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In this episode of Entropy Rising, Jacob and Lucas dive into one of the most fascinating—and controversial—ideas in space exploration: generation ships.
What does it take to send thousands of people on a voyage lasting hundreds (or even thousands) of years to another star system? Would you be willing to spend your entire life aboard a ship, knowing you’ll never see the destination? And what kind of society forms when your entire world is a metal cylinder drifting through the void?
We explore the different types of colony ships—from today’s theoretical generation ships to future possibilities involving life extension and cryo-sleep. You’ll hear discussions on ship design, population limits, farming in space, water recycling, propulsion systems, and even the ethical dilemma of bringing new life into a confined world with no escape.
But this episode goes deeper than just engineering. We tackle the psychological and social challenges: How do governments work in space? What happens to culture and language over generations? Could a closed ecosystem become a utopia—or a floating dystopia?
From building a spacefaring civilization to surviving the journey itself, this episode paints a vivid and sometimes unsettling picture of what it might really take for humanity to become an interstellar species.
Whether you're into science, sci-fi, philosophy, or just love big questions—this one's for you.
Website: https://www.entropy-rising.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jacob (00:00):
If I tell you, either we can go 20%, the speed of light,
(00:03):
this trip is gonna take fivegenerations, and you're gonna be
living in these not so greatconditions, or, we're only able
to go 10%.
The speed of light.
But you're gonna be in luxurythe entire time.
Do you care if that meansthere's gonna be a few extra
generations after you're dead?
Not at all.
(00:24):
Hello and welcome to EntropyRising, where we talk about
science and futurism.
I'm your host, Jacob, and asalways, I'm joined with my
wonderful co-host Lucas.
Lucas.
How are you doing today?
Lucas (00:34):
I'm doing fantastic, Jake.
How are you?
Jacob (00:36):
I'm doing great.
I'm glad to hear that.
So today's episode is all aboutinterstellar colonization.
Particularly we're gonna betalking about colony ships, not
so much setting up the colonyand, and what colony worlds are
gonna look like.
So this is kind of a follow upto, our Interstellar travel
episode.
Right.
Of course, that one focused moreon the rocket equation and what
goes into actually getting aship to a new star.
(00:58):
Yeah.
Uh, whereas this one's gonna beall about how do you get people
to that star and what does lifelook like on these ships?
Lucas (01:03):
Yeah.
It's, a little bit more of an indepth dive on what that would be
like.
Not only for the peopledesigning the ship to get there,
but also for the people who willbe living on that ship.
Jacob (01:12):
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's gonna be, I think, a funone.
I'm looking forward to it.
I've been looking forward torecording this episode all week
actually.
Lucas (01:18):
Yeah.
Me as well.
I love diving into these topicsand getting to learn a little
bit about it and then sharing itwith our viewers.
Jacob (01:24):
Yeah.
So, you know, I think a fairstarting point for this episode
is gonna be, why would we evenwant to colonize other star
systems?
You know, what's gonna drive usto leave our home system and
expand into other star systems?
It's gonna be a challengingjourney and there's gonna be
risks involved.
You're leaving your entire worldbehind, essentially.
And at least for your homesystem, there's not a ton to
gain.
there's almost unlimitedresources really in our solar
(01:46):
system, or at least there's,more than we could use in a very
long time.
So.
Lucas, I'm curious, what, whatare your thoughts on this?
Why do you think humans mightcolonize other stars?
Or do you think we actuallywould?
Lucas (01:56):
That's a great question.
I definitely think that we will,and really I feel like it all
just stems from an innate thingthat separates us as humans.
It's a curiosity.
Okay.
And also a drive to expand.
Yeah.
Right.
We've, we've expanded to every,livable part of our, globe.
We are going to expand out intoour solar system and eventually
(02:18):
it just makes sense that we willexpand even further out to other
stars and other planets.
Jacob (02:22):
I completely agree.
You said humanity.
I think it's, even deeper thanthat.
I think innately, any biologicalsystem that goes through natural
selection is going to be drivento expand.
You know, even if you putbacteria in a culture disc, it's
gonna fill every little niche inthat.
And looking at life on earth, wehave filled every single
biological niche that exists onthis planet.
Not we, but, you know, life has.
(02:44):
Yeah.
So I, I think humans have, thatsame innate drive buried deep
inside of us to a biologicallevel to expand as much as
possible and to go out there andto really try to establish new
homes, new niches, really.
Lucas (02:57):
Yeah, absolutely.
Jacob (02:58):
But I do think it's worth talking about why we wouldn't
expand, because, I mentioned ita little bit earlier, but the
idea of expanding to anotherstar system, for resources just
doesn't really work out in mymind.
Lucas (03:11):
No, if I'm thinking of why our planet would invest in
doing this, would maybe be toclaim other territories, but.
We would have to understand bynow that when you have a colony,
especially one that is that faraway, you will have no control
over that regardless.
Jacob (03:25):
Yeah.
No control over it.
And even if you did have controlover it and they agree to send
resources back, it's so energyintensive to try to send any
significant amount of resourcesover interstellar distances that
it just doesn't make sense.
Unless you are a type two ortype three civilization who
basically has unlimited energyand they just wanna build a mega
structure.
That's, literally the onlysituation I see where you would
(03:47):
want to get resources fromanother star system.
Lucas (03:50):
Yeah.
And even then you wouldn't sendcolony ships there.
Yeah.
Probably automated drones.
Exactly.
But.
Realistically, I guess there isa resource that we could gain
and that would be research orknowledge from a colony.
Jacob (04:03):
No, that's fair.
It costs very little to sendinformation back, if you can
power a transmitter, that'sabout it.
So.
Absolutely.
I could definitely see someresearch institutions being
interested in throwing somefunding that way.
Lucas (04:14):
Yeah, it would most definitely be privately funded.
Jacob (04:17):
I think so.
I could see governments maybefunding these for the first
couple of colonies.
You know, there is a prestige tobe had to be the first, so
maybe, you might see one or twomissions get funded.
I.
just to say we did it, but Idon't think you'll see many
because no one cares if you'rethe fifth to do something.
Right?
Lucas (04:33):
Yeah, that does make me think of another point the whole
idea of a new life or a freshstart For people who, feel like
they can't advance anymore inthe lives that they have here on
Earth because everything's sosaturated.
It offers either yourselfdepending on the type of ship or
your family an opportunity toreally, come out on top.
Jacob (04:52):
I agree with that.
It's very possible we'll reach apoint, especially if you have
life extension technology.
You might have people livinghundreds, maybe thousands of
years.
If you do have that happening,it could be really hard to
socially advance, especially ifpeople who are above you aren't
dying off.
Right.
Yeah.
There's no opportunity for that.
So it's very possible that goingto another star system might be
an opportunity for advancement.
(05:12):
And let's also not forget,religious reasons.
Throughout history.
That's been a common cause forexpansion.
Lucas (05:17):
Yeah.
Trying to, find a place whereyou can practice your religion
freely.
that has been a huge reason whypeople have expanded in the
past.
Jacob (05:24):
Yeah, I love that The Expanse actually covered that
with the, with the Navu.
That was their colony ship andit was funded by the Mormons.
Mm-hmm.
That was a really fun plotpoint.
I really liked that.
Which Blade became the behemoth?
The warship.
So it didn't quite work out forthem, but I think, I think it
might work out for us better.
Lucas (05:37):
Oh, you know, not everybody succeeds on the first
time.
They'll try again.
Jacob (05:41):
Just while we're also on this topic, when we're talking
about funding it I don'tnecessarily think these colonies
have to be externally fundedeither.
Mm-hmm.
You know, we tend to imaginepeople are gonna be living in
orbital habitats.
So it might be the case that oneof these habitats decides, we
want to go off and exploreanother solar system.
You know, they just need to getthe money together to build an
engine and maybe shore up someother systems so that they can
(06:01):
recycle everything moreefficiently.
And, anyone who wants to jointhis journey, there's no reason
for them to keep most of theirworldly possessions.
Right.
So it might make sense to get agroup of colonists together who
want to go and basicallycrowdsource this thing.
Lucas (06:14):
Yeah.
I mean, you definitely could doit.
Now to crowdsource a ship ofthat magnitude or, even a
journey of that magnitude, it,uh, definitely wouldn't be
cheap.
So if you're already living onan O'Neill cylinder and living a
life like that, why would youchoose to, spend your extra
funds on essentially living thesame life, but just going
(06:34):
somewhere else?
Jacob (06:35):
It's worth pointing out if we're imagining a point in
the future where we're buildinghundreds of thousands to
millions to billions of O'Neillcylinders, which is kind of the
situation we talk about with aDyson Swarm, it might actually
be fairly cheap to build one ofthese things.
They could be mass produced andit could be a case that if you
can get, 10,000 people together,a hundred thousand people
together, that you could justscrape together the raw
(06:55):
resources, especially if youhave a lot of automation.
it might get to.
Money's not really a factor.
You just get some automateddrones together.
They go maybe get some miningclaims from asteroids, get the
raw material, build the ship,or, retrofit an existing mass
produced O'Neill cylinder andanyone who wants to go can, fund
it or whatever.
Lucas (07:12):
That's actually a great point.
I didn't really think of that.
I was living too much within thenext hundred years, not the next
couple thousand.
Jacob (07:17):
Yeah.
Which I don't think it'll be inthe next hundred, maybe
hundreds.
We'll see the first one.
But I think hundreds to maybethousands.
Always tough to say, things tendto grow exponentially and it's
hard to predict when thatexponential curve will end.
Right?
Lucas (07:30):
Yeah.
But you talk about how theseships are, going to be made if
they're either out of existingO'Neill cylinders or, we make
them from scratch to be designedto travel that way.
But I definitely think that weshould jump into a little bit
about how the ship will bedesigned to be able to support
life, for that period of time.
Jacob (07:47):
Yeah, no, absolutely.
in my head at least, I tend toimagine these are gonna
function.
Like O'Neill cylinders.
Of course that's gonna changedepending on the technology
available.
but one big distinction betweenO'Neill cylinders and colony
ships, not just the engine ofcourse, is the fact that your
recycling systems need to besignificantly better for an
interstellar voyage.
They do need to be for anO'Neill cylinder that might be,
(08:09):
surrounded by other cylinders,and they're able to have trade
or even top off, their oxygen ortheir water from the solar
system.
That's not really an optionRight.
When you're traveling betweenthe stars or it's harder to do
anyways.
Lucas (08:19):
Yeah, that's a really good point.
And when I think of that,especially for water mm-hmm.
The ship would actually have tooperate at a hundred percent
recycling efficiency.
I mean, we could make water onthe ship by fusing, hydrogen and
oxygen, but that is a verydangerous and explosive method
of creating water.
(08:39):
So if we don't recycle at ahundred percent efficiency, we
would eventually run out,especially if this strip is
going to take several hundredyears.
Jacob (08:45):
Um, the efficiency is really just gonna depend on how
long the trip is.
Right.
You know, if you've got ahundred year trip versus a
thousand year trip, you might beable to get by with different
levels of efficiency.
99.9% efficient could work for ahundred to 200 year trip.
But yeah, you're right.
If you're going on a multi,thousand year voyage, which I
tend to think that's definitelyon the extreme side, you would
need pushing near a hundredpercent efficiency.
(09:08):
Yeah.
Now, I mean, you said that usinghydrogen and oxygen.
Is an explosive process.
But I mean, realistically, ifyou're powering one of these
ships anyways, you've, you'vegotta have a reactor room,
right?
You need a pretty beefy engine.
So you can probably handle that.
And I tend to think these wouldprobably be either fusion based
engines or some other design.
if you have anti-matter, thatwould be nice too.
But then you can do anti-mattercatalyze fusion, so you can
(09:29):
still make resources if you wantto.
Lucas (09:31):
Yeah, that, that is definitely true.
It's just expending that,especially fuel.
Mm-hmm.
I mean, I'm not gonna say yourmost valuable resource, but you
need it to get there and youneed it to stop.
