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My friend and I were talking about this a lot a few days before school ended, so Ive decided to post the topic on dakka.

We were talking about what a ship would need to send a lot of people to the nearest star. (lets assume there is some kind of planet orbiting it.) This would probably be the most expensive thing the human race has ever made. (lets also assume all the nations in the world are cooperating to make the ship.) A good place to get most of the metal for the ship would be in the asteroid belt. Once this ship was built, there would be three groups of people going on this ship. One: a group of civvies that have an understanding of the systems on the ship around them. Enough to upkeep it. Two: A group of some of the most brilliant doctors, engineers, physicists, military strategists, etc... They would be in cryogenic sleep. They would be woken up when the destination was reached and/or when something has gone horribly wrong so they can fix it. Three: Soldiers. Highly trained soldiers that have been taken from all the special forces groups on the planet. (about three companies worth) They will be especially good at clearing tight spaces, recon, and will be able to use most of the weapons supplied to them. They will have pressurized fighting suits that can administer meds to them, increase their strength, and have special sheers that can seal off the suit if the users limb is blown off, so they dont die of explosive decompression. The standard weapon that these soldiers will have will be some sort of automatic carbine. Good for close quarters and something with a high fire rate.

The ship is going to have many, many features including weapons. We cant assume we are the only life in the universe. The ship would mainley have MAC guns (like from halo) that would fire a projectile about the size of a car. The ship will also be able to support plant life to produce oxygen. The ship will be spining as to simulate gravity during the long flight to its destination. It will also be able take hydrogen from space and combine it with oxygen to make water.

I know I have forgotten some features of this ship so I might post on this thread again. So... Thoughts or ideas on this?

To get hydrogen from space you would have to go to a star, and as the purpose of the journey is to visit another star, you wouldn't be able to get any hydrogen.

It strikes me that the amount of militarisation on the ship is a bit over the top, even if we don't assume that we are the only life in the universe we can't assume that the other life isn't friendly either, and if it is friendly, having 3 companies worth of soldiers wouldn't make a particularly good impression.

This reminds me of a story about a surgeon, a physicist and an economist, who are in a pub drinking and vying with each other.

The conversation gets around to the creation of the universe.

The surgeon says that obviously God was a surgeon, because he took a rib from Adam and used it to create EVe. Obviously the work of a surgeon.

The physicist disagrees, pointing out that the world existed before Adam, and God had created it out of Chaos, obviously the work of a physicist.

"Ah!" says the economist. "But where do you think the Chaos came from?"

Two edge sword. Not enough military then the mission could have been a possible failure of "getting the scientists out" . If to many military the combat leader going to rely on what het/she see's in front of them.

I wouldn't want to be the grunt to approach some alien unarmed...I feel better if they let me take my combat blade but I also know there be like 4 snipers on target. Can't send the scientist first a grunt is cheaper

Nuke the site from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.

Only most of the weapons supplied to them?
That seems like something waiting to go wrong...

If something is wrapped around the face...nuke the site from orbit....repeatedly and NEVER set foot on the planet

The presence or absence of a strong military element to an interstellar mission is a definite tricky point.

If the military presence is too weak, you run the risk of having the mission destroyed for no return at all. If the military presence is too strong, you run the risk of looking too aggressive if we run into another starfaring race - possibly even creating a war where it wasn't necessary.

But the level of military presence is secondary. What is really important is the careful balace of curiousity vs. paranoia in the chain of command. Because someone too curious will ignore threats, and someone too paranoid will ignore opportunites. Both can be disasterous.

A defensive stance aboard would probably be best...
At the most you'd need a way for the ship to defend itself and someway to blow the entire ship to dust... just in case...

Jumpin Jesus wrote:
We were talking about what a ship would need to send a lot of people to the nearest star. (lets assume there is some kind of planet orbiting it.) This would probably be the most expensive thing the human race has ever made. (lets also assume all the nations in the world are cooperating to make the ship.)

Not necessarily. You need a springboard civilisatiion in low orbital colonies. They need not be many and they need not be rich. It is possible under a form of voluntary scientific communism, enlightened individuals joining a collective space program for the purposes of dedicating their lives for the propogation of humanity and an earthlike biosphere into space. This could be cheap, it doesnt need a lot of money it requires a carefully chosen community and no interference.

Jumpin Jesus wrote:
A good place to get most of the metal for the ship would be in the asteroid belt.

You make the ship out of foam plastic with a hydrogen core to the foam, a few metres thick. This will be placed in multiple layers which handily act as the floor and ceiling of outer colony levels. Hydrogen based foam blocks radiation real nice. Its also light and buildable by constructing a plastic inner and outer shell then fulling the void between with foam. A large volume hull can be quite inexpensive. Metal is used for fittings and the front shield of the colony ship.

