GENERATION SHIP ..... MUST READ - Why hasn't one been built yet?

marsspacestation · 2002-02-24 16:20:14

I have noticed a lot of discussion lately on the topic of building a completely self-sufficient ship that could be built in space and launched out to explore the universe. This ship would be completely self sufficient and would sustain life for generations. I have put a lot of thought into this and have a few ideas of what would be needed to be successful.

1.) A large enough ship to hold in comfort at least 100 people.

2.) The crew would have to be made up of people from at least the following professions: Scientist, Physicist, Biologist, Astronomer, Geologist, Botonist, Chemist, Metalurgist, Doctor, Pshyciatrist (Yeah, I know but you got to have at least one), Counselor/Negotiator, Law Enforcement (Got to keep the peace), Military, Miner, Smelter, Biochemist and many more.

3.) The ship would have to have the ability to mine minerals and metals from Asteroids and other space debris and then refine it and turn it into tools and other items needed to repair the ship and keep it in operation.

4.) The ship would have to have Polarized hull plating to repel micro-meteors and protect from space radiation.

5.) The ship would have to have an un-dying supply of power, possible a nuclear reactor and the ability to mine plutonium or uranium and make new rods every hundred years or so.

6.) The ship would have to have artificial gravity similar to that of Earth. This could be achieved by spinning the ship slowly.

7.) The ship would have to have an Ecosphere large enough to grow enough food to sustain 500 people, because by the time the ship found a suitable planet to colonize (Another Earth) they would have undoubtedly multiplied drastically. The ecosphere would also have to contain a sealed environment capable of raining (or at least misting) as well as capable of filtering the carbon dioxide exhaled by the crew and converting it back to breathable oxygen. Assuming the ecosphere was large enough to produce enough oxygen to support 500 people it would probably also produce enough hydrogen and oxygen to create an ample water supply for the crew.

8.) The ship would have to be capable of filtering and recycling all waste water including that exreted by humans.

9.) The ship would have to be large enough to breed goats or sheep or some other small milk/meat producing animal. Milk and meat occasionally would be essential for the sustained health of the crew.

10.) The ship would have to have a very extensize medical facility, one not only capable of handling births, illnesses, etc. but also capable of treating and isolating new diseases before they became epidemic.

11.) The ship would have to carry or be capable of storing enough food, medicine, extra parts, etc. to maintain the crew and ship in case of an emergency.

12.) The crew would have to be capable of extended space walks to repair the ship, make in flight modifications, etc.

13.) The ship would have to be able to communicate back to Earth via some sort of long range communication.

14.) The ship would have to have the ability to build and launch probes to travel ahead of it and report dangerous or interesting spacial anomolies or possible New Earths to colonize.

15.) The crew would have to be capable of building settlements on other worlds upon finding them. In order to do this they would have to have some sort of transport ship to carry the crew, supplies, etc. to and from the planets surface. It would have to be fueled by something they could mine either from space, asteroids or planets.

16.) The ship would also have to be equiped with short range mining ships the crew could use to travel from the Generation Ship into asteroid belts to mine and then return back to the ship.

Now that I have gone through those, I have a few things to say. Unless I am forgetting something majorly important this seems to be doable RIGHT NOW.

I mean think about it we have the means to travel into space and assemble such a ship. We have willing people from all the professions needed to make it work. We could use an Apollo Capsule like ship to mine asteroids with. We have the means to polarize metal. We have nuclear reactors and could easily design sensors to detect uranium and plutonium in asteroids that could be mined and used to make new rods for the reactors. It wouldn't be too hard to make the ship rotate a couple times a day to simulate Earth gravity. We have built and proved several of these Ecospheres right here on Earth and know how to build them and know they will work in space as well. We already have the filtration systems in use on ISS and the Space Shuttle. The russians proved that animals born in microgravity where healthy and could be kept healthy. So it wouldn't be any problem to transport embryos into space and then birth them in test tubes...I.E.- Cloning. We know how to do it with livestock and it is becoming very successful, very fast. We have the medical technology to equip the ship for sustained habitation. We have learned how to carry a lot of food (MRI's, etc.) and medicine (DRY Powdered, etc.) in extremely small spaces. The extra parts could be in the form of raw materials and easily stored. We would simply forge them into what we needed, when we needed it. Nasa is already making extended space walks and repairing/working on the ISS and the Shuttle as it is circling the Earth, so training the crew to do it wouldn't be hard, especially if they where equiped with jet packs and tether cables. The outside of the ship sould also be designed with something to grab every few feet or rings to run the tether cable through every few feet, just in case the jet pack failed or ran out of fuel. We already have proven that our communication technology is capable of reaching Earth from as far away as Pluto so increasing the range shouldn't be too hard.

