Design an interstellar 'generation ship' to spend decades among the stars with Project Hyperion competition

[Admin]

A new design competition, dubbed Project Hyperion, is calling for submissions for the design of a crewed interstellar generation ship.

Design an interstellar 'generation ship' to spend decades among the stars with Project Hyperion competition : Read more

 

[martinbyrne]

A fascinating idea of course. My only objection would not be technical but moral. Is it fair to expect generations of humans to live confined on a ship this size and live their lives without either seeing Earth or their destination planet? I think generational starships are immoral and such technology should only be used if and once there is some kind of hibernation technology for the crew so that they arrive without having used up too much of their lives. This applies also in the case of much extended life spans in the future; who could bear the boredom of such a trip?

 

[billslugg]

Yes, totally agree. It would be immoral to have a child on such a ship. There are problems with suspended animation that might be difficult to overcome. The naturally occuring phosphorus in our bones emits radiation that degrades the DNA. I have read of a predicted 1,000 year limit.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

I am not so sure that I agree with the morality case made above.

It really depends on how the spacecraft is designed. If it is just a box with life support plumbing and no windows, it would be very confining, mentally. But if it is a living ecosystem, with room to move around, tasks to perform for survival, and observatories to let people observe where they are and where they are headed (with appropriate telescopic infrastructure), I am not seeing this as being much different the living on Easter Island before Captain Cook got there.

Confining? - definitely! But, it would be the only "real world" that successive generations ever knew. There would be psychological adaptation - and cultural evolution.

The real question in my mind would be how humans react to the absolute certainty that their little ecosystem has a limited viable population. Could they accept that, and stay one cohesive culture, or would there be competition for dominance of different subcultures with different ideas - as has developed on our much larger multi-generational space craft that we have named "Earth"?

 

[Wonder Wart Hog]

A very interesting subject and discussion. If you want to read a very recent fictional take on a generational starship see Anthony Doerr's Cloud Cuckoo Land. This novel features a generation starship called the Argos which is flying its crew of humans to a nearby star at 10% of the speed of light. The trip is scheduled to take around 600 years. At the time in the novel, they're around 7 decades into the trip and quite a few children have been birthed onboard the Argos. It's very interesting how Mr. Doerr handles most of the issues discussed in this article on his fictional Argos. It is especially interesting how he handles the issue of disclosing to the children that the trip is going to take 600 years and none of them are ever going to live to see to the planet that is the trip's destination. The novel is actually way larger than just the Argos, spanning eight centuries and with five main characters, only one of which is on the Argos. I consider it an excellent read and one of Mr. Doerr's best novels. Note: Anthony Doerr won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for his novel All the Light We Cannot See. Cloud Cuckoo Land is his first novel published after the release of All the Light We Cannot See.

 

[Noobitron]

And the complexity is even bigger...
There's manufacturing. Equipment on the ship will wear down / break down over time. Tools and parts will be needed for repairs. Do you bring all possible tools and all possible parts with you? If no, it must be possible to manufacture them on the fly on board. Crew members can get sick, requiring medications. And a lot of medications may not have a shelf life of hundreds of years. Thus, the ship must be equipped with pharma-producing capabilities.
And every ton, every kilogram, every gram of payload required for all of that increases the demands on the propulsion system.
Next - Biology... can we create a stable closed environment that is habitable for hundreds of years? The Biosphere2 experiment showed how horrendously complicated and shaky that can be. Fungi, bacteria, viruses can affect us, and lead to some unpredictable out-of-balance runaway effect a few years or decades into the journey.
Maybe all of these aspects are a reason why we haven't picked up any signs of civilizations spreading across the stars... the astronomical (pun intended) efforts and challenges to cross the gaps between the stars might just be flat out impractical in the end. Occam's razor.

 

[ChrisA]

One huge problem. Almost every first-world country now has a birth rate less than 2.1. This means their population is shrinking. Yes, The US is still growing its population but only because of immigration. If people stopped moving to the US, it too would be in decline.

So even if you fill the ship with 1,000 people. If the ship is like many modern countries the population will decline over the coming years. To maintain a stable population, each woman will need to have slightly more than 2 kids in her lifetime.

The other problem is that 1,000 people is far too few. There is a certain minimum size that the technological society must have. That number might be closer to 100 million then only 1,000. Our society needs many specialists. We need universities and farmers and kindergarten teachers and barbers and fashion designers andengineers of all kinds plus the schools to train all these people.