Jumpin Jesus wrote:
Once this ship was built, there would be three groups of people going on this ship. One: a group of civvies that have an understanding of the systems on the ship around them. Enough to upkeep it. Two: A group of some of the most brilliant doctors, engineers, physicists, military strategists, etc... They would be in cryogenic sleep. They would be woken up when the destination was reached and/or when something has gone horribly wrong so they can fix it.

That is not current realistic technology. instead first you build a colony by the method described, then you build a much bigger colony that is a nice place to live. then you add an engine and fuel to it and slowboat your way there, Take about a century to reach a nearby star. Reliable cryogenics that last 100 years is a bit iffy, and someone has to sit around and be there in case of malfunction. Besides you need stocks of animal and plantlife, and a lot of it it will be easier all told to build a colony worth living a whole human lifespan on, so a cylinder at least 2 miles in diameter and maybe 4-10 miles long is about right.

Jumpin Jesus wrote:
Three: Soldiers. Highly trained soldiers that have been taken from all the special forces groups on the planet. (about three companies worth) They will be especially good at clearing tight spaces, recon, and will be able to use most of the weapons supplied to them. They will have pressurized fighting suits that can administer meds to them, increase their strength, and have special sheers that can seal off the suit if the users limb is blown off, so they dont die of explosive decompression. The standard weapon that these soldiers will have will be some sort of automatic carbine. Good for close quarters and something with a high fire rate.

Yu dont need soldiers, you may need internal security and police. Soldiers wont help you if you face an any civilisation at the other end. What you are hoping for is an earthlike planet to terraform, not a planet with an established xenosphere, the microbes would kill us or anyyhing else that the colonists land there.

Jumpin Jesus wrote:
The ship is going to have many, many features including weapons. We cant assume we are the only life in the universe. The ship would mainley have MAC guns (like from halo) that would fire a projectile about the size of a car. The ship will also be able to support plant life to produce oxygen. The ship will be spinning as to simulate gravity during the long flight to its destination. It will also be able take hydrogen from space and combine it with oxygen to make water.

Weapons would be good, to stop asteroids, even self protection if a hostile alien race decides we are not welcome. Though in such a case you retreat outsystem stopping only to refuel on an outer planet.
You wont get that much water from space, you take with you mini seas filled with fish, etc in a closed system. The fuel to burn is in the fuel tanks.

Other things to think about. You must have a colony big enough to wait a hundred or so years, possibly longer for terraforming efforts to establish themselves. So the colony must be seen as a permenent home, with the payoff of the possibility of finding another planet. This is why a large colony generation ship is best, if you have a frozen slowboat instead you may not have the resources at the destination to refreeze everyone in preparation for a second journey if the target system is uninhabitable for one reason or another. The colony must be able to gather fuel for a second and possibly further journeys after reaching the primary destination.
Of course you will want a succesfully terraformed planet to be part of a system wide colony, building a colony ship means that you have a longer term space station for the new colony system that hopefully will give the descendants two homes to go to.

Orlanth's method seems more realistic.

Although, why not just hollow out an asteroid, give it a decent spin to have centripetal force act as artifical gravity (0-gee does weird things to the human body),

And remember, once you get to the other system, you've already survived centuries in outer space - why bother going back down a gravity well?
Just stay well away, and get all the trace elements and fuel that you need from outer space again?
By all means, bring dedicated colonists who want to settle the planet, and drop them off if any want to go.
Assuming there isn't already a space-faring race on the other end, the military aspect can be negligible.
With orbital superiority, you don't really need a military - there's too many things you can drop down on them while it takes them tremendous effort to send one missile up towards you, especially as there's really very little for you down there.
If there is a (hostile) space-faring civilization on the other end, all that matters is that you can run faster. Given that you're entering the system from deep space, slingshotting around the local star should do that just nicely.

Thanks for the feedback guys. I have forgotten a few things but actually there is only one thing I want to add at the moment. About the food source, would it be possible to take, lets just say cow DNA, and use this cow DNA (assuming we have the tech) to clone it for a food source? My friend said you cant clone something more than sixty times. But would it still be an option.

BTW Orlanth, you have some REALLY good ideas.

Jumpin Jesus wrote:Thanks for the feedback guys. I have forgotten a few things but actually there is only one thing I want to add at the moment. About the food source, would it be possible to take, lets just say cow DNA, and use this cow DNA (assuming we have the tech) to clone it for a food source? My friend said you cant clone something more than sixty times. But would it still be an option.

BTW Orlanth, you have some REALLY good ideas.

No it wouldn't be possible. For one thing, you need a cow to give birth to the cloned cow, and for another, the cloned cow would have to grow from something, and the nutrients would need to come from somewhere, which is what you'd need the cows for in the first place.

It would be like taking battery 1 with you, to reverse engineer battery 2, which you'd then charge up using battery 3.

Also it strikes me that you're freind doesn't know that much about cloning technology.

