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Having a child that is bound to live their entire life on such a ship strikes me as tragic and depressing. I don't think I could personally be responsible for c

by mevile 8y ago

Having a child that is bound to live their entire life on such a ship strikes me as tragic and depressing. I don't think I could personally be responsible for creating a life in that kind of environment. I'd hope we'd get the quality of life possible in space very high before we ever attempt any kind of thing like this.

crooked-v 8y ago
It seems to me like the only reasonably ethical way to do it would be to have a small city's worth of people (a small city's worth of living space) and thus "society" rather than "crew". But that runs into the organizational problem that a society that's lived in space for two or three generations may not want to deal with this messy, disease-ridden, gravity-encumbering planet business again.
- reificator 8y ago
  Which brings up a much overlooked issue regarding colonization efforts: antibodies and the human immune system in general being exposed to an alien environment after generations of sterile space travel.
  - majewsky 8y ago
    Colonizable planets will either: 1. be sterile, meaning that this is not a concern. (The only germs that settlers will run into are those they brought with themselves on the ship.) 2. contain alien germs, in which case no humans would have antibodies for them regardless of origin or travel speed.
    - reificator 8y ago
      Sure, but I know people who are just allergic to metals in jewelry. Maybe it's germs on it, but if it's not...
- jerf 8y ago
  I think that's actually the primary problem with this idea. If all you have is a crew that can live on their ship, and they arrive at Alpha Centauri... now what? Terraforming on anything even remotely resembling a useful time frame is a massive undertaking. Literally in this case, requiring both substantial mass, and energy in enough quantities that it is reasonable to use mass-based measurements to quantify it! They're far more likely to just sidle up to an asteroid loaded with useful things and start using the local resources. But if you're going to do that, there are useful asteroids waaay closer than the next star system over. Interstellar colonization makes some degree of sense, but not until we're pretty far along exploiting the local system. It's not something even our great-grandchildren are actually going to do while there's so many resources here. But, eventually, if humanity and its descendants keep growing, eventually it makes sense. And rather than cobbling together something that can just barely make it and then do nothing, by then they'll have the infrastructure to make many ships, and give them useful things that will actually be helpful at the other end. And they may even be able to build "bridges"; if space really is full of ice planets we can't see, those make fantastic bases for launching and deceleration lasers, and if you can use those, the economics suddenly start looking a lot more practical. And I'd point out that barring a lot of very enormous coincidences, other planets aren't going to be "disease-ridden". If anything has to worry about being "disease-ridden", it's the ship they're on, not the almost-certainly sterile matter on the other end.
Analemma_ 8y ago
Yeah, this is a question that doesn't get brought up nearly enough in discussions about generation ships: is the entire concept unethical? You're condemning multiple generations currently unborn to spend their entire life in a can. And even once they get wherever they're going, it's probably going to be a barely-habitable frozen rock much less pleasant than Earth. Kim Stanley Robinson's novel Aurora talks about a bunch of this. Robinson mentioned that he was tired of talk about generation ships avoiding the biological, social and ethical factors and just focusing on the physics and technology, when those are probably the easiest bits. Highly recommended.
paulpauper 8y ago
if the child knows of no reality beyond the can, it may not be so bad.
true_tuna 8y ago
This is the primary tension in “Aurora”. An explorer can choose to go out into the unknown, but can an explorer choose for the children of future generations? Especially considering that humans and the earth biosphere co-evolved. It is literally perfect. Perfect temperature, air mixture, solar radiation, bio-compatible flora and fauna etc. I’m not convinced it’s possible to create an extraterrestrial environment comparable to the one we have here.
pavel_lishin 8y ago
> Having a child that is bound to live their entire life on such a ship strikes me as tragic and depressing. I agree. That's why I'm not moving to the suburbs.
maxk42 8y ago
Not just a child... 250 generations of descendants. Suffice it to say the technology is not yet up to the task.
JoeAltmaier 8y ago
Versus growing up in a trailer park, or an apartment building, or an igloo? People have endured far worse conditions for generations. Humans are probably the best choice in fact, for creating and propagating small communities for generations.
- Analemma_ 8y ago
  There's a crucial difference though: if a child decides they don't like living in a trailer park, apartment, or igloo, they at least have the potential to change their situation and live somewhere else. (And to the extent they don't have that potential– i.e. if social mobility is declining– we call that a serious social problem that needs to be addressed) A child on a generation ship would have no such choice: you're going to live and die on that ship whether you like it or not. And that's at the very minimum. It's pretty likely that, to be sustainable, a generation ship would dictate your profession, marriage partner and number of children as well, with no exit rights. Forcing that life on someone with no say in the matter is pretty unethical.
  - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
    Again, that describes the lot of much of humanity for most of existance. To call it unethical is to claim, not being a modern liberal American is unethical. Of course I exaggerate. But I see this as a First World Ethical Problem.
    - Analemma_ 8y ago
      > Again, that describes the lot of much of humanity for most of existance. Of course. But you hopefully agree that civilization has progressed since then. I do not find it ethical to force people backwards in time compared to the contemporary environment they could have. If I forcibly teleported you back to the kind of agricultural, tribal society that existed for most of history, where leaving would be death (either by punishment or just lack of protection from the dangerous outside world), and the tribe's elders dictated most of your life decisions, would you consider that ethical? What about if I pledged to do it to your unborn children? That's what we're talking about with generation ships.
Comevius 8y ago
On a spaceship one can create an environment tailored to our needs. Here on Earth we are subjected to whatever society and industry in the 21st century does to our brains. Children getting 6 hours of sleep because Facebook puts them on the spot 24 hours a day is also a tragedy.
- Analemma_ 8y ago
  > On a spaceship one can create an environment tailored to our needs. That seems pretty optimistic. I think the reality would be exactly the opposite: resources are extremely limited in space and there is much less room for error, which pretty much demands an authoritarian society where individual choice has to be severely curtailed, and the environment would be constrained by the same lack of resources. Of course, the level of technology in the ship would determine just how bad it would have to be, but I don't see any future within the next thousand years or so where you could have an environment on a generation ship anything like what we have on Earth.
garmaine 8y ago
1. By the time we do this aging and “natural death” will be a thing of the past. 2. You will never see an interstellar voyage that is longer than today’s lifespans. Because otherwise there would be time to build and launch a faster ship using new technologies which gets there sooner.