Mmaybe some AI-powered robots can remember skilled trades like semiconductor manufacturing, computer programming and medical care. But if you do that you end up at the destination with unskilled primitive humans who only know how to watch 250 year old films while being taken care of by robot baby sitters.

It will be very interesting to see how people deal with the possibility of an impact with a speed of 10% of light. The kinetic energy of a small space-rock at that speed is kind of like a nuclear bomb. Then of course space is not a pure vacuum. There are quite a large number of hydrogen atoms in every square meter of space. These will continuously rain down on the ship, collide with the hull, and set off a cascade of particles. The usual sci-fi solution is to invent a magic "deflector beam". But is magic allowed here?

I strongly suspect the winning design will all be from non-engineers and based on a very naive and shallow understanding of science so this winning design will only serve to perpetuate the idea that a generation ship is possible. The contest requirements are after all to "design a science-fiction ship"

Realistically the ship will need to hold a population that is compatible with Japan or California and there must be enough interior space that people can find a way to "travel" to "far away" parts of the ship where conditions are different

As for windows, why? There is nothing to see in interstellar space. Ok, stars. But these stars are unchanging in one person's lifetime. They would seem motionless for decades and there is no reason to look. So maybe just a tiny section of the ship has windows that a few people might go to once in their lifetime.

The declining birth rate is a big problem, You might get to the destination with only half the number of people you started with or even less.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

The declining birth rate is not a problem that can't be dealt with directly. And, anyway, it seems to be a result of socioeconomic stresses on the middle income population. Remove the stresses, and the birth rate would probably increase on its own.

Regarding "windows", I was thinking telescopes with viewers inside the space craft, intended to give the occupants a sense of where they are and an ability to study where they are headed. I think that is a psychological necessity.

The other issues are more realistic barriers.

Not even considering the issues related to travel speed, just maintaining a closed ecosystem in stable condition for the required period of time is not something we are currently capable of doing. Surely, we will learn a lot by having very isolated habitats in space - on the Moon and maybe Mars, and maybe in a solar orbit like the Lagrange points at L4 and L5. But, we would not have 200 years of continuous isolation experience to proof a system. It would be interesting to run the probabilistic analysis for the survival of the system design, if there ever is one.

Regarding propulsion and speed of travel, besides the barriers we currently have for getting enough mass to high enough speed and then stopping it once we arrive at the destination, there is the old joke about the umpteenth generation arriving after a 200 year long trip: As they debark, they are greeted by smiling Earthlings that arrived 100 years earlier on a faster ship that was invented 100 years after the slower travelers departed Earth.

 

[ChrisA]

Maybe all of these aspects are a reason why we haven't picked up any signs of civilizations spreading across the stars... the astronomical (pun intended) efforts and challenges to cross the gaps between the stars might just be flat out impractical in the end. Occam's razor.

crossing the gaps between stars certainly is physically possible. But not by sending modern-day humans. In only a few decades we will have two technologies that will help.

1) A fuller grasp of genetic engineering. If not in 30 years then in 300 or 3000 we will have the ability to create designer humans. The first of these will be designed to simply not have "bad genes". Then later we might design humans to better resist or even be immune from cancer. Eventually, parents will want children that are stronger and smarter and to have longer and healthier lives. At some point glow in the glow-in-the-dark blue hair might be fashionable for your kids. Or maybe for a few years having long arms but short legs is considered "cool" as long as the knuckles don't drag on the ground. Seriously, once you open up "creative DNA editing" we would be living in the Disney "Monsters Inc." movie.

Now back to space travel. We don't send people like you and me. We send a population that is designed to survive in the new conditions of a generation ship. They would be very tolerant of radiation and might live for 300 years. Or they could be specially designed to survive 100,000 years of suspended animation while frozen in blocks of solid helium. That would kill us for sure, but not them, they are designed to survive being frozen. Almost anything will be possible in 1,000 years if not in 10,000.