Yeah, that's absolutely true.
So, burning that to try andcounteract the fact that you're
not operating at a high enoughefficiency to create those
fluids, I feel like the ship isjust designed to fail.
Jacob (09:52):
Maybe.
I don't know.
A common way that I think aboutslowing these ships down is
gonna be something through likea baard Ram Jett.
Mm-hmm.
I know we mentioned it in ourentry, solar travel episode, so
I'm not gonna go too deep intoit.
And if anyone's curious aboutthe concept, check out that
episode.
But we talked about how you canuse one of these to actually
slow down.
You put a large magnetic fieldout to catch interstellar
hydrogen.
You pull that hydrogen in to,power a fusion reactor to slow
(10:13):
down your ship.
It doesn't work great foraccelerating, but it does work
well for decelerating and italso gives you a bunch of
hydrogen.
So maybe you can use that to topoff your.
Water reserves or your fuelreserves halfway through the
trip once you're ready to startdecelerating.
Lucas (10:25):
I mean, that would definitely be perfect because
the big issue with hydrogen,especially when you're using it
as fuel to slow down, is it'ssuch a small particle that it
leaks through metal.
Yeah.
It leaks through everything.
Jacob (10:35):
Yeah.
It's very hard to containhydrogen.
Lucas (10:37):
So even if you're not burning your fuel you're still
losing fuel, especially over aperiod of hundreds of years.
So if we could design somethingthat not only doesn't need extra
fuel to stop us or slow us down,but could also provide us with
more fuel during the travel,that's definitely a viable
option for maintaining, yourwater as well.
Yeah,
Jacob (10:55):
absolutely.
I do think it's worth, alsotalking about this in my head,
depending on technology, Iimagine there's three different
ways you can do colony ships.
Mm-hmm.
And so basically the way I thinkabout it is option A, this is
with basically technology thatexists today.
Ignoring the engine side of it,you've got no life extension.
You've got no way to preservepeople either by freezing them
or anything like that.
(11:15):
Mm-hmm.
So if you want to go on a fouror 500 year journey, this is
gonna be done through atraditional generation ship type
situation.
Right.
Where you have people livingtheir entire lives on the ship
breeding up other generations totry to make this whole journey.
Lucas (11:28):
Yeah.
Jacob (11:29):
Option B, the way I see it is maybe you have life
extension technology, people areliving well into their hundreds.
You know, maybe even you'vereached a point of near
biological immortality where.
People don't age, they don'tdie.
And you have a situation wherepeople could make this voyage
through their entire life, butyou don't yet have the
technology to freeze people.
(11:50):
Mm-hmm.
And then option C is basicallyall of those together.
You have the option to freezepeople, you can put people in
cryos stasis, you also have lifeextension technology.
I tend to group those togetherbecause if you can repair the
cellular damage from freezingsomebody, you also pretty much
have life extension technology.
Yeah.
at that point you have theoption to have sleeper ships or
people who might be awake forthe journey for their entire,
(12:12):
multi century life, maybe multimillennial life.
So those are the three optionsthat I foresee for colony ships.
Lucas (12:20):
Yeah.
I would agree with that.
Absolutely.
I do.
Love to think that we will havelife extension and we will have
perfected, cryo freezing andbeing able to essentially sleep
through the whole ride.
Yeah.
There.
But, I definitely want to focuson, what we can almost do now.
Jacob (12:38):
Yeah.
So I, I was thinking maybe wecould talk about all three of
these options.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
I think first, why don't westart talking about like the
generation ship type.
Lucas (12:45):
Okay.
So talking about that we alreadycovered, water and fuel, right?
But another big thing is food.
Yes, of course you need to feedthese people.
And depending on how many peopleyou have, you're gonna need
about a half a kilometer offarming space.
You, that's both aeroponic andtraditional farming styles to
provide meat and, calorie richvegetables.
(13:07):
And fruits like.
You'll see a lot of beans,tomatoes, potatoes, things like
that.
Jacob (13:11):
What kind of population is that for?
Uh,
Lucas (13:13):
500.
Jacob (13:14):
500 people.
Mm-hmm.
So, I mean, that's a, a surfacearea.
of course you can do thatvertically too.
So you can divide that up.
So if you have an O'Neillcylinder, for example, you don't
need half a kilometer of the
Lucas (13:23):
No.
Yeah.
You don't need just a squareship that has half a kilometer
in it, but you just need a halfa kilometer of space.
So, for the people who don'treally know how the O'Neill
cylinders are designed, theyrotate around themselves
essentially to provide like asuitable living area and mimic
earth.
Now, we could have a farm that'sjust in one of the rings that's
also providing gravity to theship.
That would definitely be viable.
(13:43):
But these are also, going toneed a lot of water for
maintenance and things likethat, and that's just per 500
people.
Now, how many people do youthink would be on one of these
colony ships?
Jacob (13:52):
I think quite a bit.
So are you familiar with theconcept of Dunbar's number?
No.
It's essentially the, a numberof social relationships, a
person can manage and it'saround 120.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
You can know more people thanthat, but you really can't
maintain more relationships sothat it's just to be too much.
That
Lucas (14:06):
sounds exhausting.
Yeah, exactly.
Jacob (14:09):
So there's, uh, a lot of research behind this that
basically says a minimum viablepopulation size to keep you
socially healthy is about twiceDunbar's number.
So about 240 people is enoughpeople to have distinct social
groups to allow marrying, toallow people to move through
friend groups, to distancethemselves from people they
don't like.
that's essentially the minimumviable number of people you need
(14:31):
before society starts to feel alittle too cramped.
Yeah.
Now I think that's a very smallnumber though.
Personally when I'm thinking of,colony ships interstellar.
Especially where people areawake.
I think a population size around10,000 is pretty reasonable,
gives you a lot of geneticdiversity and 10 thousand's, a
fairly large town, so you'reable to have tons of social
relationships.
You're able to have completelydifferent groups and even
(14:53):
specialization in certaincategories, and I think that's a
good number to aim for
Lucas (14:57):
Yeah, that would be ideal.
What would a ship that couldmaintain 10,000 people, how big
would that be?
Jacob (15:02):
Well, you know, the thing is with the, O'Neill cylinder
design that we're talking aboutis you're limited on
cross-sectional area.
Mm-hmm.
Because if you're spinning it,the larger, you try to make the
radius, the more forces the shipgoes into, but you're not
limited at all on how long itis.
So, to answer your question, Idon't really know how.
Big it would need to be Right.
(15:22):
Uh,'cause that really is just upto you.
And it's also gonna depend onfood availability and resource
availability.
But these O'Neills cylinder, youcan design them to have
population densities, like NewYork City, in which case a
couple square kilometers couldgive you, over a million people.
Or you can make'em more likesmall towns, rural areas, in
which case you might have a fewpeople per square kilometer.
So how big the ship is gonna beis mostly gonna be determined by
(15:45):
resources more than livablearea.
Yeah.
Okay.
And we don't necessarily needone ship either.
You can send a fleet of shipsand have, maybe even automated
farms that are literally justnothing but farms.
'cause that might have, lessconstraints to it than a ship
that has to kill humans.
Lucas (15:59):
That is a good point as well.
And then the farming ships couldjust have transportation vessels
that go back and forth Yeah.
And drop off the resources.
Jacob (16:07):
Once, once you've reached your speed, you know, It's
pretty easy to transfer betweenships and all that.
Yeah.
I can even imagine having theseships follow and like align so
that the ship ahead is alreadyclearing on a path so you don't
have to worry about, impacts.
Lucas (16:19):
Yeah, absolutely.
that, that is a really cool ideafor the ship.
And, going back to the originaldesign, just saying that we have
one ship and if we are using theO'Neill cylinder concept and
just talking about 500 peopleand what we would need be that's
a sample size that I, used forthe math on it, we could just
copy and paste that.
Yeah.
And make it.
Infinitely long.
Yeah.
(16:39):
Supposedly.
Jacob (16:39):
And going long is nice because the risk of impact only
increases with yourcross-sectional area.
So if you make your ship wider,there's a higher risk of impact.
But making your ship longer,does not increase your risk of
impact at all with any type ofinterstellar debris.
Lucas (16:53):
Right.
Because the front of the ship isgoing to take whatever debris
was there to begin with.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Alright, awesome.
And, um, I guess we'll, we'llget into the social aspects in a
little bit, but, those are goodto talk about, but, as far as
the design for the engines, Iknow that we were already
talking about hydrogen becausethat's what we have available
right now, but we do also havesolar sail technology.
Yeah.
We've talked about that a littlebit, where we'd use von Norman
(17:15):
probes to set up, beams thatwould send light rays for
essentially.
Space highways.
Yeah.
Jacob (17:19):
And I mean, if you've got a solar cell from Earth, even if
you don't have a way to stopyourself when you get to the
other end, you know that atleast half the amount of fuel
you need, if you can acceleratewith a solar cell and then use
your engines to slow down, thatstill saves you a lot of mass.
Yeah,
Lucas (17:32):
absolutely.
Jacob (17:33):
But as far as the propulsion technology, I think
solar cells make a lot of sense.
I think fusion makes a lot ofsense.
If you have antimatter, that'sgreat.
But as far as going deeper intodetails with those, I would
recommend the audience check outour Interstellar travel episode.
'cause that's, focuses a lotmore on these technologies and
how they could function.
Yeah.
Lucas (17:48):
Okay.
so now we've covered how, agenerational ship would look.
How do you think a ship where weincorporate just life extension
technology would look.
Jacob (17:56):
Yeah, that's definitely gonna change things up.
One of the largest issues you'regonna run into with a life
extension, especially if youdon't have any type of freezing
technology is you are going tohave population growth that's
uncontrollable because every newperson isn't replacing a person
before them.
you either need to have astricter control of reproduction
or you need to have a smallenough starting population that
(18:18):
even with uncontrolledreproduction, your ship can
maintain everyone till the endof the journey.
Right.
But an upside of having lifeextension is you have this
continuity of society, you arenot having as much cultural
drift, I think is if you hadmultiple generations.
'cause you've got people alivewho've presumably lived on
earth.
Lucas (18:35):
That is a massive, benefit.
Exactly.
Yeah.
This, and we'll talk about thatin a little bit, but really
having that is something that Ithink could make this the best
option.
Jacob (18:45):
I think so too.
And you have to think as well,it's probably easier to get
colonists or people to sign upfor this trip if you have life
extension technology.
For two reasons.
One, if you can live virtuallyforever, barring any accidents,
then the odds of you gettingbored with your life on earth or
your life in the solar systemand wanting to go and take a
chance and go to a colony,knowing that if you don't like
(19:06):
it, you can take the multiplecentury trip back is, I think,
more appealing to people.
And there's probably less socialmobility back at your home
anyways.
'cause you have people living along time.
the top ranks of society to getfilled up and people hold those
positions for a long time.
Lucas (19:20):
Yeah.
because in the first option,you're essentially sacrificing
not just you, but manygenerations Yes.
To get the opportunity, but ifyou have life extension, you're
offering yourself opportunity.
Yes.
Which a lot of people will seeis more desirable.
Jacob (19:32):
I think so too.
Yeah.
And I guess for the thirdoption, when you throw in, any
type of preservation, I thinkthe odds of people signing up
for these go up even morebecause now not only can you go
to these colonies, but you don'teven have to be awake for the
trip.
that does help solve thepopulation issue because
presumably you've got a certainamount of people who are like,
I'm bored, I'm just gonna freezemyself until I wake up.
(19:53):
So that's a nice plus.
Yeah.
Or you could potentially evenshelf people, you could have a
set population number andwhenever you approach that,
maybe it's a case of whoever'sthe oldest person has to get
frozen first.
Or maybe it's a deal you make ifyou have a kid, you agree that
in 50 years you're gonnavolunteer to be frozen or any
type of situation like that.
(20:13):
So it gives you the option tocontrol the population while
still allowing people toessentially reproduce at a
reasonable rate.