by mevile 8y ago

crooked-v 8y ago

It seems to me like the only reasonably ethical way to do it would be to have a small city's worth of people (a small city's worth of living space) and thus "society" rather than "crew". But that runs into the organizational problem that a society that's lived in space for two or three generations may not want to deal with this messy, disease-ridden, gravity-encumbering planet business again.

reificator 8y ago
Which brings up a much overlooked issue regarding colonization efforts: antibodies and the human immune system in general being exposed to an alien environment after generations of sterile space travel.
- majewsky 8y ago
  Colonizable planets will either: 1. be sterile, meaning that this is not a concern. (The only germs that settlers will run into are those they brought with themselves on the ship.) 2. contain alien germs, in which case no humans would have antibodies for them regardless of origin or travel speed.
  - reificator 8y ago
    Sure, but I know people who are just allergic to metals in jewelry. Maybe it's germs on it, but if it's not...
jerf 8y ago
I think that's actually the primary problem with this idea. If all you have is a crew that can live on their ship, and they arrive at Alpha Centauri... now what? Terraforming on anything even remotely resembling a useful time frame is a massive undertaking. Literally in this case, requiring both substantial mass, and energy in enough quantities that it is reasonable to use mass-based measurements to quantify it! They're far more likely to just sidle up to an asteroid loaded with useful things and start using the local resources. But if you're going to do that, there are useful asteroids waaay closer than the next star system over. Interstellar colonization makes some degree of sense, but not until we're pretty far along exploiting the local system. It's not something even our great-grandchildren are actually going to do while there's so many resources here. But, eventually, if humanity and its descendants keep growing, eventually it makes sense. And rather than cobbling together something that can just barely make it and then do nothing, by then they'll have the infrastructure to make many ships, and give them useful things that will actually be helpful at the other end. And they may even be able to build "bridges"; if space really is full of ice planets we can't see, those make fantastic bases for launching and deceleration lasers, and if you can use those, the economics suddenly start looking a lot more practical. And I'd point out that barring a lot of very enormous coincidences, other planets aren't going to be "disease-ridden". If anything has to worry about being "disease-ridden", it's the ship they're on, not the almost-certainly sterile matter on the other end.

