# What to do with with dead bodies on Generation Ships **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 14, 2023, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-with-dead-bodies-on-generation-ships/985514 "2023-06-14T17:58:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2023, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-with-dead-bodies-on-generation-ships/985514/141 "2023-06-21T17:02:45Z")
> [@dtilque](#): > > There’s lots of stuff in the Oort Cloud, but it’s really spread out. The average distance between sizable rocks there is several AU, maybe 10s of AU. - All the more reason to use it in place, rather than waste so much time and energy moving it more than needed. Build a self-mobile, mostly self-sustaining habitat (not a generation ship! No, of course not, not that, wink wink!). Scoop up a comet, use that as resources as you leisurely make your way to the next comet outwards. Design the habitat (not ship! Habitat!) so that it can build new habitats en route, which then spin off as new communities. Every few generations, when a new habitat is available, there’s a massive act of practical democracy, where everyone decides which which ship _habitat_ they want to live on. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2023, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-with-dead-bodies-on-generation-ships/985514/142 "2023-06-21T18:18:06Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > instead of taking care of this one. > > I am, however, in favor of taking care of this planet; and, in addition, if we’re able to without screwing up this place, trying out going someplace else; out of sheer curiosity, if nothing else. I think I am agreeing? “Instead of” creates a false dichotomy. Take as best care of this planet as we can _and_ diversify the investment … yeah humanity may existentially fuck this planet up, or a planet klller asteroid may slip by somehow despite best efforts. Unknown unknown risks. To the original OP - cultural norms adapt to societal needs. A generation ship is a strange land and those there would grok it. ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2023, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-with-dead-bodies-on-generation-ships/985514/143 "2023-06-21T18:43:21Z")
> [@Horatius](#): > > Build a self-mobile, mostly self-sustaining habitat (not a generation ship! No, of course not, not that, wink wink!). Scoop up a comet, use that as resources as you leisurely make your way to the next comet outwards. I think we discussed this a few months ago. Moving from Oort cloud object to Oort cloud object would require a lot of delta vee, and therefore a lot of fuel. This strategy only works if you can mine the Oort cloud for fusable elements such as helium, deuterium or something else; otherwise you will run out of fuel and eventually freeze to death. The Oort cloud is a pretty inhospitable place, and the objects are very far apart. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2023, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-with-dead-bodies-on-generation-ships/985514/144 "2023-06-21T18:49:06Z")
> [@Horatius](#): > > > [@dtilque](#): > > > > There’s lots of stuff in the Oort Cloud, but it’s really spread out. The average distance between sizable rocks there is several AU, maybe 10s of AU. - > > All the more reason to use it in place, rather than waste so much time and energy moving it more than needed. The other problem is finding the rocks in the first place. Forget about seeing them by reflected light. The Sun is a quarter lightyear or more away. Also forget about finding them by IR, since their temperature is something like 30 kelvins. Possibly a very powerful radar could locate them, but since the nearest one may be as far away as Neptune is from Earth, I wouldn’t be very optimistic about that. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2023, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-with-dead-bodies-on-generation-ships/985514/145 "2023-06-21T18:49:23Z")
> [@eburacum45](#): > > Moving from Oort cloud object to Oort cloud object would require a lot of delta vee, and therefore a lot of fuel. Not really. Way out there, orbital speeds are nearly zero. It’s not quite the physics-textbook ideal of “no forces”, but it’s very, very close. You can use a very small amount of delta-V to meet up with a different object, if you’re patient. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2023, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-with-dead-bodies-on-generation-ships/985514/146 "2023-06-21T19:00:05Z")
The key word there is ‘patient’. I don’t want to travel a quarter of a lightyear (or any non-trivial fraction of a light year) on a few km/s of Delta-V. If we are going to travel around at the kinds of speeds we send probes out now, it would be totally infeasible to mine the Oort cloud. Voyager 1 is going to take 30,000 years just to cross it the short way, and until New Horizons came along it was the fastest thing we ever launched. The whole mining the Oort cloud thing presupposes that we are going to run out of things to mine in the inner solar system. That prospect is so incredibly far in the future that even if mankind survives that long, we wouldn’t recognize them. We have not even the remotest idea of what a civilization with the capability to strip all the resources from moons and planets will want, be capable of, or willing to do. ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2023, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-with-dead-bodies-on-generation-ships/985514/147 "2023-06-21T19:01:46Z")
Moving Oort cloud resources closer to the people is a much more reasonable 1,000 year plan than moving the people out to the Oort cloud. One thing outer space isn’t short of is space. It’s pretty roomy, there’s no reason to fly out 1,000AU to ‘get away from it all’. ---
