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If you're effectively immortal why would you want to hang around the same place forever? You wouldn't. In fact, you might hope for "something to happen" along

If you're effectively immortal why would you want to hang around the same place forever? You wouldn't. In fact, you might hope for "something to happen" along a 100,000-year trip just to shake things up a bit! Also, don't assume that alien life is like ours. It could be many orders of magnitude more efficient and in all likelihood isn't even biological in nature if they've reached the point where a million-year journey is feasible. It could just be a bunch of AIs constantly re-making themselves from resources they pass by as they coast through the universe. They might not even have a destination! They could literally just be a bunch of machines that "live" in space. Floating around from place to place, grabbing resources from asteroids as they go by. Lastly, in regards to energy: Why assume solar? Once you've reached speed you're not going to slow down much. Just leave the sails open to protect your craft from debris. I'd also expect a nuclear battery in such a craft to power on-board components. There's plenty of radioactive material in space to draw from for renewal as well. You also don't have to worry about disposal! Just toss it towards the nearest star system or asteroid belt and get a bit of thrust out of the action :)

openasocket 10y ago
I was talking about traveling between galaxies, my understanding is there's essentially nothing between them: no asteroids to mine. So you'd need to bring everything you might need in advance. But maybe I'm wrong, maybe there is a decent amount of debris floating between galaxies? > They could literally just be a bunch of machines that "live" in space. Floating around from place to place, grabbing resources from asteroids as they go by. Whenever I think of what an advanced civilization would look like, I picture something like this (though not necessarily just machines). Something semi-nomadic, an entire civilization of ships in a big fleet, wandering together through the galaxy, stopping at various systems to gather some resources or explore the planets. Maybe the fleet breaks up and goes in different directions for a time, and rendezvous later.
- Arizhel 10y ago
  >I was talking about traveling between galaxies, my understanding is there's essentially nothing between them: no asteroids to mine. So you'd need to bring everything you might need in advance. But maybe I'm wrong, maybe there is a decent amount of debris floating between galaxies? The current thought now is that there's likely quite a few "rogue planets" out there, and other asteroids that haven't gotten captured by a star. However, the density of such things is likely to be so low, and you won't know until you get there what they're composed of, so it seems like a bad idea to plan a trip assuming you're going to stop at a bunch of asteroids and rogue planets to pick up supplies; you'll easily make your trip far, far longer. Don't forget also the big problem in long-distance space travel is speed. If you want to get to a particular star system, you need to get up to speed and stay there until you're ready to decelerate. You can't afford to slow down and stop at a bunch of rocks along the way, and you'll be going far too fast to capture the small ones. Most of your fuel will be used in acceleration and deceleration, so you can really only do that once most likely. >Whenever I think of what an advanced civilization would look like, I picture something like this (though not necessarily just machines). Something semi-nomadic, an entire civilization of ships in a big fleet, wandering together through the galaxy, stopping at various systems to gather some resources or explore the planets. Maybe the fleet breaks up and goes in different directions for a time, and rendezvous later. That doesn't sound like an "advanced civilization" at all, that sounds like a nomadic gang. An advanced civilization will value stability, and stay on their home planet(s) where all their infrastructure is located. They may very well send out exploratory missions, but those nomadic wanderers will not be the civilization itself, just one small part of it.
  - openasocket 10y ago
