The Logistics Of Generation Ships
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- Опубликовано: 3 июл 2024
- The Logistics Of Generation Ships - Second Thought
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Imagine travelling on a generation ship, living your entire life with the view that you are at the forefront of human discovery, and that your mission is of utter importance to the future of humanity. And then when you arrive, long after the original crew has passed away, you learn that FTL travel has been possible for hundreds of years, and humans have already colonized your destination long ago.
For this reason, I think we should never create a generation ship.
@@joswasi4144 Well, I disagree. Because what if FTL travel isn't possible at all? Then we'd just give up on colonizing for no reason. And realistically, we probably wouldn't let them arrive to see a fully colonized world. The first FTL ship mission would probably be to either bring the generation ship crew home or to their destination early, along with the new first colonists on the FTL ship.
@@niclas3672 We don't even need faster than light travel. We could just use antimatter propulsion. Faster than light travel at this point in human history seems like science fiction.
@@joswasi4144 Yeah, some form of near light speed propulsion would work for colonization. But then we would still have generation ships if we want to go further than like 30-50 light-years. Only the nearest stars could be colonized without FTL or generation ships. And they would still need resources for prolonged life in space, just as a generation ship would need. Getting to Alpha-Centauri at 50% light-speed would still take 8 years or so. Most trips would take at least a decade.
There was a Fraser Cain video that said that we should wait approximately 600-700 years to build a generation ship. It's a good vid.
Imagine being a second generation child on that ship, with nothing to look forward to except having another child and die
Jacob Cree damn sad af
Exactly. But I mean, ever considered that, in a sense, we're just about the same as those hypothetical children. Born too late to discover the world but also too early to explore the universe.
You people are cynical jeez 😂 we are the generations that have to achieve and support such technology to acquire the ability to explore the universe. Theres always something to live for. If you were on that ship you'd be responsible for finding and achieve more.
Justin Haffenden come on, admit it’d be at least a little depressing 😂
So just the same as us then, we just have a bigger spaceship?
What if we would launch a generation ship, invent warp technology a couple of centuries later and then manage to arrive to set planet before the generation ship?
There are several science fiction books and stories about that. Would really suck to arrive with that generation ship only to find an already colonized world lol. But realistically, I think the first mission with an FTL ship, would be to catch up to the generation ship and take them to their destination early. Or possibly home, since their scientists and engineers probably need to do some studying now. Depending on how much time passed, they might not be qualified at all anymore, because of the scientific advancements that have occurred.
wasting people time and resources XD
the wait problem
@@niclas3672 That's assuming said ship has no communication with earth, which would be highly unlikely. I think they would be kept updated with all the new discoveries and the fastest ship will most likely catch up with them a go together!
@@gardel2004 True, for some reason I didn't consider that lol. They would obviously be a few years behind, depending on how many light years away they are. But yeah, they could be kept reasonably up to date, as long as we aren't talking a lot more than 10 light-years away. So I agree, most likely they would just join the first FTL colony ship. The only exceptions would be in the case that the generation ship has near-lightspeed capabilities, and is on a hundreds of light-years trip. Then they would obviously not be up to date on the latest science.
Imagine that you end up as generation 40/50 of some sort of flying Amish just because your grand ancestors thought it was a great way to get rid of student debt.
There's a reason Australia was first colonised by prisoners sent against their will. The journey was mind numbingly long and disease, rations and boredom were a daily occurrence. Only once a functioning level of civilisation had been created did people make the arduous journey voluntarily. The trip from England to the Australian outposts took at least 8 months. 250 days trapped in a confined space, with the same people, the same smells and the same endless view.
Now imagine a multi-generational ship. The conditions would be rather pleasant in comparison, but the difference in time diminishes the increase in living standards. Instead of 8 months of isolation, the inhabitants of this ship would likely live into old age from birth, lets say an average of 80 years, which would be 120x the duration that those prisoners had to endure. It would be a complete severing with the rest of humanity. As humanity progressed, those on the ship would be destined to never experience any of it. No access to new music, films, plays, technology, news, developments, books etc. They would be stuck in a specific period in time indefinitely.
The worse part however, is that the children born on a ship like this would have had no choice in being removed from their home planet. They will never experience the sunshine on their faces, wind, rain, swimming in the ocean, seeing other animals, or ever climb a tree. Nor would they ever taste a fresh pineapple, or smell the ground after heavy rain. They would be destined to live in a cramped enclosed ship, with constant artificial white light, surrounded by the same people and the same view. They would likely be forced to work a specific job to keep the ship running, leaving no choice of career, and due to the importance of maintaining genetic diversity, they likely would not be allowed to have children with whom ever they loved and chose, instead being decreed a specific partner.
