What do you do onboard a starship?

[McCoy]

Re: What do you do onboard a starship?

 

Well' date=' a lot of it would be child rearing/socialization. For example, in the first 20 years you're going to get 2,000 children and there are 1,000 adults. This is 4 children per family (assuming the usual one man / one woman set-up for socialization purposes; of course other possibilities are there).[/quote']

Again, were this a story background, the women would pick the fathers. Some would choose the same father for all four children, others would want four different "doners." Most children are conceived, gestated, and born the old fashioned way, but high tech alternatives are available. If the chosen man is alive, he can refuse. If he's passed on but still in the sperm bank, it's first come, first served.

 

They can also do basic research. Why not? If contact with Earth is kept during the voyage' date=' they can send and recieve information. Presumably the people chosen to go on this voyage will be at the top of their fields. Why shouldn't they do scientific research while underway? It's quite reasonable they may make breakthroughs the same as anyone on Earth...plus, in a more rigidly-controlled environment and society, it could easily be argued that they'd have [i']fewer[/i] distractions than they would on Earth, and so their productivity may actually go up.

 

Scientific observation: Even a few light-years can make a huge difference in what instruments (both telescopes and others) are able to resolve. Why not send along some of the best instrumentation available (and of course see to it that the experts to run it are in the crew) and take advantage of the situation? If nothing else, for "baseline" observations. (Some types of observation require large "baselines" -- observations taken at two widely seperated points. Think of the baseline you could have by using the endpoints of an interstellar voyage!)

Humm. Had wondered if some of the top scientist would want to be increasingly out of the loop as communications lag increased. Hadn't thought about the life simplification involved. Maybe some would be willing to put up with the comm lag for fewer distractions.

 

Observations, definitely. Can you imagine a radio telescope array that includes antennas on 12 or 20 ships leaving the Sol system in different directions? Definitely send the best insterments, and send along specs for upgrades to be manufactured and installed shipboard.

[McCoy]

Re: What do you do onboard a starship?

 

There is of course no data to support this yet, so I'm just talking through my hat here...

 

The "iron womb" bit has been postulated in various SF stories to cause the people "birthed" that way to tend to be maladjusted because they didn't have the warmth, sounds, and motions of a mother's body around them as they were developing those first nine months. I have no idea if it would work out that way or not, but it seems (to me) to be a valid concern/possibility.

Hadn't heard that before. Definitely something to watch for, but don't think it's a insolveable problem. Warmth and motion would be easy to build into the machine. For the sounds, maybe put a wireless mike on the mother to transmit to the iron womb.

[McCoy]

Re: What do you do onboard a starship?

 

I choose archivist/librarian or administration/management.

 

I have found the most important feature of sci fi colonization in literature to be not knowing what it is they needed but forgot that they might need. The ability to collect, catalogue and most importantly retrieve appropriate necessary data not only on specific request but based on responding to the requirements at hand is critical.

 

Likewise, coordinating the most efficient use of labor, resources and time allocated to a given project or requirement is among the most important talents in real life even if not appreciated as much in adventure fiction.

 

Knowing what to do based on how it was done before, what you need, and how to use it is necessary to the survival of any nacent human society.

Good points.

[McCoy]

Re: What do you do onboard a starship?

 

Then why not put 50' date='000 (or at least 40,000) people on board in the first place? Bigger gene pool, and the average woman need only have 2 children so as to maintain the population.[/quote']

So let's say that we start out with 8000 in the P generation, each woman has two children instead of four, population increases to 48,000 then levels off, hopefully without having to euthanize anyone who lives past 120. How would this change what specalist you would want to include in the P generation?

 

Specifically' date=' regarding McCoy's statement above: The colonists will care very, very little about "a planet with a breathable atmosphere." So long as they can get oxygen and nitrogen from [u']somewhere[/u], they can make their own breathable atmosphere.

All of them? Would be a good idea, even if there is a habitable planet, to maintain an infrastructure in the Orrt cloud and asteroids. But how long do you think they will have lived off Earth? Maybe 10 generations in the Belt, another five on the ship? Double that. 30 generations since they lived on Earth, compared to how many lived on a planet? I think a significat minority of the colonist would live on a planet if they could.

