Generation ships? That means......

[Buster Charlie]

Okay so we have mods with solar systems besides kerbal'so system.

 

We have life support and habitation mods.

 

We even have exercise and sanity mods.

 

Well if I'm sanity ending a sanityendingelf sustaining colony ship your another solar system and it's going to take a few hundred years.

 

Will yield mod community ever tackle kerb all mortality and the implications of reproduction? I don't mean graphic awkward fan art showing the unspeakable.  I was thinking more of the abstraction used in the mobile app "fallout shelter."

 

If your kerbals dont live forever, and their mission is 250 years, it means they need to make new kerbals, a sorta twisted combination  of ISRU and the astronaut complex.

 

Thoughts? 

[Choctofliatrio2.0]

I figure you'd send frozen embryos along with the ship. However Kerbals reproduce, it probably doesn't work well in space.

[Wallygator]

On the long journey, one kerbal uses a pool que to whack another over the head. The target kerbal breaks into multiple little green chunks that gently grow into full size kerbals. 

Or am I having a 1970's board game flashback? 

Either way, it works for me. 

[Frybert]

1 hour ago, Buster Charlie said:

 I don't mean graphic awkward fan art showing the unspeakable.

I tend to think of it as scientific conceptual rendering myself.

[bewing]

I like the suggestion that Kerbals are a type of mold. Mold lives a very long time. And can reproduce (if it needs to) by just budding off a spore or two.

 

[Buster Charlie]

2 hours ago, Wallygator said:

On the long journey, one kerbal uses a pool que to whack another over the head.

First off, are you implying this is for real?

Wouldn't they use a golf club? I thought that was standard NASA issue?

 

But in reality if all it took to reproduce kerbals was a sharp blow to the head, KSC would look like a daycare center from all the rockets exploding and scattering crew all over then landacape.

 

It would make the trouble with Tribbles seem tame.

Edited February 24, 2016 by Buster Charlie
Spelling

[Buster Charlie]

13 minutes ago, Frybert said:

I tend to think of it as scientific conceptual rendering myself.

Oh jeez, now I'm going to have nightmares about some 1960s era health class video about where Kerbals come from.

7 minutes ago, bewing said:

I like the suggestion that Kerbals are a type of mold. Mold lives a very long time. And can reproduce (if it needs to) by just budding off a spore or two.

 

Counterpoint 

[katateochi]

Since the rescue contracts I've been increasingly of the opinion that they just spontaneously appear in orbit in gestation command pods and this occurrence is catalysed somehow by the presence of craft in orbit (maybe engine exhaust or "wake" from passing ships).  So on long journeys all they have to do is orbit somewhere and perform some orbital maneuvers and sooner or later a new Kerbal will appear. 

 

[Buster Charlie]

Just now, katateochi said:

Since the rescue contracts I've been increasingly of the opinion that they just spontaneously appear in orbit in gestation command pods and this occurrence is catalysed somehow by the presence of craft in orbit (maybe engine exhaust or "wake" from passing ships).  So on long journeys all they have to do is orbit somewhere and perform some orbital maneuvers and sooner or later a new Kerbal will appear. 

 

That actually makes more in game sense than the fungal/plant  theories. 

 

Let's say spontaneous generation in space makes sense in the scope of the game based on two facts:

 

The aforementioned rescue missions which involve a Kerbal in a jet cockpit floating in orbit with no way of getting there.

The fact that the only population and buildings on the planet are space related, and manned spaceflight predates atmospheric flight,  the wheel, or the ladder.

 

All these suggest Kerbal are the victim of some kind of cosmic joke, their creator must be some kind of space obsessed God or gods whose enjoyment involves the creation of a space fairing race of expendable crew.

[JoeNapalm]

Kerbals are an engineered clone race.

They all look the same, all the have same last name, lack a reasonable fear of death, show up again eventually after death, and do not require food, water, or air.

Clones, I say!

 

-Jn-

[nosirrbro]

Personally, I consider Kerbals to be very similar to plants. That's why they have green skin, for photosynthesis, which is how they can survive in a capsule without any food, they get their energy from the sun, and plants don't age. I'm not saying they are actually plants, but they also aren't animals, those who things are useless outside of earth. I'm more of saying that whatever classification they are is similar enough to plants that they use (oxygen based instead of CO2, but it's the same principal) photosynthesis and don't age.

Edited February 24, 2016 by nosirrbro

[Nightshift83]

1 hour ago, katateochi said:

Since the rescue contracts I've been increasingly of the opinion that they just spontaneously appear in orbit in gestation command pods and this occurrence is catalysed somehow by the presence of craft in orbit (maybe engine exhaust or "wake" from passing ships).  So on long journeys all they have to do is orbit somewhere and perform some orbital maneuvers and sooner or later a new Kerbal will appear. 

 

They do appear seemingly out of nowhere because of space-time-ripples caused by something going over 4 x timewarp that is controlled by 'someone' outside Kerbals dimension (2D+1D(depth)+1D(timecontrol)). Some Kerbals even believe that this 'someone' also has direct control of their actions and fates and can even revert time to some extend thus bringing some of them back to life if he pleases so..