    > An advanced civilization will value stability, and stay on their home planet(s) where all their infrastructure is located My thoughts were that a sufficiently advanced civilization would desire exploration, both for resources and scientific advancement. And you don't want your people spread out too far (for some definition of far), for a variety of reasons, the biggest being the consequences of the delay in communication and travel. For instance, scientists in different solar systems would find in next to impossible to collaborate: it could take years for news of one group's findings to reach the other, at which point they may very well have independently discovered the same thing, which is inefficient. Also, if one of the systems is attacked, or has some sort of crisis that requires assistance (plague, natural disaster, etc), the rest of the civilization would be unable to react in a timely manner. In short, it's safer to stick together. Therefore, it would make a lot of sense to put your whole civilization into a fleet of ships with all your infrastructure (or maybe a single giant ship, Death Star sized), and move around. You could stay in a single solar system for a few millennia mining resources, or hop around looking for life. Sticking to one place or a few nearby places is also an option, but I think it lacks certain advantages a fleet civilization would have.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
      For instance, scientists in different solar systems would find in next to impossible to collaborate: it could take years for news of one group's findings to reach the other, at which point they may very well have independently discovered the same thing Even on Earth, where the latency between devices on opposites sides of the planet is measured in hundreds of milliseconds, this is true. The ten closest stars to Earth are within about 10 light years distance. While two way communication would be impractically slow, sending a continuous stream, UDP-style, to another colony would probably do the job sufficiently well.
    - Arizhel 10y ago
      >Also, if one of the systems is attacked, or has some sort of crisis that requires assistance (plague, natural disaster, etc), the rest of the civilization would be unable to react in a timely manner. In short, it's safer to stick together. This is incorrect. This is the "all your eggs in one basket" problem: if you have a big crisis in your civilization, you don't want everyone in one place, because your whole civilization could get wiped out. A civilization this advanced is likely also a very large civilization, so it makes more sense for it to have different parts in different places, just in case. As for communications, as the other responder pointed out, a continuous transmission, assuming the data rate is high enough, will help keep the different locations in sync. Who cares if scientists independently discover things? Hopefully a civilization that advanced won't be so worried about patent rights. As for "hopping around" looking for life, you'll do a whole lot better keeping your civilization in one place (or a few permanent locations better yet) and sending probes or exploration teams to a bunch of different places at once. Moving your entire civilization to only one star system at a time would be horribly slow, and sticking everyone in a giant death star means your energy requirements for transporting your civilization between stars would be ridiculous. A fleet civilization wouldn't have any advantages besides mobility. You only need that if you have something you're trying to get away from, or have a well-founded concern that staying in one particular place could be dangerous. For Battlestar Galactica, it made sense because they were constantly being chased by the Cylons, and even then, the show did a pretty good job, at least at first, of showing what a PITA it is constantly being on the move. For a large, highly advanced civilization that doesn't have a bunch of genocidal robots chasing it, I just don't see how there's any advantage to remaining highly mobile. Mobility requires a lot of energy and greatly limits you in other ways. For a modern analogy, look at people today who live in RVs. Sure, they can drive their whole home away quickly and don't have to worry much about packing up to move, but they don't have much space, their home is easily damaged compared to normal dwellings, and it costs a lot to move it (because of the poor fuel economy). The only way living in starships makes any sense is if energy is basically free for you, which includes having a way to store immense quantities of it, because you'll need a lot when you're between stars.