2) AI is a brand-new science. Today the field is only 50 or 60 years old and I am sure that all the important discoveries are still in the future. Today AI is like physics was before Isaac Newton. We have ideas and rules of thumb and stuff that almost works but there is no guiding principles, just ad-hoc design. But in 30 or 300 years, maybe someone like Newton will be born and write a book called "Principia, of Conscious Behavior". Then after that, we have truly human-equivalent mechanical intelligence. These will be the ones who travel to the stars. They can in theory live forever or at least suspend operations for milinia while traveling.
If we ever see aliens on Earth, they will be of this kind. A kind of AI that seems organic and natural.

The declining birth rate is not a problem that can't be dealt with directly. And, anyway, it seems to be a result of socioeconomic stresses on the middle income population. Remove the stresses, and the birth rate would probably increase on its own.

Regarding "windows", I was thinking telescopes with viewers inside the space craft, intended to give the occupants a sense of where they are and an ability to study where they are headed. I think that is a psychological necessity.

The other issues are more realistic barriers.

Not even considering the issues related to travel speed, just maintaining a closed ecosystem in stable condition for the required period of time is not something we are currently capable of doing. Surely, we will learn a lot by having very isolated habitats in space - on the Moon and maybe Mars, and maybe in a solar orbit like the Lagrange points at L4 and L5. But, we would not have 200 years of continuous isolation experience to proof a system. It would be interesting to run the probabilistic analysis for the survival of the system design, if there ever is one.

Regarding propulsion and speed of travel, besides the barriers we currently have for getting enough mass to high enough speed and then stopping it once we arrive at the destination, there is the old joke about the umpteenth generation arriving after a 200 year long trip: As they debark, they are greeted by smiling Earthlings that arrived 100 years earlier on a faster ship that was invented 100 years after the slower travelers departed Earth.

I also thought that the birth rate issue might take care of itself. But look at where it declines. It is in the population that is LEAST pressured. As it turns out it is a problem with educated, afluent upper middle class. TRhos who would seem to be under the least pressure. We see higher birth rates with people who are poor with poor education and low income. It seems oddly that the people who are best able to care for kids, have fewer of them. Jaapan has an excellent "safety net" system and is very safe. They have a very low birth rate. Both conditions are the opbosite in Haiti. It seems to be the case that those who can least afford it have the most children. It is backward for what you would expect.

That said, it seems that this might be sorted out. To say it is an unsolvable problem just because no one knows the solution is "bad logic". There could be an answer.

The close ecosystem MIGHT be solvable. A current theory is that like the population needed for a technological society, there is a minimum size for a close ecosystem. It seems that you need multiple climate zones and space for billions of microscopic species. The minimum size for a closed system might be a large fraction of the size of the Earth. Perhaps the size of North America or Europe. But "no big deal" because we also need more than 100 million people, maybe even a billion.

I like to use the example of manufacturing the screws that are used in my eyeglasses frame to show the depth of our supply chain. The screws are made by automatic machines, controlled by computers from steel and chrome that is mined with other much larger machines. All of these machines are designed by specialist engineers and made by expert tradesmen. All of these people went to school, some for 12 years, some for 20 years and their teachers were trained in universities. Without each step in that chain you can't have micro-sized screws. And I left out the part about airplanes needed to move the screw and police and managers and accountants, nothing works without them. 1,000 people are not enough to turn iron ore into chrome-plated screws,

The ship has to be somewhere between 100M and 1B people living in a space the size of a continent.

Yes this is large but the laws of physics do not rule out a content-size ship. But there is a big problem with collision of even hydrogen atoms at fractional light speeds.

You can argue that the technical knowledge will come from Earth. Now. after 250 years of 10% light speed the ship is 25 light years from Earth. The 10-year-old girl who phones home to Earth and asks for help on her homework will be 60 years old when the answer comes back. She will not get help even with easy problems.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

A few comments on ChrisA's post:

1. The birth rate in the "middle class" declines because the middle class tries to be self-sufficient and tends to plan things like pregnancies, but has to deal with taxes, family issues, etc., while the poor tend to not be able to prevent pregnancies, sometimes due to abuse and sometimes due to lack of funds to purchase preventatives, and sometimes because of the other reasons they do not succeed. Note that the birth rate is high in "refugee camps". The low birth rates are a function of economic conditions, not biological insufficiency. Anyway, if we select a crew for an interstellar mission, we can select fertile people.

2. While I agree that we are heavily dependent upon machinery and technology, your example of the tiny screws in eyeglasses isn't really the issue. Watchmakers were making tiny screws long before the machines we are now using to turn them out by the billions.

