It is of course physically possible for us to travel to another solar system – only it takes a long time. Supposing we find habitable planets a few light years away, and have a ship that is designed to make it there in say 100 years – or more.
Supposing scientifically the ship will work, with enough food, and such. Apparently a lecture I heard from The Teaching Company mentioned that experts believe that human psychology will cause problems enough to prevent the ship from ever succeeding on its mission. The next generations that take over will forget the original mission – or it will descend into civil war between the crew, or eventually everyone will be imbred (obviously frozen embryos can solve that one the easiest).
In the Heinlein novel “Orphans of the Sky” an interstellar starship descends into anarchy, the fault of human nature.
So my question – does anyone have any research on this topic, besides Science Fiction? Does human nature preclude any such trip? What about the differences in travel time: 20 years ok, but not 2000?
NASA (and other organizations) have put a lot of study into the psychology of long duration space flight. Assuming that all of the physical problems have been solved (radiation, food/water, microgravity, etc) and that the folks on board would have to be awake the whole time (i.e. no hibernation sleep) then I’d say the answer is…it depends. I don’t see why the next generation would necessarily descend into anarchy or chaos. The environment they were brought up in would be their natural environment after all and the ship has to go somewhere. They may stray from the original mission, but assuming they don’t have to fight for resources I don’t think it would be a given that they would naturally digress to such an extent. It COULD happen but it’s not a given is what I’m getting at here.
I doubt there is any kind of scientific proof of this (though like I said, NASA and others have looked into the question), but you could probably look back at historical examples of small isolated groups who are cut off from the mainstream for one reason or another for several generations and make some broad conclusions from that. Unless resources are scarce and there is strong competition for them (or some other competition that skews things) I don’t think you’d get such aberrations as you describe in only a generation or two…nor do I think they would just forget the original goals and go nuts. Now…if we are talking about a 10,000 year voyage…that might be something else.
I think such voyages would be possible, but there would be some interesting sociological developments on ships like that, so that it’s hard to be sure until we try it, and make sure that they have strong enough communicators to keep radioing back.
I actually had a story idea along these lines a while back - a spaceship with a small crew on a ten-generation exploratory voyage of some sort. Along the way most of the crew complement had gotten very lazy and with little ambition - they knew that their lives were just for the sake of bridging the years of this voyage and they were pretty okay with it - letting the ship’s advanced computer run things mostly, learning useful skills to help keep the ship going, devoting lots of their lives to various aspects of the entertainment system or other obscure hobbies.
And then, at a certain point, it becomes clear that the next generation, the little babies and toddlers who are growing up on the ship, are going to be the eldest generation of those who are alive and fit for duty when the ship gets to its destination. And their parents start to look more closely at how they’re preparing the kids for this mission that they’re supposed to lead.
We’ve managed to build cathedrals that took much longer than a human lifetime to build. An extreme example is the cathedral in Milan which was started in 1386 and wasn’t finished until 1965.
One problem would be the rank/status of the generations following launch. Would the children of officers be treated differently from the children of enlisted crew? Could a guy that was the janitor at launch father a child that grows up to be captain of the ship? I’d assume that there would need to be some sort of strict meritocracy in place. Children are schooled/trained together, and compete for officer slots on the basis of ability…
Machines wear out, wires overheat, people operating computers make mistakes, supplies run low. During a long voyage, something would go wrong. And that would force the population of the ship to make difficult choices, possibly life-and-death decisions. So conflict would definitely happen.
What happens if one of the kids born on the starship has some serious congenital disease that requires treatment that wouldn’t be available on board, but that would be available back on Earth? I can’t see a way to save the kid, and that’s going to be very hard on the crew of the ship. It’s one thing to go on a spaceship knowing that there’s a chance you might die as a result; it would be something else entirely to watch your kid die on a generational ship knowing that it is happening because you chose to go on the ship.
What about the competition to be the next captain of the ship? I could see some really cutthroat competition among the kids in the school onboard. I could also see factions forming within the crew over this.
Anything is possible but I think regardless of the tech of the day, if the crews are properly screened prior to launching such a mission, you will always have higher odds of a technical failure on the ship, than a failure in the crew (even over several generations).
