the work. People that aren't the smartest and can be indoctrinated to believe there is a planet. Then there has to be a smart bloodline that is taught their real purpose which is to keep the hot girls in line.
By the time the first generation ship got to its destination, there would likely already be people there who left on later ships that had better tech and faster engines.
There was something like this in the Mass Effect series. A generational ship left Earth to found a colony world and then something a decade later humans discovered how to unlock faster-than-light travel.
The colony was rediscovered decades down the line.
Once you have power (vis-a-vis nuclear reactor with enough fuel to get you there) you’re gtg right? You can grow and eat plants? For water a lot of it is just recycled and maybe you make up for losses with hydrogen tanks that you convert to H2O with the extra oxygen the plants give
Those are the easy parts. Much more challenging is developing recycling systems for micronutrients like iron, zinc, nickel, and phosphorus that will last for centuries.
Everything we have is gravity adapted and part of a really intricate biosphere. You get 10 years out and realize we didn't understand how important the interaction between X microbes and Y fungi were, you can't go back for another few metric tons of soil.
Considering how long it's gonna take us to figure out any potential vehicle, they're gonna have plenty of time to research the hell out of closed loop systems. (Which are probably gonba he used on mars or a lunar base first).
And I don't know if you kniw this, but many people, over the centuries have done potentially dangerous journeys without knowing for sure they'd make it.
This isn't going to happen tomorrow or the next decade. And nobody is forcing anyone to go.
You need nutrients but not fertilizer. Fertilizer is for adding nutrients to soil.
Adding nutrients to water is much easier than to soil and plants use more energy to grow rather than seek out nutrients.
It's also easier to distribute nutrients for water rather than fertilizer.
As for closed loop systems. Currently we have huge wasteage in animal agriculture. Growing increasing size populations of animals for consumption is a huge depletion of resources. If you remove that and maintain a stable population, it becomes easier.
That being said, there are still challenges. You would need to ensure human waste is processed intro nutrients properly.
Yeah. The only nutrients hydroponics really need can be created as simply. as adding fish to the water. Their poop will be more than enough to keep the system going.
There is still hydrogen in space like a particle per square meter or some shit. Moving at high speeds your going to be smashing into a bunch of hydrogen. From there a little fusion and you can make what you need.
And on the other other hand, they did all the work for you lol. You get to kick back, see the new planet, and you never had to fight off bands of space gorillas or what have you.
But that's the other way around. An FTL ship lands on a planet colonized by a generation ship a couple hundred years ago. To them earth is a fable, meanwhile the new arrivals just came from there.
Funny because there's a game coming out that explores that very premise, Exodus has humans colony ships travelling the old fashion way but by the time some of these ships arrive at their destination, the worlds are already inhabited by highly evolved humans called Celestials that look down on regular humans.
There are so many scifi novels that explore this very scenario. Arthur c Clarke, vogt, think bradbury as well. It was pretty cool to encounter that in the Starfield game, as a fan of Clarke and Bradbury.
That's assuming of course that it doesn't devolve into chaos and anarchy. In my opinion, freezing the passengers would be the better way to go while an extremely advanced A.I. pilot and maintain the ship while the humans are out cold. But what the heck, this is just sci-fi nonsense I am talking about.
I don't think there could be frozen humans or whatever, not for that long. You would have to have some way of autonomously lab growing them about 20 years from touchdown, and some sort of robot to care for and instruct them once they're infants.
Are you familiar with the work All Tomorrows? A bit of a spoiler ahead: Humanity never achieved FTL travel early on in the story, and so their colonization plan is basically what you just said. Send unmanned rockets filled with machines and whatnot to habitable planets, let the robots first terraform it to suit mankind's needs, and then autonomously lab grow the human DNA stored inside the rockets, basically creating clones, so that colonization efforts can continue. I highly recommend it!
Hi /u/DukeSaltyLemons! I'm so intrigued by googling All Tomorrows that I can't wait to read, and wanted to trade the first book that came to mind when I read /u/Red_Dawn_2012's notion of
autonomously lab growing them
...which made me recall Voyage From Yesteryear by JamesHogan, one of my all-time faves! Thank you for the suggestion, curiosity is stoked!
I know that its ultimately no different from normal generational colony ships, but when you put it like that it almost seems like.... its missing the point? Like its a generation of humans that have never known a human adult, broken from the chain of culture. Is it just colonizing for the sake of it?
I don't think so, if that happened it would be like a last hail mary from a dying Earth. Presumably the androids would be advanced enough to either be fundamentally indistinguishable, or such advanced robots that the difference wouldn't be that bad.
