Well, from a certain point of view there may be evidence that they're in the game already.
Things we know about these generation ships:
- They were sublight (so aren't going to be further than 1000 LYs away).
- They were launched from Earth in the period 2097 to about 2700.
- Back in 3100 (original '84 Elite) there were strict penalties in place for anyone caught interfering with a generation ship (presumably they meant a "live" one, rather than a dead/abandoned hulk).
- There were an estimated 70,000 of them.
- There are only 20,000 inhabited systems in the bubble.
- Being sublight ships, they do not "jump" from system to system, but travel through normal space.
- The log of the
Thetis mentions a "ninth generation" baby; they were presumably about 300 years into the voyage at that juncture; it was given as a matter-of-fact statement while the ship was not in crisis, so it can be assumed that that ship, at least, was expected and designed to last that long.
- The log of the
Venusian indicates that it was attacked and raided by hyperspace-capable pirates (the log erroneously calls it "Supercruise", though FSD technology did not exist back then) - so in-lore at least, generation ships can be discovered and interacted with.
Some other non-generational-ship-related facts which we know:
- There are some permit-locked systems out near the fringe of inhabited space. We don't know why they are permit-locked, nor how to access their permits.
- There are even some Earth-like planets within the Bubble that have inexplicably never been colonized. TRAPPIST-1, of course, but there are others, such as MCC 528, HIP 50874 and HIP 19789. You can derive a full list from
the ELW database thread; anything less than 200 LYs of Sol could be considered "within the Bubble"; there are 25 of them.
Things we can conjecture about generation ships:
- The name "generation ship" implies their destinations were at least 50 years away (a ship that takes less than a generation to reach its destination is a "colony ship", not a "generation ship").
- With only a few thousand target systems that are both within generation-ship range and with viable planets to terraform or live on, many of those 70,000 ships must have "doubled-up". That is, many systems must have been colonized by more than one generation ship.
- If the "golden age" ended in 2700, then most of those 70,000 ships were probably launched around 2500-2600 (I would assume that construction started slow, then sped up). None of the currently-known-ships logs indicate an AD date, of either the logged events or of the ship's launch. Let's assume 50,000 ships were launched in the 26th century.
- Hyperdrive-capable probes and scout ships explored every system within 100 LYs of Sol, well in advance of the wave of generation ships. So most of these ships would have been launched with a specific destination planet in mind, and they'd have already known what the planet was like before they left (to put the timeframe in context, Achenar was colonized by a fleet of small hyperdrive-capable colony ships in the 2200s, and the first Federation-Achenar war began in 2324).
- Many, if not most, must have safely Arrived at their destinations and were presumably disassembled to provide raw materials for the colony.
- Many probably arrived to find that the planet they'd set out to colonize was now already at least partially colonized, either by an earlier generation ship or by by people who'd arrived in hyperdrive-equipped ships, and whose colonists were probably not expecting a generation ship to arrive.
- The vast majority of generation ships that are still sailing, are way out there in the interstellar darkness, far from any star.
- No generation ship has been reported as having unexpectedly Arrived at its destination for at least the last hundred years, else it would probably have been mentioned in Galnet when the Missing stories broke.
Conclusions:
- Any "live" colony ship would have been in space for 700-1000 years. However, I would assume a mission duration beyond 500 years would have been considered unreasonably long. If there were 50,000 ships launched in a century (see note above), that makes an average of more than one a day. So any potential colonists would have had plenty of options. If you were a potential colonist and there were multiple ships being launched every week promising a 300-500 year voyage for your descendants, why would you sign up for a 1000 year one? Thus, any ship still in flight on its planned trajectory would have to have been commissioned for a specific group of people with a religious/cultural/ideological goal of "getting away from it all".
- Any ship intending to travel for 1000 years would be aiming for a quite remote target; 1000 years at 1/3 of lightspeed is 300 LYs away, beyond or right at the fringe of the current edge of the Bubble.
- Any live colony ship found in a system is presumably either travelling at a significant fraction of lightspeed through that system (and so won't be "in that system" for more than a few months) or is slowing down preparing for Arrival.
Theories:
- It is possible that some of the extreme permit-locked systems are permit-locked to permit the Arrival of a generation ship and to allow the colonists to colonize in peace and interact with any prior arrivals, without external meddling.
- Numerous unclaimed Earth-like and Terraformable planets exist within the Bubble. It is possible that "They" (shadowy government figures buried deep in the bureaucracies of the two old superpowers?) are aware of and are secretly keeping an eye on at least some of the few surviving generation ships, and are ensuring that their destination planets are being kept free of current colonists so that each generation ship still has an empty planet to Arrive at.
