Settlement & Exploration ropogation

[Outsider]

Say you have relatively inexpensive, durable starships that move at some given speed and that can manage their own refueling 'in the field'.

 

How far from home base would you expect them to commonly range? A month's travel time? A year's? A decade's? More?

 

How long are people willing to be cooped up on a starship, do you think?

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Settlement & Exploration ropogation

 

It would probably be roughly equivalent to the amount of time people spent on sailing ships without making landfall.

[Basil]

Re: Settlement & Exploration ropogation

 

Say you have relatively inexpensive, durable starships that move at some given speed and that can manage their own refueling 'in the field'.

 

How far from home base would you expect them to commonly range? A month's travel time? A year's? A decade's? More?

 

How long are people willing to be cooped up on a starship, do you think?

 

It would probably be roughly equivalent to the amount of time people spent on sailing ships without making landfall.

 

Unless the ship is a "generation ship" of course.

[McCoy]

Re: Settlement & Exploration ropogation

 

It would probably be roughly equivalent to the amount of time people spent on sailing ships without making landfall.

IIRC food and water storage were the limiting factors on sailing ships. Food had a higher spoilage rate, preserved food often lacked vitamins, and when the fresh water ran out all you could do was make landfall or pray for rain.

 

Nuclear subs routeinly go on six month missions.

 

How big are the ships? If they are human social interaction among the crew may be the limiting factor, the larger the crew the more time it takes for "cabin Fever" to set in.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Settlement & Exploration ropogation

 

Hmm...yeah, with generation ships and nuclear subs in mind, my answer would have to change to "What kind of starship is it? How big? How many crew members? What is their mission?"

 

For a ship with a small crew, tight quarters, and no pressing need to be out that long, my previous answer stands.

[Cancer]

Re: Settlement & Exploration propogation

 

I have the impression that the Captain is right: with your posited tech, the limits on duration are human ones, and historical data suggest that limit is six months or so "holding your breath" (like the subs do now), and a few years if you can get a day or two of shore leave every few months but remain effectively bound to the ship for all other purposes (as was the case in the 1500s).

 

You could, if you wanted, alter that toward shorter time limits by making an assertion about some non-renewable essential supplies item that can't be fabricated or gathered in the field. That makes the excursion limit technological rather than human, and it's easier to handwave changes in tech factors if sometime down the road in your campaign you decide you need that.

 

And you could alter it to longer time limits by asserting an intermediate-length sleep technology, that is, suspended animation (or some other arrangement for preventing humans from experiencing the passage of time, like Niven's Known Space stories' stasis fields) with a modest time-expansion factor (i.e., people only have to be awake for 10% of trip, so the trips could routinely be 6 months times 1/(10%) = 5 years or so.

 

EDIT: not especially informative but a bit more detail is a PowerPoint presentation at http://www.utmb.edu/otoref/grnds/closed-env-human-factors-070815/closed-env-human-factors.pdf

[LordGhee]

Re: Settlement & Exploration ropogation

 

Hey astornauts have stayed over a year in the space station.

 

Michael Foale, holds the American and British Record for time spent in space at 374 days, 11 hours, 19 minutes

 

Sergei Krikalev, six space flights and, as of 2006, holds record for longest total time in space: 803 days, 9 hours and 39 minutes.

 

That right poor Kiralev got left in space do to a lack of money to get him back LOL

 

 

Lord Ghee

[McCoy]

Re: Settlement & Exploration ropogation

 

Sergei Krikalev' date=' six space flights and, as of 2006, holds record for longest total time in space: 803 days, 9 hours and 39 minutes.[/quote']

Didn't they bring him down when he threatened to murder another Cosmonaut?

[Merovign]

Re: Settlement & Exploration ropogation

 

Also consider methods for keeping people in space longer. Sleep tech has already been mentioned, but one thing that isn't used very often (fictionally speaking) is psychology and psychotropic drugs.

 

Psychology computers (a la THX 1138 and Demolition Man), drugs (a la Brave New World and Equilibrium) are likely to be used in the real world on and off for "behavior modification," but obviously they present problems in an RPG setting. As background story, they can provide some (cool or creepy) atmosphere, but simply drugging up players or going all "Clockwork Orange" on them could present some real playability problems.

 

"Sleep Tech" also brings up the idea of crew rotation, where half the crew sleeps while half is awake. Also, the "psych machines and drugs" thing above could create whole plots for you (like the ship's computer that periodically "resets" the crew to think they just left, so a 10-year voyage seems like a 6-month voyage until the crew get home 10 years later).

 

The obvious ideal answer is huge ships, at least the size of a Supercarrier, with a higher percentage of "civilian" crew, recreation facilities, extensive time off, etc. A true "city in space," kind of like the old anime Macross where the re-built alien ship literally had a city inside it, high-rise buildings and all.

 

Following on The Matrix (no, I don't watch too many movies), the crew could run the ship from inside a simulated reality that affords them plenty of distractions without taking up all that room and energy on a ship.