Goliath wrote:

Jumpin Jesus wrote:Thanks for the feedback guys. I have forgotten a few things but actually there is only one thing I want to add at the moment. About the food source, would it be possible to take, lets just say cow DNA, and use this cow DNA (assuming we have the tech) to clone it for a food source? My friend said you cant clone something more than sixty times. But would it still be an option.

BTW Orlanth, you have some REALLY good ideas.

No it wouldn't be possible. For one thing, you need a cow to give birth to the cloned cow, and for another, the cloned cow would have to grow from something, and the nutrients would need to come from somewhere, which is what you'd need the cows for in the first place.

It would be like taking battery 1 with you, to reverse engineer battery 2, which you'd then charge up using battery 3.

Also it strikes me that you're freind doesn't know that much about cloning technology.

Well I mean this was just a conversation taken on by highschoolers that like to read science fiction every now and then. Plus a lot that was mentioned in the original conversation I have forgot.

Thats actually why Im now wishing I had not posted this. I feel stupid compared to all the other posters!

Jumpin Jesus wrote:Thanks for the feedback guys. I have forgotten a few things but actually there is only one thing I want to add at the moment. About the food source, would it be possible to take, lets just say cow DNA, and use this cow DNA (assuming we have the tech) to clone it for a food source? My friend said you cant clone something more than sixty times. But would it still be an option.

BTW Orlanth, you have some REALLY good ideas.

You you want to take plenty of frozen fertilised cow embryos, they are your backup. But you must also take plenty of cows.

A cylinder 2miles in diameter can have and should have many layers, with the outer ones heavily compartmentalised to limit damage. Some of these layers will be the height of a room, others fifty metres or so tall and filled with various biomes, desert, jungle, temperate forest etc.

Orlanth wrote:
You you want to take plenty of frozen fertilised cow embryos, they are your backup. But you must also take plenty of cows.

Why is everyone suggesting to take cows? Locusts would be a much more efficient (but slightly Icky) option
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locust#Human_consumption_of_locusts

It takes 2kg of resources to produce 1kg of protein in the form of locusts, for that same 1kg of protein from cows, you need 10kg of resources
Take into account amount of space required (cows need a big-ass barn, locusts need a couple of terrariums), combined with the fact that when your on an ark-ship space and efficiency is at a premium and locusts are looking like a very efficient source of protein.

Even better, find a similarly efficient insect that thrives off of decaying organic matter, then the waste from the oxygen generators (read huge hydroponic farms of algae/other highly efficient oxygenating plants) gets turned into fertilizer for more plants and more protein.

Bear in mind you don't have to eat the bugs as-is, it would be fairly simple to render them down (think how we do 'mechanically reclaimed chicken') and flavour them artificially (heck, we can make pot noodles taste ok, won't be much of a stretch to work on rendered-down insect protein).


If you're wondering, I spend my commute to/from work pondering things like this, I've got it pretty well planned

Goliath wrote:

Jumpin Jesus wrote:Thanks for the feedback guys. I have forgotten a few things but actually there is only one thing I want to add at the moment. About the food source, would it be possible to take, lets just say cow DNA, and use this cow DNA (assuming we have the tech) to clone it for a food source? My friend said you cant clone something more than sixty times. But would it still be an option.

BTW Orlanth, you have some REALLY good ideas.

No it wouldn't be possible. For one thing, you need a cow to give birth to the cloned cow, and for another, the cloned cow would have to grow from something, and the nutrients would need to come from somewhere, which is what you'd need the cows for in the first place.

Although, I read a story the other day that scientists (two groups in fact) are on the verge of creating 'vat grown' meat. Such a thing is tremendously complex, but you could argue that we already have the technology to create the proteins within meat that have nutritional value, and it would be growable on board the ship.

As for taking weapons and soldiers? I can't imagine it - some kind of 'asteroid defence' is different (and I presume that the ship would have sufficiently complex radar to manouver out of the way, rather than having to try and blow it up - which seems like a bad idea for multiple reasons), but the odds of us encountering another advanced civilization or life form? I would say they are extremely unlikely - and that critical, expensive space on the ship could be used for far more useful things. Also, there is that saying about 'soldiers in peacetime.. " - having a group of highly charged individuals on board, with guns, probably wouldn't do much for the chances of the ship arriving in the first place unless everyone was in some kind of cryogenic sleep.
Perhaps an alternative would be to have some kind of 'mining/repair robot' on board - they would usually be used for mundane, EVA tasks, but perhaps they could also be fitted to work in some kind of defensive capacity? They would also not put the crew at risk, not need oxygen, food or produce waste, and could safely be used to interact with alien life should any be discovered there.