If suicide and a lack of purpose are increasing in our society at present, just imagine what would happen to those on a multi-generational ship. It really would be morally reprehensible to ever allow an idea like this to enter reality. Instead, waiting for technology to improve would appear to be the best option.
Well if we EVER get to this point, I'm sure the makers would give this a thought and check them too
I believe if this is feasible if things are going pretty bad on earth, and we'd have some way to constantly remind the crew throughout the journey of the trips importance. Even if the jobs felt monotonous and boring, they'd feel a sense of pride.
And regarding entertainment, at that period in time, it's quite likely that AI would be creating all of it.
They would be the forefront of human space colonization - so I don't really see a lack of purpose there.
The contact to earth would be delayed by a few years but still possible. Culture and entertainment would certainly make it to the ship.
And if we send thousand or more colonists instead of 98 the need for selected partners and fixed jobs would also vanish.
Don't get me wrong - the journey would be very long and boring and the question if we should choose it for children that aren't born yet is an important one. But it certainly wouldn't be as bad as you describe it.
In reality, for them it probably wouldn’t be too bad, because for the second generation, it’s all that they know. They don’t know the joys of living on earth, so how could they miss it? They would be used to the ship being “home” and wouldn’t know any different.
@@chickentenders3018 and at arrival they'll just not land the ship and instead continue as nomads 👍
You're describing an existential nightmare. The ship needs to be large enough and include enough amenities for generations of humans to somehow lead meaningful, fulfilling lives. You're describing 6,000 years of humans living in a farm basement.
Who said anything about farm animals. Meat would likely not be an option or if it is than extremely rare.
@@CountryLifestyle2023 A farm doesn't immediately mean "meat" lol
Ever hear of vegetables?
@@Free_Krazy That's what I meant when saying meat would likely not be an option. And although vegetables do smell I don't see that being an issue lol.
@@CountryLifestyle2023 Fish could be a reasonable option due to the water, I think. We could also put battery farms in space, have enclosed spaces where we can give animals feed and then later slaughter them (perhaps manually?).
@@icameherejusttocomment550 Fish might be viable. Just not sure if needed, and the water you use to store the fish will have to be cleaned before reuse and the largest stores of water would be used as a radiation shield, which wouldn't make for a good crop. Though I think small animals would work best if animals is an option.
But I really dont see animals being needed for this journey. You can keep embryos of said animals on stock for populating the new planet.
Currently we are moving away from meat and animals (very slowly), as a our populations grows. So when we are capable of launching a generational ship, it wouldn't make sense to bring them to consume. Especially when we can survive without it.
There is always the question of how the new generations would react to the fabled “earth” that they are never going to see, causing probably a rebellion or a sabotage in the mission
True, the video didn't touch on any of the ethics of such a project. While the original crew members volunteered, future generations are sentenced to living their entire lives on a small vessel with absolutely no say on the matter.
@@President_Mario/videos That's why these way-too-short videos are just Half As Interesting ...... oops, wrong channel ;]
I don't know about rebellion/mutiny, at least outside of the first 50 years or so. It's not like they could turn around and make it back "home" in the space of a lifetime. Which brings up some ethical questions. Anyways, I'd be more worried about the suicide rates...
Yeah Idk about that, I think we bigfoots are just gonna stay down here in the woods
Have same feeling...
That’d be cool if there were still woods left
I'm gonna build a cabin deep in the woods next door to Bigfoot and his wife. We're going to enjoy the good, quiet life away from all the strife.
Id assume that spermbanks could be used to keep genetic diversity high. Just have a couple thousand sperm samples on board.
Have you seen "Mother", the sci-fi flick with Hilary Swank, by any chance? :)
@Kevin Warburton or other protien like worms. More efficient.
They only "keep" for a couple of decades.
@Siddesh Gannu technically it would be most efficient if you had a few thousand very gentically diverse sperm bank samples AND a very gender-balanced crew if the voyage is thousands of years, or, if we discover something like anti-matter drive and can get to Proxima Centauri in about a decade, it would probably be best to have a crew that's at least 90% female for all voyages under 3 decades as that would allow for faster population growth in the prospective colony. (obviously a sperm bank would be useful in both scenarios but crucial in the latter)
@Prithvi N Look at you diminishing the accomplishments of all women and relegating them to less than men! You can get equally qualified individuals of any gender, so your point here is grossly sexist, (especially as a "baby farm" would imply the point was to make many babies en route, which was not at all what I suggested) but there are huge moral issues with this such as the first generation of colonists having no father or only a few of the women having romantic partners while the majority don't. Thinking about that aspect probably a more balanced population distribution would create less issues, but you will always run into huge moral dilemmas with generation ships. Even with a relatively equal gender distribution for example, many pairs will not be feasible in order to prevent inbreeding, especially as generations progress, so basically you will have a ship AI and command structure enforcing who you can or can't marry, or even have sex with as I don't think much precious supply space would've been wasted on contraceptives... Generally I'd say we should really avoid generation ships unless the entirety of human civilization is threatened or if cryogenics turn out to be feasible.
