11-19-2024, 03:22 AM
(This post was last modified: 11-19-2024, 03:24 AM by stevebowers.)
1500 people on a 250 year mission? If the ship was going to Tau Ceti the speed would need to be 0.047c - quite a respectable speed. In OA it would probably be a sleeper ship, and the payload would be significantly smaller. But if we imagine it was a generation ship it would require a lot of energy to get up to that speed, so the ship have massive propulsion system, probably both rockets and a drivesail.
Obviously the agricultural sections would need to rotate for internal gravity, which would mean a large drum-like section - perhaps two rotating in different directions to even out the angular momentum. If the ship decelerates these segments on arrival they could be used as a habitat in the new system - or, alternately, a more efficient use of energy would be to decelerate a much smaller segment of the ship using a magbrake, then arrive into the system in a smallish, cramped vessel and hope that the occupants of the ship could quickly acquire enough resources in the new system to survive. A tricky proposition, but it is always more efficient to decelerate a small payload than a large one.
Maybe the generation ship would be preceded by a fleet of smaller robot ships that help to gather resources for this eventual arrival, but these robot ships would need to be almost completely autonomous because they would be separated from the ship's crew by light travel time, and any new instructions would take years, months or weeks to arrive (assuming the robot fleet was controlled by the generation ship's crew as it approached). This is not really current or near-future technology. But if it worked, the ship would arrive at its destination to find a preconstructed habitat waiting for them.
So the mission plan I would propose is a large, relatively slow generation ship with two or four large counter-rotating agricultural rings growing food for the journey, with a central, smaller ship at the hub intended for the two-year deceleration phase. This would be accompanied by a fleet of smaller unmanned largely autonomous ships that construct a habitat at the destination - probably from asteroid material including water ice and rock. The counter-rotating rings would then become redundant and would be discarded just before deceleration- perhaps some, or most, of the mass could be converted into propellant to assist in the deceleration, but that might require some pretty weighty machinery (which would reduce the efficiency of the process).
Before we could attempt such a mission we'd need very good closed ecological life support system technology, and very good automated robot systems, and a sustainable and largely automated education/training system that would ensure the crew/colonists could be trained in all the necessary skills to maintain the ship (and the colony at the destination). I don't think this would be possible without competent general artificial intelligence and a comprehensive database, so we won't be attempting anything like this in the next century or two.
And of course my proposal would only work if everything performed its function flawlessly - if the robot ships couldn't create a sustainable habitat at the destination, the people in the ship would probably starve to death on arrival. And so on.
Obviously the agricultural sections would need to rotate for internal gravity, which would mean a large drum-like section - perhaps two rotating in different directions to even out the angular momentum. If the ship decelerates these segments on arrival they could be used as a habitat in the new system - or, alternately, a more efficient use of energy would be to decelerate a much smaller segment of the ship using a magbrake, then arrive into the system in a smallish, cramped vessel and hope that the occupants of the ship could quickly acquire enough resources in the new system to survive. A tricky proposition, but it is always more efficient to decelerate a small payload than a large one.
Maybe the generation ship would be preceded by a fleet of smaller robot ships that help to gather resources for this eventual arrival, but these robot ships would need to be almost completely autonomous because they would be separated from the ship's crew by light travel time, and any new instructions would take years, months or weeks to arrive (assuming the robot fleet was controlled by the generation ship's crew as it approached). This is not really current or near-future technology. But if it worked, the ship would arrive at its destination to find a preconstructed habitat waiting for them.
So the mission plan I would propose is a large, relatively slow generation ship with two or four large counter-rotating agricultural rings growing food for the journey, with a central, smaller ship at the hub intended for the two-year deceleration phase. This would be accompanied by a fleet of smaller unmanned largely autonomous ships that construct a habitat at the destination - probably from asteroid material including water ice and rock. The counter-rotating rings would then become redundant and would be discarded just before deceleration- perhaps some, or most, of the mass could be converted into propellant to assist in the deceleration, but that might require some pretty weighty machinery (which would reduce the efficiency of the process).
Before we could attempt such a mission we'd need very good closed ecological life support system technology, and very good automated robot systems, and a sustainable and largely automated education/training system that would ensure the crew/colonists could be trained in all the necessary skills to maintain the ship (and the colony at the destination). I don't think this would be possible without competent general artificial intelligence and a comprehensive database, so we won't be attempting anything like this in the next century or two.
And of course my proposal would only work if everything performed its function flawlessly - if the robot ships couldn't create a sustainable habitat at the destination, the people in the ship would probably starve to death on arrival. And so on.