So to summize, will someone please tell me why the H-E-L-L we aren't BUILDING THIS SHIP RIGHT NOW, instead of wasting our money on the ISS???

Please email comments directly to me at colbert_richard@hotmail.com.

Phobos · 2002-02-24 16:41:49

It seems to me that if your going to build a generational ship, you'd first need to find some earth-like planets or some other suitable destination before putting any expense into it. I guess you could just shoot the thing off and hope you find some good destinations after launch, but personally, I think we'd be better off building permament space habitats closer to earth and gain more experience in colonizing space before undertaking such a venture. Anyways, a lot of our technology isn't really mature enough for such an undertaking. Cloning for instance has problems that haven't been solved yet, like the tendency of the clone to have the biological age of the parent. Some of the other points you brought up are also not proven yet such as massive agriculture that could feed thousands being undertaken in space and mining. Ultimately, once such a ship leaves the Solar System, it might be a very long time before it can find
resources to renew itself. I think we need more research into power systems that could last hundreds of years before needing to be refueled.

marsspacestation · 2002-02-24 20:11:22

You know, if it is simply a problem of money being the limiting factor in developing a GENERATION SHIP, then here is the answer.

The ship could carry cargo pods and the ability to build new pods. Then the ship could mine resources along the way and shoot the pods back towards earth. Once near earth thrusters would be used to put the pods in Geo-Syncronous orbit where a Space shuttle could pick the resources up and bring them back to Earth.

This should be a sufficient income for any bussinesses that invest in the building and deploying a GENERATION SHIP.

Shaun Barrett · 2002-02-25 00:32:09

I'm the last person to want to rain on anybody's parade but I tend to agree with Phobos. Our technology really isn't up to this kind of thing yet; particularly in the field of closed circuit life support.
Phobos suggests we gain experience in these things while closer to home, before launching a hundred people on a one way trip with immature technology to rely on. He also raises the very pertinent point of which way to aim the Generation Ship! You could sail on into the void of interstellar space for thousands of years without ever intercepting another solar system, let alone a handy asteroid full of just the minerals you were looking for. (Incidentally, you won't find plutonium in an asteroid. It's a man-made transuranic element.) No, I'm afraid we really need a target star and we need to know with a very high degree of certainty that that star has planets suitable for colonisation.
Even supposing all the problems can be solved, the ship you mention would be absolutely colossal in size ... and price!! We would need a very good reason to spend so much money on such a journey, when we can't generate enough political will to venture even as far as the moon any more!
One more small point (and you'll have to forgive my ignorance on this), what is polarised metal?
:0

Phobos · 2002-02-25 18:52:35

The ship could carry cargo pods and the ability to build new pods. Then the ship could mine resources along the way and shoot the pods back towards earth. Once near earth thrusters would be used to put the pods in Geo-Syncronous orbit where a Space shuttle could pick the resources up and bring them back to Earth.

I'm not sure we're on the same page here. Do you intend for this ship to leave the Solar System or to be something like a permanent mining outpost in the asteroid belt? Depending on how far the generational ship has travelled it could take hundreds of years before earth would see those resource-laden capsules return, especially if they're using current propulsion technology. If you intend for this ship to leave the Solar System, I think we'd pretty much have to kiss it goodbye forever and forget about getting any physical resources in return. I'm also wondering what polarized metal is. Is it magnetic or something?

marsspacestation · 2002-02-25 21:16:05

I am not really certian how to explain a Polarized Hull, but I think it goes something like this: A polarized hull is a spance of a metalic element encasing the ship that has all the atoms ligned up from end of the ship to the other end. The effect of this is to create a giant freaking magnetic with a negative charge that would repel the natural magnetic fields surrounding any known space debris.

