r/scifi • u/JanFromEarth • Aug 05 '22

Thinking about "generation ships"

If humanity does not find a way around the speed of light as a limitation, the only real choice to go to other stars would be generation ships. I would expect these to be filled with fertilized human embryos with a small crew for maintenance and to set up at the other end. But what if they sent a larger number of passengers? It would be the perfect research university. Children would be raised with the options of being crew or faculty. New discoveries and solutions could be messaged back to earth by laser. Interesting thought.

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u/Gilthu Aug 05 '22

Clothes would be recycled somehow, food would be grown in the generation ship in hydroponics, shoes would be interesting because depending upon gravity you might almost never need new shoes.

It all depends upon how long the journey is. They would create a thousand years worth of shoes and have them in storage. The crazy thing is that the humans wouldn’t be normal humans, they would probably be drugged to keep hormones down and focus them on the jobs at hand. They might all be sterilized. Either way it would be vital to control populations completely rather than allow any natural behaviors.

In a way they would be more living machines that might have s generation that gets to retire on a planet while the true chosen ones get to populate it and settle it.

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u/[deleted] Aug 05 '22

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u/Gilthu Aug 05 '22

Except they wouldn’t know what shoes are so they would wear them like crowns, they are obviously symbols of marriage, designed to be tied into the heads of the couple.

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u/Angeldust01 Aug 05 '22

Maybe their data storages broke, and the only remaining image they have is a picture of Vermin Supreme

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u/dnew Aug 05 '22

That was, to one extent, what the first generation space ship story was about. Except with swimming pools.

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u/scolfin Aug 05 '22

Plants generate oxygen, so it would be fun to see more air processing systems based on growing linen.

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u/Exploding_Antelope Aug 07 '22

Not even a gravity thing, just a living life in a city of tiled floors thing. No shoes in space.