Lucas (20:19):
That is a really cool concept.
Like you essentially, you'resigning up.
Okay, I have a 50 year.
Cruise because if we're talkingabout the second two options,
then presumably we already haverobots doing most of this stuff.
Jacob (20:31):
Yeah.
Even in the first option,automation is something we're
seeing today.
So I think if you can launch acolony ship, you can potentially
automate most of it.
Lucas (20:37):
That does make sense.
But I feel like if we're notfreezing people are going need
something to do.
So you
Jacob (20:41):
don't need automation as much.
Lucas (20:42):
Yes.
But on these other ships, itessentially would be like robots
running the show.
If we had multiple ships, itwould be automatic transport
between the farming ship and themain ship, which would really
just make like a party type ofatmosphere and that could be
used to attract more people todo it in the first place.
Jacob (21:00):
Yeah.
actually, I'm glad you broughtthat up'cause that ties into a
point that I wanted to bring up.
We have this idea that whomeveris gonna be signing up for these
ships are gonna be making a hugesacrifice.
Right?
They're gonna be living in thesesqualid conditions and have like
a shoebox to live in.
And that's not really true, youcan actually have these colony
ships be very luxurious.
And I know I've already broughtthis point up, but again, we
(21:21):
already imagine a future wherepeople are gonna be living in
orbital habitats anyways.
Mm-hmm.
And we imagine that theseorbital habitats are going to be
very luxurious.
We had a whole episode onO'Neill cylinders and we talked
about all the benefits of them,how you can build them to be
what you want.
You can have a beautifulMediterranean city and have the
climate be like that, or youknow, whatever you want.
(21:43):
And there's no reason you can'tdo this for a colony ship
either.
Just because it's moving andgoing to a new star doesn't mean
that you have to sacrifice onthese things.
Really the only limiting factoris mass.
Lucas (21:53):
Yeah.
I mean, it's nice to think that,oh, there are going to be people
out there that will sacrifice.
Yeah, right.
To go to a new star system.
But that's not what a privatelyfunded mission's going to wanna
do.
It's gonna wanna fill spots.
do you do that by making thetrip, desirable.
which would be, adding inluxury, allowing for people to
feel like they have the freedomto do what they want on the ship
and, of course offering them, atthe destination.
(22:16):
Something to look forward to.
Yeah.
Jacob (22:17):
Someone might be rightfully thinking, okay, but
if you try to add on thisluxury, there's a good chance
that you're reducing your topspeed that the ship can reach
because you're adding more mass.
If there is a fuelconsideration, then adding more
mass means that you're gonnareach a total lower top speed
means the journey's gonna takelonger.
But hear me out.
Do you care at all if this isgonna be a five generation ship
(22:38):
or a 10 generation ship?
Either way, you're spending yourlife on it.
Right?
So if I tell you, either we cango 20%, the speed of light, this
trip is gonna take fivegenerations, and you're gonna be
living in these not so greatconditions, or, we're only able
to go 10%.
The speed of light.
But you're gonna be in luxurythe entire time.
Do you care if that meansthere's gonna be a few extra
generations after you're dead?
Not at all.
(22:58):
Yeah, exactly.
So I think it's very reasonablethat we're probably gonna aim
for a decent level of luxury inthese ships.
Even at the sacrifice of speed.
Lucas (23:05):
Yeah, absolutely.
Really the only person who wouldbenefit from the ship going
faster in the terms of just anormal generation ship would be
if a government did it.
Yeah.
'cause they wanted something.
At the destination, which wealready talked about, that's
probably not gonna be the case.
Jacob (23:20):
Or with the exception of if you have life extension
technology Yes.
At that point, you might bewilling to make a sacrifice on
luxury if it gets you there alittle faster.
'cause it's like, do you want500 years of luxury?
or a thousand years of a littlebit more luxury?
It's like, I might be willing tosacrifice to cut, you know,
hundreds of years off thejourney.
If I have to be awake for it.
Lucas (23:39):
I mean, it, it gets a little crazy to consider when
you're talking about hundreds ofyears.
Yeah.
like people would want to getthere as quickly as possible
because even though luxury isluxury and luxury is nice, it's
like, man, am I even gonna wantthe same thing in 300 years?
Like Yeah.
Like just showing up at thisbarren planet and then nobody's
(24:01):
gonna want to get off the ship.
But then again, it doesn'tmatter'cause after you've been
on the ship for 10 years, it'llprobably be the same mindset.
Jacob (24:07):
Yeah, exactly.
And you know, like I said, justto tying back into this point
again and again, we alreadyimagine people are gonna be
living their entire lives inorbital habitats and O'Neill
cylinders.
So Yeah, you're right.
Maybe when it does get there,people say, nah, like this, I'm
good.
Like, why am I gonna wanna leavemy nice comfortable ship that's
set up to be like earth, to gocolonize this barren rock?
Lucas (24:25):
Yeah.
And of course it's not evenclosely comparable, but this
already happens in real life,like with cruise ships.
Mm-hmm.
You'll see, they have statisticsposted that about 25% of
passengers, even though they goand they travel to these
different locations, they neverget off the boat.
Jacob (24:39):
That's crazy.
Yeah.
But I mean, it's, it's set up tobe luxurious.
So yeah.
You might have that situation aswell.
Lucas (24:44):
Yeah.
Jacob (24:44):
With that thought in mind though, I do think it's worth
thinking about how will thesociety on the ship be,
especially if you have asituation where you can't cry or
preserve people, and double,especially if you don't even
have a life extension, you know?
What is it like to be the secondgeneration on a eight generation
colony ship, being born on theship, knowing you're working
your whole life just to get youto a destination that you'll
(25:05):
never see?
Lucas (25:06):
That's a great topic to bring up because, I feel like
one of the biggest issues iseven if we get these 500 or
10,000 people who agree to go onthis trip and essentially give
up their lives for thisopportunity, you're going to
have not just yourself dying onthis ship, but you're going to
have, 3, 5, 10 generations afteryou that you are committing to
(25:28):
also knowing nothing but thisship.
so that is a huge thing to bringup.
And then also those, people thatoriginally went, they might have
been cut out for it, but thepeople who were born after might
not be.
so when we talk about dedicatingyourself to this, it brings up a
huge ethical problem and is thatreally worth it?
Jacob (25:45):
Yeah.
So, I have some thoughts onthis.
For one though, I don't thinkit's as bad as people make it
out to be.
We already talked about howthese ships probably aren't, as
bad as people tend to imagine,they're probably not these
squalid, horrid conditions.
Mm-hmm.
Pretty reasonable comfort ofliving.
Yeah.
And also, how many people areborn in a small town in a middle
of a rural area, who have togrow up there and stay there,
(26:06):
maybe take over their parents'farm or whatever, is, is it
really that much more different?
And also, you know, when we'rethinking about, ah, these people
might be born on the ship andresent their parents and resent
everything and.
And what refuse to participatein society.
I mean, there's already peoplewho are annoyed at how society
is, I don't like going to workevery day.
Most people don't.
(26:26):
But you still do it and youstill participate in society.
For what, like what's the grandambition of society in the
world?
Lucas (26:32):
Yeah.
That is an excellent point aswell because why we think that
it would be an ethical problemnow is because we have the
illusion of choice to get on theship or not.
Yeah.
Right.
Where, when people are born intothat, they're probably going to
be more accepting.
They're going to learn in theirearly days in like schooling
that they're doing a greatthing, that they're,
contributing to the society ofthe ship and they'll know
(26:54):
nothing but the ship.
And there will still beopportunities for them, of
course, they'll be able to gointo different jobs and all of
them will have this aspect ofpurpose, so I agree with you on
the fact that it probably won'tmatter to the people who live on
the ship.
It'll matter more to, the peoplemaking that ethical decision to
be able to launch the ship.
(27:15):
Now, I agree with that.
We're getting rid of thatchoice.
Jacob (27:17):
I think it's more ethically questionable from a
distance.
I think most people born onthese ships are just going to,
it's all they've ever known.
They're gonna accept it, they'regonna live with it.
And I mean, is that ethical froman outside standpoint?
That's a fair question, but Idon't know.
I feel like as long as thequality of life on the ship is
good, and, as long as there isenough people to give you a good
society, at least 10,000.
How many people born in a townthat size spend their whole life
(27:38):
there anyways.
Yeah.
A good
Lucas (27:39):
chunk.
Yeah.
And I mean it, if you wannamove, you could go, a couple
miles down the ship and relocateto a different type of climate.
Yeah.
Jacob (27:46):
That's built onto one of these O'Neill cylinders.
Exactly.
Or, if you launch, dozens ofthese together, maybe even
hundreds of them together, ifyou're not happy, you can just
move to another cylinder.
And you might have cylindersthat have a variety of different
climates and, you might havesome that are modeled more like
cities, some that are modeled tobe more like a rural area.
Mm-hmm.
So, at that point, if you'relaunching, between 10 and a
(28:07):
hundred of these ships together,that can also put around 10,000
people and you have the optionto move between'em.
I think the ethical issue kindof dissolves there.
Is that any worse than beingborn on earth at that point?
Lucas (28:17):
Yeah.
That's definitely a good thingto think about especially to
like grandparents where theycould be like, oh, my kid moved
to ship C 21 and they nevervisit anymore.
Yeah.
You know, so, it'll be a newtype of society especially, but
I think that people willacclimate assuming that we give
them, ample comfort and livingspace to do so.
Jacob (28:38):
I fully agree.
And, tying back to this pointagain, but you might already
have people spending their wholelives on O'Neill cylinders at
this point anyways, and thatjust dilutes the ethical
argument even more becausewhat's the difference between
spending your whole life and oneorbiting our son versus one
that's in route to another son?
Right.
Yeah.
So,
Lucas (28:54):
yeah.
But talking about some of thethings that would pose a, real
issue from a social aspect.
The first one is going to be.
As society evolves, it willevolve around their environment.
So we'll have changes inlanguage going back to the
expanse, like the people wholived in the belt, They formed
an entirely different type oflanguage and lingo.
(29:15):
And that will continue to evolveuntil we really won't be able to
communicate with Earth.
Right?
Jacob (29:21):
I don't know if it'd go that far.
That's gonna depend on a lot ofdifferent things, presumably you
still have contact with Earththere will be cultural drift and
there will be linguistic drift.
Absolutely.
But I think because you have anopen channel of communication
with Earth, it'll be very easyto keep tabs on that changing
and have people who are trainedto learn that new language and
that language can only evolve.
At the speed of, generations,which means people on Earth also
(29:42):
have time to learn it and adaptwith it over time as well.
Lucas (29:45):
Yeah, that is very true.
Like you said, we would havespecific people trained mm-hmm.
To a language, but the actuallanguage that everybody else
speaks on the ship, I feel likewould be vastly different.
Jacob (29:55):
Yeah.
Or you could have people onearth trained to speak the
common language of the ship thatway.
You don't,
Lucas (29:59):
you Yeah.
I, I guess you could do that aswell.
And I mean,
Jacob (30:01):
realistically you don't need that much back and forth
communication with earth.
Maybe a few trained people totransmit science and stuff like
that, but it's not like, oh no,the regular person on the colony
ship can't speak earth language,whatever.
Will they do with a
Lucas (30:16):
you you are absolutely right.
I don't
Jacob (30:18):
speak middle English.
That's gonna be a real challengeone day.
Lucas (30:22):
Really, I'm just thinking from the standard, of course,
still like just giving somethingback to your starting system,
but that, that could very wellnot be the case now where it
could become an issue.
Is these people are going to beliving on this ship and they're
not going to know a lot ofthings to do when they get to
the planet that they're supposedto be colonizing, for example,
(30:43):
metal smelting or tilling afield or building a home, right?
A lot of these people, they'renot going to really know how to
do that because the ship willprovide them with all of those
things already.
Jacob (30:53):
I don't know.
I think it depends on how arethese ships set up to farm in
the first place, right?
Do you have a large rotatingcylinder that has open fields
where people can teal and farm.
