My Views on the 100-Yr Starship Study in Stereo
Immediately after my discussion of Kepler 22b, Christopher Jones interviewed me for Trek.fm. I first met Chris when he interviewed me about The Biology of Star Trek for Suite 101.
This time around, Chris asked me to opine on the 100-Year Starship symposium, long-generation starships and the future of humanity on- and off-earth.
Thank you for this link.
I enthusiastically agree with you that addressing the problems of developing a people-carrying vehicle is complementary to improving our environmental and social sustainability on Earth, not an irresponsible distraction from terrestrial problems as some have argued. (From 21:00 onwards.)
Stephen
[Athena’s note: this comment was edited for length and redundant content.]
I think it is important to approach star travel as a cross-disicplinary problem. Otherwise, scientists in different fields will only ever have a partial grasp on the problem. Obviously, physics and engineering play an enormous part in space travel. However, biology also plays a large role when we discuss manned flights. We need to be sure the astronauts can remain healthy and adapt to new environments.
There is a tendency for scientists in all fields to be rather gung-ho about the issues that aren’t covered by the branch of science they trained for, and it goes both ways. The physics-engineering types are mostly interested in propulsions systems, not sustainable ecosystems and governing a multigenerational starship. The biologists are equally gung-ho when it comes to propulsions systems and so on. Both groups really need to meet and share ideas, as you stated in your discussion. Biologists should go to some propulsion talks, and the physics-engineering types should go to the talks hosted by biologists, anthropologists, etc. If only the 100 year Starship Symposium had not been so tightly scheduled…
I can’t help but wonder if a wide variety of distantly related humans who evolved to survive in alien environments might resemble the humanoids from shows like Star Trek and Star Wars. In Star Trek, you go to a distant planet and find a society of humanoids who have slightly different bodies adapted to their home world, but still recognizably human, they have a different society and so on, but they still want to meet you and discuss philosophy. Might they really be the descendants of colonists who left the Earth many centuries ago in a sublight starship?
By the way, what is the name of that depressing SF story where the space colonists die? I tried to write down the name, but I couldn’t quite make it out.
That’s the problem with the engineer types- they work on starships, but never figure what we do after we get there. It’d be really depressing to survive the journey, land on a habitable planet, and then die by running out of supplies, falling over cliffs, being eaten by alien predators, etc.
In The Next Generation they advance a bogus “early seeding by an advanced race” argument about why the humanoids look so similar and can even still interbreed. However, they postulate the seeding happened when life was at a very early stage — which means humanoids would never have evolved twice, and they would certainly not be inter-fertile.
The book I mentioned was “We Who Are About to…” by Joanna Russ.
That’s why I consider Star Trek to be rather unscientific. I always though “rubber forehead aliens” are very unimaginative, and they feed the public’s “little green men” expectation. If and when we ever encounter alien intelligences, I expect they will look quite different from humans.
I don’t think that starships should be launched until they can reach a destination star in less than a human lifetime. Multigenerational craft have too many issues. Even if we have a functioning closed ecosystem, there are societal problems. The later generations might not want cooperate with the vision of the people who launched the ship.
Back on Earth, it will be hard to keep the public’s interest and support in the starflight program if every ship takes centuries to reach its destination. The top astronauts will not want to join the crew, since they will never see their destination. Most likely, these ships will be surpassed by faster starships launched decades after the multigenerational ships were launched.
Thank you for telling me the title of the book!!
Well, nobody accused Star Trek of being too scientific. As for starship voyages taking centuries, a lot of human endeavors did that (with heavy resource investment and equally heavy casualties) and people still undertook them.
What do you think of Robert Zubrin’s plans to colonize Mars? I find it a little annoying that he ridicules anyone who wants to research better methods of propulsion as “Building the Battlestar Galactica” solely because he considers them to be competition against his Mars Direct plan, but he does have a point when he says that we have to set upon a goal and just do it if we want to succeed, instead of fighting endlessly over side trips and methods.
I like Zubrin’s plan, although not necessarily his philosophy (the Manifest Destiny angle was a perennial problem in the Mars Society conferences). There is no question that Mars makes the most sense as the next destination. However, I would prefer to see a scientific expedition go first and literally tread carefully. If there is extant life there, we may stomp all over it before we realize what we did.
Christopher Phoenix said on December 20, 2011 at 1:18 am:
“I don’t think that starships should be launched until they can reach a destination star in less than a human lifetime. Multigenerational craft have too many issues. Even if we have a functioning closed ecosystem, there are societal problems. The later generations might not want cooperate with the vision of the people who launched the ship.”
Walden2 replies:
We better get off Earth, then. This eight thousand mile-wide spaceship we’ve been riding on has been going in circles for 4.6 billion years now with no end in sight, it is starting to run low on room and resources, and the crew won’t stop breeding or fighting about any and everything.