 

Lots and lots of options, though if your goal is to play the "stir crazy" story, you'd skip most of them.

[tkdguy]

Re: Settlement & Exploration ropogation

 

One thing you may wish to consider is the effects of living in microgravity for a long time. Over time, people's muscles atrophy. They lose bone mass. Their blood flow isn't regulated the way it is on Earth. With that in mind, you may wish to have some sort of artificial gravity on the ships by having parts of them spin (or continuously accelerate, but that brings up other problems). Also consider the effects of living on a world where gravity is not that of Earth's.

[LordGhee]

Re: Settlement & Exploration ropogation

 

Right now Nasa is planning a 3 year mission to mars.

 

Lord Ghee

[tkdguy]

Re: Settlement & Exploration ropogation

 

True, and people are living in simulated environments and trying to recreate the Martian environment as much as possible. But again, they know Martian gravity is only 38% that of Earth's, and even they aren't sure how that will affect them. Still, it's something worth attempting. And if we ever do establish a permanent colony there, maybe future generations will be better able to adapt to Mars if they're born there.

[pinecone]

Re: Settlement & Exploration ropogation

 

I'd be unsuprised if the "max" turns out to be around 10 years....Monastic orders can also be a model for a starship, and they live "inside" for their whole lives...

[pinecone]

Re: Settlement & Exploration ropogation

 

Shoot, crew the ship with Gamers, add two or three good GM's and they'd never leave....

[tkdguy]

Re: Settlement & Exploration ropogation

 

Shoot' date=' crew the ship with Gamers, add two or three good GM's and they'd never leave....[/quote']

Someone started a thread with that very idea in the General Roleplaying forum. I mentioned sex and inadvertently derailed the thread. My bad!

[The Weapon]

Re: Settlement & Exploration Propogation

 

Say you have relatively inexpensive, durable starships that move at some given speed and that can manage their own refueling 'in the field'.

 

How far from home base would you expect them to commonly range? A month's travel time? A year's? A decade's? More?

 

How long are people willing to be cooped up on a starship, do you think?

 

Well it depends on the people and what they consider to be an unacceptable depravation of social interaction. I personally have regular significant face to face interactions with fewer than 20 people. Most of the rest is either small transactions (unneccesary if you're living off ship supplies) or some form of online or telephonic communications. Does the ship have the capacity to phone home? Or at least email home? If it has the former then a lot of the isolation is mitigated. Is the reason you're on the ship really really important? Exactly how desperate are you for a paycheck? People will put up with a lot for something important, even if it's just paying off crushing debts and living on something other than beans for the rest of their life.

 

Offhand I'd say that a one year round trip is pretty acceptable if the reason is as important to the crew as a military "tour" is to a military person. Of course with trips that long it's hard to get anyone to agree to being on ship more than 50% of the time, so a year on, a year off maybe. This is assuming that there are plenty of other employment opportunities. It's also assuming that crewing ships is not done by family/social group. If your society consists of your family/crew and the people you encounter when it docks then you can cruse forever. Of course inbreedings a problem, so you have to pick up new crew to provide the next generation. Hopefully this process is voluntary:eek:.

[Comic]

Re: Settlement & Exploration ropogation

 

I hear rumors that there are families in Minneapolis-St. Paul who have not stepped foot outdoors in two generations.

[sbarron]

Re: Settlement & Exploration ropogation

 

I hear rumors that there are families in Minneapolis-St. Paul who have not stepped foot outdoors in two generations.

Do tell...

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Settlement & Exploration ropogation

 

If the only thing waiting for me outside was Minneapolis, I think I'd stay indoors as well.

[tkdguy]

Re: Settlement & Exploration ropogation

 

If the only thing waiting for me outside was Minneapolis' date=' I think I'd stay indoors as well.[/quote']

What's wrong with Minneapolis?

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Settlement & Exploration ropogation

 

What's wrong with Minneapolis?

 

Thoose peeple tok funny, doonchanoo?

 

Nah, seriously, my only experience of Minneapolis, aside from Minnesota accents, is a two hour layover at the airport during a snowstorm. It just seemed like a funny thing to say.

[tkdguy]

Re: Settlement & Exploration ropogation

 

Here are some notes I took a few years back when I was coming up with ideas for my campaign. Here are the steps on colonizing other worlds I outlined.

 

1. Send robots and materials to the planet or moon. This can be a slow trip, to conserve fuel.

 

2. Once the robots land, they build the habitat. They may begin terraforming the surrounding area on a very small scale.

 

3. Humans make a fast trip to the planet. Once they settle in, they can continue and expand the terraforming process.

 

By the slow and fast trips, I was referring to the VASIMR system, which can vary the rocket's thrust and specific impulse.

 

Also, I realize terraforming takes centuries, if not millenia to complete. But I can see the process beginning soon after colonization begins. Perhaps it won't start after humans settle in, however.