Uh, maybe you do, maybe youdon't.
It's not the best use of space,but it is possible you would
have that en route.
Or alternatively, maybe youdon't have that.
Maybe all the farming is donethrough automated farms or you
(31:13):
know, some more advancedtechniques like hydroponics and
all that, in which case youwould probably still use that
technique once you get to thenew colony Anyways.
Lucas (31:21):
yeah,
Jacob (31:21):
that is a
Lucas (31:22):
good point.
You could just set up facilitiesYeah.
Where you use aeroponic orhydroponic farming
Jacob (31:27):
and, it's not like the information on how to do it
won't be preserved and thepeople can't figure it out when
they get there too.
Especially on a colony ship, youhave a way to generate food to
sustain that population anyways.
Yeah.
So you have all the time in theworld to figure out farming and
you only need to figure outfarming to grow your population.
You have a farm on your colonyship anyways, that can sustain
your population at the size thatit is.
Currently.
(31:47):
Mm-hmm.
Lucas (31:48):
You do bring up great points there.
Really, when I came into this,in the beginning, I was thinking
of how all the bad stuff couldbe there.
Yeah.
But really you'll have most ofthat figured out.
Yeah.
And you'll have these peoplethat have acclimated to it,
almost like a, a utopian versioninstead of a dystopian Yeah.
Hopefully.
Right.
Being on the ship.
Right.
Not to
Jacob (32:05):
say it can't be dystopian.
I mean, you have, of
Lucas (32:06):
course.
I mean, we could have a shipthat's run poorly and people do
live in squalor.
Yeah.
And but more realistically, likeyou're saying, most of these
ships, when they are designed,to get people to go on them,
it's going to be a more lavishlifestyle.
Jacob (32:18):
Yeah.
Well, I was also gonna say, youcan have things happen on the
way, for example, maybe you havea, a tyrannical leader, show up
and, you have social collapse orsomething, so things can't
happen.
Lucas (32:26):
Oh yeah.
I mean that, that's anothergreat point.
Government.
Jacob (32:29):
Yeah.
Lucas (32:29):
Right?
Like how is the ship going tooperate?
Because once they leave, whatlaw are they going to abide by?
Especially if it's a ship that'spulled from all different parts
of the globe.
What government does that shipstart as and where will it end?
Does it just like a common lawtype of thing.
Like, don't kill people, don'tsteal things.
be kind to your fellow personand will make this work.
But people will crave leadershipand other people will crave
(32:52):
power.
Jacob (32:53):
I feel like you'll just set up a government before the
ship ever leaves.
You'll probably have a charterthat outlines all of the laws
that will be ab obeyed on thisship and how the government
works and all of that.
That'll be set up before theship ever launches.
Lucas (33:04):
But will it maintain three generations down the line?
I mean,
Jacob (33:07):
People crave stability.
So I think for the most part, ifyou have a charter set up on
your ship, most people are gonnaobey that just because that's
what they do anyways.
Lucas (33:16):
Yeah.
The reason why it's fascinatingto me is, I recently just
watched the Fallout series.
Yeah.
And I kind of think of it aslike a, a vault.
Oh, yeah, yeah, right.
Sort of a weird, dystopian vibeto it, to where it's like
everybody's like, happy.
But there, there could be weirdstuff going on in the background
or.
some kind of, tyranny orsomething like that.
but realistically, you areright.
(33:36):
It's not gonna matter'causewhere are you gonna go?
Jacob (33:38):
Yeah.
Lucas (33:38):
But, it's definitely an interesting idea to touch on
with how that would evolve.
Jacob (33:42):
Yeah, it is fair.
I, I genuinely think though,that you would probably set up
some type of charter, some typeof legal system well before the
ship even left.
And for the most part, I thinkpeople would follow it.
Again, just tying into what Isaid, I think people crave
stability.
I think most people aren't gonnago for the anarchy route just
because they're on a ship thesame way you don't have small
towns in the United Statessucceeding just because they
have a smaller population.
(34:03):
Right.
that is true.
There is of course, a risk thatmaybe you'll have a tyrant for a
leader that crops up and you canhave social collapse.
It's not saying that can'thappen, but I don't know.
Just have to roll the dice.
That's something that happened.
Yeah, absolutely.
That's something that can happenhere on earth though.
that is true.
It's happened before,
Lucas (34:16):
but it's, it's again that illusion of choice type of
thing.
Yeah.
If you don't like.
What's happening?
There are other spots in thecountry where you can go, but
realistically, most people don'thave the resources nor the
ability to do that anyways.
But we feel better about thesituation that we're in because
we feel like we could change itif we needed to.
Jacob (34:34):
There is also a point of bringing out, you can't leave
this, right?
So especially if you only haveone ship and you do have, a
dictator crop up, there's no oneoutside to stop him.
Yeah.
You know, at least on earth youhave different countries and if
you get too crazy, presumablysomeone's gonna declare war with
you and take you outta power,you know, on a ship, you don't
have any external forces.
So there is a risk of that too.
Lucas (34:53):
Yeah.
And, that makes me think aboutalso if this is like a fleet.
You could have differentgovernments on different ships.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
And what if they disagree?
Jacob (35:00):
Yeah.
Lucas (35:01):
Right.
They're like, I don't wanna goto the planet with that guy
anymore.
Set course to a different star.
I'm outta here.
Yeah.
Maybe
Jacob (35:08):
you could, or maybe you say, you know, whenever we land,
we're colonizing the furthestcontinent away from you.
Lucas (35:13):
Yeah.
It's like, you don't get to comeon our half of the planet.
Yeah.
Back up.
and then we think about, peoplewho of course are still going to
break the law even though maybenot as much as they would here
on earth, because it'll all bevery equal.
To the people that are living onthese ships, right.
you're going to be in luxuryregardless.
So if we're thinking aboutpeople breaking the law, because
(35:34):
some people they will just havedevious intention from the
beginning.
They will murder or arsonistwould be a huge problem.
How do you deal with thesepeople?
Do you have arsonists?
Jacob (35:44):
Why are arsonists particularly gonna be a problem?
Well, because if the shipcatches on fire, that's bad.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
You're fair enough.
Not that it's gonna breedarsonists, it's just that it's a
particularly heinous crime in aclosed system.
That's completely fair.
to answer your question, I thinkyou'll have gels, you'll have
penal systems, or maybe youdepends on the technology.
Maybe you can just like.
Brainwash people.
I dunno.
Okay.
But I think you would have alegal system just like you would
(36:06):
have on earth.
I mean, 10,000 people.
Uh, you're gonna have jails, Ithink probably
Lucas (36:09):
right now.
Would we put that on a, on aseparate ship we keep it on the
same one.
Jacob (36:13):
I don't know.
Uh, it's probably gonna dependon the setup.
I mean, if you have multipleships, maybe one is like a, a
penal ship.
If you've got, maybe not, Idon't know.
It's just gonna fully depend onyour fleet setup.
And, if you're a sci-fi writer,you can do it either way.
You can have each ship havetheir own, you can have a penal
ship.
maybe you just have an airlock.
Yeah.
just kill everyone who's aproblem.
It's just,
Lucas (36:31):
well, yeah, no, it, it's sentenced to life in prison, but
then you just put'em in theairlock or, and send them out
into space.
Jacob (36:37):
There might be harsher consequences though, on closed
systems like this.
Especially if you're threateningthe ship, it's hard for one
person to destroy the world,but, uh, when you're on a closed
ship, one act of sabotage reallycould, destroy the whole ship.
Or, you know, at least make itimpossible to complete the
mission.
So it, there might be strongincentives not to do that.
And I think, you know what Imean by strong incentives?
Lucas (36:54):
Yes.
I definitely think that issomething that should be in
place.
Because like I said, I feel likepetty crimes, like theft and
things like that aren't reallygonna be a thing.
'cause why are you stealing?
You have the same thing thatthat guy has.
Jacob (37:05):
I don't know.
Maybe, maybe not.
I think petty crimes will alwaysexist.
my case for this is that.
A lot of people commit pettycrimes just for the thrill of
it.
Lucas (37:12):
Ah, that is, that is a good point.
Jacob (37:13):
I mean, there's people who shoplift not because they
need the thing.
Right.
So petty crime, I think is justa human condition that's always
gonna happen no matter what.
Even if you have resourceabundance, I think people are
gonna do petty crimes or getdrunk in a fight.
That type of stuff.
I think you'll probably justdeal with like you would deal
with on earth.
When you get to like capitaloffenses, that gets a little
more tricky.
I could definitely see a cultureon these ships forming of every
(37:35):
single person is a resource sinkand they need to contribute to
be allowed to stay alive on thisship.
Yeah.
So it might be the case thatlife in prison isn't a thing
because why are we gonna feedyou and clothe you in a limited
world if you have done thishorrible thing?
So capital punishment might bemore common.
So that, that's a good one.
Lucas (37:51):
Yeah, that is definitely a good point.
The last big topic that I wantedto touch on was, reproduction
We've talked about that a littlebit, already, but would we have
a regulated reproduction law,for people?
Because overpopulation on one ofthese ships could be
catastrophic.
Jacob (38:05):
I think that is going to depend wildly on what
technologies are available andhow you set up your ship or
fleet.
I know I talked about itearlier, but if you've got life
extension technology, maybe youstart off with a small enough
population and you overbuildyour ship mm-hmm.
So that people can breed freelyand the population size, will be
reaching capacity as you'rereaching your planet.
Or, it might be a legalsituation.
(38:26):
We've definitely seen, on earth,China famously had the one child
policy limiting reproduction,but didn't necessarily go well.
But it's not hard to imaginehaving policies like that on a
colony ship that has limitedavailability.
Lucas (38:38):
Yeah.
It's just, reproduction is oneof those things that I find to
be such, an interesting topicbecause limiting that could be
incredibly detrimental to somepeople's, mental health.
Jacob (38:47):
yeah.
You'll have to find a way aroundit.
It does get trickier with lifeextension, especially if you
don't have unlimited capacity onyour ship, like I said, it might
be a case that to have a kid,either you volunteer to be put
in cryos stasis or you put alimit on your own life, maybe
that's the sacrifice you have tomake.
There's a lot of differentsituations that can happen.
Have you read the, silo bookseries at all?
No.
there's a TV show on it now onApple tv.
(39:08):
It's really good.
It's also a closed ecosystem,and they run into the same issue
of reproduction, in the show.
every woman is given a birthcontrol pill, once they hit, the
age of, I think 13 is what thebook says.
Mm-hmm.
And that is only removed if youwin a, lottery to have a kid.
It's basically a compulsorybirth control, little dystopian,
but that is also an option.
(39:29):
I don't think this is a spoiler,it doesn't come up in the show.
But the book does cover acharacter who's mom's birth
control fails.
'cause there is a failure ratefor these and she doesn't report
it.
She decides to have the kidanyways.
And it's revealed in the, thebook, the price you pay on that
is your own life.
Once your kid reaches, a certainage, they kill you.
Lucas (39:45):
I see.
I guess no, no matter how youswing it, it'll always be a
little.
bizarre.
Yeah.
Jacob (39:50):
there is the option too of oversize your ship for the
generation so they can growanyways.
If you start with a populationof, a thousand and you have a
500 year journey, just designyour ship to handle that and let
people do whatever they want.
Lucas (40:00):
that would be the best option in my mind.
Yeah, I think so.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Jacob (40:03):
But yeah, just to say there's a lot of different
options and you can really goabout it and either dystopian
ways, utopian ways orutilitarian ways, bunch of
different ways you can slicethat.
Lucas (40:11):
Yeah.
I mean, it's just fun to thinkabout, you know, all the
different ways that it could go.
Jacob (40:14):
Absolutely.
Well, Lucas, I think that's allI really have to say about this
topic.
How about you?
Lucas (40:18):
Yeah, that's all that I really got.
I really enjoyed talking aboutit.
Jacob (40:21):
Yeah, this was a really fun one.
This is one of our longer wrapepisodes.