3. Any generational duration space voyage would obviously need self-repair capability for the devices involve in their ship. But, that is not the same as building their ship from raw materials. It is probably doable - at least up to the point of catastrophic failures. Training materials could be provided for the generation that lands on a distant planet, to provide the knowledge that is useful when raw materials are available - and maybe various threats that require defenses not needed while in transit on the ship.

4. We don't need a population of billions of people to maintain either our biology or our technology. Humans evolved from far smaller populations, even complex societies evolved from much smaller populations. Genetically, I have seen estimates in the hundreds for a space colony to avoid interbreeding problems.

5. Regarding the size of ecosystems needed for stability: it depends heavily on the environment. If the environment is challenging in diverse ways, it requires a diverse gene pool to keep adjusting to the perturbations. But, in a very stable environment, genetic diversity seems to decrease, maybe because it is wasteful of energy. A multigenerational space ship would probably have a more stable environment than anything that has ever existed on Earth.

6. However, add in the genetics of bacteria, fungi, viruses and other "fellow travelers", and those might evolve into something that could effectively dominate the ship's energy cycle, competing with and possibly killing off human life forms. Those things evolve far faster than humans, and we probably would not initially provide them all with optimum conditions for each. But, maybe some day in the future we could achieve that, a perfectly symbiotic set of creatures that remains stable for thousands of years. The closest thing I have read about like that here on Earth is the discovery of still-living extremely ancient bacteria in rocks deep in the Earth. See https://www.newscientist.com/articl...es-found-deep-inside-2-billion-year-old-rock/

 

[IndomitableIntrepidity]

Perhaps a way to skirt the generational travel time issue is to devise a true means of cryostasis, and/or have that method reserved for the second generation (born in space) so that the original astronauts and their progeny could arrive together after being "frozen" for a period of time. That would help to resolve some of the knowledge-retention issues faced. and the astronauts would have real memories of their original planet, Earth (plus all learned experiences, etc., of course).

If the trip is, truly, to be 250+ years, with normal procreation/lifetimes occurring, I think it would be wise to consider a means to experience time outside the ship -- perhaps in flyable "mini-ships" that could dock back to mother after getting some leisure/science time outside of the main. I can see the confines of even a gigantic ship becoming problematic for the psyches of some, and being able to "go outside" -- while introducing a whole host of new implications to sort through -- might do much for preserving stable mental health.

Of course, this all assumes undeveloped technologies, but it's all hypothetical, at this point, anyway.

 

[ChrisA]

Perhaps a way to skirt the generational travel time issue is to devise a true means of cryostasis, and/or have that method reserved for the second generation (born in space) so that the original astronauts and their progeny could arrive together after being "frozen" for a period of time. That would help to resolve some of the knowledge-retention issues faced. and the astronauts would have real memories of their original planet, Earth (plus all learned experiences, etc., of course).

If the trip is, truly, to be 250+ years, with normal procreation/lifetimes occurring, I think it would be wise to consider a means to experience time outside the ship -- perhaps in flyable "mini-ships" that could dock back to mother after getting some leisure/science time outside of the main. I can see the confines of even a gigantic ship becoming problematic for the psyches of some, and being able to "go outside" -- while introducing a whole host of new implications to sort through -- might do much for preserving stable mental health.

Of course, this all assumes undeveloped technologies, but it's all hypothetical, at this point, anyway.

in interstaller space there is NOTHING outside of the ship to see. It is pure black emptyness with only a background of stars. And those stars never change even over a person's lifetime. Your grand parents would have seen the same stars. And can not imagine how anyone would want to go outside into darkness so see a sight that is static and never different.

But I do agree that people like to "get away". It seems that the ship needs to be the size of a continent. If it really is the size of (say) Europe there will be places to go inside the ship.

As it turns out our technology really does depend on the size of the intercommunicating population. A group size of 1,000 would only support a society that supplements hunting a gathering with agriculture, you would not be able to support a "bronze age" technical level. One million people gets you to nearly the industrial revolution with coal powered steam engines. You do not get to 1930s aircraft until you have much larger politically connected populations. It is the supply chain issue.

Yes robots can help, but then you have "humans as cargo" and you might as well be carrying cartons of strawberry jello as the humans will be helpless after 100 generations of nothing to do.

