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Let's say we absolutely found another advanced civilization, and in fact somewhat close, reachable in just 500 years. Let's assume we can build a rather large s

Let's say we absolutely found another advanced civilization, and in fact somewhat close, reachable in just 500 years. Let's assume we can build a rather large spaceship, say the size of the Empire State Building, and can fill it with enough food and fuel for the journey. My question, what are the ethics of sending humans on such a trip? It would take 15 to 20 generations of human beings, living their entire lives confined to a prison, to complete this journey. An absolute nightmare of an existence, to be entirely disposable except to procreate in order to produce more prisoners like themselves for a few hundred more years. And when the ship did arrive, the living passengers would not be Earthlings, in the sense they would have little idea about the Earth, none would have ever been there or know anyone who had. We could provide them with every book, movie, etc that ever existed but they would still have no Earth-bound experiences. And it would likely depress them greatly, seeing and hearing things they will never experience. And finally, why would we expect anyone to ever return, to "complete" the mission? Their choice would be to make the best of life on their new planet or to once again volunteer for this bleak, suicidal journey to get back to Earth. Some may say that future tech, or ultra-advanced VR, or cryogenics, or "downloading" brains and sending inert bodies, may make such a journey possible, but no answers sound very convincing, in my opinion.

gman83 8y ago
I think we'd probably send robotic probes on missions such as this. The only way I can really see a multi-generational mission being done is for some kind of colonization mission.
- Freestyler_3 8y ago
  And wouldn't we then send frozen egg and sperms, robots taking care of everything once the ship gets close, the humans get education etc. from robots
  - listenallyall 8y ago
    Nothing personal, but this is exactly what I was mentioning about "future tech" not being sufficient to solve these problems. In-vitro fertilization (test-tube babies) still requires a living uterus in which to gestate. And the idea that a robot could successfully raise a child from birth to even about 8 years old seems VERY far-fetched. I think the physics of velocity, acceleration, etc will be figured out well before the human aspect, as evidenced by our ability to send a rover to Mars but not a person.
fhars 8y ago
That is sort of a plot summary of Kim Stanley Robinon's "Aurora", which has been criticized on the pages of this very website for not being upbeat and optimistic enough, but is IMO a very nice literary treatment of these problems. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23197269-aurora https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23197269-aurora
monort 8y ago
This logic makes any birth unethical too. You are just confining your children to a prison of very large generation ship Earth, with the aim to "procreate in order to produce more prisoners like themselves".
summerdown2 8y ago
> It would take 15 to 20 generations of human beings, living their entire lives confined to a prison, to complete this journey. From a link given by a poster in another comment, earlier, you can do it at 1g acceleration for just 12 years subjective time: http://convertalot.com/relativistic_star_ship_calculator.html http://convertalot.com/relativistic_star_ship_calculator.htm... ... so from the look of it, the difficulty isn't having a generation ship, it's having sufficient fuel to produce the acceleration.
- fhars 8y ago
  The problem with that argument is that a constant acceleration of 1g is an astronomically huge acceleration (for comparison, it corresponds to the surface gravity of a stone-and-iron ball with a whopping 12000km in diameter!). The most extravagant system on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_travel#Non-rocket_concepts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_travel#Non-rocket... has a maximal acceleration of 0.3g.
- ectospheno 8y ago
  Another difficulty being the design of a ship that stays a ship when it hits a pebble in space at that speed...

gman83 8y ago

I think we'd probably send robotic probes on missions such as this. The only way I can really see a multi-generational mission being done is for some kind of colonization mission.

Freestyler_3 8y ago
And wouldn't we then send frozen egg and sperms, robots taking care of everything once the ship gets close, the humans get education etc. from robots
- listenallyall 8y ago
  Nothing personal, but this is exactly what I was mentioning about "future tech" not being sufficient to solve these problems. In-vitro fertilization (test-tube babies) still requires a living uterus in which to gestate. And the idea that a robot could successfully raise a child from birth to even about 8 years old seems VERY far-fetched. I think the physics of velocity, acceleration, etc will be figured out well before the human aspect, as evidenced by our ability to send a rover to Mars but not a person.

fhars 8y ago

That is sort of a plot summary of Kim Stanley Robinon's "Aurora", which has been criticized on the pages of this very website for not being upbeat and optimistic enough, but is IMO a very nice literary treatment of these problems. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23197269-aurora https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23197269-aurora

monort 8y ago

This logic makes any birth unethical too. You are just confining your children to a prison of very large generation ship Earth, with the aim to "procreate in order to produce more prisoners like themselves".

summerdown2 8y ago

> It would take 15 to 20 generations of human beings, living their entire lives confined to a prison, to complete this journey. From a link given by a poster in another comment, earlier, you can do it at 1g acceleration for just 12 years subjective time: http://convertalot.com/relativistic_star_ship_calculator.html http://convertalot.com/relativistic_star_ship_calculator.htm... ... so from the look of it, the difficulty isn't having a generation ship, it's having sufficient fuel to produce the acceleration.

fhars 8y ago
The problem with that argument is that a constant acceleration of 1g is an astronomically huge acceleration (for comparison, it corresponds to the surface gravity of a stone-and-iron ball with a whopping 12000km in diameter!). The most extravagant system on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_travel#Non-rocket_concepts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_travel#Non-rocket... has a maximal acceleration of 0.3g.
ectospheno 8y ago
Another difficulty being the design of a ship that stays a ship when it hits a pebble in space at that speed...