Space Arks

[Montjoy]

The natural answer to this risk would be to not preserve seeds, but to grow living plants on board the ark, in hydroponic plants. This would minimize the risk of seed damage: you can always obtain new seeds from the plants.
Of course, the radiation of space could cause subtle mutations to creep in undetected. This would be a much more likely (and much more fun) disaster scenario

I don't disagree because that is what I said a couple posts up as well

-->Maintain an orbital safe house of seed stock by farming and harvesting in the now largely empty craft as a backup. 

I do like the idea of radiated plant monsters or mutant problems

[seneschal]

Sorry, I know I keep mentioning the seed/farming aspect but I think it should be a HUGE concern for colonists.

There isn't a guarantee their seed couldn't fail or be damaged.

Are we assuming they could survive long term on their new home on native vegetation and it's domestication?

No, we aren't assuming that.  That's why our colonists need that 15-month food supply for themselves and for their livestock, and a store of seed and/or live plants from the ship's greenhouse.  They need something they know they can eat until their crops and livestock get established.  Again, the Jamestown example is instructive.  The early settlers survived on food brought from England and starved when they didn't have it until they learned how to hunt American game and cultivate American fruit and vegetables -- and how to cultivate European introductions in an unfamiliar environment.  And that was merely moving to a new continent on the same planet.  Learning what alien plants and animals are palatable or how to adapt Earth crops and livestock to alien soil and climate would be a challenge.  Are there metals in the soil that could poison the colonists via their fresh broccoli harvest?  Are there amino acids and enzymes in the flesh of native animals that would make them inedible to humans, or even merely make them taste terrible?  Wasabi sauce is your friend.

An on-board greenhouse or hydroponic garden is a good idea and a long-established sci-fi convention.  But would it survive on a sleeper ship where even the maintenance personnel are asleep most of the voyage?  No one awake to water and fertilize the plants, and no one awake for years at a time to maintain and correct that automatic lighting, watering and feeding system.  If the light bulbs burn out or the water nozzles get clogged, what then?  On a regular spacecraft or on a generation ship that isn't a problem.  Someone is always around to tend the plants, since they cleanse the air and provide food and medicine.

Re  in-space mutations.  Rosen, you do want our poor, benighted colonists to survive, don't you?  

[Montjoy]

The facility and stock could be in storage until say 2 months before arrival, at this point the botonists/farmers are awoke to begin their work.

This would have fresh food in production before the bulk of the colonists awoke allowing them to further stretch their prepared food stocks, or the robots turn on at 3 months away, the auto systems kick on 6 weeks out, etc

[Montjoy]

I'd also add that the above has the possible benefit of providing seedlings.

Some crops really do benefit starting in greenhouses instead of just seeds stuck in the outdoors.

[Montjoy]

Are the colonists bringing along supplies for renewable energy production or will they start stripping the new planet of it's limited resources for those needs?

 

If they plan for the 1st and something goes wrong with their equipment I could see much fun being had trying to solve their basic energy needs.

Edited September 15, 2015 by Montjoy

[Montjoy]

 and starved when they didn't have it until they learned how to hunt American game and cultivate American fruit and vegetables -- and how to cultivate European introductions in an unfamiliar environment.

It is worth noting that it took the locals teaching them how to get through these tough times as well. Your poor colonists wont have that going for them

[Montjoy]

 

Re  in-space mutations.  Rosen, you do want our poor, benighted colonists to survive, don't you?  

On this one, maybe the mutations aren't actually bad things to have.

Donno how far out there you wanna go on that sorta thing.

[Aelwyn]

Seeds? That's 20th century talk. Keep the DNA of every living thing (except maybe mosquitoes, lima beans, and Ebola) on a hard drive. The only biomaterial you need is stem cells and some basic chemicals. The DNA would take up about 5 petabytes for two individuals of each eukaryotic species. That's not very much genetic variation, so let's multiply that by 5,000, the average minimum viable population for 95% survival 100 to 1,000 years into the future. That's 25 exabytes. Nanobots produce the DNA, robots pipette it into stem cells. Instant clone farm, and a pretty big clone zoo.

Downloading memories into clones might be more difficult, possibly beyond the scope of possibility, so we might still want to include sleeper colonists.

Of course, mechanical storage is just as susceptible to random noise as DNA, so... mutations? Yep. We got mutations.

Edited September 15, 2015 by Aelwyn

[Aelwyn]

Anyone remember Starship Warden?

This was my first role-playing game, so I'm loving this thread. 

[seneschal]

We haven't really gotten to the generation ships yet.  They'd have to be even larger to accommodate presumably thriving dynasties of would-be settlers and the biosphere needed to provide for them.

[Guest Vile Traveller]

I think the concept of space arks almost mandates planetfall. The goal is not to create orbital habitats (in which case why leave the home system?), but to provide relatively unlimited space for expansion.