Ok, you think the ship caries a vast library of human knowledge and culture? That will fail. Try this experiment. Find a kid and teach him to use a web browser. Then watch what he does. Does he spend 18 hours a day playing video games and watching reality TV or does he study advanced mathematics, physics and engineering? Not one in a thousand kids will do the later. But if you set him up in a society where either he goes out hunting for food or he dies of starvation, he learns to find food.

With only 1,000 people you can't even train the next generation of elemerty school teachers. You would never be able to stuff a university with only 1,000 people. You need the Ph.D.-level micro biologist to train the next generation of scientists, the same for every other specialty. You run this logic out until you see the need for a population size that compares to Japan or the UK at the very minimum

Again you can use robots. but then what is the role of the humans, they become useless cargo.



My guess: Advanced civilizations and we humans will all come to the same conclusion: Send "generation ships" that contain advanced AI and robots but there is zero need to also have human cargo. The robots have no need for people. But you do need a population of robots who can build more robots and recycle parts and so on. It will need to be a complex society if it is to last 1,000 or 10,000 years. The entire ship might need to be rebuilt several times. But you just don't need the humans. Ok, if you want humans, all you need to send is copies of the human genome in computer files and the robots can make people later. But there is no role for humans during the 10,000 year flight

 

[Unclear Engineer]

I don't agree with your assertions about how many people are needed to support societies at various levels of technology. It seems that you are trying to use a correlation from past history to relate the technology level to the population size. But, that was the population that was extant at the times of discovery of technological processes and innovations. It does not automatically follow that the same population levels are needed to continue to implement and maintain that technology, once it is learned and available.

I do agree more about what would occur psychologically to a population in a space ship in the middle of a big nothing for many generations. But, while you seem to think that the population would become uselessly lazy and ignorant, human nature seems to become aggravated and hostile when bored and denied the mental freedoms desired. Rather than become passive, the confined population may instead become argumentative, split into factions, and threaten to exterminate each other, probably resulting in destroying themselves entirely. At least that is how we behave on this planet-sized "space craft" with the ecosystem we don't even have to design and build from scratch.

But, all of this is still not even beginning to address where the space ship would get the power to run its ecosystem for so long, so far away from stellar power sources. And, it also does not address the propulsion systems needed to drive such a big craft to speeds that would allow it to make the interstellar journey in time periods as "short" as so many generations of humans.

 

[ChrisA]

I don't agree with your assertions about how many people are needed to support societies at various levels of technology. It seems that you are trying to use a correlation from past history to relate the technology level to the population size. But, that was the population that was extant at the times of discovery of technological processes and innovations. It does not automatically follow that the same population levels are needed to continue to implement and maintain that technology, once it is learned and available.

I do agree more about what would occur psychologically to a population in a space ship in the middle of a big nothing for many generations. But, while you seem to think that the population would become uselessly lazy and ignorant, human nature seems to become aggravated and hostile when bored and denied the mental freedoms desired. Rather than become passive, the confined population may instead become argumentative, split into factions, and threaten to exterminate each other, probably resulting in destroying themselves entirely. At least that is how we behave on this planet-sized "space craft" with the ecosystem we don't even have to design and build from scratch.

But, all of this is still not even beginning to address where the space ship would get the power to run its ecosystem for so long, so far away from stellar power sources. And, it also does not address the propulsion systems needed to drive such a big craft to speeds that would allow it to make the interstellar journey in time periods as "short" as so many generations of humans.

I did not make this theory up. It is very much mainstream science. The theory is that cavemen did not invent metal working because their economy could not support it. Not because they were dumb. Anotmically modern humans, just like use lived in caves for 200,000 years. and they made stone tools using the exact same method of pressing flaks in exactly the same way for thousands of years. The made double stranded tisted fiber cord for 10,000 years using the exact same methods. A few of these people were as smart od Issac Newton but none thought about making metal tools, not util there were cities.

I think the past is well explained. But in the future? Could 1,000 people support a high school? Likely not. You would need teachers and the teachers need training which means you need a university and you quickly run of of people to staff even a small university.

You would need robots. But then what is the role for humans, just to be mobile contains that hold human DNA? We could more easily store genetic data in a computer file.