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2023, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-with-dead-bodies-on-generation-ships/985514/148 "2023-06-21T19:06:29Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > We have not even the remotest idea of what a civilization with the capability to strip all the resources from moons and planets will want, be capable of, or willing to do. > [@Cheesesteak](#): > > One thing outer space isn’t short of is space. It’s pretty roomy, there’s no reason to fly out 1,000AU to ‘get away from it all’. I think we’ll find quite a few people who are contrarian enough to do just that, maybe even just to spite people who say it’s impractical or irrational. We already have people who do things like that. I suspect most of these groups would look like some kind of cult to us, if we were able to meet them. The people who boarded wooden ships in 1600 to go set up colonies in America probably looked just as crazy. In fact, lots of them **were** loony religious cult-type people. I think it will take more than a few thousand years to evolve past that. ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2023, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-with-dead-bodies-on-generation-ships/985514/149 "2023-06-21T19:08:48Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > How about a system of robotic probes, each of which carries frozen embryos. If a planet is not found suitable for humans the robots just develop it for resources and discard the embryos. If one of the probes lands on a planet that humans could survive on, the robots create habitats, birthing and raising facilities, etc. Once all are complete, hatch the embryos. Years ago I devised a list of different interstellar strategies, and this one was on that list. I called this strategy **seed ships** ; you can send a lot of biological material to another system in the form of seeds, including humans, but you need to include autonomous devices that can take the place of parents and teachers on arrival. Not easy. I assumed that spacecraft would never travel much faster than 0.1c, because anything else requires far too much energy. But this assumption may one day be unfounded. The full list is as follows; 1/ **Methuselah ships**. The problem with interstellar travel is it takes too long. If we can extend human lifetimes by an arbitrary amount then humans could get to the stars in a single lifetime. This strategy requires advances in technology not yet available, but that is true of all of them. 2/ **Sleeper ships**. Freeze people (or otherwise suspend their metabolism) and wake them up on arrival. Same objection as #1. 3/ **Generation ships**. We are discussing these at the moment. To make a generation ship work well, you need a lot more mass, and this implies that the acceleration and final cruising speed will be a lot slower. If you do your sums right, the generation ship can transport a lot of people to the destination, but it takes a lot longer. 4 / **Seed Ships** ; I assumed that biological seeds could be transported much more cheaply than entire humans or entire animals, so you could send a lot more ships. But cultivating the seeds at the destination requires a lot of not-invented-yet tech, and competent robots. 5/ **Data only ships** - this means just sending robots, AIs and comprehensive databases to the stars, and forget about sending humans until the robots are ready to receive them. Trouble is, the robots might not want to be bothered with humans, and just defer their arrival indefinitely. ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2023, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-with-dead-bodies-on-generation-ships/985514/150 "2023-06-21T19:44:58Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Way out there, orbital speeds are nearly zero. It’s not quite the physics-textbook ideal of “no forces”, but it’s very, very close. You can use a very small amount of delta-V to meet up with a different object, if you’re patient. Hmm. Perhaps there are entire civilisations travelling at a tiny fraction of c between the Oort clouds of nearby stars. We probably won’t be seeing them arriving at Earth in the foreseeable future. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2023, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-with-dead-bodies-on-generation-ships/985514/151 "2023-06-21T20:05:54Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > I think I am agreeing? “Instead of” creates a false dichotomy. Take as best care of this planet as we can _and_ diversify the investment … yeah humanity may existentially fuck this planet up, or a planet klller asteroid may slip by somehow despite best efforts. Unknown unknown risks. We may well be agreeing. But there do seem to be some people who talk about space habitats/travel to other planets as if it’s some sort of solution to environmental problems here. A planet-splitting meteor could be another matter – but the chances that we’ll succeed in screwing up this planet, not only so badly that we can’t survive on it, but so badly that it will be less hospitable to us than even next-door Mars, are poor. We’d have to do such a thorough job that never mind not only the cockroaches and algae, but even the tardigrades couldn’t make it. > [@Horatius](#): > > The people who boarded wooden ships in 1600 to go set up colonies in America probably looked just as crazy. In fact, lots of them **were** loony religious cult-type people. They were heading for a place where they expected – with good reason – to be able to breathe the air, drink the water, eat the wildlife, find fuel and building material, and grow crops. Not to mention that they were expecting to be confined on the ship at most for a matter of months, and to be able to send back for more supplies and to exchange people. Some of them were indeed religious cults; and there may actually be enough people willing to voluntarily staff generation ships; but I think the difference in the degree of looniness required is nevertheless considerable. Maybe it would be somewhat less so for literal looniness, as in people willing to settle Earth’s Moon – they might be expecting to be able to get back if they couldn’t stand it. And probably less so if it is a matter of such habitats getting gradually further out from Earth after people have figured out how to live on them. If we can successfully raise children in such habitats, then the children might not need to be loony at all to want to keep it up. But I don’t think it’ll be trivial to get past that “if”. And I also don’t think we’ll ever be able to pull off space travel unless we can learn to stop thinking about it like sailing across the Atlantic, or even like taking a canoe to the next island somewhere way out of sight in the Pacific when all you’ve got is canoes. It’s not only a whole different thing. It’s a whole different _order_ of thing – to more than one exponent. ---