I think there would also be a physiological toll on the descendants of the original crew. They would be born into this mission with no free will. They'd be forced to continue knowing that their whole life would be spent on a space craft and never getting to experience what life on earth could be.
We're all forced to continue on Earth without getting to know what life in space could be. It's not so bad.
@@artemis_smith Plus, conditions on Earth would have to be dire for anyone to sign up for this one-way trip in the first place. Remember, the people who leave know they will die in space.
@@SundiataWTFi think there is enough people in the world that you could find lots of people eager to do that
“Billions of miles away” = outer solar system
Voyager 1 is already billions of miles away lol
Billions of miles is nothing in space
Surprised you didn’t talk about it getting hit while out there streaming along. Wouldn’t it suck if we spent a hundred years building this ship and it goes through space for a few generations only to be taken out by a massive asteroid
dude what would suck even more than that is travelling for hundreds of years in a generation ship just to see that in all the time that they spent travelling back on earth a more advanced propulsion method was developed and these things are overtaking the generation ship
Space is massive it's very unlikely we hit something. Getting hit by asteroids is something made up by sci fi. To make things suspenseful.
@@dargondude2375 dust can do the trick
@@dargondude2375 a tiny asteroid with a mass of 50g hitting a ship moving at the speed of 187.5 km/s (the average speed needed to cross 4 light years in 6300 years) would have the kinetic energy of 874.2 MJ, which is 72.2 times the muzzle energy of M829A3 apfsds used on the abrams, and that's assuming the asteroid has no velocity of its own to add to the equation.
in fact, to match the muzzle energy of M829A3, you only need 700mg worth of mass at that velocity, which wouldn't be that uncommon to see in interstellar space.
@@voltagedrop5899 Of course that would be catastrophic if it happened but my point was the sheer scale of space makes it easy to avoid such catastrophes.
You left out a HUGE consideration:
No human society or institution has endured unchanged for thousands of years. Even those that survive in name only, such as the Catholic Church, would be unrecognizable to today to those who founded it. A 6300 year voyage would mean many vast changes in the society that set out in charge of the ship, which would likely include violent upheavals just like in societies on Earth, or one that would be so draconically maintained that it would likely calcify to unviability. Both are bad ideas when you're dealing with a system as potentially delicate as a starship.
I think there is a solution of sorts to this. You over-engineer the generation ship so that there's a vast amount of unused space in the beginning that can act as a 'safety valve' that disaffected members of society can 'colonize' to have their own space. Say you start with a crew of 200 for a ship that's ultimately designed to hold 10,000 people. It should be designed to reach maximum capacity just as it's also reaching its destination. Definitely not a perfect solution, but it does give a crew more options than they might otherwise have to avoid a catastrophic societal meltdown.
A cheaper (yet arguably harder) alternative is create a political system that discourages conflict and encourages a "one for all, all for one" culture. Either remind them of their important task, sort of like an "it's bigger than me" mindset; or scare them into submission with the possible repercussions of conflict and violence within such a small space.
That’s because that doesn’t necessarily have to do with logistics
Or maybe it does, idk
Your idea produces another offshoot : fleet of ships. The communist ship, the freedom ship, the monoculture ship, the captialist ship all travel together because just like nukes here on this big mothership we called Earth, they have some form of M.A.D. So that gives a variety of social structures, with the fluidity to move from one to another and space to play politics. At the same time, since it is a fleet, an asteroid taking out one of them will not end the mission.
6300 years is ridiculous. On Earth the tech to build a much faster ship would only be a few hundred years away.
...it would be thousands of years before they reached their destination, but what an adventure that would be."
Reaching the destination would be an adventure, but the trip there through the vast emptiness of interstellar space would have the same problem a long sea voyage has had on earth through the centuries. Principally, boredom. My father went to sea for most of his working life, and often mentioned the stifling boredom of it when out to sea. It's bad enough to go a month or two at sea with nothing to look forward to but the ship's routine. Out in space there's not even changes in weather to break the monotony. Can you imagine looking forward to lifetimes of that? It would drive people mad. They'd have to devote a large part of resources and space inside any interstellar ship toward recreation to try to avoid that.