As far as whether the ship would leave the solar system the answer is yes. My suggestion for mining was for the ship to travel first to the nearest asteroid belt and mine as much as possible. They would then keep what they needed and send the rest back to earth. Then they would journey on towars somewhere like Alpha-Centauri (The closest star to the Earth).

Now everyone keeps telling me that we do not have the technology to build and deploy such a ship, let me refresh your history. When the Russians successfully put a man in space and subsequently announced they where going to the moon we had NO SPACE PROGRAM to speak of. We had only managed to pull off a few unmanned craft into extremely low orbit, much lower than where the space station is being built. However, in 6 years we managed to get ahead of the Russian's and put man on the moon. Now we did this with much less experience, a heck of a lot less technology than the Russians and probably less money spent on it.

My point is that if we believe we can do it, we get it done extremely quick. When the US started working on putting man on the moon, the initial Project draft called for a 25 year ETA to man on the moon, but we did it in 6 years.

So if you really believe that we can't do it, RIGHT NOW I pitty your naivity. If a meteor large enough to obliterate humanity on Earth we would build and launch such a ship in less than 2 years, and we could do it with very little technological break-throughs. There are only a few small problems that we have found possible ways to overcome but haven't tested. The only thing standing in our way is generating enough interest to enspire people, companies and governments to spend the money to do it.

Phobos · 2002-02-26 17:37:59

So if you really believe that we can't do it, RIGHT NOW I pitty your naivity. If a meteor large enough to obliterate humanity on Earth we would build and launch such a ship in less than 2 years, and we could do it with very little technological break-throughs. There are only a few small problems that we have found possible ways to overcome but haven't tested. The only thing standing in our way is generating enough interest to enspire people, companies and governments to spend the money to do it.

We don't have to leave the Solar System in order to
preserve humanity, we could set up bases on Mars, the Moon, or out in open space, or even more practical for the very near term, develop systems capable of detecting and thwarting an asteroid that threatens earth. We don't have to send some giant beast on some questionable journey out into the middle of nowhere to save ourselves. And yes, our technology isn't good enough for this yet. And are you sure I'm the one being naive?

Adrian · 2002-02-26 18:02:41

I hope to be able to respond to this thread in greater detail soon, but I would think that if we discovered a massive asteroid that would obliterate all higher life on Earth only two years away, instead of building a generation ship we'd probably instead build a ship capable of diverting the asteroid

AndyM · 2002-02-27 12:55:34

A couple of points on the generation ship:

1) Compared to a mars mission, the generation ship is too risky from both a financial and scientific point of view. The likelihood of success is very slim and not enough to justify the huge investment.

2) The practical problems associated with mining minerals and metals from asteroids are not something we can solve within the next five or ten years. How do you get near the asteroid without damaging the spacecraft? How do you retrieve the raw minerals? How do you refine them on the spacecraft? Most minerals have to be burnt in air or reacted with other elements to purify them. These are all significant engineering challenges that won't be solved in one try., but will take years of experience. Then of course, there is the challenge of building a spacecraft in orbit large enough to accomplish the goal.

