[Turing_Machine]

> We're not going beyond our solar system. Ever.

Sorry, that simply isn't true. Multi-generation starships don't violate any laws of physics.

> How do you propose to travel for over 20 years?

By recognizing that you aren't coming back, and that even if you don't make it there, your children will.

I mean, we have examples of this even here on Earth. Moses and the Israelites supposedly wandered for 40 years. The pioneers who set out on the Oregon Trail largely knew it was a one-way trip. Other examples abound..

[taylodl]

> Multi-generation starships don't violate any laws of physics.

That's true - but they do violate what we know about psychology. You're signing on your progeny to be imprisoned on a ship from birth to death, when you yourself never had to endure that. Think about the sentiment behind the "Okay, Boomer..." memes and magnify that generational hatred several-fold. Someone is going to sabotage the ship and its crew long before they ever reach their destination. That's just how people work. Remember, we're not rational.

[Turing_Machine]

Any practical multi-generation starship is going to be the size of a small town, at a minimum, with open spaces and greenery inside.

Plenty of people have lived out their lives while rarely or never leaving their small town.

In fact, that was the default for most of human history.

[taylodl]

Yet they yearned for adventure - and many, many people went on such adventures. Now we live in an age of mass transportation where people routinely leave their towns to venture elsewhere. They take airplanes to fly to different parts of the world, they take their cars to go on trips, they go on cruises: they travel. They may live in the same town in which they grew up, but they've travelled quite further.

How is that going to work for your population confined to a ship the size of a small town? It isn't. It's science fiction.

[bluescrn]

> Now we live in an age of mass transportation where people routinely leave their towns to venture elsewhere

Future generations may grow up in a world of much more limited travel, existing in small areas of '15-minute cities' without cars, minimal access to air travel, living in tiny apartments, and most likely spending most of their time in some sort of metaverse, with very limited food choices. We'll have stopped burning fossil fuels and given most of the planet back to nature, and can't allow the working-class masses the transport/freedoms to access/enjoy/ruin it again.

If that's what the world comes to, it'll be a lot closer to life on a generation ship than the world we're used to today.

[taylodl]

That world you describe is a dystopia and it would probably be better for humanity to wink-out at that point. Then again, maybe by then we'll have bio-engineered ourselves to have a native port into VR working directly with our visual cortex. Then again, by the time we get to the point we need to be serious about getting out of the solar system (100 million years) we arguably wouldn't even be the same species as today - especially as we'll have been bioengineering ourselves for millions of years by that point.

Not that any of this solves the problem of humanity having nowhere to go. The trip is ultimately futile since the stars you're going to are also dying.

[Turing_Machine]

> Yet they yearned for adventure

Some did. Most stayed in their little town for their entire lives.

> How is that going to work for your population confined to a ship the size of a small town?

The same way it worked for small towns before mass transportation was available.