[clarence]

As many of the uncertainties as possible would need to be ironed out by probes long before the colonists arrive; or even better before they start their journey. It will be a waiting game though: 130 years for a probe to go to Alpha Centauri. Transferring data back to Earth would be another 4 years or so, assuming light speed communication (laser?). 

A lot can be gleaned from orbit of course, but I doubt anyone would spend such enormous amounts of money to go there unless the probe has actually landed. Getting detailed atmospheric data, soil samples, a bacterial & virologic analysis and a more general chemical data set I think will be needed to really convince people it's worth going there in person. 

Even more information can be gained if another probe or two are sent halfway during the journey. Perhaps even a future version of Curiosity driving around would be possible, detailing flora, fauna, mapping out good locations etcetera. 

[nclarke]

Speaking as someone who was involved in some of  NASA's missions over the years the communications issues would prevent direct control of any lander and sophisticated self-aware driving programs would be needed to manoeuver around a planetary surface including plotting where to go and what looks like a suitable place to land any colonists. The Cassini-Huygens mission (one of my last) is probably the template for such a probe to another world with an orbiter and a separate lander just as the ESA Rosetta-Philae mission to  67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko show how much we can improve a design after a successful test including the Mars lander missions where the use of retro-thrusters and bouncing balloons led the way to .Curiosity's 3 years work.

[seneschal]

The great-granddaddy of all generation ship gone wrong stories seems to be Robert Heinlein's 1941 (1941!!!) novel Orphans of the Sky, originally published in two parts as Universe and its sequel, Common Sense.  Heinlein, in the same year Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, gives us many of the tropes we've become accustomed to:  the mission forgotten, the fact that the colonists are on a ship headed to another star forgotten, the vessel badly off course, the crew descended to tribal barbarism, radiation-spawned mutants, warring factions aboard ship, necessary ship maintenance reinterpreted as religious ritual.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphans_of_the_Sky

Who needs invading aliens, xenophobic cyborgs or malfunctioning robots?  The humans were doing a pretty good job of killing themselves off without such exotic help.

Edited September 16, 2015 by seneschal

[seneschal]

Before we get to specifics of our generation ship, here's a brief description of "Earthship Ark" from "The Starlost."

The main body of the ship, the spine if you will, is an I-beam shaped rectangle composed of modular sections.  This houses the bridge and auxiliary bridge, the computer and communication centers, a hospital, a hangar for landing craft, a police station for ship's security, fuel and engines.  To port and starboard of the spine are four clusters of biosphere domes (two clusters of nine each side) plus an extra dome thrown in there for a total of 37.  The domes in each cluster are interconnected with travel tubes.  Individual domes are 50 miles across and in case of emergency are capable of sealing themselves and maintaining life support on their own.  It isn't clear how many colonists the ship was intended to house.  At the beginning of the TV series the domes and the spines have been separated from each other for a very long time.

http://www.snowcrest.net/fox/props/index.html

 

Edited September 19, 2015 by seneschal
Add info, add link

[clarence]

How long is the spine; how many decks? It sounds like it must be enormous, if each biosphere is 50 miles...

I've been trying to figure out the simplest way to draw deckplans. As long as the outer shape of the ship is relatively basic I think it's quite manageble. Everywhere I read, two tools keep cropping up: CAD programs and Adobe Illustrator (or similar vector programs). If you don't want to do it by hand of course. 

Setting up some re-usable parts seems the way to go, like cubicles, hangars, sick bay and so on, and then just drag and drop them. I suppose SketchUp could work too, but doing them in 3d might make the job considerably more difficult. 

Old deckplans for (sea-going) ships are quite good as reference!

[seneschal]

Unfortunately the show didn't last long enough for Trek style technical manuals to come into vogue.  But consider that the studio model was 10 feet by 12 feet in size, and the spine would support a row of habitats 8-10 domes long (the others stacked on top of each lower cluster).

[Ethereal]

How long is the spine; how many decks? It sounds like it must be enormous, if each biosphere is 50 miles...

I've been trying to figure out the simplest way to draw deckplans. As long as the outer shape of the ship is relatively basic I think it's quite manageble. Everywhere I read, two tools keep cropping up: CAD programs and Adobe Illustrator (or similar vector programs). If you don't want to do it by hand of course. 

Setting up some re-usable parts seems the way to go, like cubicles, hangars, sick bay and so on, and then just drag and drop them. I suppose SketchUp could work too, but doing them in 3d might make the job considerably more difficult. 

Old deck plans for (sea-going) ships are quite good as reference!

http://www.dundjinni.com/ is a good program to use. I think it is still available, but I am not sure. Seems there was some question as to the store being closed. However in the Forums section there are a lot of pre-made battle maps and items that you can just  layer in to making some maps of your own. Some of it space, deck plans etc. You can do a search of the forums to find it, just be aware that misspelling or specific wording can be important. Sometimes I have to use several different words to find what I am looking for. The forums are good and have a lot of good material for cities to dungeons to modern to futuristic.