Shaun Barrett · 2002-02-27 18:43:19

I certainly admire marsspacestation's optimism and enthusiasm for his starship idea. And I think the day may well dawn when we'll launch such an expedition.
But I can't help but agree with Phobos and AndyM that the technological hurdles are simply too great at this stage of our development. As mentioned, work on enclosed life-support which can function continuously and without fail for decades or even centuries(!) is really in its infancy. The mining skills we would need to process an asteroid are non-existent, except perhaps as a theoretical concept. Stopping the expedition at the asteroid belt (I assume you mean the one between Mars and Jupiter?) in order to mine and process a few million tons of ore sounds like a monumental undertaking to me. And do we have the skill to accurately send these massive pods of ore back to Earth on automatic pilot, knowing that if one of them slammed into Earth by mistake, we could lose a major city? (Unlikely I suppose, but would people be prepared to risk it?) And would your creditors wait that long to see a return on their money; haven't they spent trillions on this enormous Ark?
The question about where to aim it is likely to remain unanswered for at least another 10 years. And how good are we at interstellar navigation? Even assuming we know which star to head for, do we entrust the lives of one hundred people to unproven navigational skills?
I think we would need a huge incentive to even contemplate such a trip at present and, even if humanity's survival depended on it, I feel justified in saying it simply couldn't be done. It would be like asking a 1930s aeronautical engineer to build a 747 jetliner! He might agree that in principle it could be done, but he would laugh at the idea of actually attempting it. Too many gaps in the materials science and other technologies.
Can't we just concentrate on getting to Mars, for now?! It seems to me we're going to have more than enough trouble achieving even that relatively modest goal; never mind building a real-life "Battlestar Galactica"! Besides, maybe somebody will come up with a wormhole generator and save us the trouble of trudging across the light-years!

RobS · 2002-03-05 17:15:45

Here's an article about exactly this idea from today's New York Times.

RobS

One Lifetime Is Not Enough for a Trip to Distant Stars
New York Times, March 5, 2002, Science Section