I agree the power and propulsion system are not possible with any technology we have now or in the foreseeable future. Antimatter might work as a fuel. But in real life, no one would ever try to do this.

what they will do is build a tiny ship with robots and AI and no people. An advanced society might be able to launch one of these ships every week or every month. They would take centuries or longer to reach their destinations and there are MANY places to go. we would learn a lot about our little corner of the galaxy. Over the course of thousands of years, we learn even more.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

So, you have some evidence that 200,000 years ago, "cave men" knew how to smelt ores into metals and how to work them into tools, but chose not to because they were not numerous enough to need to do that? I am not buying that theory.

Nor am I buying the concept that education can only occur via the school systems now used in Western cultures. The main thing I learned was how to learn, and I do that from all sorts of available information. I don't need to pay to be spoon fed the prepared course work in order to learn something. Actually, if all I know now was what I had learned by the time I finished my graduate work, I would be pretty useless by now.

But, I will give you this: there is more to learning than just reading about something. There is skill development in many trades that requires practice and some guidance to minimize the costs of the trial-and-error-correction alternative. That type of knowledge would be difficult to transmit over many generations of non-use on a space ship so that it could be used immediately upon debarking on a destination planet where it would again become a necessity.

But, if you think that robots can be made to do such tasks, and keep repairing themselves for the duration of the trip, then there is no "education" limit for any humans going along. If humans can't remember how to identify raw materials, extract them, process them and design and build new integrated electronic microchips, but robots can, then no problem for the humans, just send appropriately programmed robots to do that part of the processes.

So, I think the real issue is whether it is possible to make such a space ship capable of supporting humans for such extended periods without any outside source of energy.

I think that even a fully robotic mission of such duration would be a severe challenge to our capabilities - at least with the limits we currently recognize.

But, why would we send robots to establish a colony of robots on a distant planet? Except for scientific discovery purposes, what is the value to humans from having established a self-sustaining colony of robots on another planet?

And, if we could do that, what is the risk that they would evolve a competing society and, being able to come back to Earth, return as an enemy at some point in the distant future?

 

[George²]

Then watch what he does. Does he spend 18 hours a day playing video games and watching reality

GS not needs of democracy about question of the upbringing and education. So, if the goals are to be achieved, there will be a restriction on the freedom of the child to waste his life on the path of unproductiveness.

 

[ChrisA]

So, you have some evidence that 200,000 years ago, "cave men" knew how to smelt ores into metals and how to work them into tools, but chose not to because they were not numerous enough to need to do that? I am not buying that theory.

Nor am I buying the concept that education can only occur via the school systems now used in Western cultures. The main thing I learned was how to learn, and I do that from all sorts of available information. I don't need to pay to be spoon fed the prepared course work in order to learn something. Actually, if all I know now was what I had learned by the time I finished my graduate work, I would be pretty useless by now.

But, I will give you this: there is more to learning than just reading about something. There is skill development in many trades that requires practice and some guidance to minimize the costs of the trial-and-error-correction alternative. That type of knowledge would be difficult to transmit over many generations of non-use on a space ship so that it could be used immediately upon debarking on a destination planet where it would again become a necessity.

But, if you think that robots can be made to do such tasks, and keep repairing themselves for the duration of the trip, then there is no "education" limit for any humans going along. If humans can't remember how to identify raw materials, extract them, process them and design and build new integrated electronic microchips, but robots can, then no problem for the humans, just send appropriately programmed robots to do that part of the processes.

So, I think the real issue is whether it is possible to make such a space ship capable of supporting humans for such extended periods without any outside source of energy.

I think that even a fully robotic mission of such duration would be a severe challenge to our capabilities - at least with the limits we currently recognize.

But, why would we send robots to establish a colony of robots on a distant planet? Except for scientific discovery purposes, what is the value to humans from having established a self-sustaining colony of robots on another planet?

And, if we could do that, what is the risk that they would evolve a competing society and, being able to come back to Earth, return as an enemy at some point in the distant future?

The theory is that he is not motivated to invent metal working because in his society metal working has a high negative value. It would never pay off. Even if he did think of it, he would not do it

You are right, could you power a ship for so long? Only with some very exotic technology like antimater.

We don't send robots. The robots, being human-equivalent intelligent send themselves. They decide to build a ship. Or the sj=hip itself is a single robot and it wants to go, so it does.

Perhaps be the time antimater powered ships are possible, there will be no humans like you and me.