Then Christopher says:
“Back on Earth, it will be hard to keep the public’s interest and support in the starflight program if every ship takes centuries to reach its destination. The top astronauts will not want to join the crew, since they will never see their destination. Most likely, these ships will be surpassed by faster starships launched decades after the multigenerational ships were launched.”
Walden2 replies:
This is why Jersey Shore has more interest and support than space travel these days, due to the public’s need for instant gratification. Hopefully there will always be enough talented people to keep doing what is right for the day and the descendants who are wiser and better.
That being said, I do not cater to this idea that we should not bother building starships right now because some imagined descendant down the road will make better and faster ones anyway. Our future seems on the brink of being more uncertain than ever and I do not want to wait and hope for my distant children to take up the torch and improve it. People thought we would be on the Moon and Mars by now back in the Apollo days, but look what happened in short order.
Multigenerational ships are something we have to consider and attempt, no matter what the difficulties are (and they are many and steep). However, “top astronauts” are not relevant to this. This is Apollo-mission-style thinking, where each capsule could hold three people — although the open secret is that much was done remotely and the alpha males were just a carryover from the supersonic pilot program. On a long-term starship, everyone will have to be trained across disciplines: for redundancy but also for emergencies that will not wait for specialized attention.
@Walden2
How do you suppose these space-faring descendants of ours will fare if they are no better at managing resources and getting along with each other than most humans are today? If they reached their destination, they would just repeat the same mistakes we are making today on a pristine alien world.
Actually, we aren’t going anywhere as we are today. To build an interstellar generation ship, we need to do three things. First, we need a propulsion system that can reach a low fraction of C- say 5% the speed of light. Second, we need a closed ecological life support system. Thirdly, we need to shield the crew from hazardous radiation and space debris during the interstellar flight.
Any society that can build a generation ship is also capable of creating a sustainable Type-1 society on Earth. The same technology we use to grow our food, maintain air quality, purify water, and supply power on an enclosed craft for over a century will help solve problems of scarcity and want on Earth. Mark Millis cites this as a very good reason to support research into generation ships.
However, if people keep saying “We must colonize space to escape the damage we’ve done to Earth bla bla bla…”, they will turn many people off of the idea of space travel. Most people will feel it is very wrong to strip mine Earth and then leave all the species that dwell on her to die in the exhaust of our nuclear rocket engines.
The image of strip-mining aliens heading from planet to planet in vast generation ships and moving on once they have used up the resources on their newest conquest has become something of a classic “alien invasion” scenario. It’s best to make sure that the public doesn’t come to the conclusion that efforts to build real starships are attempts to turn us into the marauding alien space pirates of bad SF movies. (We’ll have the death rays we need to vaporize the hapless aliens we come across- just Google “THEL” and “MIRACL”!!!”)
We should definitely build starships- and build a working Kardashev Type-1 planetary civilization along the way. The “run of to space!!” solution to environmental problems doesn’t hold any water. Building a sustainable society on Earth and building starships are symbiotic goals- advances on one will feed into the other. Carl Sagan explains this in this interview. We can have it all- a sustainable futuristic society, antimatter factories orbiting the sun, cities buried under the crust of Saturn’s moons, starships…
Christopher, I have said in several places (including the 100Yr starship talk) that methods which allow star travel will also make it possible to take better care of Earth and its life. But what makes you think that Larry disagrees with you?
Athena- maybe I misinterpreted Larry’s statements, but he seemed to be suggesting that we need to “get off Earth” to escape overpopulation, war, and lack of resources. At the very least, he was proposing that multigenerational ships are an “escape hatch” to get away from problems on Earth- but I consider this to be absurd. The same technologies the crew needs to survive far from home also make it possible to take better care of our own home planet.
Stephen Hawking recently suggested that aliens might live in massive ships, having consumed the resources of their own planet centuries ago. These aliens fly from star to star, consuming the resources of entire planets. *cough* Independence Day *cough* Obviously people who are supposedly very intelligent can suggest some fairly ludicrous ideas…
If the aliens are so advanced that they can travel between stars, why don’t they just gather the energy of uninhabited suns and mine dead planets? I’m surprised Hawking borrowed the plot of a certain rather bad movie as the modus operandi of aliens. Next he will tell us that they are lizards and they want our water. *cough* V *cough*
What do you think star travel will end up being like? You discussed multigenerational craft in your interview on Trek.fm. Is your focus mainly colonizing expeditions? It seems a little rash to embark on a century long trip to reach the nearest habitable planet we find- what if there are inhabitants? Let’s be honest, in the long run a human settlement will destroy or drastically alter the environment they move to.
Personally, I want to see Alpha Centauri for myself. I’d be willing to set out on a decades long voyage to reach an interesting exoplanet. Perhaps some futuristic matter-antimatter photon rocket will be up to the challenge.
The Space Review’s take on the second 100 Year Starship Symposium:
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2161/1
One year old and already circling the drain… the “warp drive” concept is clearly a pipe dream.