Given human nature, I don't see such a generation ship survive longer than a couple of years at best.
You forgot about the most important question. About morality, can we really force the generations after to live on the ship with no way to leave and just continue the mission?
You asking can we, or should we? The "can" is easy, make first generation all-volunteer, let them indoctrinate...er, raise their kids with a strong sense of devotion to the mission. That'll fade over the generations but past the first couple nobody else has a choice in the matter. You're not getting off the damn ship in interstellar space, and given the choice between keeping the thing in repair so you descendants can get off it some day and dying enough people will choose to work that you'll get there eventually. Should we do that? Maybe. It would make humanity a lot more resistant to extinction to have even a few interstellar populations out there, so probably worth the resources. Ethically, I see no issue at all. When's the last time you gave serious consideration to how your lifestyle was impacting your great-great-great-grandkid's? As a species we don't give much consideration to the desires or needs of generations unborn, even assuming we could accurately predict them. Earth is already a very grandiose generation ship that lacks only a destination, and few people are conserving its resources for even three generations down the line, much less folks 6000 years in the future. Sticking a bunch of people who won't even exist till we're all long dead in a giant spaceship for their entire lives doesn't strike me as being anywhere near as unethical as, say, driving an entire species extinct so that we can have cheap passenger pigeon on the menu for a few decades. Our ancestors did that barely 100 years ago, and they never gave a thought to whether we might mind.
Honestly, that's what we've been doing all along, just on a much larger scale. The question comes down to "at what scale does it hinder people's choices?"
@@richmcgee434 Why does humanity's continued existence matter after you are dead? Why does our DNA need to be preserved and sent all over the universe? Does it really matter that a large, self-replicating molecule continue to exist indefinitely? And what happens when all the stars in the universe have consumed all their gases and space becomes entirely cold and dark? Is there a point in preserving the self-replicating molecule for a few billion more years, if at the end of that time there is nothing for them to do, nowhere for them to go, no way out, no way to keep persisting? Does a few billion more years of existence matter in the grand scheme of infinite time? Why do you care what happens when you are gone? Did you care about what was happening before you were born? Don't you imagine the after death experience is similar to the prior to birth experience?
[isaac arthur has entered the chat]
*_John Michael Godier wants to know you're location_*
Yeah boi
@@iseriouslycouldntfindagood2207 But that person doesn't look like location
[ Freeman Dyson has left the chat ]
imsosorry
-clark
Sure water is a problem, but there are others that make a 6300 year trip infeasible. Wear/tear on the ships (especially those with moving parts like spinning rings) or micrometeor impacts will destroy the ships long before arrival. But he biggest hurdle will probably be power. All of our nuclear power sources involve radioactive materials that will decay long before arrival (most have a half life of less than 100 years). We wont be able to refuel in space, and we cant prevent our fuel sources from breaking down. For a 6k year trip, we would all die in the cold vacuum. Going faster is also a possible solution, but travelling at near relativistic speeds will turn a grain of space dust into a nuclear bomb. Any collission would destroy the ship, it would be impossible to dodge or deflect it, and hitting something is inevitable because space isnt completely empty. The best case scenario that I have seen with current tech is a fission pellet drive that can get a ship up to 10 percent of c, which would get us to nearby systems in less than 100 years and would be below relativistic speeds that would make space travel impossible. But even that would be highly risky.
Jonathon Polk finally, someone with common sense. Seeker needs to be more practical.
"All of our nuclear power sources involve radioactive materials that will decay long before arrival (most have a half life of less than 100 years)."
Most nuclear reactors run on uranium which has quite a long half life. Uranium 234, the fissionable isotope of uranium that power plants run on, has a half life of 245,500 years. Uranium 238, the much more common more stable version of uranium, has a half life of 4.5 billion years. It can't be used directly as a power plant fuel, though it can be mixed with 234 or converted into plutonium.
Pretty much the only reactors that run on really short half life materials are RTG's, tiny reactors that convert radioactive decay into power via thermocouples and only produce a few hundred watts of power. They are mostly used for space probes since they can be made very small. Actual city scale power plants use cheaper longer lasting fuels like uranium.
@@planetfall5056/videos This, and also why won't we be able to "refuel in space"? Nuclear fuel is comparably lightweight in comparison to its energy density, so carrying a sufficient amount wouldn't be that much of an issue.
