Generation starships and their internal society structure

[Nyrath]

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/11/designing_society_for_posterit.html

 

Generation starships: they're not fast.

 

If you can crank yourself up to 1% of light-speed, alpha centauri is more than four and a half centuries away at cruising speed. To put it in perspective, that's the same span of time that separates us from the Conquistadores and the Reformation; it's twice the lifespan of the United States of America.

 

We humans are really bad at designing institutions that outlast the life expectancy of a single human being. The average democratically elected administration lasts 3-8 years; public corporations last 30 years; the Leninist project lasted 70 years (and went off the rails after a decade). The Catholic Church, the Japanese monarchy, and a few other institutions have lasted more than a millennium, but they're all almost unrecognizably different.

[Clonus]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

The subject of generation starship economics came up on the GURPS board in regard to the GURPS Spaceships generation ships. There was a really neat faster than light generation ship that had people wondering why there wasn't enough power to run the engines and the onboard factory at the same time. The answer, of course, was that the ship isn't going to be mining raw materials to run its factory while travelling at faster than light speeds (or even a significant fraction of light speed). You can't run a growth-oriented economy while trapped in what might as well be a pocket universe several miles wide. There are only two sources for "new" stuff (information aside), the contents of the cargo holds and used stuff being recycled back into what it used to be.

 

Honestly it doesn't matter HOW ship-board society mutates, as long we can keep them from doing the things that will compromise ship's safety or leave the final generation totally unprepared for debarkation. The safest approach would probably involve a constitutional popular democracy (although I suspect it will eventually adopt a policy of voting on who should be recycled at regular intervals). After that, I'd go with with a highly ritualized caste system but that has iffy implications for the chances of their survival on an alien world with nothing to go on but the information beamed back from whatever probes told Earth this was a place worth going to.

[Duke Bushido]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

Nice find, Nyrath. Stirred up some early memories of my space opera setting.

 

Generational ships don't come up much in them anymore (except as curious anomalies), but the concept was vital for some of the "world building" that went into shaping the campaign world history prior to play.

 

Neat read!

[Jagged]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

Doesn't it all change if you can get to a reasonable propotion of light speed?

 

I'm sure I remember reading some calculations about Generation ships moving at half the speed of light or above and effectively replicating themselves like a virus at every star. In a few hundred generations humans would be everywhere in the known universe

[Clonus]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

All that would take is devoting many years of the Sun's entire output of energy to get up to that speed. But if you could do it, while it would be a long trip, it wouldn't be a generation ship.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

Waaaaaaaaahhhh!!!!!!!!!

 

Charles' Site, she's nae loadin' for me...

 

 

*sulk*

[Beast]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

Depending on the speed of travel and the mode you could have a growing economy by harvesting asteroids along your flight path

mine then for more raw materials hollow out and seal up construct power,drives,etc...

presto more living space to expand into

think the Jindarians from Star Fleet Battles board game

this would also allow insurance against the ship having an accident or attack wiping out the whole ship

also as parts and ships wear out new ones replace the old

[Nyrath]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

Waaaaaaaaahhhh!!!!!!!!!

 

Charles' Site, she's nae loadin' for me...

 

 

*sulk*

 

Use Google Cache:

 

http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.antipope.org%2Fcharlie%2Fblog-static%2F2009%2F11%2Fdesigning_society_for_posterit.html&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

[Clonus]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

Depending on the speed of travel and the mode you could have a growing economy by harvesting asteroids along your flight path

mine then for more raw materials hollow out and seal up construct power,drives,etc...

 

That's not a generation ship though. That's just a ship-ship. A generation ship is a ship that takes literally generations to arrive at a destination. A star nomad ship like you describe would be taking no more than a few months or years to arrive at the next comet or asteroid for more foraging.