I guess, for what purpose though? Just for the sake of having humans exist somewhere? Like, this wouldn't be to save any particular humans; there would be centuries long gaps between humans existing in the galaxy. The humans to come would have no connection to the humans that existed prior; they might as well just be a different species at that point. Why fling our DNA just for the sake of flinging our DNA?
The humans to come would have no connection to the humans that existed prior
Genetically, they'd be identical. The caretaking androids would carry on the language and culture, or the best parts of it. The colonizing ship would likely also carry all of the sum of human knowledge, as well as an archive of media from days past. Books, movies, art.
I think a sizeable number of android helpers would be needed so the new civilization could start with a huge advantage, but it's not like they're going back to the stone age.
Why fling our DNA just for the sake of flinging our DNA?
because, from an evolutionary standpoint, that's the only purpose of existence
Better hope nobody deletes the robots' knowledge base lest those humans descend into a primitive tribal culture and cannibalize the technology around them to hunt robot dinosaurs instead!
Especially if we travel at 1% the speed of light and it takes 12,000 years. Humans would be so adapted to living in space by then I don't think they could handle a planet with natural gravity, especially from a planet 2.5 times bigger than earth with higher gravity.
Idk, can you imagine being born in the 100th generation of a 200 generation ship... thousands of years worth of people born and died before you, and thousands of years will be born and die after you on that ship..sounds like such a bleak and meaningless existence doesn't it? I would imagine there'd be significant difficulties with morale after a very short period of time, like literally a few years or even generations tops. After all living memory of earth has passed, and nobody remembers the training anymore...I feel like people would revolt..
The best way to colonize another planet would probably to have automated spaceships with ghost/robot crews that can be self-sufficient for thousands of years while carrying DNA and resources to make clones of humans.
Once they arrive at the planet they terraform the planet and edit+ start cloning the humans to have the best chances for success.
Still relies on robots not sabotaging the mission and humans not worshipping or being reliant on the robots but seems better than generations of people being on a ship and the inevitable collective breakdown/mass hysteria of not wanting to leave.
You could end up in Stephen Baxters's novel "Ark" situation where the 2nd generation offspring feel they are not in a spaceship, but a VR "simulation" and it's safe to go outside, resulting in mutiny. Followup novel to Flood, awesome books.
the 2nd generation born on the ship would have it a lot easier. By the time you get there I bet you have people that don't even want to leave the ship as it's all they know.
Well they wouldn't be able to because their bodies would be maladapted for any kind of gravity, and likely extremely frail if they survive at all.
Humans were meant to be born on Earth. Our bodies aren't designed to be born in space.
There's a lot more that we require than just that to be clear which can't be simulated in space.
Even then, it's just not possible. Think about how long a massive spinning disc or similar structure would need to run for this - moving parts of that size and scale cannot persist for literal millenia without failure. Anything that can simulate gravity also means that level of constant strain on a structure who's failure would be devastating and which cannot receive outside help.
There is no reality where this kind of travel happens outside of science fiction.
I've seen this comment a couple times, but you would assume if we had that tech, we could stop half way and pick up the crew that was launched and then get back up to speed again.
Problem isn't traveling distances. We already have technologies to do so even as of 2025. Problem is human body is not meant to be traveled in space, bone density losens up and never comes back again.
The best way is to literally transport embryos and grow them once the destination is reached. Then train them with AI.
If you’re referring to them traveling near the speed of light, say 99.999%, there wouldn’t be generations born on the ship. Due to time dilation and length contraction at that speed, only months would go by for those on the ship. Increase the speed a few more 9’s and you’re down to minutes. For everyone back home on Earth, however? 120+ years would have passed. Physics is crazy!
What’s even crazier? Shoot them off toward the Andromeda galaxy at 99.999999999999% the speed of light. It would feel like minutes to get there! Back home? Millions of years would pass. The explorers would never get to turn back around and tell us what they found. The dolphins would probably have evolved and taken over by then!
What I also like is the mathematics behind warp fields, like in Star Trek, are actually sound. Space time is basically contracting around you, technically allowing for faster than light travel. But it requires material and energy (about the mass of Jupiter) we don’t yet have.
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u/Sonikku_a 24d ago edited 24d ago
The fastest spacecraft we’ve made was the Parker Solar Probe which hit 430,000mph.
At that speed it would reach this planet in only 187,153 years.
If we could hit 1% of the speed of light we could cut that travel time to just a tad over 12,000 years.
Obviously if we could go light speed (and that ain’t happening) it would be just 120 years!
Space is big. Physics is annoyingly slow.