An ark colony with as full a biodiversity as possible is the berst solution, Yes, you cant transport everything. Blue whales might have to stick it out here, but elephants even lions are not unfeasible. In fact they are preferable. Layers of your colony ship will include 'zoos', you are making an ark, and varied animal contact will make the long journey more bearable.
You will also want whole ecosystems on some layers, notably jungle and temperate forest. Not only is this the most logical ways of transporting trees to seed the planet, it also transports a lot of other stuff, possibly including some top tier predators.
This may sound incredulous, but a 2 mile diameter 4-10mile long colony ship is very big on living space when you account for rotation.

Lets metricate this for simplicity: A slowboat colony 3km habitat diameter, 6km habitat length, plus drives.

We can assume of a 1.5km radius the bottom 250m consists of decks, with progressively lighter gravity as you move up. decks are 50m tall with five 10m subdecks which cover about half the space. So a deck will have in part both 50m cavernous habitats, and five times that surface area in 5m decks which can contain farms and living space.
Let us assume the bottom 50m is taken up by armoured plating, sewage and water systems and is highly compartmentalized to contain any damage from hull breaches. So we can count that out of the equation for 'usuable' space.

So we have five usable heavy decks.
- 6km x 1.45km radius, fully compartmentalized, flooded
- 6km x 1.40km radius, half compartmentalized
- 6km x 1.35km radius, half compartmentalized
- 6km x 1.30km radius, half compartmentalized
- 6km x 1.25km radius, colony interior, not compartmetnalised, 2.5km diameter colony core.

I will ignore deck thickness which will be a few metres for the main decks and we can take out of the intervening space. The only point of note is that you wont be getting anything like a 10m ceiling on the subdecks everywhere.

The outer deck is fully flooded and heavily subcompartmentalized, its contains fish farms shrimp farms and tanks containing many aquatic ecosystems. Other aquatic biomoes are built elsewhere but this is the main one.

This plus the 50 metres of sewage, water storage and water reclamation gives approx 100 metres of decking and water. You can kiss goodbye to most interstellar radiation problems because of that.

As its all 'sea' we will deduct it from our usable volume even though its not only counted and important but also the most biologically rich.

So we have three main decks each partly compartmentalised into five subdecks.

The maths involved to deduce surface area here is:

2 x pi x radius x length

Taking pi as 3.14 we get 2x 3.14x 1.4x 6 = 52.752 km sq
Thats just for the bottom deck, and that doesnt account for compartmentalization.

Let us assume the compartmentalization covers roughly half the deck. So half of the deck 23.376 km sq, is split into five levels. So multiply by five for 131.88 km sq, add that to 23.376 km sq of habitat with a 50 m ceiling totals at: 155.276 km sq.
Let us round that down to 150 km sq to account for the inaccuracies in the above such as deck thickness, space deducted for verticle bulkheads and the fact that the 5x multiplier is a cheap fix, each other above subdecks will be smaller as the radius is smaller.
The other two decks above are similar yet a little smaller because of the reduced radius. Approx 96% of the size, we can deduct approx 5 km square progressively for each deck. To keep the numbers nice and simple.
So before we get to the inner core we have 150+145+140 = 435 km sq of usuable floorspace, with reasonably high ceilings/deep floors varying from 2m to 5m. With one sixth of the total, over 72 km sq being cavernous habitat space with a 50 m ceiling, more than enough for an artificial sky. These zones are filled with trees, some as park space, miost as zones with limited human access prefered like rainforest and wild temperate forest biomes.
The interior core has a surface area of 47.1 km sq. This is your central colony core, a cylinder 2.5 km across. a luxury space with a land surface about two thirds the size of Manhattan. Think about what you could put in that!
However don't think about putting in too many tower blocks, a population cap of 50,000 is about right, and you might want to settle for under half that. You want to feed everyone, yes, without turning the rest of the colony into a bio-hell hole. And yes locust based food substitute bulks out the diet nicely, though arable crops and high density seafood like whelks, shrimp produce and above all seaweed do an even better job.
All told you have a surface 'land' area comparable to that of Andorra or Guam, but its all sculpted walled off level terrain allowing for the compartmentalization and production of multiple high density biomes, so you have something that can best be described as a 'nation in a bottle' .
Colonies are independent concerns, and viable nation states but yes you ideally would hope to settle a planet on the other end of the journey.
Yes a colony can raise an army from its own population, and even mount some very big guns, but swift victory would be desirable, it has no resources for protracted war.
The biggest threat will be a following colony, who might turn up a few decades later just when the atmosphere below is turning breathable and demand a land share, or worse try to take it all.

Some replies:

Leigen_Zero wrote:
Why is everyone suggesting to take cows? Locusts would be a much more efficient (but slightly Icky) option

Because take only locusts and you eat locusts forever.
Take some cows and you get some milk, later when your cowes get there you build up their population base and diversify the genepool by adding the fertilised embryos to surrogate mother cows.
Now your colonists can enjoy beef and milk.
If you only take locusts you deny them those things, forever.
That might be ok, if you lie to them about the existence of cows. But if they have historical records of home or ask what a steak tastes like they will notice the deception and be restless.