The wear problem I find way more interesting. Of course there would be replacements for the most crucial parts as well, but the bigger and the heavier they get, the more unlikely it would be to have everything redundant. Then again, I could think of means like magnetic levitation to reduce wear, that "only" require more power.
@@planetfall5056 If what you say were the full story, then we would not need to refuel nuclear-powered ships every ten years or so. The fact is that nuclear fuel in a reactor is used up faster than the natural decay rate.
Let's be generous and say that each reactor will need to be refueled every 20 years. That's 300 refuelings in 6000 years. There will also have to be multiple reactors, both for redundancy and to allow for the refuelings (which will last months each; it's more complicated than pulling up to the pump and saying, "Fill 'er up."). So you'd need a bare minimum of three reactors (and that is a bare minimum, because if you lose one, you're in deep trouble). That's 900 refuelings. Each weighing up to 100 tons of uranium (for a PWR).
@@misatzu Yes! Although, if we're talking thousands (hundreds?) of years or more, even that much nuclear fuel would add significant mass to the spacecraft (as well as the shielding for it). And within 1000 years, even "simple" things like oxidation (rust, et al) become problems even for stationary machinery and recycling.
Space madness would set in only 1/20 of the way into the ort cloud.
I wonder if it's going to end up like the Titanic (generation edition)
vAqeii Probably instead of an iceberg, it’s a comet
Oh that would be properly the most tragic thing to happen to humanity
To bad nobody would know about it
earth is the generation ship
I'm holding out for cryosleep and artificial wombs, so we can send a skeleton crew of scientists and engineers to another planet and then start creating the new colony using thousands of embryos created on Earth. Capacity requirements would be minimal, as would the need for resource production (food, water, air, etc.).
Now imagine an imposter snuck onboard.
Expected you to bring up a point about passengers eventually having to eat deceased fellow passengers, even if it would be an indirect process
Nice! :) He really missed a chance there.
@johnmburt1960 and Santa Claus exists
@johnmburt1960 i have some very, very grim news for you, pal...
Doesn't this basically already happen on earth, with a few extra steps thrown in?
I was gonna ask, do the deceased get mined for valuable resources? It would be wasteful to do otherwise. But people have hang-ups about these things. All waste materials would need to be mined.
The passengers would go insane and kill each other within the first 20 years. Human boredom will be the biggest obstacle.
bring a deck of cards
@@unclefreddieDied lol
@@unclefreddieDied fidget spinner
they should be able to stay in contact with Earth for a pretty reasonable period of time right? Obviously it wouldn't be real time two way communication but Earth could just keep beaming them data with radio or some kind of light binary code.
No they wouldn't , space is not empty
It has to use low tech so that the crew is able to create and replace any item whether it is just a hose or more difficult a control system by themself.
The reality is you would need a fleet not a generation ship
There is always that one guy, great video!
There's quite a bit of water ice present in the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud, the latter of which extends up to a light year from the Sun. Kuiper belt and Oort cloud objects could reasonably be used to procure large quantities of water, as well as other volatile compounds like ammonia. The Kuiper belt and Oort cloud that presumably also exists around Proxima Centauri could be used for additional supplies as the vessel approaches the system. Furthermore, various light gasses - namely hydrogen - are present in the interstellar medium, and could plausibly be removed from it for use on the vessel.
Well, I'm way more concerned with the ethics of generation ships than their logistics. It sounds like a pretty fucked up deal for a lot of people that didn't even had the chance to agree or to decline.
How is that any different from parents giving birth to kids?
@@spencervance8484 technically, there is no difference and that's why I consider myself an antinatalist. But I'd argue, that being involuntarily born on earth is still way better than being involuntarily born on a generational space ship. Warm and bright sunshine, beautiful landscapes, a vast and ever growing pool of art; earth has a lot of worthwhile things that you could never experience, if you spend your entire life on a ship in space.
The real question is - whhat fuel do we use and where do we get it from? Electricity doesnt come from nowhere, and thousands of years is a rly long time - fosil and fission fuels can be ruled out easily. That leaves fusion, but even that is questionable.
The next issue are the people. How many wars did we have in the last 6000 years? How many countries fell? Its not unlikely for the mission to fail, because 2 groups of people got into a fight, and destroyed the ship in the process. Or 1 psycho poisoning the water/air - we had plenty of such leaders in the past.
I just cant see how such a long trip is feasible. Going for faster speed makes much more sense - above 1% light speed and we could drop the travel time to under 400 years - and even that is stretching our limits, i think.