**Author:** ![chriscrob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chriscrob/32/14702_2.png) [@chriscrob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chriscrob)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2023, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-with-dead-bodies-on-generation-ships/985514/152 "2023-08-07T15:52:56Z")
> [@Jasmine](#): > > I’m not understanding. The dead person is no longer using up oxygen or eating food or drinking water. Seems to me I’m GAINING on the deal, not losing. Please elaborate. In between stars, **nothing** is coming into the ship. A century later, future generations will have exactly the resources available on board (less whatever was used up.) So you can’t afford to just let a human body float away—or even to burn it. _Everything_ must be recycled, every byproduct captured, etc to create an entirely closed loop. If some pipe leaks a single droplet of water every couple days, everyone on board will eventually die. The same goes for basically any resource. If a loop goes unclosed, the whole ship fails. Shooting resources of any kind into space would be an act of sabotage. ---
**Author:** ![Mama\_Zappa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/71e660/32.png) [@Mama\_Zappa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Zappa)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2023, 5:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-with-dead-bodies-on-generation-ships/985514/153 "2023-08-08T05:02:30Z")
> [@Horatius](#): > > To overcome both the “waste of resources” problem and the “cannibalism” problem, make it a multi-stage composting system. > > Have a “Memorial Garden” for burial. It grows plants that are strictly ornamental, but which also wilt regularly, and so must be routinely pruned and maintained. You can cut flowers that “used to be mom”, have them in your quarters for a few days, and then recycle those in the regular-for-food composting system. Excellent idea. Properly planned, the initial garden can be one that is used to help supply oxygen to the ship - so Grandpa starts giving back pretty much as soon as he kicks off. By the time any of his molecules go into the hydroponic food supply, they’ll bear no resemblance to anything squeamish-making. Lois McMaster Bujold’s book, Ethan of Athos, discusses something quite similar. It’s a space station, not a generation ship, but all mass is accounted for. Human remains are sent to feed plants. Which, of course, ultimately go into the systems that feed food production… ---
**Author:** ![Mama\_Zappa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/71e660/32.png) [@Mama\_Zappa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Zappa)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2023, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-with-dead-bodies-on-generation-ships/985514/154 "2023-08-08T05:07:16Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > How about a system of robotic probes, each of which carries frozen embryos. If a planet is not found suitable for humans the robots just develop it for resources and discard the embryos. If one of the probes lands on a planet that humans could survive on, the robots create habitats, birthing and raising facilities, etc. Once all are complete, hatch the embryos. James Hogan wrote basically that exact tale, 40 years ago. > **[Voyage from Yesteryear](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyage_from_Yesteryear)** > > Voyage from Yesteryear is a 1982 science fiction novel by British writer James P. Hogan. > According to Hogan, the idea for the book originated around 1976 when he was asked by a friend about whether there was a solution to "the Troubles" in Northern Ireland. He said that there was no solution that he could see and that the only thing that might work was separating the children and the adults to prevent the prejudices from being taught at an early age. However, some years later he returned to the ... ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2023, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-with-dead-bodies-on-generation-ships/985514/155 "2023-08-14T12:23:38Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > I’m assuming that if we’re at the point of _contemplating_ sealing up a near-Earth space station for a decade or a century, we’re already at the point of having multiple large near-Earth space stations, perhaps ones containing hundreds or thousands of residents, just not ones that are completely isolated. The point isn’t whether it’s better to test your generation habitat in Florida or in Anarctica or in earth orbit or someewhere else. The point is that _basically nothing is being invested in it_. Elon Musk builds big rockets that could go to Mars. Fair enough; soaking up taxpayer funds for nebulous space programs is a time-tested way of getting rich. We’ve built Mars rockets before; there’s nothing particularly novel about that. Musk will send something to Mars (probably another of his cars) and that’s fine. My issue is he keeps babbling about starting a Mars colony to “spread the light of human consciousness or whatever”, but this obviously _does_ have a huge engineering requirement that nobody’s tackled before - keeping a crew alive and healthy for 2 years, with minimal (if any) prospects for resupply or rescue. That pesky little “habitation” part of Mars colonization is the real bottleneck, and Musk hasn’t even started to address it. Like he hasn’t even done the basic thing of having people live in a sealed luxury hotel for 4 weeks in Texas and trumpeting it as a publicity stunt. Nobody’s creating a Mars colony because nobody wants to do even the basic work required to make Mars habitable. There is no argument against this uncontroversial fact except “they thought landing on the moon was impossible”, which is no kind of argument at all. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2023, 12:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-with-dead-bodies-on-generation-ships/985514/156 "2023-08-14T12:31:11Z")
> [@mbh](#): > > Dehydrate the corpse. > Send the water to the hydroponics farm. > Grind the dry corpse to powder. Send it to the compost heap for the regular farm. > > If people are too squeamish for that, use a series of chemical reactions to decompose the corpse into separate masses of carbon, nitrogen, iron, etc. Then recycle those. I don’t think there’s any reason for anyone onboard to _be_ squeamish about it - the launch generation would have to sign up to it; for subsequent generations it would be part of the only normality they had ever known. I suppose you might get people spontaneously dissenting to this (or indeed any other matter in the closed-system life and society on board - but that’s a different matter more related to policing) ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2023, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-with-dead-bodies-on-generation-ships/985514/157 "2023-08-14T13:14:17Z")
A couple of months ago, CBS Sunday Morning ran a story about composting as a way of disposing of human bodies. They visited a Seattle facility already set up for this. So perhaps something similar would work on a generation ship. > **[Human composting: The rising interest in natural burial](https://www.cbsnews.com/video/human-composting-the-rising-interest-in-natural-burial/)** > > Natural organic reduction, more simply known as human composting, is a natural process that transforms the body into soil. It has become a recognized alternative to embalming, and a climate-friendly option compared to cremation. Correspondent Ben... ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2023, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-with-dead-bodies-on-generation-ships/985514/158 "2023-08-14T13:35:33Z")
> [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > The point isn’t whether it’s better to test your generation habitat in Florida or in Anarctica or in earth orbit or someewhere else. The point is that _basically nothing is being invested in it_. Exactly. This is not a trivial problem; it’s a deal-killing one. So long as we don’t know how to make an environment that will support humans long-term without resupply from Earth, we can’t do generation ships, we can’t do space colonies, we can’t colonize other planets, we can’t even manage human-staffed research stations that are further out than our ability to supply them easily reaches. And we have, as it stands, no idea whatsoever how to do that. That of course doesn’t mean that we can’t learn how. But anyone proposing any of those things who isn’t simultaneously experimenting, here on Earth and/or in orbit within reachable short-term rescue distance, is either a fool or a scam artist (or both). It isn’t something that can be figured out rapidly at the last minute; and it isn’t solely an engineering issue, in any of our standard senses of engineering, though engineering will certainly be involved. It requires a degree of ecological knowledge that we’re only beginning to understand the breadth and complications of. > [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > A couple of months ago, CBS Sunday Morning ran a story about composting as a way of disposing of human bodies. They visited a Seattle facility already set up for this. So perhaps something similar would work on a generation ship. Yup. This part, we already know how to do. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2023, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-with-dead-bodies-on-generation-ships/985514/159 "2023-08-14T14:33:42Z")
I would say that it is an engineering issue, specifically, ecological engineering. But ecological engineering is a field that’s still in its infancy, and still requires a great deal of experimentation (far more than a mature engineering discipline like structural engineering). But yes, the overall point stands, that we need to be doing that experimenting to make ecological engineering a mature discipline before we can even start proposing any sort of long-term off-Earth habitat. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2023, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-with-dead-bodies-on-generation-ships/985514/160 "2023-08-14T15:19:46Z")
Fair enough. But I think ecological engineering is going to turn out to be a lot more complicated than structural engineering. We’re still very much in the stage of ‘the more you know, the more you realize that you don’t know’. But we very much do need to work on it; because, while still in that state of huge ignorance, it turns out we’ve been ecologically engineering the planet we’re living on. Lately, that hasn’t been working out real well. If this were the part of getting people off the planet that were being hyped up and that money were being poured into, I’d be a lot happier. At least, as long as the experimentation was being done with a great deal of caution. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-with-dead-bodies-on-generation-ships/985514.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-with-dead-bodies-on-generation-ships/985514.md?page=9)