Pacific wrote:
Although, I read a story the other day that scientists (two groups in fact) are on the verge of creating 'vat grown' meat. Such a thing is tremendously complex, but you could argue that we already have the technology to create the proteins within meat that have nutritional value, and it would be growable on board the ship.

All these tech shortcuts would be welcomed, if only to up the technological base of the colony and society. However the best results will take place by cultural sculpting. Human colonial society would be vegetarian, or near vegetarian. Meat must be seen as a luxury, but also part of our collective past. eggs and dairy is more viable, plus plenty of arable produce and vat farmed seafood. Shrimps and seaweed can thrives in high desnity containers tfgurning voklume rather than area of food production. Much of that will of course need to go on animal feed, the beef grown will also need to feed the obligate carnivores your colony is supporting, from animals ranging from small raptors like hawks and eagles through to housecats and even small number of big cats.
All populations are backed up with a gene depository, preferably multiple storage of sperm banks and seperate banks of fertilised eggs. So even if a few lions make it to the other end, and even if they arent genetically healthy, yopu can implant in them or another broadly similar species the product of a fully genetically viversified population base. This can even go for humans if needs be. Human fertilised embryo can be inserted into sows, who are more than capable of carrtying a human foetus. As with all surrogation theere is no genetic link between the pig and the baby human that is removed upon term.

Technology acts as a multiplier, and keep options open, even allows the opportunity to resurrect species from stock if the base animal species did not survive the journey. However biodiversity would be a priority for any colony ship. Not only for the sake of the animal population but also for the human spirit, because there is a huge psychological difference between spending a century in a hive and spending a century on an forested ark.

Pacific wrote:
As for taking weapons and soldiers? I can't imagine it - some kind of 'asteroid defence' is different (and I presume that the ship would have sufficiently complex radar to manouver out of the way, rather than having to try and blow it up - which seems like a bad idea for multiple reasons), but the odds of us encountering another advanced civilization or life form?

Asteroid defences are essential. Big asteropids you can see coming and evade. Small ones you cant se coming until its too late to evade. Evasion doesnt mean turning a steering column, colony ships weigh billions of tons and build acceleration over years, even small course changes need to be worked out months in advance. Acceleration would be slo slow as to be inperceptible to anything but a physicist.

Pacific wrote:
I would say they are extremely unlikely - and that critical, expensive space on the ship could be used for far more useful things. Also, there is that saying about 'soldiers in peacetime.. " - having a group of highly charged individuals on board, with guns, probably wouldn't do much for the chances of the ship arriving in the first place unless everyone was in some kind of cryogenic sleep.

I agree with minimising volume dedicated to war. However large guns are desirable. They can be fired at a low power setting to launch probes more cheaply and efficiently than rockets can. They can also be used to protect against the most likely threat, another colony ship that purposely turns up a few years later to steal resources and take advantage of your terraforming efforts for themselves.
Why do you need to worry about aliens, humans are threat enough.
If cryosleep is available yes do use it, but use it to carry a diversity of people needed for the voyages conclusion. Plus large animals that you dont want walmking around if you can help it, like lions tigers and bears (oh my). The frozen human population will includes combat trained exploration teams, but likely not dedicated soldiers per se. You see you can train for landing and varied environoment on earhh, but not adequately during the journey. Meanwhile technicians doctors and scientists you can grow along the way, and will need along the way. Same with farmers. You will freeze some too, but that is a population bonus kickstarter.

Frankly I would prefer to look at cryosleep as a bonus to population capacity at best and not a solution to interstellar travel. A fully automated vessel is prey to anything that comes along and there is no evidence the technology is even viable, unlike everything else discussed so far. Frogs can be frozen and thawed out, not humans. We tend to die instead. Sure deep freeze the colony frog and newt population, thats one thing less to worry about on the journey.
As far as current science goes freezing is limited to embryos, plant seeds, sperm and some small primitive animals, with frogs being as advanced as they get. Thats real tech. In some respects if you want to invent human cryosleep you might as well add warp drive. Methinks that sort of hand waving goes beyond the exercise.

Yes, the colony proposed is about half the size of a super star destroyer, but remember its an inflatable structure filled with hydrogen based 'concrete' like foam as its hull. That technology is very real and scales up relatively easily in terms of human effort. Cryosleep for advanced mammals beyond the embryonic stage on the other hand doesn't have any current science to back it up. It however isn't out there like floor fields and teleporters, research into this area is not pie in the sky. We might get it to work, but shouldnt count on doing so. Besides we dont truly need it , we can transport embryos, and they are more space efficient than frozen humans, just take some surrogate mothers from the pig pens, grow the embryos to term, then add 20 years of food and education, for an 'instant' (by stellar terms) population. As for the pigs, they need housing too but not at the same level as humans do. Factory farming will be necessary, but as the motives are different the factory farms can be 'pig condos', not 'pig gulags'.

