What's the lore on human life expectancy in the Elite universe? Other science fiction universes I've seen, there's some sort of treatment that extends life well past 100 and it's usually a pill, liquid, or therapy. I had assumed Progenitor Cells was Elite's answer to that trope, or is it?
Life Expectancy
- Thread starter damon8r351
- Start date
Not very long if you become Emperor
life expectancy in Elite all depends on the amount of escape pods you have 
Let me say this again, what is human life expectancy, not politician or pilot life expectancy? Just your generic human.
well mine is not as long as i would have liked but that's just the way thing's have turned out i'm afraid
and sometimes i get very afraid
and sometimes i get very afraid
but to answer your question i think by then humans will be some sort of generic hybrid
I don't have an answer, as like most of the things in Elite's lore it seems finding any real answers is a complete pain in . (oh, hey, pointless censor that doesn't ever match the culture of the game itself! we meet again... )
But, to be fair, the answers to many lore questions are quite similar, i.e. it boils down to 'not much different to how it is in our era'. In the context of life expectancy that means there will a huge range across different systems and worlds, depending on socioeconomic state.
Mahon is, I think, the oldest leader at 114, and he barely looks in his 40's, just as Winters is in her 70's but looks around the early 30's. Doesn't seem as if we have details on who uses p-cells and who doesn't, so it's hard to suss exactly who's using and who's au natural. Some instances could be genetic, i.e. some people are less viable for the treatment, which could explain why Hudson, for example isn't exactly looking good for his age relative to some of the others.
Given the text for the progenitor cells ("Some cultures believe it is immoral, especially as they tend to be used by the richest people, and so they are illegal in some jurisdictions"), it's reasonable to speculate that ED's life expectancy isn't linearily commensurate to the kinds of broad predictions that see, for example, average lifespans to top 125 by 2100. Who knows where the general upper limit 'topped out' in Elite.
What's the question for, btw? Any reason, or just random curiosity?
I RP a character, and I've simply gone with her being in her mid 30's, which makes sense given her backstory, and would fit just fine into most visions of how education, career, and life stages roll by in 3303 given what I know of the [frustratingly patchwork, hard to pin down] lore. None of older relatives would use p-cells given their demographics, so I'd just roll with her parents - and her own - lifespan to be around 100 years.
If the gap in wealth keeps widening - and everything suggests that to be the case - by 3033 the average wouldn't be that high at all, given the sheer volume of people living in various forms of deprivation. After all, as some have remarked, in many ways Elite's universe is dystopic.
Oh, this got started because I was reading one of the RP threads on INARA where one of the people said in-character that they remember flying with John Jameson and people laid into her calling her a liar. And I was thinking, given that stretching life expectancy is a common science fiction trope, it's not completely out of the realm of possibility so I wanted to see what official canon, if any, was available on the subject. I already knew Edmund Mahon was remarkably spry for his age, I just never got around to doing the math on Felicia Winters. So obviously there's something in the universe, it's just never been discussed. My money is on progenitor cells being involved somehow though.
Any pilot who flew in pre-FSD and post-Quirium fuel days will physically be a lot younger than they appear to be due to the time-dilation effects of type-2b hyperdrive (used in FE2 and FFE). A max range hyperjump would take seconds for the pilot, but to the observer would appear to take ~1 week. An observer could see a whole year pass by and the pilot would probably only physically age a few days. In addition, because travel in-system required standard impulse drives this meant it would take a long time to get anywhere so pilots used the StarDreamer to put themselves into a semi-stasis to make time pass quicker (otherwise nobody would have ever made it to Hutton Orbital!). I assume that StarDreamer also had the side effect of slowing down biological processes and hence extending life.
Extrapolate this pattern over 100 years and it's easy to see that a pilot could be 100 years older chronologically but only have aged a year or so.
That was in the old days though, now us pilots have to grow older at the same rate as all the other riff-raff
Extrapolate this pattern over 100 years and it's easy to see that a pilot could be 100 years older chronologically but only have aged a year or so.
That was in the old days though, now us pilots have to grow older at the same rate as all the other riff-raff
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