Interstellar travel

--- In spacesettlers@y..., "Dr. Omni" wrote:
> From:
> To:
> Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2001 1:56 AM
> Subject: Interstellar travel (was: Re: [spacesettlers] Re: Not that
> I WANT to terraform Mars...)

> [snikt]

> The question is: will people get aboard generation ships like the
> ones that you describe above? I wouldn't.

I'm not talking about genration ships. I'm talking about city-ships
that make the journey in fifty years or less (ship-board time). I
guess you could call them "decade ships."

> As far as I know, generation travel is something beyond any human
> experience in history, and basically no one would like to get
> aboard a ship - even a city-sized ship - that ultimately would
> be his/her coffin.

Any ship you're on when you die is your coffin, whether it's orbiting
the Earth, moving from comet to comet in the Oort cloud, or making
it's way to Barnard's star. Everybody who moves onto the High
Frontier is volunteering to move into "coffin ships."

> I concede that, in a population of billions (or trillions) of
> people, you would certainly find enough whacko to fill your

Why whacko?

> generation ships, but this colonization wave would be zillions of
> times smaller than the one that would happen with FTL travel.

Granted. I could see lots of twenty-somethings signing up to spend
fifteen years (shipboard time) en route to 82 Eridani. I can see a
lot more signing up to spend two weeks making the same trip.

> My lack of motivation to get into a generation travel would be even
> stronger in a scenario where the Solar System is getting colonized.
> Why should I bury myself in a coffin ship so that my great-
> grandsons will explore new worlds,

I don't understand why it's better to "bury myself in a coffin ship"
that endlessly orbits Sol as opposed to a "coffin ship" that goes
from one star to another. But since these aren't generation ships...

> if I myself can explore a virtually inexhaustible supply of new
> worlds in my own planetary system?

By "a virtually inexhaustible supply of new worlds," I assume you
mean the various habitats being built all over the Solar system?
Some people won't be satisfied to explore what other people have
built. Of course, the other system will be well-mapped, thanks to
huge compound telescopes such as described in The High Frontier.

> [snikt]
>> The other planetary system gets colonized, and then when it
>> "collides" with yet another star system, the cycle repeats, leading
>> to a very, very slow "chain reaction" that eventually will populate
>> the whole galaxy (after a few hundreds of million years)... I saw
>> this method as described by Carl Sagan in "Pale Blue Dot", but I
>> think that it was imagined by someone else long ago.
>
> Well, if you're in no hurry... I suspect that they will find people
> already there, people who were a bit more... impatient.
> [snikt]
>
> That's the beauty of the "cometary diffusion" way. The goal of this
> people that eventually will colonize the whole galaxy is not to
> travel to other planetary systems: at any given time, their goal is
> to start new colonies in nearby planetesimals. But the side effect
> is that Humanity spreads across other systems in the process...

And find themselves Johnny-come-lately everywhere they go. I fail to
see the beauty. Cometary diffusion will do the job, but NAFAL
(Nearly As Fast As Light) "single generation ships" will fill the
galaxy a lot faster.

> Lucio Coelho

Xenophile