Pacific wrote:
Perhaps an alternative would be to have some kind of 'mining/repair robot' on board - they would usually be used for mundane, EVA tasks, but perhaps they could also be fitted to work in some kind of defensive capacity? They would also not put the crew at risk, not need oxygen, food or produce waste, and could safely be used to interact with alien life should any be discovered there.

Robots are good, robots are wanted, but telemetry is preferred (think glove puppet robot) and don't forget to bring plenty of EVA suits. We have robots in space now, but some jobs require human hands.

What you need is an enormous engine to get you travelling at relativistic speeds, so that's the majority of the mass of the ship (when you take into account the amount of fuel you have to carry to get yourself to these speeds). Travelling at those speeds causes time dilation, so you can get to that star within one generation, no messing about with cryogenics. The ship will not use metal but lightweight polymers or possibly nano-materials.

Weaponry is a no. It's a waste of mass. Your chances of being hit by an asteroid are so small, even if you're going through an asteroid belt, that it is pointless for that reason. Don't believe films, in real life the average distance between asteroids in a belt is around 4,500km. We have sent 11 probes through our asteroid belt, not one has ever come close to being hit. As for aliens, if they have space capabilities and you're trying to land in a system they already own then it's gonna be one ship against many. If they want to kill you then you will die.

Military presence is a no. You have an onboard police force to maintain law and order but that's it. If aliens attack your colony then it won't hold, even with trained soldiers, as they will run out of ammunition fast.

The ship should be modular so it is capable of detaching into several pieces and landing on the planet. These modules then link together with tubes, providing the basis for your colony. Some of these modules will be for oxygen production, others for water and others for the production of materials to expand the colony. The rest are living quarters, food production, exercise, entertainment etc.

A Town Called Malus wrote:What you need is an enormous engine to get you travelling at relativistic speeds, so that's the majority of the mass of the ship (when you take into account the amount of fuel you have to carry to get yourself to these speeds). Travelling at those speeds causes time dilation, so you can get to that star within one generation, no messing about with cryogenics. The ship will not use metal but lightweight polymers or possibly nano-materials.

Technically true, but you also needv to account for acceleration time and cost in fuel (mindbogglingly large). You also have to double that fuel to account for deceleration. Approaching target planet at 90% c is not going to help matters much.

Also to transport a viable colony you need more than a few thousand tons of cargo, you need a few million. Your ship might be able to get there at high subluminal speeds, itsd still has to sit around in orbit for a few deades waiting for terraforming to work.

Now friendly follow up colonies can work on the principle you described, but even then its a wasteful method of travel. However you need to take a long look at the mass in fuel you need to project even a small vessel at high subliminal speeds. Projects like Daedalus use a high efficiency nuclear drive and yet the probe itself weighs under 450 tons and is intended for a high speed pass, not orbital intercept.

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

A Town Called Malus wrote:
Weaponry is a no. It's a waste of mass. Your chances of being hit by an asteroid are so small, even if you're going through an asteroid belt, that it is pointless for that reason. Don't believe films, in real life the average distance between asteroids in a belt is around 4,500km. We have sent 11 probes through our asteroid belt, not one has ever come close to being hit. As for aliens, if they have space capabilities and you're trying to land in a system they already own then it's gonna be one ship against many. If they want to kill you then you will die.

Its not the doomsday rock 6km in diameter that kills you, its the rock about the size of a ball. You need some light autocannon turrets to destroy those, hopefully they wont be incoming particularly quickly if you are travelling at sinsible speeds. Besides if you want to build a colony travelling at near c, have fun with space dust!

A Town Called Malus wrote:
The ship should be modular so it is capable of detaching into several pieces and landing on the planet. These modules then link together with tubes, providing the basis for your colony. Some of these modules will be for oxygen production, others for water and others for the production of materials to expand the colony. The rest are living quarters, food production, exercise, entertainment etc.

You will need modular landing pods yes, but if you build a colony ship you have a colony in orbit ready to serve your new civilization. its pays to keep your civilization a type 2 (system wide) civilization even if a class M planet is the specific prize, UYou will still need to wait a few decades for terraforming. Got a nice large colony ship to lounge around in? No, thats too bad.

Orlanth wrote:
Its not the doomsday rock 6km in diameter that kills you, its the rock about the size of a ball. You need some light autocannon turrets to destroy those, hopefully they wont be incoming particularly quickly if you are travelling at sinsible speeds. Besides if you want to build a colony travelling at near c, have fun with space dust!

I believe there was talk some years previously about a future ship carrying some kind of charged particle field at the front of the ship? Essentially like a giant dust-buster and protective shield in one, any incoming asteroids under a certain size would just be brushed out of the way.