Well as for fuel you only need enough to leave earth, slingshot round the moon and for slowing down when you get close to your destination, and maybe some slight adjustment every now and then. But yeah slingshot round the moon and maybe jupiter along with nuclear fuel would propel
us up to a decent speed
@@spencervance8484 They would need energy to grow food, generate oxygen and recycle waste. Just as a reminder, they're stuck in a place with no sun for millenia. I can't think of an energy source when its empty space with no sun. Theoretically, they could capture hydrogen for fusion, but the amount could be counted in atoms - not rly helpful, and it would induce some drag, requiring more energy to maintain speed.
never been this early before, uhh cool ships
cool ships indeed
No, hot ships
6300 years without the latest memes the internet can offer?!?! May the space gods have mercy upon them...
We need a giant space station first and start mining asteroids.
We already are on a gigantic generation ship and we're destroying it right now.
little Girl: I'm tired of space grandpa
Grandpa: *WELL THAT'S TOO DAMN BAD*
Not exactly a new concept:
1973 "Rendezvous With Rama", Arthur C. Clarke.
It would be so awesome if someone made a Tycoon game based on this concept.
I like it! I am a scifi nerd. Good work again!
This is a trip I would attend if it ever happened the view is everything to me
Age of Wonders Planetfall has an interesting idea where the Vanguard leave to colonize planets on cryo ships but then they get to their destination and find that the empire they worked for was destroyed. But the gen ship has a much worse possibility, what if the people on the ship lose the knowledge of human history and arrive at their destination with no knowledge whatsoever of their ancestors.
One scenario you know what you had or the other you're clueless
It would take humanity to put aside all their differences and work together to get this type of engineering and construction of such a ship.
Patrick James yep... not gonna be that easy
@@MichaelOrtega I'm not saying its gonna be easy. Im pointing out the obvious accomplishment.....humans putting their differences aside and actually working together.
That's why it'll never happen.😂🤣😆
You could use a solar sail and an Earth based laser to propel it to approximately 20% the speed of light. The only problem is slowing down once you get there.
solar sails would never work. Space is a vacuum, but it's hardly empty. The sails would be trashed in short order and having to constantly replace them would be impossible.
@@Tourist_McGee bunch of holes ain't gonna change much
1:15 ... WHAT IF ... By the time the generation ship reaches the habitable planet we have a warp drive!
edit:-
Told you, 6300 years are more than enough for that!
we also have to consider morale at the end of the mission. imagine knowing that that one generation after yours will land on a planet, but not you?
You take off and an advancement happens that would have made it possible to travel faster by the amount of time past.
Imagine humans inventing warp drive just after the generation spaceship reaches alpha century.
This reminds me of "The City of Ember"
We are currently on a generation ship logged on to a VR simulated reality. Woke up yesterday and the AI said this is the most efficient way than building farms in a ship and allow humans to roam around it. The simulated reality keeps our brains and muscles active. We’ve been here for hundreds of thousands of years already. Travelling through the void. You are living in a generation ship right now stimulated by VR managed by an AI.
Bruh you just blew my mind.
Chinoy House I hope so. This world is too crazy.
@johnmburt1960
no wtf
more like "Mars Colonisation"
When motivated and pushed, we can achieve anything we set our eyes upon
Time travel? Shrinking? Making healthy, happy societies? Good governance? I think there is plenty we can't acheive. Don't believe the hype about humans. We're just primates with the ability to conceptualize and abstract about perceptions.
There is certainly a new world inside the circling wave of colours more beautiful than earth.
Give 'em long enough and they'll think their ship is a different shape than the spinning rings. 🤣
#SquareShipTheory
Water: That would be closed loop, so actual lost water is very very little.
Examples: Plants need water a lot for capturing Co2, water will be released to the air. More Co2 == Less water required. So maintain a healthy 1500ppm+
Then plants are eaten, and water is captured by your body, then comes out with visit to toilet - recycle it, rinse and repeat.
Farming: Vertical farms can increase density by a great degree.
However, humans need animal nutrition to survive, so you would need to some livestock on board as well. The good thing about livestock is that you won't need fertilizers, and they are excellent at converting human inedible biomass into high quality proteins and fats. So a combo of hydroponics with fish, and pasturing chickens and cows. Fattier the meats the better!
Extra perk: Having live animals pasturing would create a park, and add A LOT to the enjoyment of people who could hang out in that park and animals.
Another perk: Very good air quality, if cows pasturing they will eat grass which grows super fast, and cleans the air at the same time - and not just working as Co2 sink but other gasses too, particulate matter etc. Issue actually starts becoming how to have enough Co2 at that point - not as much about water, nor oxygen.
