Life on a generation ship.

[kiwiak]

This scenario is assuming that cryostasis couldn't be mastered to the point where an entire colonization force could be frozen and sent on an automated ship to a nearby star, without anything going wrong. (Dying in their sleep, the ship breaking down after 300 years without maintenance etc), so a sleeper ship is out of the question.

You can always introduce system of taking shifts, two crew members stay awake each year.

[lunait]

Can someone provide us with titles of interesting books in this topic? Life on board of generation ships, evacuating earth etc

Few years ago, i readed interesting novel by Arthur C Clark, about moon colony that accidentally become last stand of humanity after Nuclear War, barely managing to survive after being cut from any earth support.. I think its somewhat related to topic.

There is a great book called Aniara by Harry Martinson, published (in Swedish) in 1956. There should be an English translation, if you can find it. The full title is Aniara: A Review of Man in Time and Space (Aniara: en revy om människan i tid och rum in Swedish). It's maybe not a "generation ship" book in the traditional sense, but it's still something I think people should read. The book contributed heavily to Martinson receiving the Nobel Prize in literature in 1974. I don't think the text is available online, but perhaps you can find a new or used book somewhere.

<Summary of the story - highlight the following text if you want to read it>It's a collection of 103 poems which together form the story of a transport ship (Aniara) leaving Earth, which has been severely damaged by pollution and nuclear war, bound for a Mars colony. Early in the book, while on their way to Mars, the ship is hit by a rogue asteroid and veers off course, with its directional control destroyed in the process while the rest of the ship is unharmed. The rest of the book is about the existential struggle of the passengers and the crew when they realize that being rescued is impossible and that they cannot prevent the ship from being ejected out of the solar system and drifting off into interstellar space. The only thing that remains for them is an existence onboard Aniara for eternity, or at least until the ship's supplies run out.

</summary>

I can in all seriousness say that it is the most beautiful thing I have ever read. Writing this summary while thinking about the book almost brought tears to my eyes. If you ever get the chance to read the English translation (or, if you know Swedish, the original), do it.

Edited January 16, 2014 by lunait

[Javster]

You can always introduce system of taking shifts, two crew members stay awake each year.

Yeah, I meant keep the passengers asleep, and the crew awake in shifts

[SuperBigD60]

some things:

its a ship. the government is going to be the captain and officers. though you might use the pirate ship model, where the captain is voted in by the crew and can be deposed by the crew at any time. you also dont want a bunch of passengers making these decisions, as they do not have the training neccisary to understand who would make a good captain. you might have a democratic civilian leadership that is independent of the crew structure, this would have the job of keeping the population happy while the crew have the job of keeping the ship safe. the economic model will probibly be communist or possibly socialist to eliminate inter-class conflicts. rationing will be how goods are ultimately distributed. it will be an engineered society.

population control is going to be critical. if you somehow create more humans than you can feed, you are going to have to resort to cannibalism. too few and you will have an insufficient workforce to maintain food production and keeping systems functional. so population control measures will need to be taken. so not only will you be limited to how many offspring you have, in some situations you may have a quota (to fill yourself or transfer to someone else).

workforce is going to need to be maintained at an optimal level. priority will go to filling essential jobs first, and personal choice second. so you might not get to choose your occupation aboard the ship. you will of course be placed in the available job you are best suited for, and would be required to stay there. because of the resource cost to retrain someone. traditional education will probibly be replaced with an accelerated education, you might do in 8 years what normally takes 12 (by setting people into their job early and eliminating unnecessary classes), then go through an aptitude selection process followed by vocational skills training or an apprenticeship for your job, depending on skill level and training required. unskilled labor could enter the workforce by age 16 and skilled workers could be ready by 18 or 20.

You definitely sound like the captain that we'd mutiny against.

Seriously, though, I subscribe more to your theory for at least the first few generations of the journey. That part of the scenario is somewhat reminiscent of Stargate Universe (which is my favorite stargate series, and pretty darn interesting).

[Nuke]

its not going to be pretty. basic freedoms go out the window when human extinction is one suicide bomber away. everyone is going to be monitored. everyone will be subject to routine psychological screening. extreme ideologies are going to be completely intolerable. imprisonment of criminals will not even be possible due to supply constraints (ration cutting might be punishment for small offenses, anything major that endangers the ship or causes instabilities in the population carries the death penalty). its going to suck.

things might be a little more lax if humans are not in danger of extinction, for example ships to seed new colonies.