By NATALIE ANGIER

Nobody knows why our early ancestors decided to get off their knuckles and stand upright. Maybe they just wanted a better view of the stars.
And when sky gazers finally realized that the heavenly lights were not the footprints of the gods, but rather millions of blazing stars like our Sun writ far, they began to wonder, How do we get there? How can we leave this world and travel, not merely the 238,000 miles to the Moon, or 35 million miles to Mars, but through the vast dark silk of interstellar space, across trillions and trillions of miles, to encounter other stars, other solar systems, even other civilizations?
According to a group of scientists for whom the term "wildly optimistic dreamers" is virtually a job description, it will indeed be very difficult to travel to other stars, and nobody in either the public or private sector is about to try it any time soon. But as the researchers see it, the challenge is not insurmountable, it requires no defiance of the laws of physics, so why not have fun and start thinking about it now?
They talked about propulsion at a reasonable fraction of the speed of light, a velocity that is orders of magnitude greater than any space ship can fly today, but that would be necessary if the light-years of space between the Sun and even the nearest star are ever to be crossed.
They talked about the possibility of multigenerational space travel, and what it might be like for people who board a space ship knowing that they, their children, grandchildren and descendants through 6, 8 or 10 generations would live and die knowing nothing but life in an enclosed and entirely artificial environment, hurtling year upon year through the near-featureless expanse of interstellar space.
They talked about how big the founding crew would have to be to prevent long-term risks of inbreeding and so-called genetic drift. They talked about how the crew's chain of command would be structured, what language people would most likely speak, and what sort of marital and family policies might be put in place.
And they talked about food, all of which would have to be grown, cultivated and synthesized on board.
"One thing is almost certain," said Dr. Jean B. Hunter, an associate professor of biological and environmental engineering at Cornell. "You'll have to leave the steak, cheesecake and artichokes with hollandaise sauce behind."
Many of the subjects raised during the session were so fanciful that at times it felt like a discussion of how to clone a unicorn, and indeed half the presenters moonlight as science fiction writers.
Nevertheless, the researchers argued, human beings have shown themselves to be implacable itinerants, capable of colonizing the most hostile environments.
Dr. John H. Moore, a research professor of anthropology at the University of Florida, compared a theoretical crew of spacefaring pioneers to groups of Polynesians setting out tens of thousands of years ago in search of new islands to populate.
"Young people with food and tools would set out in large flotillas of canoes," he said. "Nobody knew if they would ever come back, the trade winds went in only one direction, and many of them perished in the ocean."
Yet over time, the Polynesians managed to colonize New Zealand, Easter Island and Hawaii.
Still, no human migration in history would compare in difficulty with reaching another star. The nearest, Alpha Centauri, is about 4.4 light- years from the Sun, and a light-year is equal to almost six trillion miles. The next nearest star, Sirius, is 8.7 light-years from home. To give a graphic sense of what these distances mean, Dr. Geoffrey A. Landis of the NASA John Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, pointed out that the fastest objects humans have ever dispatched into space are the Voyager interplanetary probes, which travel at about 9.3 miles per second.
"If a caveman had launched one of those during the last ice age, 11,000 years ago," Dr. Landis said, "it would now be only a fifth of the way toward the nearest star."
Dr. Robert L. Forward, owner and chief scientist of Forward Unlimited, a consulting company that describes itself as "specializing in exotic physics and advanced space propulsion," argued that rockets and their fuel would be so heavy that they would prevent a starship from reaching the necessary velocity to go anywhere in a sane amount of time. He envisions a rocketless spacecraft that would be manufactured in space and equipped with an ultrathin, ultralarge sail, its span as big as Texas but using no more material than a small bridge. A beam of laser light or high-energy particles from a source on Earth, in space or perhaps on the Sun- drenched planet of Mercury would be aimed at the sail, propelling it and its attached module to as much as 30 percent the speed of light - or about 55,000 miles per second.
At that pace, said Dr. Forward, a crew would reach Alpha Centauri in under 50 years.
"You could get a bunch of 16-year- olds, train them and then send them out at the age of 20," he said. "They'd have a long, boring trip, reach Alpha Centauri when they're in their 60's or 70's, do some exploring, and send everything they learned back home."
Admittedly, the astronauts would not make it home themselves. "It's a lifetime job," Dr. Forward said. "But it could be done in a single generation."
For longer journeys, designed with multigenerational crews in mind, an onboard engine and fuel source would be required, perhaps something powered by nuclear bombs, or the combining of matter and antimatter in a reaction that converts both substances into pure energy.
However the ship is propulsed, the researchers agree that it must be comfortable for long-distance travel. That means creating artificial gravity by gently rotating the craft; a spin no greater than one or two revolutions per minute would suffice.
It might also mean calling upon architects with Disney-esque sensibilities.
"The inside of one of these long- duration space habitats might feel like the inside of a shopping mall," Dr. Landis said. "Malls are carefully designed to use space efficiently, yet to give you the feeling that they're more spacious than they are."
And malls, of course, are a great place to bring the family. In Dr. Moore's view, the good old-fashioned family is the key to success in space.
"Over the past several decades, space scientists and writers of science fiction have speculated at length about the optimum size and composition" of an interstellar crew, he said. They have imagined platoons of Chuck Yeager-type stalwarts grimly enduring all hardships, or teams of bionic and vaguely asexual crew members overseeing freezers of embryos that can be defrosted and gestated as needed.
"Some of the scenarios proposed so far are downright alarming from a social science perspective," Dr. Moore said, "since they require bizarre social structures and an intensity of social relationships which are quite beyond the experience of any known human communities."
In deciding how to organize a star mission, Dr. Moore looks to the most "familiar, ubiquitous, well-ordered and well-understood" of social forms, the human family. "Virtually every human society in history has been structured along kinship lines," he said, "from small-scale foraging societies to empires comprising millions of people."
Lines of authority and seniority in a family are reasonably clear, and when they're not, well, there's always the time-out chamber.
In Dr. Moore's rendition, all recruits for an interstellar odyssey would be guaranteed the opportunity, though not the requirement, to marry and have children. Mate choice would be part of the bargain as well, with the population cannily structured so that each cohort of individuals, on reaching sexual maturity, would have about 10 potential partners of a similar age to select from.
Dr. Moore and his colleagues have developed a computer simulation called Ethnopop, in which they asked how large the crew must be in order to maintain genetic variability over time while still allowing crew members a choice of sex partners. They determined that a founding crew could be as small as 80 to 100 people and stay viable for more than a thousand years, assuming that two rules were followed: women waited until they were in their mid-30's or so before having children, and they had only a couple each. Counterintuitive though it may seem, said Dr. Moore, delayed childbearing and small families are known to help maintain genetic variability in a closed population.
Genetic diversity may be essential, but Dr. Sarah G. Thomason, a professor of linguistics at the University of Michigan, argued that the same could not be said for language. "You want everyone to be able to talk to each other as soon as they're on board," she said.
As Dr. Thomason sees it, the likeliest lingua franca for a starship will be - gracias a Dios - English. After all, she said, English is the language of the international air traffic control system, the scientific community and the educated class generally. English is the official language of 51 of the 195 nations of the world, and it is the second language of many others.
Yet, while crew members will be expected to speak English, their accents are likely to be quite diverse, and the English that their children and grandchildren end up speaking will have a rhythm and texture of its own - Space English. And though Dr. Thomason believes that the basic structure of Space English is not likely to change much from that of the mother tongue, teenagers will, of course, invent words of their own and drop words of scant use. "I can imagine the loss of words like snow, rivers, winter, mosquitoes, if they're lucky," she said.
Another arena that will test the limits of human ingenuity is space cuisine. Without livestock on board or supply ships to restock the pantry, crew members will have to be entirely self-sufficient. Dr. Hunter of Cornell envisions crops grown in hydroponic gardens, in which plants are suspended in troughs like rain gutters, and water and fertilizer are trickled slowly over their roots. Among the possible food groups are wheat, rice, sweet potatoes, beans, soy, corn, herbs and spices.
In addition, space-minded agronomists are exploring the marvels of microbes. Plants take weeks to grow, but yeastlike micro-organisms replicating in vats can be used to churn out significant quantities of carbohydrates, sugars, proteins and fats in a matter of hours. Of benefit to a community in which recycling is not just a personal virtue but a public necessity, micro-organisms can live on the carboniferous waste products of plants and people.
"There's a protein product called quorn, which is made from filamentous mold," Dr. Hunter said. "Not to make a joke of it, but it does taste like chicken."
Some clich?s, it seems, are truly universal.