Excellent previous post though Orlanth!

Although I do think robots/computers would have a massive role in any kind of future exploit of this nature. In many ways in fact we are just on the cusp of creating technologies that would make such a thing far more feasible - automated systems and robotics which reduce the risk to human crew, and perhaps remove the need for some of them entirely (the biggest limiting factor on any space voyage being our own biology, and its requirements) - entertainment and exercise systems, even as our understanding of the human physique in zero-g, and exposed to harmful particles in space, grows. New materials technologies, and material processing technologies (being able to process hydrogen in space to use as fuel for instance).

Very interesting stuff though that's for sure! I'm really looking forward to see what the next 20 years brings, and specifically the first trips to Mars (whether by the US or China), as well as asteroids, will no doubt teach the industry a lot about what it needs to know about the long term plans for space exploration.

Since its gov't funded. There will be military presence

Jihadin wrote:Since its gov't funded. There will be military presence

If its government funded, it will be cancelled.

Using fiscal economies to build a massive colony is a no go, it will involve too many payoffs and paycheques. Also no matter how bad things get on earth politicians will find it more effective and personally beneficial to redirect all resources to short term shoring up of the infrastructure, with benefits lasting no longer than the next election, feth the long term. Because that is how they think.

projects like this require vision, not corporate vision either, if fiscal has anything to do with it it will be swallowed, only volunteer communism can achieve this. A number of people who agree to pool resources and work for the future, you only need about 10000 like minded individuals, mostly intellectuals. as we make a worse and worse mess of our planet these will be easier to find.

They will need armed security, to prevent resource grabs by external forces, but the society they build is no Maoist or Soviet state, but a scienftific democracy that decides to leave out fiscal economics for the time being. Such a society needs to get out into space, thats the hard part. Once you have a seed colony it can build a much bigger colony from off world resources all the while saying a big F-off to any earth based nation that wants to take away what they build. That of itself will require a modest amount of armament, however remoteness is the best defence. A space station at an earth legrange point can defend itself easily enough. after a while once you have built your larger colony you can sell off the small colony to another community and put engines on your main colony, then away you go. Off to find a system of your own.

As such a society is visionary based, it will likely have green economics at its core, it will certainly need them in deep space where not balancing the environment is not an optional issue to be overlooked for temporary benefit. That is not to say they are either 'commies' as we know them, or 'tree huggers'.

The new society will likely have a green education at its core and has a good chance of making the new system work better than the current one. After all we have learned in the past. There have been plenty of isolated island communities in the Pacific, and only one destroyed their environment (Easter island) the others lived with it though by living on a small island with limited resources for centuries means they had it in them to cut down all the trees if they wanted to.

One example. Space Shuttle. The pilot are from what branchs.

Jihadin wrote:One example. Space Shuttle. The pilot are from what branchs.

Which cost a lot and eventually got cancelled.

Private is the way forward, even NASA knows that. And scientific communes are the best subcategory of private.

There will be no end of educated people who can see we are making a pigs ear of this planet and will sign up for a space program on a minimal cost basis. After all we must either stop what we are doing to the planet or get off it. The latter being far more viable for any who know how humans think. The resultant community is a bit like a hippie commune, but with fewer guitars and lentils and more rocket launch pads and tech labs. Once they have their first reusable shuttle and grav deck based colony they can shift more and more of their resources offworld. If it survives that stage the new society can reorganise itself as an orbital nation state. From there is can recruit a population base, build a bigger colony and either stay, or add drives and leave.

I really do see national governments being that forward thinking, not even China; and certainly not the short term thinking self serving oafs that make up 99% of western politicians.

Orlanth wrote:

A Town Called Malus wrote:What you need is an enormous engine to get you travelling at relativistic speeds, so that's the majority of the mass of the ship (when you take into account the amount of fuel you have to carry to get yourself to these speeds). Travelling at those speeds causes time dilation, so you can get to that star within one generation, no messing about with cryogenics. The ship will not use metal but lightweight polymers or possibly nano-materials.

Technically true, but you also needv to account for acceleration time and cost in fuel (mindbogglingly large). You also have to double that fuel to account for deceleration. Approaching target planet at 90% c is not going to help matters much.

Also to transport a viable colony you need more than a few thousand tons of cargo, you need a few million. Your ship might be able to get there at high subluminal speeds, itsd still has to sit around in orbit for a few deades waiting for terraforming to work.

Now friendly follow up colonies can work on the principle you described, but even then its a wasteful method of travel. However you need to take a long look at the mass in fuel you need to project even a small vessel at high subliminal speeds. Projects like Daedalus use a high efficiency nuclear drive and yet the probe itself weighs under 450 tons and is intended for a high speed pass, not orbital intercept.

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

You don't need to double the fuel as it is easier to decelerate the ship than it is to accelerate it due to it having lost mass as it burns fuel, making it easier to stop.

