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Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition

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Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition

#291

Post by varjag »

icetank wrote: post #246
varjag wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Europeans" is kinda broad brush. Norwegians around me had little trouble following the safety instructions. Still not sold though that the cohesion in an small, resource constrained, artificial community can hold over a few generations. Huge risks of it degrading into some cult/dictatorship.

I don't see why smaller societies should not be able to thrive. My grandparents said once that back in the day you could identify what rural village someone was from by their accent. Meaning populations inside of villages changed very little. And most of these villages did just fine with populations as low as 200.

They all existed within the greater (regional, national) social context. There still was freedom of movement even if at much greater cost. There were avenues for delinquents and outcasts to seek fortunes in the cities or even overseas. There was no overarching purpose imposed on their life other than the religion.

This is not to say that generation ship societies are doomed to fail but chances are decent.

Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition

#292

Post by m4rtink »

ascorbic wrote: post #176
Mistletoe wrote: post #61

What's the cost for getting all that to space? Is it still about $4,000/kg? What's a rough idea about how much Chrysalis would weigh? 2.4M tons it says. ~2.2B kg = $8.8 trillion dollars just for the launch costs alone? I also thought this was interesting from the 2nd place booklet. Did not know this. >The chance of a successful pregnancy in deep space without a geomagnetic field is essentially zero. >During mitosis a…

They suggest that a lot could come from the moon. This page has the rough breakdown of where each part would come from https://www.canva.com/design/DAGmr3ubC8E/LHHAeeAIGGQe_TkZVs-...

Yeah, no way space projects this size are built from materials lifted from earths gravity well. Like, you could probably do it as an achievement with launch loops[0] or an space elevator[1]. But it makes no sense if you have material ready to use just flaoting in space (asteroids) or in a much more shallow gravity well (Lunar stuff can be easily launched to orbit via mass drivers).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_loop [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator

Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition

#294

Post by m4rtink »

olddustytrail wrote: post #290
AngryData wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Provided the first generation volunteered, I expect the second generation would still be indoctrinate enough to the idea and mission to be fine, but the third generation would definitely be stirring some shit up.

Not really. That would just be the way life is to those people. Showing them videos of how people lived on a planet would be like asking them to imagine how a caveman lived. If they did rebel it would probably be more along the lines of reaching the target inhabitable planet and refusing to leave the ship. Just grab enough material to set a new course for the next one and keep going. The next set of rebels would be t…

Living on a ball of rock with no climate controll ? Are you insane ? Do what you want, I'll go back to building that new custom Stanford Torus we just got started last cycle. And don't call for help when it inevitably starts raining!

Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition

#295

Post by andrewla »

NoGravitas wrote: post #264
andrewla wrote: post #256

On this thread people are pointing out many potential problems with all of these solutions. I think all have an element of validity but in the end a much bigger problem is the complete unknowns. The good news is that there is a system for measuring the effectiveness of the potential solutions. That system is called "reality". If humanity builds a single "ark" then it is very likely to fail. The trick is that we need…

The generation ship in KSR's "Aurora" failed due to unknown unknowns. I'd very much hate to have lived on it as it did, and I would be unwilling to condemn tens or hundreds of thousands of people to the same fate as an experiment.

There were numerous ships that attempted to traverse the Atlantic to form colonies in the Americas. Many were lost, or died out, or failed to thrive for unknown unknowns. And many survived and flourished for reasons not even the settlers understood, and which frankly we will probably never understand because the moment has passed.

In Aurora society took a one-shot approach. This strikes me as unrealistic; why weren't there dozens of competing attempts? I thought the book was one of the best treatments of generation ships that I've ever seen in scifi except for this. And I don't love the "also we discovered new physics and made a sentient AI on our ship somehow" plots (the latter is also a reason I never liked "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress"). I get that it feels unjust or unfair or morally wrong to subject new generations to an experiment that they never signed up for, but that's just the way that humanity works -- all of our children are part of an experiment that they never signed up for, because none of us know (or can even conceivably know) the "right" way or environment in which to raise children.

Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition

#296

Post by m4rtink »

antisthenes wrote: post #278
Zigurd wrote: post #272

The words "woman" or "women" appear zero times on this thread up to my composing this post. The word "female" appears once in the context of how to breed a next generation without any women. That's why none of this is going to work. Is that blunt enough for you? Have any of you asked a woman about the utter insanity of generation ships? Do you think maybe the tech industry still needs to do some work about gender equ…

It's not going to work because the energy requirements of reaching another habitable planet through interstellar space are mind-bogglingly high. You need to be able to run a fusion reaction in space, for 100+ years and have absolutely nothing in the system break or require maintenance. Until you do this, these spaceship competitions are just fancy CGI renders.

I think with highly enriched uranium you could definitely power a (set of spare) fishion reactors for that long during transit with reasonable mass budget.

Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition

#297

Post by jandrese »

ascorbic wrote: post #171
jandrese wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, individual weirdos can do that for a few years. But you're talking about literally millennia of travel. Hundreds of generations of people living their entire life on the bus never getting to the destination before they die. Trapped out in the cold empty void of space with literally nothing around, for their entire lives, and the lives of their children, and their children's children, for longer than we have had…

In this exercise, it's 400 years. A long time, yes, but nowhere near what you're suggesting.

We don't have anywhere near the engine technology to make it anywhere worth going to in 400 years. That's orders of magnitude more difficult.

Anywhere that might sustain life is no closer than a couple thousand years away if we develop ultra-efficient almost magical engines that only bend the laws of physics instead of breaking them outright. Stuff like accelerating the propellent so hard that it picks up enormous amounts of relativistic mass, like every gram of propellant weighs effectively a ton because you've accelerated it so close to the speed of light, which requires some kind of ultra-dense power source that makes mere matter-antimatter annihilation look like burning a match.

Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition

#298

Post by m4rtink »

zdragnar wrote: post #270
FuriouslyAdrift wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speed isn't the problem... time is. Long term travel in space will destroy the body. Even with artificial gravity, cancer is nearly inevitable. I am ignoring the mental and emotional issues. Astronauts are extremely tough individuals. Now, if we can figure out some form of suspended animation, that fixes many problems for long range travel. I am much more convinced that our best way to leave our solar system will be…

> Now, if we can figure out some form of suspended animation You'll still need someone awake to pilot the ship, otherwise you'll end up crash landed on a planet with Riddick running loose.

Yep, it is always a good idea to have a flight crew[0] when most of the passengers are in hibernation. It might take them some time but they will always sort thing out in the end! :)

[0] https://revelationspace.fandom.com/wiki/Galactic_North_(shor...

Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition

#299

Post by jandrese »

Ekaros wrote: post #165
jandrese wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fundamental problem with Ark ships. They're just much harder to build versions of fully self-sufficient orbital colonies. Not only do you need to install the enormous thrusters, but you have to be able to operate without any inputs at all. No solar power. No imports of mass from asteroids or elsewhere. No increasing genetic diversity via swapping people between other colonies. What advantage is there in moving yo…

Slightly less chance of dying in very tiny solar system destroying effect. Traded to much higher risk of dying for some other risk or system failure. Anything affecting solar system likely affects also any ark on the way... And well inside solar system you might be able to get some support. Where as outside none... Just what sort of population would enter that risk profile? Especially when there is little to gain for…

Even if the sun explodes you're probably better off staying in the solar system and picking through the remnants than trying to make the trip out to another solar system.

Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition

#300

Post by m4rtink »

icetank wrote: post #248
jvanderbot wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is not "Would a randomly selected demographic be a good pool for this mission" The question is "Could we create a cadre of 400 highly effective people that could sustain a colony on a spaceship. I argue the answer to the first is "No" for any demographic but the answer to the second is a clear "Yes".

Maybe the issue is that people assume that a randomly selected population would consist of US citizens. What if you picked Japanese? They did well during covid. An they are know for having a strong communal responsibility. Maybe the average US citizen is just a bad choice for a generation ship? Then again given the choice between sending foreign citizen's or sending no generation ship would probably result in no gene…

People from latin america might be a good match - last time the fleet of generation ships not only reached the destination in sufficient number, but one of them even ahead of schedule[0]!

[0] https://revelationspace.fandom.com/wiki/Sky_Haussmann

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