 

Current scientific thought puts Oort Clouds around all star systems (save a few that've had near misses with other star systems)' date=' so volitiles will always be present; a colony will need only a [u']very little[/u] amount of other resources, so "no usable resources" won't happen.

You can state that for a fact? I agree that most stars will probably have an Oort clound and other useable resources, but need to have a contengency plan in place for if your chosen destinaton star does not. But let me revise that. They should be able to detect the presence (or absence) of an Oort cloud 20 years out, on the cusp between the F3 and F4 generations, so if needed they can go to the Zero Population Growth option.

[Dr. Anomaly]

Re: What do you do onboard a starship?

 

You can state that for a fact? I agree that most stars will probably have an Oort clound and other useable resources' date=' but need to have a contengency plan in place for if your chosen destinaton star does not. [/quote']According to the current best theories of planetary system formation, yes.

 

Another factor is that a few years ago they started looking at the spectra of dying stars (those throwing out planetary nebulae -- which of course have nothing to do with planets -- and swelling red giants, along with supernovae). When examined in the right frequencies, they have uniformly detected water...which has been taken to mean the larger-than-previous energy output of these dying stars is boiling off their Oort Clouds and cometary halos. The fact they've found this every time they've analyzed the spectrum of a dying star (assuming the star was close enough for this kind of analysis -- and for a supernova, that can be as far away as the LMC & GMC) would make it a pretty good bet that all Population I stars have such clouds/halos.

 

Most Population II stars, of course, would not...but then again, you're not going to be sending a colony ship to a Population II star.

[McCoy]

Re: What do you do onboard a starship?

 

I actually researched the numbers extensively, men outnumber women in every age group younger than 55, the 55-65 age group is roughly 98 men to 100 women, after that the women start vastly outnumbering the men.

 

All the numbers are there if you read the census reports of any western country. They all have almost identical numbers, 105 men born for every 100 women, the women get married 2-4 years younger, and the number of single men dwarf the number of single women, especially in the 25-50 age ranges.

 

Also, for a lot of reasons (social proof, the fact that someone able to attract one partner is very likely to be able to attract another, etc), the divorced men actually have a higher chance of being able to attract a mate than the men of the same age who are still single.

 

All of this could be completely ignored in a game, but on a real generation ship it would quickly grow to be a huge problem, unless you put a lot of bears on the ship.

 

THE BEAR THEORY.

 

Humans grew up in a more dangerous world, there were a lot of bears around, the women stayed close to home and thus seldom got eaten by bears, the men on the other hand had to go out and hunt and fish and farm and a much higher percentage of them were eaten by bears, which equalized the gender numbers. Very few men get eaten by bears these days, which is why we are in the mess we are today.

 

Obviously bears aren't JUST bears, but are all the dangers of a pre-industrial world.

 

 

THE ONLY BEGOTTEN SON THEORY

 

The gender gap is entirely social in origin, based completely on the fact that a small, but noticeable percentage of couples have children until they have a son, and then STOP, while very few couples do the reverse.

 

The problem with this theory is that one would assume that Muslim cultures and other male dominated cultures would show a higher male birthrate, they do not, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and other Muslim countries have the exact same gender ratio at birth.

 

China obviously has a variation on this problem to a massive extent.

It's no mystery. Y-bearing wigglers are smaller and swim faster than X-bearing ones. The ratio is even more lopsided at conception, but the majority of miscarages and stillbirths are male.

 

But giving the sex imbalance problem more thought, while it can be tweaked, it probably would not need to be. The youngest of the F-1 generation will probably date the oldest of the F-2, and so forth, so the sex imbalance would not be apparent unless the Zero population Growth option needs to be enacted. And again that's assuming that excess 2.5% does not turn out to be Gay.

[Dr. Anomaly]

Re: What do you do onboard a starship?

 

And as a side note, even if a Population II star were to be within colonization range (extremely unlikely; I'm not aware of any) they are easy to type so you wouldn't have to worry about the ship accidentally being sent to a target star that would turn out to be a Population II star.

[Bucky]

Re: What do you do onboard a starship?

 

What is the job of the other initial 800? What specialities would you want to be sure to include?

Resource Identification and Extration primarily. For aboard ship, (and also once you make landfall) you need farmers. That is your base, your foundation, that you need or else your colony will not survive. But with modern technology, that still leaves a lot of folks just hanging around.