And you need to look at the distances we're talking about. The closest star system to us is 4.243 light years away (4.01*10^16 metres). The fastest object we've ever built travelled at 70,220m/s. So it would take 18,125 years for that probe to reach Proxima Centauri. Without approaching relativistic speeds and making use of time dilation there is no way we can get to another system in a reasonable time frame.

The problem with time dilation of course is that only the people travelling at high speed benefit from the effects. So to us observers on Earth the ship will take a longer time to reach the planet than it does for the people actually riding aboard it. Isn't time travel fun?

Orlanth wrote:

A Town Called Malus wrote:
Weaponry is a no. It's a waste of mass. Your chances of being hit by an asteroid are so small, even if you're going through an asteroid belt, that it is pointless for that reason. Don't believe films, in real life the average distance between asteroids in a belt is around 4,500km. We have sent 11 probes through our asteroid belt, not one has ever come close to being hit. As for aliens, if they have space capabilities and you're trying to land in a system they already own then it's gonna be one ship against many. If they want to kill you then you will die.

Its not the doomsday rock 6km in diameter that kills you, its the rock about the size of a ball. You need some light autocannon turrets to destroy those, hopefully they wont be incoming particularly quickly if you are travelling at sinsible speeds. Besides if you want to build a colony travelling at near c, have fun with space dust!

I wasn't talking about doomsday rocks. If Stephen Hawking believes relativistic speed travel between systems is a possibility (and pretty much the only possibility as wormholes are impossible in the sizes required) then I'm inclined to agree with him.

Orlanth wrote:

A Town Called Malus wrote:
The ship should be modular so it is capable of detaching into several pieces and landing on the planet. These modules then link together with tubes, providing the basis for your colony. Some of these modules will be for oxygen production, others for water and others for the production of materials to expand the colony. The rest are living quarters, food production, exercise, entertainment etc.

You will need modular landing pods yes, but if you build a colony ship you have a colony in orbit ready to serve your new civilization. its pays to keep your civilization a type 2 (system wide) civilization even if a class M planet is the specific prize, UYou will still need to wait a few decades for terraforming. Got a nice large colony ship to lounge around in? No, thats too bad.

You don't need to terraform, just have domes where people live. Sitting in space is not preferable to a colony on a planet in any way. You get a fire on your ship in space and you risk losing everyone. Damage to the outside of a ship in space is a lot harder to repair than damage to the outside of a dome on a planets surface.

A Town Called Malus wrote:[

You don't need to terraform, just have domes where people live. Sitting in space is not preferable to a colony on a planet in any way. You get a fire on your ship in space and you risk losing everyone. Damage to the outside of a ship in space is a lot harder to repair than damage to the outside of a dome on a planets surface.

Here I agree with you in part. You can live on the surface under domes, in fact the terraforming teams would. However being in an atmosphere domes degrade faster and less perceptibly than orbital colonies. If the atmosphere is still not ready its best and safest if you keep te bulk of your resources off world.

Also domes are a major construction effort and wgile plausible for humans don't really offer much benefit for animals and planets, better to keep them where they are.

Furthermore you have reactors on your colony ship, probably rather old and leaky. Which isnt a problem in space. As soon as you climb down the well you need to start thinking about a fuel economy. Better wait until the planet is ready.

Finally if you abandon the space colony you go back to a type 1 civilization, or even type 0. By maintaining the colony and vertical transit you remain a type 2 civilization. It also gives you a much better position to defend the system from hostile follow up colonies.

The smartest build while waiting for a colony to develop is to build more orbaital space colonies, spread the resources between them, and slowly double up. By the time your people are ready to breath New Earth air you have four space station city colonies and a system defence fleet.

KK wait..we went from how to get there with what crew to terrafarming? Did we make it there already?

You just have your navigator send you through the warp, and you can get to the other star in a day or so, but 200 years ago because warp travel just isn't very reliable.

My thoughts on this subject. Get a huge asteroid (ceres size or larger) into Near Earth orbit (Probably Lunar orbit to be honest). hollow it out and plant various biomes and so forth there, populate with animal and plant species. Induce spin using a rocket engine (one time thrust) add water for fish and sea species.

The photosythensis of the trees should produce enough oxygen to sustain the ecosystem of the colony. Add a plasma engine, piloting areas and computer guidance. Plus some point defense turrets for emergencies.

Have a police force, and a token garrison. (probably 200 troops). There would be a mix of people, from scientists to lay people and unskilled workers. have equipment, earthmoving materials and so forth. add storage for nuclear weaponry (for terraforming or emergencies)

Use the waste of the human and animal passengers to fertilize the trees and plants. do everything by HAND (means that people exercise and also adapt) The biomes should balance out precipitation, oxygen consumption should be alright as well.

Set course to the nearest star.