There are 2 other sites which might be of use. They both have battle maps. deckplans and other interesting maps.

Deviant Art http://www.deviantart.com/browse/whatshot/

Cartographers Guild http://www.cartographersguild.com/content.php?s=b7f79d56e998142d32f592e979b442f2

[Sunwolfe]

Greetings,

I'm not sure this will be very helpful in your quest, but I enjoyed this site for its inspirative capabilities: The Star Wars Deckplans Alliance. Wonderful drawings and plans.

Cheers!

[Skunkape]

http://www.dundjinni.com/ is a good program to use. I think it is still available, but I am not sure. Seems there was some question as to the store being closed. However in the Forums section there are a lot of pre-made battle maps and items that you can just  layer in to making some maps of your own. Some of it space, deck plans etc. You can do a search of the forums to find it, just be aware that misspelling or specific wording can be important. Sometimes I have to use several different words to find what I am looking for. The forums are good and have a lot of good material for cities to dungeons to modern to futuristic.

There are 2 other sites which might be of use. They both have battle maps. deckplans and other interesting maps.

Deviant Art http://www.deviantart.com/browse/whatshot/

Cartographers Guild http://www.cartographersguild.com/content.php?s=b7f79d56e998142d32f592e979b442f2

As far as I know, Dundjinni is no longer available for purchase. It's  good program, but might not be what you want to use. Checking out deckplans at the sites mentioned is good advice. If you really wanted a mapping program, while it has a steep learning curve, Profantasy's Campaign Cartographer might be the way to go. It is a CAD based program and allows for to draw outside terrain, town layouts, building layouts etc.

[MoonHunter]

I love space arks.  By the time you have the technology to make one of these huge generational crafts, you don't need to make them.  Once you have the basics of making a space craft a hundred miles across (figuring biomes of 30 to 50 miles) and the ability to maintain an enviroment properly (which is not easy as Biosphere 2 has proven), you can build stations/ships that stay near the star or colonize any planet in the system. There will be no population issues, as various ships will absorb that.  There will be no materials issues, because to make something this big you can actually make/modify matter.  

These ships holding your population will float and splinter culturally... a bit.   Eventually those will take very long orbits (something in the oort might show up every couple of hundred years), so being a bit alien by the time to return.  

The reason to build an Ark are political and survival insurance.  

The political reasoning has to do with taking your marbles and leaving.  For some reason the group needs to leave the Sol Space and find their own destiny, be in command of their own life, and not be controlled by others.  (So a group that does not like the social trends of transhumanism might pack it up and leave).  These people would take a ship and go... hoping that their children might find an star with a jewel planet to call their own.  Until then, they will live on the ship. 

Survival is just that.  Spreading your eggs into more than one baskets.  So while you will have long orbit ships holding huge populations, they are still tied to Sol... so if something happens to the Sun or our system, they would be effected as well.  Just sending them into the deep black would be tough, but ensures survival of the Humanity splinter of the moment.  

I have given this a lot of thought and over 200 posts worth of action.  

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?424444-Setting-riff-Metamophasis-Alpha-The-Argon

MoonHunter does love The Argon/ Agean.  Used to hate it, but now I can look at it and go "Cool".

[clarence]

I like the reasoning behind that. But I also think you are missing one very basic driving force for humanity: Curiosity and the resulting drive to explore. I'm thinking about what will happen once we have a good enough space-based telescope (or long range probe) to give us photos of another Earth-like planet. Once we know it is there, can we really stop ourselves from going there? Regardless of the cost and the time it will take? Even if only the construction of the ship will take fifty (or a hundred) years, and countless resources and man hours, I think we eventually will want to see it with our own eyes. Explore it.

The James Webb telescope scheduled for 2016 (or is it 2017?) is not that telescope, I think. It will give us much more information about exoplanets, but not a photo of a blue-green sphere. That will at best be with the next generation of telescopes. A fast probe, on the other hand, will take at least 130 years to get there (unless we find even more powerful engines) and so far we're not really in a position where we can build them.

Looking forward to reading the thread on RPG.net!

[Wolfsbane]

Fantasy Games Unlimited (FGU) had a game that started by telling your players it was about colonizing Mars and that the astronaut personnel would be in cryo' on the journey, but the Buck Rogers twist was that WW3 interferes and the un-frozen astronauts; pilots, engineers, scientists and technicians end up being the core of a Resistance to save America.

[Aelwyn]

Ben Bova wrote a novel about a colony ship gone awry, End of Exile. Been many years since I read it, but this thread is making me want to revisit it.