[Beast]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

you might as well put everybody in stasis except for a small crew if you want to keep the same culture before the exodus

 

the destination can be set

it just might take a while to get there

so new supplies must be gathered along the way till they get to the promised land

 

while the Jindarians may have been a bad example because of the speed of travel in the SFB universe

But harvesting asteroids to expand living space and expand the colony size and survivability when they get there would not

they may not have a fuel supply that can sustain them the whole trip let alone a ship that could last a few hundred yrs of constant use

 

when man first learn to fly he did not cross the atlantic or pacific in 1 hop

they had to hop from fuel stop to fuel stop why should it be different for space travel that takes generations to complete

unless of course your story has them meeting nobody or truly no major repairs are needed(replacing large portions of the hull0

 

you could of course just build a ship a million times bigger that what is needed so the population can expand along the trip

 

That's not a generation ship though. That's just a ship-ship. A generation ship is a ship that takes literally generations to arrive at a destination. A star nomad ship like you describe would be taking no more than a few months or years to arrive at the next comet or asteroid for more foraging.

[Clonus]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

you might as well put everybody in stasis except for a small crew if you want to keep the same culture before the exodus

 

the destination can be set

it just might take a while to get there

so new supplies must be gathered along the way till they get to the promised land

 

 

Since you need to accelerate and decelerate at every stop, they will never reach their theoretical destination.

[Beast]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

depends on your mode of travel

lets say it takes 1000 yrs to get there at say 10% of c

your ship needs 1 or 2 months to get up to speed or to stop or you just need to slow down a bit so you can send engineers forward to scout and ready the target subjects,maneuver them into position,dock then then speed up and be on your way

you do the work as you travel

you might stop once every 200 yrs it might add a decade or 2 if you are really slow

95% of the time you will just be coasting

there will be generations that will never see a new ship harvested from an Oort cloud or asteroid belt

heck odds are you would not want to have your generation ship even getting close enough to be damaged by then inner solar system

 

you would just need to have the new engines ready to go when you decide to add to your little fleet

 

 

Since you need to accelerate and decelerate at every stop' date=' they will never reach their theoretical destination.[/quote']

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

Well, just off the top of my head, you'd want to ban education. Nothing keeps people in their place in the middle of a complex machine like total lack of scientific knowledge. Just on the off chance, though, you'd probably want to downplay the machine part with some potted plants and a matte sky. Just enough to convince, say, a 60s TV viewer that this was an outside set. For rulers, you'd want to go with an evil priest god-king type. The "evil" part might require some psychological profiling, but I can assure you that it's necessary. That said, he'd also have to be pretty good looking, because his daughter ought to be smokin'.

Now, nothing keeps society together like human sacrifice, so you'll need a pyramid, and a regular supply of sacrificees. To a point you can get away with using inquisitive, intelligent members of your crew-society. I mean, what else are they good for? That said, you'll probably want to keep some ancient astronauts in stasis and thaw them out on a regular basis. Nothing gets a good human sacrifice going like strapping some hunk of astronaut down to the table and then standing around fiddling with your obsidian blade (Note to self: pack obsidian blades) while he monologues like a JFK stand-in.

It goes without saying that there will have to be cute, intelligent creatures around. Make sure that they're bright enough to steal rings of keys (Note to self: probably need some locks. Can Neolithic technology produce locks? Research req.) and a few scenes, but still dumber than the astronauts. No, strike that. You'll probably want a macaw monkey, and it will turn out to be brighter than the astronaut.

Okay, cute, intelligent, scene-stealing, key-stealing creatures that can't talk. That's the ticket.

Polish it all off with some lame references to traditional Earth society --Aztecs are good, but Jungle Pygmies will do-- and you have the makings of a generation ship society that will conquer the stars! Or steer the ship into a sun, which is almost as good.

[Nyrath]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

And of course there is the "Metamorphosis Alpha" meme.

[Cancer]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

How long did the longest-lived of the Chinese dynasties last? Those were hydraulic despotisms, and there's ample room for monopolistic despotism on a long-haul interstellar ship.

