For consideration (taking into account all the above in my posts about gen ships).
I think the question still remans unanswered:
In this spoiler below is the reasoning for this statement.
Instead of mining, insert literally any commercial venture you want in there, the results are basically the same. There's just no point in sending commercial ventures to other stars using Generation ships.
Again instead of mining, insert literally any commercial venture you want in there, the results are basically the same. There's just no point in sending commercial ventures to other stars using Generation ships after FTL has been discovered.
Does that sound like a Corporation to you? A Government, maybe, but not a corporation with shareholders and profit margins. Maybe a hyper-wealthy individual can afford to do this a few times, but is there enough hyper-wealthy individuals to send over 70,000 Generations ships out?
A hyper-rich individual may do this, sure, but enough for over 70,000 generation ships? no chance.
There's enough resources in the Sol system to support a population in the multiple billions, maybe into the trillions. Gen ships have spin gravity and self-sustaining agriculture. If you can build that, you can put a station anywhere in the Sol system. You can have one as your corporate headquarters while you terraform Mars, Titan, build habitats in the waters of Europa, etc. etc. Also, if some fail, they're close enough to aid to be helped, or you can salvage the remains of the station and repopulate it. Can't do that with a gen ship.
You could have over 70,000 self-sustaining stations in the Sol system, each one remains in-range of civilisation and therefore ideas, research, products, etc. can be easily traded. That's literally what corporations exist for.
For a post-war society to construct and send out over 70,000 generation ships simply doesn't make sense for any reason other than long-term future colonisation specifically outside Sol.
Even the closest stars (we're told that Tau Ceti was the first colony 12ly away) would take at least multiple decades to reach, most probably significantly longer. And if you could do that, why send ships anywhere else? Tau Ceti has an ELW and plenty of resources. Two star systems with habitable planets to exploit is an insane amount of resources and colonisation space...
Why continue to send thousands and thousands of Gen ships out per year to dozens of different systems in an unfocused frenzy for hundreds of years? Even after FTL is discovered and you know that your destination will be colonised by the time you get there, why keep sending out ships?
Maybe Tau Ceti was thought to be too close to Sol? Maybe no-one really knew how close was 'too close' so ships kept going out to new and further destinations. They weren't going out there for some corporate cash-grab, they were going out there to survive.
Something must have happened, or have been happening, around the end of the 21st Century that would make the entire population of Earth believe the only solution was to leave the Sol system entirely and focus a massive effort of developing a space-industry entirely devoted to building thousands of ships to carry as many people away from Sol as possible.
What could possibly make an entire population believe that, for potentially decades or centuries? Remember the ships were sent in different directions.
Raxxla was discovered prior to 2296 (and wasn't such a well-kept secret maybe, since it became common myth) - so it was discovered sometime around this 'great diaspora' and written casually in a journal by someone in the first colony outside Sol.
We know that a secret cabal convinced generations of people that the Thargoids never really existed, or if they did stories of interstellar war were vastly exaggerated. That was only 130 years ago.
Imagine what the same people might have convinced us about a time 1000 years in the past...
I think the question still remans unanswered:
Why send Generation ships out?
We're told "corporations" sent them - but why? A corporation couldn't profit from a generation ship. The cost of building it and sending it wouldn't pay back. Especially the ships sent prior to the discovery of FTL.In this spoiler below is the reasoning for this statement.
Pre FTL: Which of these scenarios makes sense to you?
1) You are the 1st CEO of Miningcorp in 2100. You invest billions in sending a self-sustaining Gen ship sent out to a star with a metal-rich world to exploit. It takes them 200 years to arrive. They set up the colony, mine metals. In 2550, 450 years after your distant ancestor spent billions of dollar-pounds on a Gen ship, you (the 16th CEO of Miningcorp) get a shipment of metals back which may or may not be more valuable than the cost of the expedition... This assumes that:- The gen ship arrived
- The colonists' descendants stuck to the original plan generation-on-generation
- They were able to send either the original gen ship back, or build another one
- The colonists didn't think the idea of sending materials along a 200 year journey back to a planet none of them knew isn't a waste of time, what are the corporations going to do? send lawyers over 200 years in a gen ship to follow up? By the time lawyers arrived it would be the year 2700... the colony would have been established at that point longer than the United States of America in 2022...
Instead of mining, insert literally any commercial venture you want in there, the results are basically the same. There's just no point in sending commercial ventures to other stars using Generation ships.
Post FTL: which of these scenarios makes sense to you?
