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by calamari4065 873 days ago
Generally it's taken for granted that the technological problems with generation ships can be solved with sufficient time and resources. We can probably build a metal box that lasts for a thousand years. We can probably design a sustainable closed ecosystem. We could probably build fusion reactors that run on interstellar hydrogen collected with ramscoops.

But the real problem with generation ships is not technological. Technology can't solve the fundamental social and psychological problems of locking some humans in a box for a hundred generations. That's the most important problem, and the one that's usually waved away with "oh you just can't imagine future technology"

1 comments

You'd probably need to create a religion for them about some gods/ancients that they are serving in their mission. That seems to be how humans stay focused on long-term social organization across generations.
See the Mormon generation ship in The Expanse: https://expanse.fandom.com/wiki/Nauvoo_(Books)

They were intending to use the ship to get to the Tau Ceti system: https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/exoplanet-catalog/7179/tau-ceti-...

Mormonism seems well-suited for the religion role you mention since they have the concept of a particular planet being close to the residence of their god: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolob

Or modify them genetically making them biological robots. Or create artificial humanoids similar to Abh: https://seikai.fandom.com/wiki/Abh