Generation Ships 1.1 OXP

[phkb]

Wood, no? Our very first wooden spaceship!

Wait, what? No, it's not wood, it's definitely rusted, weathered metal. Really, it is!

surely people on board would have gold, jewels & platinum. And food of a sort. And liquors. And textiles of a sort. This stuff could possibly all be varieties of luxuries rather than the more mundane versions bought in the orbital stations.

But they wouldn't have Galactic credits, and the F8 screen is completely based on credits changing hands. I mean, the attraction of having a market on one of these would be for it to, to use UK_Eliter's words, "receive monstrous amounts of credits". But that seems unlikely based on the interface we have with markets. I know, in the "game in your head", the F8 screen could be operating as a bartering system, but in my mind it just breaks mimesis way too much.

Coupled with that, how would their centuries-old tech even interface with your super-modern market system? (I mean, a super modern system that can only have around 27 lines on the screen, with a clunky menu interface, but... ahem. Moving on). There would be no way to connect the two systems up,

As I mentioned in the other thread, bartering would make sense, but not through the F8 screen. It would need it's own screen, where a pure bartering system could be put into use.

[Cody]

... surely people on board would have gold, jewels & platinum...

After centuries travelling in a closed environment, the people on board might be batshit crazy, call you a heretic, and burn you!

[Nite Owl]

By definition these ships are self contained environments with no need for anything that might be available from outside of themselves. The possible exception to this rule would be a very large Hyperdrive and the fuel to power it so that those on board could get to their destination before they die. Could that be the reason behind GalCop's ban on docking with them - instant overpopulation upon arrival?

[Cholmondely]

By definition these ships are self contained environments with no need for anything that might be available from outside of themselves. The possible exception to this rule would be a very large Hyperdrive and the fuel to power it so that those on board could get to their destination before they die. Could that be the reason behind GalCop's ban on docking with them - instant overpopulation upon arrival?

Interesting.

I would guess that the ban is due to some systems worried about this, and other perhaps worried about diseases or religious fanatics or the arrival of more cooped-up and crazed enthusiasts about whatever (see http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Sector1/Digebiti (Fiction section). Plus the difficulties in assimilating a group of primitive technologists with a different culture.

But, I can't see the ban being enforced unless one is unlucky.

[Redspear]

By definition these ships are self contained environments with no need for anything that might be available from outside of themselves. The possible exception to this rule would be a very large Hyperdrive and the fuel to power it so that those on board could get to their destination before they die. Could that be the reason behind GalCop's ban on docking with them - instant overpopulation upon arrival?

Interesting.

I would guess that the ban is due to some systems worried about this, and other perhaps worried about diseases or religious fanatics or the arrival of more cooped-up and crazed enthusiasts about whatever (see http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Sector1/Digebiti (Fiction section). Plus the difficulties in assimilating a group of primitive technologists with a different culture.

Generation Ships Before the development of the WS Thru-Space drive, in all its various forms, interstellar travel occurred in large, self-sustaining environment ships - Generation Ships - most of which have now been logged and their progress monitored. There are more than seventy thousand of these immense vessels ploughing their way through the galaxy, some of them into their 30th generation. The penalty for interference with such a vessel is marooning.

A big question here would be to what extent are GS occupants aware of events outside their travelling home?

They may be being monitored but to what extent are they monitoring? Is there an automated navigation and (ultimately) landing sequence upon finding a suitable world or was it to always be under human control ? If the latter then might some decide that life might even be better aboard their current home?

After centuries travelling in a closed environment, the people on board might be batshit crazy, call you a heretic, and burn you!

Or the other way around...

The generation ships likely left Earth with a much more naive and optimistic mindset than that of any player character.
Some new virgin paradise to call home, free from whatever troubles and difficulties were plaguing them on earth, only to be boarded by a hardened space pilot more familiar with space lanes rife with piracy, hyperspace dogged with Thargoids and a galactic economy including slavery in every system.

Maybe being on a generation ship doesn't seem so bad after all...

