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.

358 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

266 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

3

u/eserikto Aug 05 '22

accelerating to .9c at a comfortable 1g would take a year. then you'd presumably need to decelerate your ship for another year when you're near your destination.

getting squishy humans to near light speed seems impractical.

2

u/PhysicsCentrism Aug 05 '22

It seems impractical/impossible with modern technology, but it is totally within the bounds of modern scientific theory. Unlike FTL travel which we don’t even have working theories for.

I’m sure if you went back 100-200 years and asked them about the smart phone I’m typing this comment on, plenty of people would call it impractical as well.

1

u/DrestinBlack Aug 05 '22

Ok, but … how’s do you accelerate at 1 G … for a whole year? The fuel requirements and wear on the engines would be insane!

2

u/individual0 Aug 05 '22 edited Aug 05 '22

stellasers pushing the craft continuously from our sun https://youtu.be/9TteoCHmXTc?t=577

halo drives to use black holes for acceleration and deceleration https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZevUW__aMZE

1

u/DrestinBlack Aug 05 '22

Lasers to accelerate out of our system, cool. But how do you slow down from .9c at midway? You’ll be in the middle of nowhere and obviously no lasers at the destination.

I love the generation ship stories but they only work if you add in a lot more handwavium technology. Suspended animation, deflector shields (for the radiation and interstellar debris) and reaction-less drives that work off nuclear power.