 

[Fearless Son]

Hmm, asteroid capture, multi-generational interstellar colony ship, my mission logo, what does this all remind me of... ?

[SpaceNomad]

3 hours ago, Buster Charlie said:

All these suggest Kerbal are the victim of some kind of cosmic joke, their creator must be some kind of space obsessed God or gods whose enjoyment involves the creation of a space fairing race of expendable crew.

Very close: They are brought by the Kraken, of course! The Kraken gives, the Kraken takes.

[Sir_Robert]

4 hours ago, Buster Charlie said:

Counterpoint 

Let's stay as far away from that discussion as we can. That only leads to endless flame wars

 

 

There is no word on reproduction, but there are mods that let you keep your current Kerbals fresh for prolonged periods of time. Just Freeze them

 

[Buster Charlie]

14 minutes ago, Sir_Robert said:

Let's stay as far away from that discussion as we can. That only leads to endless flame wars

 

 

There is no word on reproduction, but there are mods that let you keep your current Kerbals fresh for prolonged periods of time. Just Freeze them

 

I'm not sure what is more sci-fi, cryogenic suspended animation,  or century long space travel where the crew raise families and the whole thing doesn't end up like the movie event horizon.

[Nightshift83]

4 hours ago, Buster Charlie said:

All these suggest Kerbal are the victim of some kind of cosmic joke, their creator must be some kind of space obsessed God or gods whose enjoyment involves the creation of a space fairing race of expendable crew.

I see we are pretty much on the same page here as you might take from my above statement!

[Sir_Robert]

2 hours ago, Nightshift83 said:

They do appear seemingly out of nowhere because of space-time-ripples caused by something going over 4 x timewarp that is controlled by 'someone' outside Kerbals dimension (2D+1D(depth)+1D(timecontrol)). Some Kerbals even believe that this 'someone' also has direct control of their actions and fates and can even revert time to some extend thus bringing some of them back to life if he pleases so..

 

http://www.kerbalcomics.com/2013/09/15/episode-31-future-echoes/

Relevant comic

Edited February 24, 2016 by Sir_Robert

[Fearless Son]

31 minutes ago, Buster Charlie said:

I'm not sure what is more sci-fi, cryogenic suspended animation,  or century long space travel where the crew raise families and the whole thing doesn't end up like the movie event horizon.

Civilization: Beyond Earth had a pretty good depiction of long-journey interstellar travel.

"Our journey through deep space was long, and quiet..."

[Nightshift83]

16 minutes ago, Sir_Robert said:

http://www.kerbalcomics.com/2013/09/15/episode-31-future-echoes/

Relevant comic

Nice one! Just think about our first man/ woman landing on Mars and having a deja-vu: 'hmm..it just feels like I've been here before?!'

[Buster Charlie]

1 hour ago, Nightshift83 said:

I see we are pretty much on the same page here as you might take from my above statement!

This is all too much like Terry Pratchetts "only you can save mankind"

[Nothalogh]

1 hour ago, Buster Charlie said:

I'm not sure what is more sci-fi, cryogenic suspended animation,  or century long space travel where the crew raise families and the whole thing doesn't end up like the movie event horizon.

Generation Ships are more like vaults in Fallout, just hope the ships aren't built by Vault-Tec. 

[Sir_Robert]

15 minutes ago, Nothalogh said:

Generation Ships are more like vaults in Fallout, just hope the ships aren't built by Vault-Tec. 

No instead they are build by someone who plays KSP. I'm not sure which is worse

[Kerbart]

After a long long mission my lander finally arrived on Eeloo. Anxiously I select the Hitchiker and click "transfer crew" to decide who is the lucky Kerbal to go first to the airlock (I always use a Mk I lander can as airlock). Will it be Jeb or Val? Jeb or Val? Jeb or...

Frotgard? Flembob? Snidgard? I don't remember putting those in my ship?!

[Provisional Name 12]

8 hours ago, Choctofliatrio2.0 said:

I figure you'd send frozen embryos along with the ship. However Kerbals reproduce, it probably doesn't work well in space.

actually this is something that has come up in mars one that it is likely that humans cannot reproduce in space or on mars (I think related to gravity and radiation). I suspect that we will likely have technology to produce artificial wombs and probably use genetic engineering within a few decades, but it is genuinely improbable that we will be will be able to colonize without beating these limitations somehow. The same would logically be true for the kerbals.

Also there are many theories on the kerbals being colonists or products of genetic engineering. I'm not going to throw any darts at that board, but some people have brought up that the kerbals are all green, I just wanted to point out that this is not necessarily true, if in the 1970s you looked at nasa (especially the astronauts) you would have thought all the earthlings were white. It could simply be that the racial dynamics on kerblin are such that the green class of kerbals are the dominant class and that there are purple and blue kerbals that are not in the space program because of their disparate socioeconomic backgrounds.