Someone could argue that we are on a ship (Earth) traveling through time and space, and look at us, we can’t really get along that well. But we are a couple billion humans and some thousands of years beyond the scope of a mission into space. Besides, we dont share a common goal (as would the mission crew) and they dont have many options of going elsewhere. Compromise is a obvious first choice. Even if you dont like the other half of the crew, you have to realize that you need them to keep the ship going.
Solution to the problem: Make it so that they all have to take turns to peddle on a regular basis to keep the life support on the ship working well. That will curb any desire for mutiny and/or unwarranted use of the airlock.
I wonder what the success rate, so to speak, was for people colonizing uninhabited lands, like the Polynesians when they got to New Zealand or Hawaii. I’d guess colonizing a small uninhabited island is probably the closest thing to this that we humans have historically done. Obviously we managed to make it work a few times, at least.
That seems by far the most likely outcome (since humans can only thrive in a pretty narrow environmental range). But suspending disbelief, let’s suppose they get there and there’s a suitable planet available. Would they settle there? Or by that time would they have become so acustomed to living on the ship that they wouldn’t see any good reason to leave it?
The society created would have to be geared heavy towards education and training. They would have to keep up an *esprit de corps *spanning generations. I think the generations born on the ship will be well adjusted to shipboard life and thus that won’t be a problem.
The ship will need to be huge to carry and support a large crew to seed a new colony. I think around 10,000 might be right, maybe as little as 2,000. They will all have to be well tested genetically before departure. They will probably have to be careful and draconian about breeding while on the ship. The population would need to be kept to some manageable size and thus might be able to hold to the purpose for 100 years if needed. But I can see so many situations where strife wrecks the crew or vital systems. Politics, power grabs and conflicts over Religion will be hard to stamp out and can cause great grief. They need to avoid a caste system at all costs and make a flexible system. It will probably need to be quasi-military for the duration. The US Navy[sup]2[[/sup] or Air Force would possibly be a good base model for promotions and justice.
They need the ability to make replacements for anything on the ship. This can get tricky without some innovative techniques in handling circuitry. Heinlein probably was envisioning tubes and switches for logic circuits* when he wrote the book. These would be far easier to make on board and more interchangeable. They would need the ability to make processors and keep them as universal as possible.
Now it gets even more fun. They need to carry with them the plans and tools to make construction and farming equipment for the planet. They need to carry shuttles and maybe scouts. The might need a vessel that can be used to mine asteroids. Once there you will suddenly be faced with a highly trained tech crew that will need to become mostly farmers and lower tech tradesmen I think. Of course the ship would need farmers to so maybe I am exaggerating this issue.
As hokey as the book is, I do love it.
Though maybe not, it seems like he may of hinted at some unknown more advance tech that was used to make the controls. He did have fusion or at least a matter-to-energy converter available too, something we do not yet.
[sup]2[[/sup] RAH would of course approve of the Navy model I believe. He was a proud Naval Officer.
I would destroy Sister Miriam every chance I got, even if it meant ignoring more pressing concerns.
Anyway, arguably Earth itself is a multi-generational interstellar transport (that is, our entire solar system is wandering through the galaxy) and if there ever was a mission, we’ve long forgotten it.
Certainly. But it’s not inevitable, which was my point. The OP seemed to be saying that it was inevitable, given the human condition or whatever. Shit happens and on such a voyage it’s certainly possible for things to go badly wrong…no doubt about that.
Unless they were still very close to the Earth there would probably be nothing they could do. Sometimes bad things happen and there is nothing that can be done.
Could happen, especially if there is no formal process for deciding who would be the next captain. One of the major problems with human society has always been in the succession and transition of power from one generation to the next. However, if military like chains of command were put in place then it would probably make this process a bit easier. I doubt that anyone sending off a colony ship like that proposed in the OP would not have thought through how succeeding generations would have power transitioned to them, or how something like the captains position wouldn’t have some kind of formal process to decide.
Why? The Polynesians managed to create successful societies on the islands they colonized, with caste systems. Those might not have been societies that you or I would like to live in, but they were functioning societies.
There would have to be a very thoroughly designed social structure. They could plan for purpose in the interim by having the ship do double duty as a probe studying the universe from angles we cannot achieve on Earth and beaming that info back to Earth. It could be done, as long as everyone clearly understands the purpose of what they are doing.
Parts breaking down would be no problem as long as your on ship fabrication plants don’t go down all at the same time.
Having an economy would be one of the worst things you could possibly have. That would be the thing that would destroy the ship. It would have to be entirely communist to work.