After we have superhuman AI, the only way we compete isto incorporate some of that technology into ourselves. But the AI may decide not to compete and just leave the solar system. Or maybe the distinction between human and robot will be unimportant in their culture. There might just be many different kinds of "people"

When you can combine genetic re-engineering and embedded AI technology and make people by design, there is no limit.

maybe the reason to move out of the solar system is that some class of cybors are considered so weird and annoying that we kick them out.

Designing this ship today is like asking an ancient Roman engineer to design a ship that could land on the moon. He would never think of an Apollo-like lander. He might think of gient bird's wings and with ros of galley slaves pulling on ors to make the wing flap. Any ship we invent today will be as silly as the Roman flying bird ship

We can't know what a world were there exist both hyper-intelegents and the ability to hurl asyrtoid-sized ships to the stars would look like

the ships might not be made of metal but with something that acts like living cells that can move and reconnect themselves and change the design of the ship. They don't biuuld ships, they grow them.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Your last post is a mix of misinterpretations of human behaviors and fantastical speculations about the future of technology and biological evolution. The first sounds like the musings of an economist, not a biologist or a psychologist. The latter sounds like Hollywood.

People are curious by nature. That is how we discover things. Use of fire was probably our first "technological" implementation. And, heating rocks with our fires resulted in some ores producing metallic residues (mainly gold and copper), which people played with and found uses for - initially just ornamentation. They did not decide that they wanted to grow their populations and so went looking for new technologies needed to transition from stone to metal tools. They used whatever they had learned to their best advantages as conditions changed. For example, there were large urban populations in the Americas that still used stone tools while there were similar sized populations in the Mediterranean area using metals up to iron. The people in the Americas were isolated and did not learn of the metallurgy advances already being put to use on the other side of the ocean. Similarly, the coal in Europe was not being used until trade with China brought back knowledge (and samples) of "black rocks that burn". So, I am still not buying the "economist" perspective on not using things until populations got larger. I think it is more a matter of technological advances providing the opportunity for populations to get larger and be sustained. Arguments about what is useful technology at what levels of population density do have some merit, but the economists' version of cause and effect seems backwards with respect to how the evolution of technology occurs. Madam Curie was not thinking about making nuclear power reactors when she was investigating radioactivity.

Regarding the visions of the future evolution of technology and human biology, all we can do is speculate. I would not honor much of that speculation with the title of "prediction". Not to the point where we are talking about interstellar travelling.

 

[Michel Lamontagne]

I am not so sure that I agree with the morality case made above.

It really depends on how the spacecraft is designed. If it is just a box with life support plumbing and no windows, it would be very confining, mentally. But if it is a living ecosystem, with room to move around, tasks to perform for survival, and observatories to let people observe where they are and where they are headed (with appropriate telescopic infrastructure), I am not seeing this as being much different the living on Easter Island before Captain Cook got there.

Confining? - definitely! But, it would be the only "real world" that successive generations ever knew. There would be psychological adaptation - and cultural evolution.

The real question in my mind would be how humans react to the absolute certainty that their little ecosystem has a limited viable population. Could they accept that, and stay one cohesive culture, or would there be competition for dominance of different subcultures with different ideas - as has developed on our much larger multi-generational space craft that we have named "Earth"?

That's the whole point of the contest, exploring if the situation is acceptable. Let's not forget that the ship should remain at all times in contact with Earth. It might even be reached by a fast automated shuttle. We expect contestants to provide a complete ecosystem, but we might be surprised.

 

[Michel Lamontagne]

The theory is that he is not motivated to invent metal working because in his society metal working has a high negative value. It would never pay off. Even if he did think of it, he would not do it

You are right, could you power a ship for so long? Only with some very exotic technology like antimater.

We don't send robots. The robots, being human-equivalent intelligent send themselves. They decide to build a ship. Or the sj=hip itself is a single robot and it wants to go, so it does.

Perhaps be the time antimater powered ships are possible, there will be no humans like you and me.

After we have superhuman AI, the only way we compete isto incorporate some of that technology into ourselves. But the AI may decide not to compete and just leave the solar system. Or maybe the distinction between human and robot will be unimportant in their culture. There might just be many different kinds of "people"

When you can combine genetic re-engineering and embedded AI technology and make people by design, there is no limit.

maybe the reason to move out of the solar system is that some class of cybors are considered so weird and annoying that we kick them out.