Another perk: Cleaning water, plants can utilize gray water and as it goes thru the soil and plants it gets cleaned up.
Yet another perk: If you plant a few trees people can have this carbon foam to make stuff out of, but those will sink up Co2 like crazy, so you might have to burn or gasify them eventually to release the Co2 back to circulation.
Yet another perk: Biomass can be used to make plastics for 3d printers :)
(You start to see the trend here? More natural environment, the easier stuff becomes!)
If this happen ppl would be more closer together and working for one cause
This is actually a lot more doable than I would have thought...
What will it take? About 200 more years I expect. Oh and we'll already be there by the time it arrives. Yeah that old chestnut!
Not gonna lie. I genuinely forgot that this channel was more centered around science, as well as some anti-capitalism but under the lens of science. Not saying to change completely back because I love the new content too. But would love to see more stuff like this again =)
Me too
Honestly, the biggest problem of a generational ship is that what's there to prevent one person from blowing it up? Say halfway down the trip, three thousand years after launch or so, a group of people form who don't want to follow what someone on Earth (which they may view as a myth at this point) have decided for them and they rebel. Even if they made it, the societal demands needed to make the trip over six thousand years would result in a culture that's probably incredibly strict and planned out, maybe even totalitarian in nature.
Personally, I'd love to be on a generational ship, but even if all the ship problems were set aside I don't see it ending well. The only solution I can come up with is to make the ship big enough to contain the entire population of a small country, and I mean millions. This would make it easier to have a more content population but would probably increase risk factors, then again said ship would be harder to blow up in theory because of its size alone. The problem ultimately isn't the tech, it's humanity itself. Too bad because I'd sign up for one in a second if I could.
This is my second favorite RUclips channel
Last time I was this early, I had original jokes.
logoff Deux “Original comment”
You mean before the meme killed original joke
Also hello there
I wonder if there would be a human rights revolution a few generations in. Where everyone on the ship has strict mating and reproductive guidelines, but people still remember that on earth life was not this way. You would only have a handful of people who were potential partners, and it’s likely that just a few people not having children will have severe repercussions if we’re near the minimum number of people. Imagine being born on such a ship, living your whole life under restrictions, knowing that you’ll never be the one to see the end of the journey
It seems you missed out on addressing radiation shielding 🤔
In my head the only sociologically stable version of this has people basically immersed in pods 95% of their lives living in an Earth-like virtual reality sim.
If life on or near Earth starts heading that way (bulk of time spent in virtual worlds, day jobs supervising drones on Mars or whatever) then I think mass volunteering for this becomes more comprehensible.
I’ve always seen myself as a explorer or atleast having the explorer spirit, I’d give anything to be apart of this even if it’s just to see my descendants live them out.
If you are interested in the concept of colony ships I can HIGHLY recommend the novel "Aurora" by Kim Stanley Robinson.
It is set on a generation ship long into its journey, and deals with many of the issues discussed here and beyond, amazing book!
You're a goat. I was looking for something exactly like this.
@@atlanticmetal6001 Glad to help, enjoy :)
1:10 yeah we do. Orion drives. Literally first thing that pops up when searching for relativistic-capable drives
"Lets build a generation ship, what would it take?"
oeh! oeehh ! me! meee!
"yes? "
It would take.. a generation!
The solution to the water is pretty simple, if we're going interstellar, then we're bound to find the kiper belt. So just get some asteroids and melt em down. you can also cut down on time by useing small explosives to propell the ship, like in ksp 2.
The only problem i see with this is that the ship would need to essentially stop in the Kuiper belt to take on resources (which would cost fuel). And then it would have to have the capability to mine/process the object to get those resources (which adds more mass, which needs more fuel to move)
@@pills- A colony ship like this would necessarily be carrying the equipment to mine and process resources as part of its mission, otherwise it would have no way to establish a society at the destination (which would rather defeat the point of the whole exercise). Fuel could still be a concern, but should be fairly easy to solve with good mission design.
We'd probably need a way to get ahold of the ship, if faster methods caught up to it, and signal it to join the other, so we could get the people from the genship onto an FTL ship, or even just a much faster more conventional ship.
0:43 ... This ship travels faster than then the speed of light! .. IMAGINATION but still
There are other engineering concerns we need to work out: like making doorknobs, hinges, window seals, generator ballbearings, etc. that can last 6300 years... longer than we have been out of the caves.
Magnet?