1) You are the 1st CEO of Miningcorp in 2150. FTL has been discovered, but is still unstable for human transit, it's being used only for unmanned probes. You invest billions in sending a self-sustaining Gen ship sent out to a star with a metal-rich world to exploit. It takes them 200 years to arrive. They set up the colony, mine metals. In 2550, 450 years after your distant ancestor spent billions of dollar-pounds on a Gen ship, you (the 16th CEO of Miningcorp) get a shipment of metals back ... This assumes that:- The gen ship arrived
- The colonists' descendants stuck to the original plan generation-on-generation
- They were able to send either the original gen ship back, or build another one
- The colonists didn't think the idea of sending materials along a 200 year journey back to a planet none of them knew isn't a waste of time...etc.
- In the intervening centuries FTL hasn't improved to the stage where automated mining ships are possible, or manned FTL transits are safer, overtaking your Generation ships and rendering the entire investment completely pointless.
- The gen ship arrived
- The colonists' descendants stuck to the original plan generation-on-generation
- The colonists didn't think the idea of mining materials for a planet they never knew because their ancestors signed a contract to do so was stupid and decided to simply not do that.
- In the intervening centuries FTL hasn't improved to the stage where automated mining ships are possible, or manned FTL transits are safer, overtaking your Generation ships and rendering the entire investment completely pointless.
Again instead of mining, insert literally any commercial venture you want in there, the results are basically the same. There's just no point in sending commercial ventures to other stars using Generation ships after FTL has been discovered.
Given it can't be profit, what's the point of Generation ships?
Altruistic colonisation, or to reach something that's completely unique and incredibly valuable?Altruistic colonisation
Altruistic colonisation means literally sending a Generation ship to colonise another star-system knowing that it is incredibly unlikely to ever pay off, even if it does so in some distant future, you'll never see anything of it.Does that sound like a Corporation to you? A Government, maybe, but not a corporation with shareholders and profit margins. Maybe a hyper-wealthy individual can afford to do this a few times, but is there enough hyper-wealthy individuals to send over 70,000 Generations ships out?
Reach something unique and valuable
Even if we consider the idea that a Generation ship might be dispatched to explore something incredibly valuable, consider all the above factors. The hyper-rich individual or corporation funding the project must be doing it for a greater purpose with no hope of a payoff, therefore it essentially falls into the altruistic colonisation model - doing something for an incredibly faint chance at a distant payoff generations later.A hyper-rich individual may do this, sure, but enough for over 70,000 generation ships? no chance.
There's enough resources in the Sol system to support a population in the multiple billions, maybe into the trillions. Gen ships have spin gravity and self-sustaining agriculture. If you can build that, you can put a station anywhere in the Sol system. You can have one as your corporate headquarters while you terraform Mars, Titan, build habitats in the waters of Europa, etc. etc. Also, if some fail, they're close enough to aid to be helped, or you can salvage the remains of the station and repopulate it. Can't do that with a gen ship.
You could have over 70,000 self-sustaining stations in the Sol system, each one remains in-range of civilisation and therefore ideas, research, products, etc. can be easily traded. That's literally what corporations exist for.
For a post-war society to construct and send out over 70,000 generation ships simply doesn't make sense for any reason other than long-term future colonisation specifically outside Sol.
So, why build Generation ships in those numbers? To escape.
The only reason to make Gen ships when they did, in the numbers we're told they did is to simply flee not just Earth, but the entire Sol system.Even the closest stars (we're told that Tau Ceti was the first colony 12ly away) would take at least multiple decades to reach, most probably significantly longer. And if you could do that, why send ships anywhere else? Tau Ceti has an ELW and plenty of resources. Two star systems with habitable planets to exploit is an insane amount of resources and colonisation space...
Why continue to send thousands and thousands of Gen ships out per year to dozens of different systems in an unfocused frenzy for hundreds of years? Even after FTL is discovered and you know that your destination will be colonised by the time you get there, why keep sending out ships?
Maybe Tau Ceti was thought to be too close to Sol? Maybe no-one really knew how close was 'too close' so ships kept going out to new and further destinations. They weren't going out there for some corporate cash-grab, they were going out there to survive.
Exodus.
Something must have happened, or have been happening, around the end of the 21st Century that would make the entire population of Earth believe the only solution was to leave the Sol system entirely and focus a massive effort of developing a space-industry entirely devoted to building thousands of ships to carry as many people away from Sol as possible.
What could possibly make an entire population believe that, for potentially decades or centuries? Remember the ships were sent in different directions.
Raxxla was discovered prior to 2296 (and wasn't such a well-kept secret maybe, since it became common myth) - so it was discovered sometime around this 'great diaspora' and written casually in a journal by someone in the first colony outside Sol.
We know that a secret cabal convinced generations of people that the Thargoids never really existed, or if they did stories of interstellar war were vastly exaggerated. That was only 130 years ago.
Imagine what the same people might have convinced us about a time 1000 years in the past...