openasocket 10y ago

I was talking about traveling between galaxies, my understanding is there's essentially nothing between them: no asteroids to mine. So you'd need to bring everything you might need in advance. But maybe I'm wrong, maybe there is a decent amount of debris floating between galaxies? > They could literally just be a bunch of machines that "live" in space. Floating around from place to place, grabbing resources from asteroids as they go by. Whenever I think of what an advanced civilization would look like, I picture something like this (though not necessarily just machines). Something semi-nomadic, an entire civilization of ships in a big fleet, wandering together through the galaxy, stopping at various systems to gather some resources or explore the planets. Maybe the fleet breaks up and goes in different directions for a time, and rendezvous later.

Arizhel 10y ago
>I was talking about traveling between galaxies, my understanding is there's essentially nothing between them: no asteroids to mine. So you'd need to bring everything you might need in advance. But maybe I'm wrong, maybe there is a decent amount of debris floating between galaxies? The current thought now is that there's likely quite a few "rogue planets" out there, and other asteroids that haven't gotten captured by a star. However, the density of such things is likely to be so low, and you won't know until you get there what they're composed of, so it seems like a bad idea to plan a trip assuming you're going to stop at a bunch of asteroids and rogue planets to pick up supplies; you'll easily make your trip far, far longer. Don't forget also the big problem in long-distance space travel is speed. If you want to get to a particular star system, you need to get up to speed and stay there until you're ready to decelerate. You can't afford to slow down and stop at a bunch of rocks along the way, and you'll be going far too fast to capture the small ones. Most of your fuel will be used in acceleration and deceleration, so you can really only do that once most likely. >Whenever I think of what an advanced civilization would look like, I picture something like this (though not necessarily just machines). Something semi-nomadic, an entire civilization of ships in a big fleet, wandering together through the galaxy, stopping at various systems to gather some resources or explore the planets. Maybe the fleet breaks up and goes in different directions for a time, and rendezvous later. That doesn't sound like an "advanced civilization" at all, that sounds like a nomadic gang. An advanced civilization will value stability, and stay on their home planet(s) where all their infrastructure is located. They may very well send out exploratory missions, but those nomadic wanderers will not be the civilization itself, just one small part of it.
- openasocket 10y ago
  > An advanced civilization will value stability, and stay on their home planet(s) where all their infrastructure is located My thoughts were that a sufficiently advanced civilization would desire exploration, both for resources and scientific advancement. And you don't want your people spread out too far (for some definition of far), for a variety of reasons, the biggest being the consequences of the delay in communication and travel. For instance, scientists in different solar systems would find in next to impossible to collaborate: it could take years for news of one group's findings to reach the other, at which point they may very well have independently discovered the same thing, which is inefficient. Also, if one of the systems is attacked, or has some sort of crisis that requires assistance (plague, natural disaster, etc), the rest of the civilization would be unable to react in a timely manner. In short, it's safer to stick together. Therefore, it would make a lot of sense to put your whole civilization into a fleet of ships with all your infrastructure (or maybe a single giant ship, Death Star sized), and move around. You could stay in a single solar system for a few millennia mining resources, or hop around looking for life. Sticking to one place or a few nearby places is also an option, but I think it lacks certain advantages a fleet civilization would have.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
    For instance, scientists in different solar systems would find in next to impossible to collaborate: it could take years for news of one group's findings to reach the other, at which point they may very well have independently discovered the same thing Even on Earth, where the latency between devices on opposites sides of the planet is measured in hundreds of milliseconds, this is true. The ten closest stars to Earth are within about 10 light years distance. While two way communication would be impractically slow, sending a continuous stream, UDP-style, to another colony would probably do the job sufficiently well.
  - Arizhel 10y ago
    >Also, if one of the systems is attacked, or has some sort of crisis that requires assistance (plague, natural disaster, etc), the rest of the civilization would be unable to react in a timely manner. In short, it's safer to stick together. This is incorrect. This is the "all your eggs in one basket" problem: if you have a big crisis in your civilization, you don't want everyone in one place, because your whole civilization could get wiped out. A civilization this advanced is likely also a very large civilization, so it makes more sense for it to have different parts in different places, just in case. As for communications, as the other responder pointed out, a continuous transmission, assuming the data rate is high enough, will help keep the different locations in sync. Who cares if scientists independently discover things? Hopefully a civilization that advanced won't be so worried about patent rights. As for "hopping around" looking for life, you'll do a whole lot better keeping your civilization in one place (or a few permanent locations better yet) and sending probes or exploration teams to a bunch of different places at once. Moving your entire civilization to only one star system at a time would be horribly slow, and sticking everyone in a giant death star means your energy requirements for transporting your civilization between stars would be ridiculous. A fleet civilization wouldn't have any advantages besides mobility. You only need that if you have something you're trying to get away from, or have a well-founded concern that staying in one particular place could be dangerous. For Battlestar Galactica, it made sense because they were constantly being chased by the Cylons, and even then, the show did a pretty good job, at least at first, of showing what a PITA it is constantly being on the move. For a large, highly advanced civilization that doesn't have a bunch of genocidal robots chasing it, I just don't see how there's any advantage to remaining highly mobile. Mobility requires a lot of energy and greatly limits you in other ways. For a modern analogy, look at people today who live in RVs. Sure, they can drive their whole home away quickly and don't have to worry much about packing up to move, but they don't have much space, their home is easily damaged compared to normal dwellings, and it costs a lot to move it (because of the poor fuel economy). The only way living in starships makes any sense is if energy is basically free for you, which includes having a way to store immense quantities of it, because you'll need a lot when you're between stars.