[Cody]

Maybe being on a generation ship doesn't seem so bad after all...

Indeed! I'm sure there's been plenty of sci-fi written about life on such ships, most of it dystopian, I expect.

[hiran]

Maybe being on a generation ship doesn't seem so bad after all...

Indeed! I'm sure there's been plenty of sci-fi written about life on such ships, most of it dystopian, I expect.

Although not designed to be a generation ship, in the end it was used as such: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passengers_(2016_film)

[Cody]

Sleeper ships are a different kettle of fish. Some excellent sci-fi has used them.
The Legacy of Heorot and Coyote come to mind as particularly good examples.

[Redspear]

Indeed! I'm sure there's been plenty of sci-fi written about life on such ships, most of it dystopian, I expect.

I've read so little sci-fi that I often suspect that what I might consider to be a relatively original idea of mine might actually be a hackneyed old cliche disguised only by my own ingorance.

[hiran]

Sleeper ships are a different kettle of fish. Some excellent sci-fi has used them.
The Legacy of Heorot and Coyote come to mind as particularly good examples.

Maybe I should get hold of that story.

So far I have discovered sleeper ships not as the real story since all the characters are in deep sleep and nothing happens until they arrive.
Similar like in a movie when people change location and you can see a plane either/or taking off and landing for a second.

This happened e.g. in Avatar, where in the beginning of the plot the sleeper ship already arrives and the main character is woken up.

[Cody]

Maybe I should get hold of that story.

So far I have discovered sleeper ships not as the real story since all the characters are in deep sleep and nothing happens until they arrive.

The Legacy of Heorot falls into that category, but the after effects of coldsleep play a part.
Coyote is partly set during the flight, and also deals with the after effects.

[UK_Eliter]

A P. K. Dick story is relevant. The story concerns a man who is in suspended animation on an interstellar flight, and the suspension breaks such that he is awake, though immobile. The onboard computer tries to keep the man sane - he will be stuck conscious for years - by simulating scenarios, including (to give him hope?) the scenario that he has reached his destination. He does reach the destination, but he does not believe it is real. Possibly he looks inside a television and finds that the machine is empty inside - 'possibly' because I forget and this is a typical Dickian trope and indeed at least at times Dick himself did not believe that his world was real. (Cf. Nick Bostrom's Simulation Argument, though Dick's reasons were more to do with mental illness that philosophy, I suspect.)

I forget what the story is called. I think it was a short story rather than a novel. A web-search that I undertook to try to discover the story's name did not yield that name but told me that Dick wrote a short novel on a similar theme. That novel is called A Crack in Space or - its original title - Cantata 140. See this Wikipedia page. I have read a lot of PKD but I have not read that one. [Edited to add some missing italics.]

[Cody]

When Dick gets into time, things get tricky - Counter-Clock World, for example!

[hiran]

I forget what the story is called. I think it was a short story rather than a novel. A web-search that I undertook to try to discover the story's name did not yield that name but told me that Dick wrote a short novel on a similar theme. That novel is called A Crack in Space or - its original title - Cantata 140. See this Wikipedia page. I have read a lot of PKD but I have not read that one.

Oh that writer did not foresee the future...

On a future Earth (c. 2080 CE) overwhelmed with severe difficulties related to overpopulation, a portal is discovered that leads to a parallel world. Jim Briskin, campaigning to be the first Black president of the United States, believes that ...

It has happened in 2008 that the US had their first president of colour....

But there are lots of stories about a really existing generation ship. It is somewhat similar to a rock hermite, maybe bigger and definitely not built by the passengers. The passengers, as so often, have no control over where they are going. But they call their ship Earth.

The Wandering Earth is a story where passengers decide to use that generation ship to go to some better place.

[UK_Eliter]

hiran,

Surely not every part of a work of science fiction should be construed as a prediction or at least not a specifically-dated one.

On a typical construal, a generation ship - I take it - is a fabricated thing. Thus, Earth is a generation ship only in a metaphorical or attenuated sense. Yet, that idea (that enlarged idea, or metaphor) is useful . .