I think we could've gone evenlonger.
We'll have to definitely do afollow up.
Lucas (40:27):
Yeah, definitely.
But people did say that theywanted longer episodes.
Oh.
Jacob (40:30):
Hopefully they like this one.
thank you so much for listening.
Please follow us on threads ifyou wanna follow along with the
show and keep up with the latestthings that we're talking about.
Also, if you wanna support theshow, you can support us on
Patreon.
It helps a ton.
It'll help us grow and expandthe show and increase the
production quality.
Lucas (40:46):
Yeah.
Thank you everybody so much seeyou next time.
If I tell you, either we can go 20%, the speed of light,
(00:03):
this trip is gonna take fivegenerations, and you're gonna be
living in these not so greatconditions, or, we're only able
to go 10%.
The speed of light.
But you're gonna be in luxurythe entire time.
Do you care if that meansthere's gonna be a few extra
generations after you're dead?
Not at all.
(00:24):
Hello and welcome to EntropyRising, where we talk about
science and futurism.
I'm your host, Jacob, and asalways, I'm joined with my
wonderful co-host Lucas.
Lucas.
How are you doing today?
Lucas (00:34):
I'm doing fantastic, Jake.
How are you?
Jacob (00:36):
I'm doing great.
I'm glad to hear that.
So today's episode is all aboutinterstellar colonization.
Particularly we're gonna betalking about colony ships, not
so much setting up the colonyand, and what colony worlds are
gonna look like.
So this is kind of a follow upto, our Interstellar travel
episode.
Right.
Of course, that one focused moreon the rocket equation and what
goes into actually getting aship to a new star.
(00:58):
Yeah.
Uh, whereas this one's gonna beall about how do you get people
to that star and what does lifelook like on these ships?
Lucas (01:03):
Yeah.
It's, a little bit more of an indepth dive on what that would be
like.
Not only for the peopledesigning the ship to get there,
but also for the people who willbe living on that ship.
Jacob (01:12):
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's gonna be, I think, a funone.
I'm looking forward to it.
I've been looking forward torecording this episode all week
actually.
Lucas (01:18):
Yeah.
Me as well.
I love diving into these topicsand getting to learn a little
bit about it and then sharing itwith our viewers.
Jacob (01:24):
Yeah.
So, you know, I think a fairstarting point for this episode
is gonna be, why would we evenwant to colonize other star
systems?
You know, what's gonna drive usto leave our home system and
expand into other star systems?
It's gonna be a challengingjourney and there's gonna be
risks involved.
You're leaving your entire worldbehind, essentially.
And at least for your homesystem, there's not a ton to
gain.
there's almost unlimitedresources really in our solar
(01:46):
system, or at least there's,more than we could use in a very
long time.
So.
Lucas, I'm curious, what, whatare your thoughts on this?
Why do you think humans mightcolonize other stars?
Or do you think we actuallywould?
Lucas (01:56):
That's a great question.
I definitely think that we will,and really I feel like it all
just stems from an innate thingthat separates us as humans.
It's a curiosity.
Okay.
And also a drive to expand.
Yeah.
Right.
We've, we've expanded to every,livable part of our, globe.
We are going to expand out intoour solar system and eventually
(02:18):
it just makes sense that we willexpand even further out to other
stars and other planets.
Jacob (02:22):
I completely agree.
You said humanity.
I think it's, even deeper thanthat.
I think innately, any biologicalsystem that goes through natural
selection is going to be drivento expand.
You know, even if you putbacteria in a culture disc, it's
gonna fill every little niche inthat.
And looking at life on earth, wehave filled every single
biological niche that exists onthis planet.
Not we, but, you know, life has.
(02:44):
Yeah.
So I, I think humans have, thatsame innate drive buried deep
inside of us to a biologicallevel to expand as much as
possible and to go out there andto really try to establish new
homes, new niches, really.
Lucas (02:57):
Yeah, absolutely.
Jacob (02:58):
But I do think it's worth talking about why we wouldn't
expand, because, I mentioned ita little bit earlier, but the
idea of expanding to anotherstar system, for resources just
doesn't really work out in mymind.
Lucas (03:11):
No, if I'm thinking of why our planet would invest in
doing this, would maybe be toclaim other territories, but.
We would have to understand bynow that when you have a colony,
especially one that is that faraway, you will have no control
over that regardless.
Jacob (03:25):
Yeah.
No control over it.
And even if you did have controlover it and they agree to send
resources back, it's so energyintensive to try to send any
significant amount of resourcesover interstellar distances that
it just doesn't make sense.
Unless you are a type two ortype three civilization who
basically has unlimited energyand they just wanna build a mega
structure.
That's, literally the onlysituation I see where you would
(03:47):
want to get resources fromanother star system.
Lucas (03:50):
Yeah.
And even then you wouldn't sendcolony ships there.
Yeah.
Probably automated drones.
Exactly.
But.
Realistically, I guess there isa resource that we could gain
and that would be research orknowledge from a colony.
Jacob (04:03):
No, that's fair.
It costs very little to sendinformation back, if you can
power a transmitter, that'sabout it.
So.
Absolutely.
I could definitely see someresearch institutions being
interested in throwing somefunding that way.
Lucas (04:14):
Yeah, it would most definitely be privately funded.
Jacob (04:17):
I think so.
I could see governments maybefunding these for the first
couple of colonies.
You know, there is a prestige tobe had to be the first, so
maybe, you might see one or twomissions get funded.
I.
just to say we did it, but Idon't think you'll see many
because no one cares if you'rethe fifth to do something.
Right?
Lucas (04:33):
Yeah, that does make me think of another point the whole
idea of a new life or a freshstart For people who, feel like
they can't advance anymore inthe lives that they have here on
Earth because everything's sosaturated.
It offers either yourselfdepending on the type of ship or
your family an opportunity toreally, come out on top.
Jacob (04:52):
I agree with that.
It's very possible we'll reach apoint, especially if you have
life extension technology.
You might have people livinghundreds, maybe thousands of
years.
If you do have that happening,it could be really hard to
socially advance, especially ifpeople who are above you aren't
dying off.
Right.
Yeah.
There's no opportunity for that.
So it's very possible that goingto another star system might be
an opportunity for advancement.
(05:12):
And let's also not forget,religious reasons.
Throughout history.
That's been a common cause forexpansion.
Lucas (05:17):
Yeah.
Trying to, find a place whereyou can practice your religion
freely.
that has been a huge reason whypeople have expanded in the
past.
Jacob (05:24):
Yeah, I love that The Expanse actually covered that
with the, with the Navu.
That was their colony ship andit was funded by the Mormons.
Mm-hmm.
That was a really fun plotpoint.
I really liked that.
Which Blade became the behemoth?
The warship.
So it didn't quite work out forthem, but I think, I think it
might work out for us better.
Lucas (05:37):
Oh, you know, not everybody succeeds on the first
time.
They'll try again.
Jacob (05:41):
Just while we're also on this topic, when we're talking
about funding it I don'tnecessarily think these colonies
have to be externally fundedeither.
Mm-hmm.
You know, we tend to imaginepeople are gonna be living in
orbital habitats.
So it might be the case that oneof these habitats decides, we
want to go off and exploreanother solar system.
You know, they just need to getthe money together to build an
engine and maybe shore up someother systems so that they can
(06:01):
recycle everything moreefficiently.
And, anyone who wants to jointhis journey, there's no reason
for them to keep most of theirworldly possessions.
Right.
So it might make sense to get agroup of colonists together who
want to go and basicallycrowdsource this thing.
Lucas (06:14):
Yeah.
I mean, you definitely could doit.
Now to crowdsource a ship ofthat magnitude or, even a
journey of that magnitude, it,uh, definitely wouldn't be
cheap.
So if you're already living onan O'Neill cylinder and living a
life like that, why would youchoose to, spend your extra
funds on essentially living thesame life, but just going
(06:34):
somewhere else?
Jacob (06:35):
It's worth pointing out if we're imagining a point in
the future where we're buildinghundreds of thousands to
millions to billions of O'Neillcylinders, which is kind of the
situation we talk about with aDyson Swarm, it might actually
be fairly cheap to build one ofthese things.
They could be mass produced andit could be a case that if you
can get, 10,000 people together,a hundred thousand people
together, that you could justscrape together the raw
(06:55):
resources, especially if youhave a lot of automation.
it might get to.
Money's not really a factor.
You just get some automateddrones together.
They go maybe get some miningclaims from asteroids, get the
raw material, build the ship,or, retrofit an existing mass
produced O'Neill cylinder andanyone who wants to go can, fund
it or whatever.
Lucas (07:12):
That's actually a great point.
I didn't really think of that.
I was living too much within thenext hundred years, not the next
couple thousand.
Jacob (07:17):
Yeah.
Which I don't think it'll be inthe next hundred, maybe
hundreds.
We'll see the first one.
But I think hundreds to maybethousands.
Always tough to say, things tendto grow exponentially and it's
hard to predict when thatexponential curve will end.
Right?
Lucas (07:30):
Yeah.
But you talk about how theseships are, going to be made if
they're either out of existingO'Neill cylinders or, we make
them from scratch to be designedto travel that way.
But I definitely think that weshould jump into a little bit
about how the ship will bedesigned to be able to support
life, for that period of time.
Jacob (07:47):
Yeah, no, absolutely.
in my head at least, I tend toimagine these are gonna
function.
Like O'Neill cylinders.
Of course that's gonna changedepending on the technology
available.
but one big distinction betweenO'Neill cylinders and colony
ships, not just the engine ofcourse, is the fact that your
recycling systems need to besignificantly better for an
interstellar voyage.
They do need to be for anO'Neill cylinder that might be,
(08:09):
surrounded by other cylinders,and they're able to have trade
or even top off, their oxygen ortheir water from the solar
system.
That's not really an optionRight.
When you're traveling betweenthe stars or it's harder to do
anyways.
Lucas (08:19):
Yeah, that's a really good point.
And when I think of that,especially for water mm-hmm.
The ship would actually have tooperate at a hundred percent
recycling efficiency.
I mean, we could make water onthe ship by fusing, hydrogen and
oxygen, but that is a verydangerous and explosive method
of creating water.
(08:39):
So if we don't recycle at ahundred percent efficiency, we
would eventually run out,especially if this strip is
going to take several hundredyears.
Jacob (08:45):
Um, the efficiency is really just gonna depend on how
long the trip is.
Right.
You know, if you've got ahundred year trip versus a
thousand year trip, you might beable to get by with different
levels of efficiency.
99.9% efficient could work for ahundred to 200 year trip.
But yeah, you're right.
If you're going on a multi,thousand year voyage, which I
tend to think that's definitelyon the extreme side, you would
need pushing near a hundredpercent efficiency.
(09:08):
Yeah.
Now, I mean, you said that usinghydrogen and oxygen.
Is an explosive process.
But I mean, realistically, ifyou're powering one of these
ships anyways, you've, you'vegotta have a reactor room,
right?
You need a pretty beefy engine.
So you can probably handle that.
And I tend to think these wouldprobably be either fusion based
engines or some other design.
if you have anti-matter, thatwould be nice too.
But then you can do anti-mattercatalyze fusion, so you can
(09:29):
still make resources if you wantto.
Lucas (09:31):
Yeah, that, that is definitely true.
It's just expending that,especially fuel.
Mm-hmm.
I mean, I'm not gonna say yourmost valuable resource, but you
need it to get there and youneed it to stop.
Yeah, that's absolutely true.
So, burning that to try andcounteract the fact that you're
not operating at a high enoughefficiency to create those
fluids, I feel like the ship isjust designed to fail.
Jacob (09:52):
Maybe.
I don't know.
A common way that I think aboutslowing these ships down is
gonna be something through likea baard Ram Jett.
Mm-hmm.
I know we mentioned it in ourentry, solar travel episode, so
I'm not gonna go too deep intoit.
And if anyone's curious aboutthe concept, check out that
episode.
But we talked about how you canuse one of these to actually
slow down.