Designing this ship today is like asking an ancient Roman engineer to design a ship that could land on the moon. He would never think of an Apollo-like lander. He might think of gient bird's wings and with ros of galley slaves pulling on ors to make the wing flap. Any ship we invent today will be as silly as the Roman flying bird ship

We can't know what a world were there exist both hyper-intelegents and the ability to hurl asyrtoid-sized ships to the stars would look like

the ships might not be made of metal but with something that acts like living cells that can move and reconnect themselves and change the design of the ship. They don't biuuld ships, they grow them.

The ship can be fusion powered. Any ship this size, that can reach the required velocity to get anywhere in a few centuries, will have huge amounts of available power. This is one of the things earlier SF stories about these types of vehicles got wrong. It's a very conservative design, and kind of requires that humans or AI do not become transcendently intelligent in the near future. In such a case the whole idea may become moot. We don't really care all that much about the ship design, but we are interested in the design of the society, and how it might survive, and if this has any applicability to Earth.

 

[Michel Lamontagne]

So, you have some evidence that 200,000 years ago, "cave men" knew how to smelt ores into metals and how to work them into tools, but chose not to because they were not numerous enough to need to do that? I am not buying that theory.

Nor am I buying the concept that education can only occur via the school systems now used in Western cultures. The main thing I learned was how to learn, and I do that from all sorts of available information. I don't need to pay to be spoon fed the prepared course work in order to learn something. Actually, if all I know now was what I had learned by the time I finished my graduate work, I would be pretty useless by now.

But, I will give you this: there is more to learning than just reading about something. There is skill development in many trades that requires practice and some guidance to minimize the costs of the trial-and-error-correction alternative. That type of knowledge would be difficult to transmit over many generations of non-use on a space ship so that it could be used immediately upon debarking on a destination planet where it would again become a necessity.

But, if you think that robots can be made to do such tasks, and keep repairing themselves for the duration of the trip, then there is no "education" limit for any humans going along. If humans can't remember how to identify raw materials, extract them, process them and design and build new integrated electronic microchips, but robots can, then no problem for the humans, just send appropriately programmed robots to do that part of the processes.

So, I think the real issue is whether it is possible to make such a space ship capable of supporting humans for such extended periods without any outside source of energy.

I think that even a fully robotic mission of such duration would be a severe challenge to our capabilities - at least with the limits we currently recognize.

But, why would we send robots to establish a colony of robots on a distant planet? Except for scientific discovery purposes, what is the value to humans from having established a self-sustaining colony of robots on another planet?

And, if we could do that, what is the risk that they would evolve a competing society and, being able to come back to Earth, return as an enemy at some point in the distant future?

The energy source would be onboard. To reach the level of prosperity required to build such a vehicle, the would need to be a solar system wide economy, and probably some type of self replicating systems/factories. One of these could be carried on the Ship. An interesting question would be the function of humans in such a system. That's what the contest aims to explore.

 

[Michel Lamontagne]

I'm one of the contest designers. feel free to ask questions!

Project Hyperion | interstellar generation ship design competition

Project Hyperion explores the feasibility of crewed interstellar travel via generation ships, using current and near-future technologies. A generation ship is a hypothetical spacecraft designed for long-duration interstellar travel, where the journey may take centuries to complete. The objective...

www.projecthyperion.org

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Michel Lamontagne, thank you for joining the discussion.

 

[Noobitron]

.... An interesting question would be the function of humans in such a system. That's what the contest aims to explore.

History seems to suggest that we humans carry very tribal behavioral traits with us. We seem to to have a tendency to splinter into small (often competing) factions, rather than working together in a unified monolithic group. It's been 15-20 year or so since I read the books, but I believe one of the follow-up books to Arthur C. Clarke's "Rendezvous with Rama" touched a little bit on that aspect.

 

[Noobitron]

...Rather than become passive, the confined population may instead become argumentative, split into factions, and threaten to exterminate each other, probably resulting in destroying themselves entirely. At least that is how we behave on this planet-sized "space craft" with the ecosystem we don't even have to design and build from scratch.
...

Agreed.
Maybe future results in DNA research will reveal more about how our genes are directing and controlling our behavior. And that could create a movement towards... mandatory targeted gene therapy do eliminate destructive behavior. Oh, brave new world...