VitaminJ · 2002-04-04 13:35:17

I think one show-stopper for the idea of a generational ship, at least a colony ship to another earthlike planet, is this: decades later, a faster ship could be built. Picture it, a colony ship goes out, eta 500 years. but 50 years after the first leaves, a ship that can do the trip in 300 years goes, passes them, and the first ship arrives only to find their world already colonized! Maybe the second ship also finds an even faster ship beat them to the punch. you get the picture.

I'd think any generational ship, even one that hung around the solar system would be ENORMOUS and the cost would dwarf that of the ISS. They'd also have to develop space-mining technology (probably pretty easy) and refining and manufacturing (probably pretty involved).

my 2 cents,
Jay

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#1 2002-02-24 16:20:14

Re: GENERATION SHIP ..... MUST READ - Why hasn't one been built yet?

#2 2002-02-24 16:41:49

Re: GENERATION SHIP ..... MUST READ - Why hasn't one been built yet?

#3 2002-02-24 20:11:22

Re: GENERATION SHIP ..... MUST READ - Why hasn't one been built yet?

#4 2002-02-25 00:32:09

Re: GENERATION SHIP ..... MUST READ - Why hasn't one been built yet?

#5 2002-02-25 18:52:35

Re: GENERATION SHIP ..... MUST READ - Why hasn't one been built yet?

#6 2002-02-25 21:16:05

Re: GENERATION SHIP ..... MUST READ - Why hasn't one been built yet?

#7 2002-02-26 17:37:59

Re: GENERATION SHIP ..... MUST READ - Why hasn't one been built yet?

#8 2002-02-26 18:02:41

Re: GENERATION SHIP ..... MUST READ - Why hasn't one been built yet?

#9 2002-02-27 12:55:34

Re: GENERATION SHIP ..... MUST READ - Why hasn't one been built yet?

#10 2002-02-27 18:43:19

Re: GENERATION SHIP ..... MUST READ - Why hasn't one been built yet?

#11 2002-03-05 17:15:45

Re: GENERATION SHIP ..... MUST READ - Why hasn't one been built yet?

#12 2002-04-04 13:35:17

Re: GENERATION SHIP ..... MUST READ - Why hasn't one been built yet?

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