 

Which goes back into mining, and other areas of resource extraction. You'll need a science team that will be able to indentify any materials the colony comes across. Once you figure what is where, you can decide what is, and is not a resource to be exploited.

 

So, farmers, a science team, miners. These you will need before any technology is even possible, let alone doable. After that you will need engineers, arcitects, and designers. You might need a government setup which will require people. And Cops and military (if facing external threats)

[Mentor]

Re: What do you do onboard a starship?

 

Right' date=' I can't imagine a generation ship would be launched that allows randomized childbirth.[/quote']

I agree. IMHO, it is much more likely that not only will the timing of birth be strictly controlled, but a whole range of genetic preferences will deliberately selected, including the sex of the child. Who is to say that the genetic material will only be of the 1000 actual colonists? There is a whole planet of DNA to choose from, especially if one assumes the ability to mix and match for individual traits.

 

Naturally there will be ethical outrage from people opposed to the procedure on religious, chaos theory, egalitarian or even squeemish reasons, but it seems unlikely that the sperm and ova of larger cross section of Earth at the very least would not be included for implantation in willing mothers.

[Basil]

Re: What do you do onboard a starship?

 

So let's say that we start out with 8000 in the P generation' date=' each woman has two children instead of four, population increases to 48,000 then levels off, hopefully without having to euthanize anyone who lives past 120. How would this change what specalist you would want to include in the P generation?[/quote']

Why this concentration on specialists? What a colony that far from help will need is generalists.

 

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialisation is for insects." -- Robert Heinlein

 

 

Specifically, regarding McCoy's statement above: The colonists will care very, very little about "a planet with a breathable atmosphere." So long as they can get oxygen and nitrogen from somewhere, they can make their own breathable atmosphere.

All of them? Would be a good idea, even if there is a habitable planet, to maintain an infrastructure in the Orrt cloud and asteroids. But how long do you think they will have lived off Earth? Maybe 10 generations in the Belt, another five on the ship? Double that. 30 generations since they lived on Earth, compared to how many lived on a planet? I think a significat minority of the colonist would live on a planet if they could.

30 generations ago (assuming 20 years/generation) was circa 1400 CE. Do you want to live in the miserable, primative, non-technological conditions of that time? How do you think planet-bound life will look to those who have had the "freedom" of outer space for dozens of generations.

Of course, that's using what I think is the only likely scenario for interstellar expansion (absent FTL); the inhabitants of the Kuiper's Belt/Oort Cloud "drifting outwards." YMMV.

 

You can state that for a fact? I agree that most stars will probably have an Oort clound and other useable resources' date=' but need to have a contengency plan in place for if your chosen destinaton star does not. But let me revise that. They should be able to detect the presence (or absence) of an Oort cloud 20 years out, on the cusp between the F3 and F4 generations, so if needed they can go to the Zero Population Growth option.[/quote']

Dr. Anomaly has already covered this, but I'd like to add to it. After umpteen generations in the Kuiper's Belt, I'm sure humanity will know which nearby (out to, say, 100 light-years) star do or do not have Kuiper's Belts/Oort Clouds. We are already finding super-Jovian planets by their reflected light; with a century or two of technology and a 500-1000 AU baseline, there' no question we'll be able to see planetesimals. And thus we can stop worrying about the colonists arriving only to find no Kuiper's Belt or Oort Cloud.

 

BTW, it is now thought that the mas of all objects in the Kuiper's Belt is anywhere from 10 to 25 times the mass of all the planets, moons, asteroids, and other minor stuff. The mass of the Oort Cloud is considered 100x to 500x that of the Kuiper's Belt. Lack of materials is a non-issue.

[McCoy]

Re: What do you do onboard a starship?

 

30 generations ago (assuming 20 years/generation) was circa 1400 CE. Do you want to live in the miserable' date=' primative, non-technological conditions of that time? [/quote']

Yet there are Mountain Men, homesteaders, survivlaist, the Amish, and others who do pride themselves on living, if not a 15th century life, a pre-20th century one.

 

I went through a survivlalist period in my teens and 20's. Studied flint napping, trapping, and other primitive skills. Took down my first whitetail buck with a bow, dressed it with a knife I'd made myself.