You put a large magnetic fieldout to catch interstellar
hydrogen.
You pull that hydrogen in to,power a fusion reactor to slow
(10:13):
down your ship.
It doesn't work great foraccelerating, but it does work
well for decelerating and italso gives you a bunch of
hydrogen.
So maybe you can use that to topoff your.
Water reserves or your fuelreserves halfway through the
trip once you're ready to startdecelerating.
Lucas (10:25):
I mean, that would definitely be perfect because
the big issue with hydrogen,especially when you're using it
as fuel to slow down, is it'ssuch a small particle that it
leaks through metal.
Yeah.
It leaks through everything.
Jacob (10:35):
Yeah.
It's very hard to containhydrogen.
Lucas (10:37):
So even if you're not burning your fuel you're still
losing fuel, especially over aperiod of hundreds of years.
So if we could design somethingthat not only doesn't need extra
fuel to stop us or slow us down,but could also provide us with
more fuel during the travel,that's definitely a viable
option for maintaining, yourwater as well.
Yeah,
Jacob (10:55):
absolutely.
I do think it's worth, alsotalking about this in my head,
depending on technology, Iimagine there's three different
ways you can do colony ships.
Mm-hmm.
And so basically the way I thinkabout it is option A, this is
with basically technology thatexists today.
Ignoring the engine side of it,you've got no life extension.
You've got no way to preservepeople either by freezing them
or anything like that.
(11:15):
Mm-hmm.
So if you want to go on a fouror 500 year journey, this is
gonna be done through atraditional generation ship type
situation.
Right.
Where you have people livingtheir entire lives on the ship
breeding up other generations totry to make this whole journey.
Lucas (11:28):
Yeah.
Jacob (11:29):
Option B, the way I see it is maybe you have life
extension technology, people areliving well into their hundreds.
You know, maybe even you'vereached a point of near
biological immortality where.
People don't age, they don'tdie.
And you have a situation wherepeople could make this voyage
through their entire life, butyou don't yet have the
technology to freeze people.
(11:50):
Mm-hmm.
And then option C is basicallyall of those together.
You have the option to freezepeople, you can put people in
cryos stasis, you also have lifeextension technology.
I tend to group those togetherbecause if you can repair the
cellular damage from freezingsomebody, you also pretty much
have life extension technology.
Yeah.
at that point you have theoption to have sleeper ships or
people who might be awake forthe journey for their entire,
(12:12):
multi century life, maybe multimillennial life.
So those are the three optionsthat I foresee for colony ships.
Lucas (12:20):
Yeah.
I would agree with that.
Absolutely.
I do.
Love to think that we will havelife extension and we will have
perfected, cryo freezing andbeing able to essentially sleep
through the whole ride.
Yeah.
There.
But, I definitely want to focuson, what we can almost do now.
Jacob (12:38):
Yeah.
So I, I was thinking maybe wecould talk about all three of
these options.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
I think first, why don't westart talking about like the
generation ship type.
Lucas (12:45):
Okay.
So talking about that we alreadycovered, water and fuel, right?
But another big thing is food.
Yes, of course you need to feedthese people.
And depending on how many peopleyou have, you're gonna need
about a half a kilometer offarming space.
You, that's both aeroponic andtraditional farming styles to
provide meat and, calorie richvegetables.
(13:07):
And fruits like.
You'll see a lot of beans,tomatoes, potatoes, things like
that.
Jacob (13:11):
What kind of population is that for?
Uh,
Lucas (13:13):
500.
Jacob (13:14):
500 people.
Mm-hmm.
So, I mean, that's a, a surfacearea.
of course you can do thatvertically too.
So you can divide that up.
So if you have an O'Neillcylinder, for example, you don't
need half a kilometer of the
Lucas (13:23):
No.
Yeah.
You don't need just a squareship that has half a kilometer
in it, but you just need a halfa kilometer of space.
So, for the people who don'treally know how the O'Neill
cylinders are designed, theyrotate around themselves
essentially to provide like asuitable living area and mimic
earth.
Now, we could have a farm that'sjust in one of the rings that's
also providing gravity to theship.
That would definitely be viable.
(13:43):
But these are also, going toneed a lot of water for
maintenance and things likethat, and that's just per 500
people.
Now, how many people do youthink would be on one of these
colony ships?
Jacob (13:52):
I think quite a bit.
So are you familiar with theconcept of Dunbar's number?
No.
It's essentially the, a numberof social relationships, a
person can manage and it'saround 120.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
You can know more people thanthat, but you really can't
maintain more relationships sothat it's just to be too much.
That
Lucas (14:06):
sounds exhausting.
Yeah, exactly.
Jacob (14:09):
So there's, uh, a lot of research behind this that
basically says a minimum viablepopulation size to keep you
socially healthy is about twiceDunbar's number.
So about 240 people is enoughpeople to have distinct social
groups to allow marrying, toallow people to move through
friend groups, to distancethemselves from people they
don't like.
that's essentially the minimumviable number of people you need
(14:31):
before society starts to feel alittle too cramped.
Yeah.
Now I think that's a very smallnumber though.
Personally when I'm thinking of,colony ships interstellar.
Especially where people areawake.
I think a population size around10,000 is pretty reasonable,
gives you a lot of geneticdiversity and 10 thousand's, a
fairly large town, so you'reable to have tons of social
relationships.
You're able to have completelydifferent groups and even
(14:53):
specialization in certaincategories, and I think that's a
good number to aim for
Lucas (14:57):
Yeah, that would be ideal.
What would a ship that couldmaintain 10,000 people, how big
would that be?
Jacob (15:02):
Well, you know, the thing is with the, O'Neill cylinder
design that we're talking aboutis you're limited on
cross-sectional area.
Mm-hmm.
Because if you're spinning it,the larger, you try to make the
radius, the more forces the shipgoes into, but you're not
limited at all on how long itis.
So, to answer your question, Idon't really know how.
Big it would need to be Right.
(15:22):
Uh,'cause that really is just upto you.
And it's also gonna depend onfood availability and resource
availability.
But these O'Neills cylinder, youcan design them to have
population densities, like NewYork City, in which case a
couple square kilometers couldgive you, over a million people.
Or you can make'em more likesmall towns, rural areas, in
which case you might have a fewpeople per square kilometer.
So how big the ship is gonna beis mostly gonna be determined by
(15:45):
resources more than livablearea.
Yeah.
Okay.
And we don't necessarily needone ship either.
You can send a fleet of shipsand have, maybe even automated
farms that are literally justnothing but farms.
'cause that might have, lessconstraints to it than a ship
that has to kill humans.
Lucas (15:59):
That is a good point as well.
And then the farming ships couldjust have transportation vessels
that go back and forth Yeah.
And drop off the resources.
Jacob (16:07):
Once, once you've reached your speed, you know, It's
pretty easy to transfer betweenships and all that.
Yeah.
I can even imagine having theseships follow and like align so
that the ship ahead is alreadyclearing on a path so you don't
have to worry about, impacts.
Lucas (16:19):
Yeah, absolutely.
that, that is a really cool ideafor the ship.
And, going back to the originaldesign, just saying that we have
one ship and if we are using theO'Neill cylinder concept and
just talking about 500 peopleand what we would need be that's
a sample size that I, used forthe math on it, we could just
copy and paste that.
Yeah.
And make it.
Infinitely long.
Yeah.
(16:39):
Supposedly.
Jacob (16:39):
And going long is nice because the risk of impact only
increases with yourcross-sectional area.
So if you make your ship wider,there's a higher risk of impact.
But making your ship longer,does not increase your risk of
impact at all with any type ofinterstellar debris.
Lucas (16:53):
Right.
Because the front of the ship isgoing to take whatever debris
was there to begin with.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Alright, awesome.
And, um, I guess we'll, we'llget into the social aspects in a
little bit, but, those are goodto talk about, but, as far as
the design for the engines, Iknow that we were already
talking about hydrogen becausethat's what we have available
right now, but we do also havesolar sail technology.
Yeah.
We've talked about that a littlebit, where we'd use von Norman
(17:15):
probes to set up, beams thatwould send light rays for
essentially.
Space highways.
Yeah.
Jacob (17:19):
And I mean, if you've got a solar cell from Earth, even if
you don't have a way to stopyourself when you get to the
other end, you know that atleast half the amount of fuel
you need, if you can acceleratewith a solar cell and then use
your engines to slow down, thatstill saves you a lot of mass.
Yeah,
Lucas (17:32):
absolutely.
Jacob (17:33):
But as far as the propulsion technology, I think
solar cells make a lot of sense.
I think fusion makes a lot ofsense.
If you have antimatter, that'sgreat.
But as far as going deeper intodetails with those, I would
recommend the audience check outour Interstellar travel episode.
'cause that's, focuses a lotmore on these technologies and
how they could function.
Yeah.
Lucas (17:48):
Okay.
so now we've covered how, agenerational ship would look.
How do you think a ship where weincorporate just life extension
technology would look.
Jacob (17:56):
Yeah, that's definitely gonna change things up.
One of the largest issues you'regonna run into with a life
extension, especially if youdon't have any type of freezing
technology is you are going tohave population growth that's
uncontrollable because every newperson isn't replacing a person
before them.
you either need to have astricter control of reproduction
or you need to have a smallenough starting population that
(18:18):
even with uncontrolledreproduction, your ship can
maintain everyone till the endof the journey.
Right.
But an upside of having lifeextension is you have this
continuity of society, you arenot having as much cultural
drift, I think is if you hadmultiple generations.
'cause you've got people alivewho've presumably lived on
earth.
Lucas (18:35):
That is a massive, benefit.
Exactly.
Yeah.
This, and we'll talk about thatin a little bit, but really
having that is something that Ithink could make this the best
option.
Jacob (18:45):
I think so too.
And you have to think as well,it's probably easier to get
colonists or people to sign upfor this trip if you have life
extension technology.
For two reasons.
One, if you can live virtuallyforever, barring any accidents,
then the odds of you gettingbored with your life on earth or
your life in the solar systemand wanting to go and take a
chance and go to a colony,knowing that if you don't like
(19:06):
it, you can take the multiplecentury trip back is, I think,
more appealing to people.
And there's probably less socialmobility back at your home
anyways.
'cause you have people living along time.
the top ranks of society to getfilled up and people hold those
positions for a long time.
Lucas (19:20):
Yeah.
because in the first option,you're essentially sacrificing
not just you, but manygenerations Yes.
To get the opportunity, but ifyou have life extension, you're
offering yourself opportunity.
Yes.
Which a lot of people will seeis more desirable.
Jacob (19:32):
I think so too.
Yeah.
And I guess for the thirdoption, when you throw in, any
type of preservation, I thinkthe odds of people signing up
for these go up even morebecause now not only can you go
to these colonies, but you don'teven have to be awake for the
trip.
that does help solve thepopulation issue because
presumably you've got a certainamount of people who are like,
I'm bored, I'm just gonna freezemyself until I wake up.
(19:53):
So that's a nice plus.
Yeah.
Or you could potentially evenshelf people, you could have a
set population number andwhenever you approach that,
maybe it's a case of whoever'sthe oldest person has to get
frozen first.
Or maybe it's a deal you make ifyou have a kid, you agree that
in 50 years you're gonnavolunteer to be frozen or any
type of situation like that.
(20:13):
So it gives you the option tocontrol the population while
still allowing people toessentially reproduce at a
reasonable rate.
Lucas (20:19):
That is a really cool concept.
Like you essentially, you'resigning up.
Okay, I have a 50 year.
Cruise because if we're talkingabout the second two options,
then presumably we already haverobots doing most of this stuff.
Jacob (20:31):
Yeah.
Even in the first option,automation is something we're
seeing today.
So I think if you can launch acolony ship, you can potentially
automate most of it.
Lucas (20:37):
That does make sense.
But I feel like if we're notfreezing people are going need
something to do.
So you
Jacob (20:41):
don't need automation as much.
Lucas (20:42):
Yes.