[Nyrath]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

How long did the longest-lived of the Chinese dynasties last? Those were hydraulic despotisms' date=' and there's ample room for monopolistic despotism on a long-haul interstellar ship.[/quote']

 

Indeed.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_despotism

 

"Hydraulic state" is a term coined by Oswald Spengler in "Decline Of The West" to describe the societies of the Eurasian arid zone which were built on massive irrigation systems. By extension to has come to apply to any society which owes its current state of existence to a massive infrastructure.

 

The outstanding characteristic of hydraulic states is that their existence depends utterly on maintaining this elaborate infrastructure. If that is damaged or destroyed the civilization isn't merely damaged, it collapses. Meanwhile if the infrastructure is maintained such societies tend to be extraordinarily rich and productive.

 

What this means is that the infrastructure has to be maintained at all costs and in a successful hydraulic state (in the pure form) this is a major consideration in everything, from government to economic policy to military posture to culture. In such states civil war and anarchy are disasters.

 

 

A space colony or a Dyson sphere is by its nature a particularly pure form of a hydraulic state. If you maintain the infrastructure it is rich and productive. Seriously damage that infrastructure and nearly everyone dies. The entire society is far more dependent on maintaining the infrastructure than any irrigation empire ever was on Earth.

 

Under these circumstances there is both a huge incentive (and a strong cultural imperative) to find solutions for social conflicts short of civil war -- or even strong disorder. Buying off your dissident elements by helping them build a new colony or a generation ship to go to the next star becomes a heck of a lot more attractive than fighting it out because if you fight both groups are almost certain to lose big-time.

 

From A World Out Of Time by Larry Niven

 

"... do you know what a water-monopoly empire is?"

 

"... A lot of early civilizations were water-monopoly empires. Ancient Egypt, ancient China, the Aztecs. Any government that controls irrigation completely is a water empire... See, these water-monopoly empires, they don't collapse. They can rot from within, to the point where a single push from the barbarians outside can topple them. The levels of society lose touch with each other, and when it comes to the crunch, they can't fight. But it takes that push from outside. There's no revolution in a water empire."

 

"That's a very strong statement."

 

"Yeah. Do you know how the two-province system works? They used it in China. Say there are two provinces, A and B, and they're both having a famine. What you do is, you look at their records. If Province A has a record of cheating on its taxes or rioting, then you confiscate all the grain in Province A and ship it to B. If the records are about equal you pick at random. The result is that Province B is loyal forever, and Province A is wiped out so you don't worry about it...."

 

"There's nothing more powerful than controlling everybody's water. A water- control empire can grow so feeble that a single barbarian horde can topple it..."

 

A push from outside, eh? Like the player characters coming across an old generation ship? For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched The Sky.

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

That link is ..appalling. Rescuing Wittfogel with Said? Really, now.

I cannot imagine a more thoroughly refuted bit of hogwash than Wittfogel's "hydraulic despotism." Apart from all of its other problems (i.e. total lack of value for describing the history of anywhere, anytime), every state that has ever existed has had to manage hydraulic resources. England, Jacksonian America, the Holy Roman Empire, Celtic Ireland.. dip into the right sources and you'll read at endless length about millstreams, millponds, dykes, canals, water meadows, "up and down husbandry," "in-field, out-field.... where there's enough water for agriculture, chances are that it is in the wrong place. Someone really needs to write a book about one of the Venerable Bede's trips up Watling Street" mountains to the right, endless watery waste to the left all the way down to the sea, the long, straight, dyked Roman road leading on ever southwards. And there now are prosperous farms as far as the eye can see, right in the midst of the modern English hydraulic despotism.

 

For those interested, and apologising for reposting a link that I'm sure I've posted before: http://www.amazon.ca/Myths-Archaic-State-Evolution-Civilizations/dp/0521521564/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258674004&sr=8-1

And for novelties' sake if no other: http://www.amazon.ca/Eight-Eurocentric-Historians-J-M-Blaut/dp/1572305916/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258674047&sr=1-1

I believe that Blaut has a go at Wittfogel, although if he does, he has to dig him up and dust him off, first.