 

Until my health went would go camping for three days or so three or four times a year, take a week off for hunting every fall. I still have plans for the dream house I wanted to build, while it had running water it had no electricity; used propane for the stove, refirgerator, and lights.

 

Anyway, I think you're mixing apples and oranges here. Don't think the colonist are going to go back to the tech level of when they left Earth, but taking their tech down to the new planet. It's like you asking "Conditions in 1400 CE were miserable, primative, and non-technological, so why would anyone want to live in Europe?" While I choose not to live in Europe, others do. While I chose not to live off the grid, it's nice to know that option is available.

 

We are already finding super-Jovian planets by their reflected light;

We are? I thought we were finding them by dopler shifts as their gravity makes their star wobble.

 

BTW' date=' it is now thought that the mas of all objects in the Kuiper's Belt is anywhere from 10 to 25 times the mass of all the planets, moons, asteroids, and other minor stuff. The mass of the Oort Cloud is considered 100x to 500x that of the Kuiper's Belt. Lack of materials is a non-issue.[/quote']

So IIRC the Oort Cloud may contain a full solar mass? If that's typical, could be a step toward solving the dark matter problem.

[Nyrath]

Re: What do you do onboard a starship?

 

We are? I thought we were finding them by dopler shifts as their gravity makes their star wobble.

Seeing planets by their light is a very recent development.

http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media/releases/ssc2005-09/release.shtml

http://space.com/scienceastronomy/030522_exoplanet_direct.html

 

But for the most part they've been doing it by detecting the wobble, as you said.

[austenandrews]

Re: What do you do onboard a starship?

 

Check out today's news:

 

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/050401_first_extrasolarplanet_pic.html

 

After a few close calls, astronomers have finally obtained the first photograph of a planet beyond our solar system, SPACE.com has learned.

[Lupus]

Re: What do you do onboard a starship?

 

Check out today's news:

 

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/050401_first_extrasolarplanet_pic.html

Um... article dated April 1?

 

I'll wait for confirmation.

[austenandrews]

Re: What do you do onboard a starship?

 

Man, nobody's falling for this stuff.

[DrTemp]

Re: What do you do onboard a starship?

 

Um... article dated April 1?

 

There are others.

 

http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050321/pf/050321-9_pf.html

[Nyrath]

Re: What do you do onboard a starship?

 

Seeing planets by their light is a very recent development.

http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media/releases/ssc2005-09/release.shtml

http://space.com/scienceastronomy/030522_exoplanet_direct.html

 

But for the most part they've been doing it by detecting the wobble, as you said.

Yes, I too am suspicious of the April 1 article. But my links above are from March 22nd.

[Supreme]

Re: What do you do onboard a starship?

 

Nothing to do with role playing, just want to get people's opinion.

 

Imagine a STL multigeneration ship. One thousand humans will start out from Earth, their descendants will reach another star system in a century. Population will increase to 25,000 during the trip. Ship can support 50,000 safely and comfortably. It is possible arriving at the new star system they will discover a planet with a breathable atmosphere. It is possible they will discover no usable resources (in which case they will use a gravity slingshot around the star to head to a different system. It is most likely they will find an Oort Cloud, and asteroid belt, and planets that can be terraformed in 100 to 1000 years. Communications will be maintained with Earth, and through Earth any sister ships, but speed of light lag insures these will be monologues rather than conversations.

 

Let us now assume that of the original 1000, 10% are needed to run the machinery (engines, navigation, communication, etc), and another 10% work in life support (air, water, sewage recycling, food production & preparation).

 

What is the job of the other initial 800? What specialities would you want to be sure to include?

Man does not live by bread alone. Entertainment will something of an industry. I imagine those folks will get bored. That means entertainers, and engineers to support the holo-decks or whatever medium of choise they use (even theaters require engineering). You also didn't mention anything about medicine or education (as others have mentioned). Then there's the fact that those 100+ engineers and 100+ life support people will want more time off of work.

[Adventus]

Re: What do you do onboard a starship?

 

A problem that has only partially addressed is illness. It was said that illness would run it's course fairly early in the trip because everybody would be immune to the diseases. Because of this, their immune systems would atrophy. The doctors would have to keep releasing new viruses into the environment to keep peoples immune systems strong. Otherwise you would have a population of sickly asthmatics.