But on these other ships, itessentially would be like robots
running the show.
If we had multiple ships, itwould be automatic transport
between the farming ship and themain ship, which would really
just make like a party type ofatmosphere and that could be
used to attract more people todo it in the first place.
Jacob (21:00):
Yeah.
actually, I'm glad you broughtthat up'cause that ties into a
point that I wanted to bring up.
We have this idea that whomeveris gonna be signing up for these
ships are gonna be making a hugesacrifice.
Right?
They're gonna be living in thesesqualid conditions and have like
a shoebox to live in.
And that's not really true, youcan actually have these colony
ships be very luxurious.
And I know I've already broughtthis point up, but again, we
(21:21):
already imagine a future wherepeople are gonna be living in
orbital habitats anyways.
Mm-hmm.
And we imagine that theseorbital habitats are going to be
very luxurious.
We had a whole episode onO'Neill cylinders and we talked
about all the benefits of them,how you can build them to be
what you want.
You can have a beautifulMediterranean city and have the
climate be like that, or youknow, whatever you want.
(21:43):
And there's no reason you can'tdo this for a colony ship
either.
Just because it's moving andgoing to a new star doesn't mean
that you have to sacrifice onthese things.
Really the only limiting factoris mass.
Lucas (21:53):
Yeah.
I mean, it's nice to think that,oh, there are going to be people
out there that will sacrifice.
Yeah, right.
To go to a new star system.
But that's not what a privatelyfunded mission's going to wanna
do.
It's gonna wanna fill spots.
do you do that by making thetrip, desirable.
which would be, adding inluxury, allowing for people to
feel like they have the freedomto do what they want on the ship
and, of course offering them, atthe destination.
(22:16):
Something to look forward to.
Yeah.
Jacob (22:17):
Someone might be rightfully thinking, okay, but
if you try to add on thisluxury, there's a good chance
that you're reducing your topspeed that the ship can reach
because you're adding more mass.
If there is a fuelconsideration, then adding more
mass means that you're gonnareach a total lower top speed
means the journey's gonna takelonger.
But hear me out.
Do you care at all if this isgonna be a five generation ship
(22:38):
or a 10 generation ship?
Either way, you're spending yourlife on it.
Right?
So if I tell you, either we cango 20%, the speed of light, this
trip is gonna take fivegenerations, and you're gonna be
living in these not so greatconditions, or, we're only able
to go 10%.
The speed of light.
But you're gonna be in luxurythe entire time.
Do you care if that meansthere's gonna be a few extra
generations after you're dead?
Not at all.
(22:58):
Yeah, exactly.
So I think it's very reasonablethat we're probably gonna aim
for a decent level of luxury inthese ships.
Even at the sacrifice of speed.
Lucas (23:05):
Yeah, absolutely.
Really the only person who wouldbenefit from the ship going
faster in the terms of just anormal generation ship would be
if a government did it.
Yeah.
'cause they wanted something.
At the destination, which wealready talked about, that's
probably not gonna be the case.
Jacob (23:20):
Or with the exception of if you have life extension
technology Yes.
At that point, you might bewilling to make a sacrifice on
luxury if it gets you there alittle faster.
'cause it's like, do you want500 years of luxury?
or a thousand years of a littlebit more luxury?
It's like, I might be willing tosacrifice to cut, you know,
hundreds of years off thejourney.
If I have to be awake for it.
Lucas (23:39):
I mean, it, it gets a little crazy to consider when
you're talking about hundreds ofyears.
Yeah.
like people would want to getthere as quickly as possible
because even though luxury isluxury and luxury is nice, it's
like, man, am I even gonna wantthe same thing in 300 years?
Like Yeah.
Like just showing up at thisbarren planet and then nobody's
(24:01):
gonna want to get off the ship.
But then again, it doesn'tmatter'cause after you've been
on the ship for 10 years, it'llprobably be the same mindset.
Jacob (24:07):
Yeah, exactly.
And you know, like I said, justto tying back into this point
again and again, we alreadyimagine people are gonna be
living their entire lives inorbital habitats and O'Neill
cylinders.
So Yeah, you're right.
Maybe when it does get there,people say, nah, like this, I'm
good.
Like, why am I gonna wanna leavemy nice comfortable ship that's
set up to be like earth, to gocolonize this barren rock?
Lucas (24:25):
Yeah.
And of course it's not evenclosely comparable, but this
already happens in real life,like with cruise ships.
Mm-hmm.
You'll see, they have statisticsposted that about 25% of
passengers, even though they goand they travel to these
different locations, they neverget off the boat.
Jacob (24:39):
That's crazy.
Yeah.
But I mean, it's, it's set up tobe luxurious.
So yeah.
You might have that situation aswell.
Lucas (24:44):
Yeah.
Jacob (24:44):
With that thought in mind though, I do think it's worth
thinking about how will thesociety on the ship be,
especially if you have asituation where you can't cry or
preserve people, and double,especially if you don't even
have a life extension, you know?
What is it like to be the secondgeneration on a eight generation
colony ship, being born on theship, knowing you're working
your whole life just to get youto a destination that you'll
(25:05):
never see?
Lucas (25:06):
That's a great topic to bring up because, I feel like
one of the biggest issues iseven if we get these 500 or
10,000 people who agree to go onthis trip and essentially give
up their lives for thisopportunity, you're going to
have not just yourself dying onthis ship, but you're going to
have, 3, 5, 10 generations afteryou that you are committing to
(25:28):
also knowing nothing but thisship.
so that is a huge thing to bringup.
And then also those, people thatoriginally went, they might have
been cut out for it, but thepeople who were born after might
not be.
so when we talk about dedicatingyourself to this, it brings up a
huge ethical problem and is thatreally worth it?
Jacob (25:45):
Yeah.
So, I have some thoughts onthis.
For one though, I don't thinkit's as bad as people make it
out to be.
We already talked about howthese ships probably aren't, as
bad as people tend to imagine,they're probably not these
squalid, horrid conditions.
Mm-hmm.
Pretty reasonable comfort ofliving.
Yeah.
And also, how many people areborn in a small town in a middle
of a rural area, who have togrow up there and stay there,
(26:06):
maybe take over their parents'farm or whatever, is, is it
really that much more different?
And also, you know, when we'rethinking about, ah, these people
might be born on the ship andresent their parents and resent
everything and.
And what refuse to participatein society.
I mean, there's already peoplewho are annoyed at how society
is, I don't like going to workevery day.
Most people don't.
(26:26):
But you still do it and youstill participate in society.
For what, like what's the grandambition of society in the
world?
Lucas (26:32):
Yeah.
That is an excellent point aswell because why we think that
it would be an ethical problemnow is because we have the
illusion of choice to get on theship or not.
Yeah.
Right.
Where, when people are born intothat, they're probably going to
be more accepting.
They're going to learn in theirearly days in like schooling
that they're doing a greatthing, that they're,
contributing to the society ofthe ship and they'll know
(26:54):
nothing but the ship.
And there will still beopportunities for them, of
course, they'll be able to gointo different jobs and all of
them will have this aspect ofpurpose, so I agree with you on
the fact that it probably won'tmatter to the people who live on
the ship.
It'll matter more to, the peoplemaking that ethical decision to
be able to launch the ship.
(27:15):
Now, I agree with that.
We're getting rid of thatchoice.
Jacob (27:17):
I think it's more ethically questionable from a
distance.
I think most people born onthese ships are just going to,
it's all they've ever known.
They're gonna accept it, they'regonna live with it.
And I mean, is that ethical froman outside standpoint?
That's a fair question, but Idon't know.
I feel like as long as thequality of life on the ship is
good, and, as long as there isenough people to give you a good
society, at least 10,000.
How many people born in a townthat size spend their whole life
(27:38):
there anyways.
Yeah.
A good
Lucas (27:39):
chunk.
Yeah.
And I mean it, if you wannamove, you could go, a couple
miles down the ship and relocateto a different type of climate.
Yeah.
Jacob (27:46):
That's built onto one of these O'Neill cylinders.
Exactly.
Or, if you launch, dozens ofthese together, maybe even
hundreds of them together, ifyou're not happy, you can just
move to another cylinder.
And you might have cylindersthat have a variety of different
climates and, you might havesome that are modeled more like
cities, some that are modeled tobe more like a rural area.
Mm-hmm.
So, at that point, if you'relaunching, between 10 and a
(28:07):
hundred of these ships together,that can also put around 10,000
people and you have the optionto move between'em.
I think the ethical issue kindof dissolves there.
Is that any worse than beingborn on earth at that point?
Lucas (28:17):
Yeah.
That's definitely a good thingto think about especially to
like grandparents where theycould be like, oh, my kid moved
to ship C 21 and they nevervisit anymore.
Yeah.
You know, so, it'll be a newtype of society especially, but
I think that people willacclimate assuming that we give
them, ample comfort and livingspace to do so.
Jacob (28:38):
I fully agree.
And, tying back to this pointagain, but you might already
have people spending their wholelives on O'Neill cylinders at
this point anyways, and thatjust dilutes the ethical
argument even more becausewhat's the difference between
spending your whole life and oneorbiting our son versus one
that's in route to another son?
Right.
Yeah.
So,
Lucas (28:54):
yeah.
But talking about some of thethings that would pose a, real
issue from a social aspect.
The first one is going to be.
As society evolves, it willevolve around their environment.
So we'll have changes inlanguage going back to the
expanse, like the people wholived in the belt, They formed
an entirely different type oflanguage and lingo.
(29:15):
And that will continue to evolveuntil we really won't be able to
communicate with Earth.
Right?
Jacob (29:21):
I don't know if it'd go that far.
That's gonna depend on a lot ofdifferent things, presumably you
still have contact with Earththere will be cultural drift and
there will be linguistic drift.
Absolutely.
But I think because you have anopen channel of communication
with Earth, it'll be very easyto keep tabs on that changing
and have people who are trainedto learn that new language and
that language can only evolve.
At the speed of, generations,which means people on Earth also
(29:42):
have time to learn it and adaptwith it over time as well.
Lucas (29:45):
Yeah, that is very true.
Like you said, we would havespecific people trained mm-hmm.
To a language, but the actuallanguage that everybody else
speaks on the ship, I feel likewould be vastly different.
Jacob (29:55):
Yeah.
Or you could have people onearth trained to speak the
common language of the ship thatway.
You don't,
Lucas (29:59):
you Yeah.
I, I guess you could do that aswell.
And I mean,
Jacob (30:01):
realistically you don't need that much back and forth
communication with earth.
Maybe a few trained people totransmit science and stuff like
that, but it's not like, oh no,the regular person on the colony
ship can't speak earth language,whatever.
Will they do with a
Lucas (30:16):
you you are absolutely right.
I don't
Jacob (30:18):
speak middle English.
That's gonna be a real challengeone day.
Lucas (30:22):
Really, I'm just thinking from the standard, of course,
still like just giving somethingback to your starting system,
but that, that could very wellnot be the case now where it
could become an issue.
Is these people are going to beliving on this ship and they're
not going to know a lot ofthings to do when they get to
the planet that they're supposedto be colonizing, for example,
(30:43):
metal smelting or tilling afield or building a home, right?
A lot of these people, they'renot going to really know how to
do that because the ship willprovide them with all of those
things already.
Jacob (30:53):
I don't know.
I think it depends on how arethese ships set up to farm in
the first place, right?
Do you have a large rotatingcylinder that has open fields
where people can teal and farm.
Uh, maybe you do, maybe youdon't.
It's not the best use of space,but it is possible you would
have that en route.
Or alternatively, maybe youdon't have that.
Maybe all the farming is donethrough automated farms or you
(31:13):
know, some more advancedtechniques like hydroponics and
all that, in which case youwould probably still use that
technique once you get to thenew colony Anyways.
Lucas (31:21):
yeah,
Jacob (31:21):
that is a
Lucas (31:22):
good point.
You could just set up facilitiesYeah.