[Nyrath]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

That link is ..appalling. Rescuing Wittfogel with Said? Really' date=' now[/quote']

I'll take your word for it, as I know very little about it.

However, the link was to Wikipedia. Which means if the article is not currently a hot-button topic, you can edit it and correct it.

[Kristopher]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

There's a kernel of truth there, in the ability of the state that directly controls individual access to a vital resource to have a tremendous amount of power over individual lives, whether that's food, water, energy, whatever -- the threat of cutting it off is a massive lever.

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

I know. I'm being grumpy, and I take your correction and encouragement, Nyrath. And while I'm apologising for being grumpy, let me extend that apology to Cancer, too.

That said, while I have pretty big problems with Wittfogel, obsolete ideas are not high on the priority list for Wikipedia edit wars. The thing is that this article is also someone's attempt to

pump a particular (weird) theory that has precious little to do with Wittfogel except as a sort of quasi-mystical Founding Father.

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

There's a kernel of truth there' date=' in the ability of the state that directly controls individual access to a vital resource to have a tremendous amount of power over individual lives, whether that's food, water, energy, whatever -- the threat of cutting it off is a massive lever.[/quote']

 

 

Well, no, because it begs the question of whether the state actually has that power. Largescale irrigation systems do not, by and large, work that way. On the contrary, they rely pretty heavily on local cooperation, since otherwise the levees or sluices begin to unaccountably leak. It's like when Louis XIV attacked Holland in 1672, and the Estates General opened the sluices to inundate the land around Amsterdam --and the land didn't flood. Once William of Orange was appointed Stadholder, as the farmers preferred, the water levels began to rise....

(http://books.google.ca/books?id=mu79HAAACAAJ&dq=mary+trevelyan+netherlands&lr=)

[Nyrath]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

I know. I'm being grumpy, and I take your correction and encouragement, Nyrath. And while I'm apologising for being grumpy, let me extend that apology to Cancer, too.

That said, while I have pretty big problems with Wittfogel, obsolete ideas are not high on the priority list for Wikipedia edit wars. The thing is that this article is also someone's attempt to

pump a particular (weird) theory that has precious little to do with Wittfogel except as a sort of quasi-mystical Founding Father.

 

No apology required, your comments were grumpy but not personal.

And if the Wikipedia article is somebody's attempt to pump a particular weird theory, then perhaps it should be edited to be a bit more mainstream.

[Kristopher]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

Well, no, because it begs the question of whether the state actually has that power. Largescale irrigation systems do not, by and large, work that way. On the contrary, they rely pretty heavily on local cooperation, since otherwise the levees or sluices begin to unaccountably leak. It's like when Louis XIV attacked Holland in 1672, and the Estates General opened the sluices to inundate the land around Amsterdam --and the land didn't flood. Once William of Orange was appointed Stadholder, as the farmers preferred, the water levels began to rise....

(http://books.google.ca/books?id=mu79HAAACAAJ&dq=mary+trevelyan+netherlands&lr=)

 

I wasn't limiting the idea to just water.

 

Obviously, if the people with their hands on the levers don't cooperate, it complicates things. On the other hand, it is quite often that a tyrant does get his army and secret police to do his oppressive bidding, yes?

[Clonus]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

There are things that will help keep a generation ship stable. There's no source of external pressure for one thing. A lot of enfeebled dynasties could have continued a lot longer had there been no barbarians to move in as soon as the borders weren't being maintained. Also, it will have, will have to have due to the issue of payload versus thrust, a relatively small, close-knit population, little more than a space going small town.

[Nyrath]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

There are things that will help keep a generation ship stable. There's no source of external pressure for one thing.

Again, this is true up until the point where some joker back on the origin planet invents a FTL drive, and flies out to the generation ship to be a tourist. Since a hydraulic empire can become incredibly weak, hilarity will ensue. Possibly fatal hilarity for the tourist(s).

 

Evil game masters will already see where I am going with this.