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Humans Will Sail To The Stars
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..."
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?
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Heh. I wouldn't be very concerned about the boredom level of the colonists... I mean, if we were going to build such a big spaceship, it wouldn't be much of an extra cost to give them:
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.
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
I still think the easiest way to spread the human race to other stars in a Van Neuman machine. It's a self-replicating machine that when it finds a good planet will first terraform it that clone humans to live on it (I may be confusing it with something else but I think I got the basics right). This would not only be drastically cheaper and more practical it holds much more potential for the spread of the human race. It also avoids finding a way to keep a bunch of people occupied for several decades.
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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.
After the colonists spend a few centuries or millenia traveling to another star system, their society will have adapted to life in space. They'll have become emotionally acclimated to living in a confined habitat surrounded by vacuum, and they'll have learned the technical skills necessary for survival there. Hell, they'll probably be agoraphobic.
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
If you say "I'll probably get modded down for this..." then I will mod you down.
three ships. We put all the laborers on one, all the intellectuals on another, and...
(If you don't get it, don't moderate it)
-- "Other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?"
Technology is advancing so quickly that people would realize that any group that launched such a voyage would be passed by a faster group within a few years.
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.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
What you are asking for is impossible.
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.
Saying we will sail to the stars can be likened to the inventor of the zepplin saying that we will have mass crossings of the atlantic via deridgible.
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.
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.
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You're thinking about the Orion project, which was proposed in the 70s. It was quietly dropped, and I think it's safe to say that it will never come about, given humanity's disillusionment with nuclear bombs. Not to mention the impracticality of the design, compared to the alternatives.
The chance of a collision with asteroids is very minute. There are actually very few significantly sized asteroids, and they are spread over an enormous volume of space, generally concentrated between Mars and Jupiter. If you don't believe me, just consider that any number of space missions have made it to the outer solar system by now. JPL has launched Pioneer 10, Pioneer 11, Voyager 1, Voyager 2, Galileo, Ulysses (on a gravity assist to get to the sun), and Cassini (now halfway between Jupiter and Saturn), and none were taken out of commission by an asteroid (though Galileo had unrelated problems).
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
Science, like Nature, must also be tamed, with a view turned towards its preservation.