Where you use aeroponic orhydroponic farming
Jacob (31:27):
and, it's not like the information on how to do it
won't be preserved and thepeople can't figure it out when
they get there too.
Especially on a colony ship, youhave a way to generate food to
sustain that population anyways.
Yeah.
So you have all the time in theworld to figure out farming and
you only need to figure outfarming to grow your population.
You have a farm on your colonyship anyways, that can sustain
your population at the size thatit is.
Currently.
(31:47):
Mm-hmm.
Lucas (31:48):
You do bring up great points there.
Really, when I came into this,in the beginning, I was thinking
of how all the bad stuff couldbe there.
Yeah.
But really you'll have most ofthat figured out.
Yeah.
And you'll have these peoplethat have acclimated to it,
almost like a, a utopian versioninstead of a dystopian Yeah.
Hopefully.
Right.
Being on the ship.
Right.
Not to
Jacob (32:05):
say it can't be dystopian.
I mean, you have, of
Lucas (32:06):
course.
I mean, we could have a shipthat's run poorly and people do
live in squalor.
Yeah.
And but more realistically, likeyou're saying, most of these
ships, when they are designed,to get people to go on them,
it's going to be a more lavishlifestyle.
Jacob (32:18):
Yeah.
Well, I was also gonna say, youcan have things happen on the
way, for example, maybe you havea, a tyrannical leader, show up
and, you have social collapse orsomething, so things can't
happen.
Lucas (32:26):
Oh yeah.
I mean that, that's anothergreat point.
Government.
Jacob (32:29):
Yeah.
Lucas (32:29):
Right?
Like how is the ship going tooperate?
Because once they leave, whatlaw are they going to abide by?
Especially if it's a ship that'spulled from all different parts
of the globe.
What government does that shipstart as and where will it end?
Does it just like a common lawtype of thing.
Like, don't kill people, don'tsteal things.
be kind to your fellow personand will make this work.
But people will crave leadershipand other people will crave
(32:52):
power.
Jacob (32:53):
I feel like you'll just set up a government before the
ship ever leaves.
You'll probably have a charterthat outlines all of the laws
that will be ab obeyed on thisship and how the government
works and all of that.
That'll be set up before theship ever launches.
Lucas (33:04):
But will it maintain three generations down the line?
I mean,
Jacob (33:07):
People crave stability.
So I think for the most part, ifyou have a charter set up on
your ship, most people are gonnaobey that just because that's
what they do anyways.
Lucas (33:16):
Yeah.
The reason why it's fascinatingto me is, I recently just
watched the Fallout series.
Yeah.
And I kind of think of it aslike a, a vault.
Oh, yeah, yeah, right.
Sort of a weird, dystopian vibeto it, to where it's like
everybody's like, happy.
But there, there could be weirdstuff going on in the background
or.
some kind of, tyranny orsomething like that.
but realistically, you areright.
(33:36):
It's not gonna matter'causewhere are you gonna go?
Jacob (33:38):
Yeah.
Lucas (33:38):
But, it's definitely an interesting idea to touch on
with how that would evolve.
Jacob (33:42):
Yeah, it is fair.
I, I genuinely think though,that you would probably set up
some type of charter, some typeof legal system well before the
ship even left.
And for the most part, I thinkpeople would follow it.
Again, just tying into what Isaid, I think people crave
stability.
I think most people aren't gonnago for the anarchy route just
because they're on a ship thesame way you don't have small
towns in the United Statessucceeding just because they
have a smaller population.
(34:03):
Right.
that is true.
There is of course, a risk thatmaybe you'll have a tyrant for a
leader that crops up and you canhave social collapse.
It's not saying that can'thappen, but I don't know.
Just have to roll the dice.
That's something that happened.
Yeah, absolutely.
That's something that can happenhere on earth though.
that is true.
It's happened before,
Lucas (34:16):
but it's, it's again that illusion of choice type of
thing.
Yeah.
If you don't like.
What's happening?
There are other spots in thecountry where you can go, but
realistically, most people don'thave the resources nor the
ability to do that anyways.
But we feel better about thesituation that we're in because
we feel like we could change itif we needed to.
Jacob (34:34):
There is also a point of bringing out, you can't leave
this, right?
So especially if you only haveone ship and you do have, a
dictator crop up, there's no oneoutside to stop him.
Yeah.
You know, at least on earth youhave different countries and if
you get too crazy, presumablysomeone's gonna declare war with
you and take you outta power,you know, on a ship, you don't
have any external forces.
So there is a risk of that too.
Lucas (34:53):
Yeah.
And, that makes me think aboutalso if this is like a fleet.
You could have differentgovernments on different ships.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
And what if they disagree?
Jacob (35:00):
Yeah.
Lucas (35:01):
Right.
They're like, I don't wanna goto the planet with that guy
anymore.
Set course to a different star.
I'm outta here.
Yeah.
Maybe
Jacob (35:08):
you could, or maybe you say, you know, whenever we land,
we're colonizing the furthestcontinent away from you.
Lucas (35:13):
Yeah.
It's like, you don't get to comeon our half of the planet.
Yeah.
Back up.
and then we think about, peoplewho of course are still going to
break the law even though maybenot as much as they would here
on earth, because it'll all bevery equal.
To the people that are living onthese ships, right.
you're going to be in luxuryregardless.
So if we're thinking aboutpeople breaking the law, because
(35:34):
some people they will just havedevious intention from the
beginning.
They will murder or arsonistwould be a huge problem.
How do you deal with thesepeople?
Do you have arsonists?
Jacob (35:44):
Why are arsonists particularly gonna be a problem?
Well, because if the shipcatches on fire, that's bad.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
You're fair enough.
Not that it's gonna breedarsonists, it's just that it's a
particularly heinous crime in aclosed system.
That's completely fair.
to answer your question, I thinkyou'll have gels, you'll have
penal systems, or maybe youdepends on the technology.
Maybe you can just like.
Brainwash people.
I dunno.
Okay.
But I think you would have alegal system just like you would
(36:06):
have on earth.
I mean, 10,000 people.
Uh, you're gonna have jails, Ithink probably
Lucas (36:09):
right now.
Would we put that on a, on aseparate ship we keep it on the
same one.
Jacob (36:13):
I don't know.
Uh, it's probably gonna dependon the setup.
I mean, if you have multipleships, maybe one is like a, a
penal ship.
If you've got, maybe not, Idon't know.
It's just gonna fully depend onyour fleet setup.
And, if you're a sci-fi writer,you can do it either way.
You can have each ship havetheir own, you can have a penal
ship.
maybe you just have an airlock.
Yeah.
just kill everyone who's aproblem.
It's just,
Lucas (36:31):
well, yeah, no, it, it's sentenced to life in prison, but
then you just put'em in theairlock or, and send them out
into space.
Jacob (36:37):
There might be harsher consequences though, on closed
systems like this.
Especially if you're threateningthe ship, it's hard for one
person to destroy the world,but, uh, when you're on a closed
ship, one act of sabotage reallycould, destroy the whole ship.
Or, you know, at least make itimpossible to complete the
mission.
So it, there might be strongincentives not to do that.
And I think, you know what Imean by strong incentives?
Lucas (36:54):
Yes.
I definitely think that issomething that should be in
place.
Because like I said, I feel likepetty crimes, like theft and
things like that aren't reallygonna be a thing.
'cause why are you stealing?
You have the same thing thatthat guy has.
Jacob (37:05):
I don't know.
Maybe, maybe not.
I think petty crimes will alwaysexist.
my case for this is that.
A lot of people commit pettycrimes just for the thrill of
it.
Lucas (37:12):
Ah, that is, that is a good point.
Jacob (37:13):
I mean, there's people who shoplift not because they
need the thing.
Right.
So petty crime, I think is justa human condition that's always
gonna happen no matter what.
Even if you have resourceabundance, I think people are
gonna do petty crimes or getdrunk in a fight.
That type of stuff.
I think you'll probably justdeal with like you would deal
with on earth.
When you get to like capitaloffenses, that gets a little
more tricky.
I could definitely see a cultureon these ships forming of every
(37:35):
single person is a resource sinkand they need to contribute to
be allowed to stay alive on thisship.
Yeah.
So it might be the case thatlife in prison isn't a thing
because why are we gonna feedyou and clothe you in a limited
world if you have done thishorrible thing?
So capital punishment might bemore common.
So that, that's a good one.
Lucas (37:51):
Yeah, that is definitely a good point.
The last big topic that I wantedto touch on was, reproduction
We've talked about that a littlebit, already, but would we have
a regulated reproduction law,for people?
Because overpopulation on one ofthese ships could be
catastrophic.
Jacob (38:05):
I think that is going to depend wildly on what
technologies are available andhow you set up your ship or
fleet.
I know I talked about itearlier, but if you've got life
extension technology, maybe youstart off with a small enough
population and you overbuildyour ship mm-hmm.
So that people can breed freelyand the population size, will be
reaching capacity as you'rereaching your planet.
Or, it might be a legalsituation.
(38:26):
We've definitely seen, on earth,China famously had the one child
policy limiting reproduction,but didn't necessarily go well.
But it's not hard to imaginehaving policies like that on a
colony ship that has limitedavailability.
Lucas (38:38):
Yeah.
It's just, reproduction is oneof those things that I find to
be such, an interesting topicbecause limiting that could be
incredibly detrimental to somepeople's, mental health.
Jacob (38:47):
yeah.
You'll have to find a way aroundit.
It does get trickier with lifeextension, especially if you
don't have unlimited capacity onyour ship, like I said, it might
be a case that to have a kid,either you volunteer to be put
in cryos stasis or you put alimit on your own life, maybe
that's the sacrifice you have tomake.
There's a lot of differentsituations that can happen.
Have you read the, silo bookseries at all?
No.
there's a TV show on it now onApple tv.
(39:08):
It's really good.
It's also a closed ecosystem,and they run into the same issue
of reproduction, in the show.
every woman is given a birthcontrol pill, once they hit, the
age of, I think 13 is what thebook says.
Mm-hmm.
And that is only removed if youwin a, lottery to have a kid.
It's basically a compulsorybirth control, little dystopian,
but that is also an option.
(39:29):
I don't think this is a spoiler,it doesn't come up in the show.
But the book does cover acharacter who's mom's birth
control fails.
'cause there is a failure ratefor these and she doesn't report
it.
She decides to have the kidanyways.
And it's revealed in the, thebook, the price you pay on that
is your own life.
Once your kid reaches, a certainage, they kill you.
Lucas (39:45):
I see.
I guess no, no matter how youswing it, it'll always be a
little.
bizarre.
Yeah.
Jacob (39:50):
there is the option too of oversize your ship for the
generation so they can growanyways.
If you start with a populationof, a thousand and you have a
500 year journey, just designyour ship to handle that and let
people do whatever they want.
Lucas (40:00):
that would be the best option in my mind.
Yeah, I think so.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Jacob (40:03):
But yeah, just to say there's a lot of different
options and you can really goabout it and either dystopian
ways, utopian ways orutilitarian ways, bunch of
different ways you can slicethat.
Lucas (40:11):
Yeah.
I mean, it's just fun to thinkabout, you know, all the
different ways that it could go.
Jacob (40:14):
Absolutely.
Well, Lucas, I think that's allI really have to say about this
topic.
How about you?
Lucas (40:18):
Yeah, that's all that I really got.
I really enjoyed talking aboutit.
Jacob (40:21):
Yeah, this was a really fun one.
This is one of our longer wrapepisodes.
I think we could've gone evenlonger.
We'll have to definitely do afollow up.
Lucas (40:27):
Yeah, definitely.
But people did say that theywanted longer episodes.
Oh.
Jacob (40:30):
Hopefully they like this one.
thank you so much for listening.
Please follow us on threads ifyou wanna follow along with the
show and keep up with the latestthings that we're talking about.
Also, if you wanna support theshow, you can support us on
Patreon.
It helps a ton.
It'll help us grow and expandthe show and increase the
production quality.
Lucas (40:46):
Yeah.
Thank you everybody so much seeyou next time.
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