Analemma_ 8y ago

Yeah, this is a question that doesn't get brought up nearly enough in discussions about generation ships: is the entire concept unethical? You're condemning multiple generations currently unborn to spend their entire life in a can. And even once they get wherever they're going, it's probably going to be a barely-habitable frozen rock much less pleasant than Earth. Kim Stanley Robinson's novel Aurora talks about a bunch of this. Robinson mentioned that he was tired of talk about generation ships avoiding the biological, social and ethical factors and just focusing on the physics and technology, when those are probably the easiest bits. Highly recommended.

paulpauper 8y ago

if the child knows of no reality beyond the can, it may not be so bad.

true_tuna 8y ago

This is the primary tension in “Aurora”. An explorer can choose to go out into the unknown, but can an explorer choose for the children of future generations? Especially considering that humans and the earth biosphere co-evolved. It is literally perfect. Perfect temperature, air mixture, solar radiation, bio-compatible flora and fauna etc. I’m not convinced it’s possible to create an extraterrestrial environment comparable to the one we have here.

pavel_lishin 8y ago

> Having a child that is bound to live their entire life on such a ship strikes me as tragic and depressing. I agree. That's why I'm not moving to the suburbs.

maxk42 8y ago

Not just a child... 250 generations of descendants. Suffice it to say the technology is not yet up to the task.

JoeAltmaier 8y ago

Versus growing up in a trailer park, or an apartment building, or an igloo? People have endured far worse conditions for generations. Humans are probably the best choice in fact, for creating and propagating small communities for generations.

Analemma_ 8y ago
There's a crucial difference though: if a child decides they don't like living in a trailer park, apartment, or igloo, they at least have the potential to change their situation and live somewhere else. (And to the extent they don't have that potential– i.e. if social mobility is declining– we call that a serious social problem that needs to be addressed) A child on a generation ship would have no such choice: you're going to live and die on that ship whether you like it or not. And that's at the very minimum. It's pretty likely that, to be sustainable, a generation ship would dictate your profession, marriage partner and number of children as well, with no exit rights. Forcing that life on someone with no say in the matter is pretty unethical.
- JoeAltmaier 8y ago
  Again, that describes the lot of much of humanity for most of existance. To call it unethical is to claim, not being a modern liberal American is unethical. Of course I exaggerate. But I see this as a First World Ethical Problem.
  - Analemma_ 8y ago
    > Again, that describes the lot of much of humanity for most of existance. Of course. But you hopefully agree that civilization has progressed since then. I do not find it ethical to force people backwards in time compared to the contemporary environment they could have. If I forcibly teleported you back to the kind of agricultural, tribal society that existed for most of history, where leaving would be death (either by punishment or just lack of protection from the dangerous outside world), and the tribe's elders dictated most of your life decisions, would you consider that ethical? What about if I pledged to do it to your unborn children? That's what we're talking about with generation ships.

Comevius 8y ago

On a spaceship one can create an environment tailored to our needs. Here on Earth we are subjected to whatever society and industry in the 21st century does to our brains. Children getting 6 hours of sleep because Facebook puts them on the spot 24 hours a day is also a tragedy.

Analemma_ 8y ago
> On a spaceship one can create an environment tailored to our needs. That seems pretty optimistic. I think the reality would be exactly the opposite: resources are extremely limited in space and there is much less room for error, which pretty much demands an authoritarian society where individual choice has to be severely curtailed, and the environment would be constrained by the same lack of resources. Of course, the level of technology in the ship would determine just how bad it would have to be, but I don't see any future within the next thousand years or so where you could have an environment on a generation ship anything like what we have on Earth.

garmaine 8y ago

1. By the time we do this aging and “natural death” will be a thing of the past. 2. You will never see an interstellar voyage that is longer than today’s lifespans. Because otherwise there would be time to build and launch a faster ship using new technologies which gets there sooner.