If we're advanced enough to do all this, we're probably advanced enough to prolong a person's lifespan
We need to find the best route with pitstops in between .. like planets or moons that have frozen or liquid water
Another problem will be the maintenance of the ship itself. You would have to have backups for every critical system plus the ability to make them and the tools required. Also you would need trained personel who have to be taught.
One big consideration has been omitted: Energy. The generation ship would need a long lasting source of energy.
We may soon be living like this with Virgin Galactic and SpaceX
Yeet
Idk, I think I'll just stay in my woods
lol dude virgin galactic is a space tourism company which only focuses on sub-orbital flights
Not exactly soon virgin galactic is focusing on sub orbital tourism and space science mission and spaceX is prioritising the colonisation and terraformation of Mars
master shooter64 you act like things don’t start “small” do some research into their future plans.
Imagine how boring that would be though, being on a generation ship
you can collect all the molecules from space , if traveled long enough and large enough collector opening, possible collect enough ice molecules from space
We could actually do a test run here one earth. We already have something similar where a group of people were locked up away for a long period of time to simulate human travel to Mars.
On a grander scale, we can put volunteers on a giant cruise ship to simulate a generation space ship. I have a feeling it's not going to end up well. Even if you have your every need met, the thought of being confined is a constant existential cloud over your head. Perhaps only the most introvert of us would sign up for such a psychological experiment.
You should incorporate PF (precision fermentation) vats that can produce a wide variety of foods using far less "farming" space. Tony Seba does a good run-down on this emerging technology.
Capture a water ice bearing comet/asteroid. Shield it and use it as an inertial component of the ship. Mine out the water over time
One major problem that is not mentioned here is that of cosmic radiation. It is a serious health issue and requires thick and, unfortunately, massive layers of material to protect the travelers. This in turn requires more fuel to propel the ship, and so on.
Everybody is talking about an FTL ship being invented and passing the generation ships but they're not talking about the idea that a 6300 year journey leaves a loooooooot of room for error.
Honestly if they work cyrogenic into that that save ALOT of resources until arrival
5:15 That Stock video footage lady appears AGAIN!
Same haircut and everything!
oh i see !! this will be v interesting rules for the scifi world i plan on building !!
It's a shame all biosphere experiments on earth have failed so we do not know we can even pull that off.
they would likely give themselves a purpose through research and/or further development to the ship
Second thought: generation ships
Also second thought: short term
We absolutely have the tec to reach 1% C. Just use the orion nuclear propulsion model. You could get up to 15% c using that.
Let's do it!
What about the fuel? I'd think that'd be the biggest concern. Did I miss it in the video?
ISAAC ARTHUR can explain this further
Greetings, good video. When it comes to space colonization, planets (of any type) are no great prize.
If I have any choice in the matter, I’d prefer a rotating habitat to any planet (including earth). So, I can avoid things like climate being too hot or too cold (most of the planet), no land (most of the planet), natural disasters of various flavors (everywhere), no fresh water, being stuck at the bottom of a very expensive gravity well, having low efficiency solar power (nighttime, latitude, clouds, dust), communities that exist as immobile targets, etc.
On a rotating habitat, you may not initially get something nice as a perfect day on earth, but most earth people never see any perfect days either. And compared to colonizing any planet like Mars, it's paradise.
Also, assuming fusion power, rotating habitats can be adapted to serve as the cores of Starships.
Thanks for listening. :)
Man, this is your best video. Keeo it up !
Ice = Water. I assume there is alot of frozen stuff floating around out there asteroids and such. Maybe we can get moving fast enough to catch a few every once in a while and then trail, melt or mine them with a mirror or laser etc.
Ascension ?!
possible water solution; capture comets while passing through the oort cloud. launch small booster ships to sheperd them to coast along with the main ship.
One way to solve the water problem would be ice. We could basically create our own iceberg that we could tow with us as we make the trip. An insulated container would need to be built to reflect the sun's direct heat, which at our current distance is about 260 degrees Fahrenheit. The container could also spin so that no one side takes the direct heat of the sun for an extended period of time. A container 1,000 feet x 500 feet x 500 feet, would hold 1.87 billion gallons of water. If all the passengers used 10 gallons of water a day (including the watering of their portion of food in the hydroponics bay), a crew of 100 would take 5,123 YEARS to go through all the water contained in that iceberg. And that time would be greatly extended through the use of water recycling. If the recycling systems were only able to reuse 50% of that water, it would double the supply to 10,246 years (and the water recyclers currently in use are far and away more efficient than that).
The biggest hurdle to this method would be getting that much water up into space to the area where the iceberg would be constructed.
Solution to the water problem: really long hose