Hyper Ships As Generation Ships

MODERN HYPER SHIPS USED AS GENERATION SHIPS

Why has the attitude of generation ships been cast aside? As a result of Earth's final wars mankind had to take to slow generation ships in order to seed the galaxy and survive. After landing on these newly discovered planets, the attitudes regarding generation ships has been discarded because the pressing need has been eliminated. Yet, Haven was an expansionist society. They needed to conquer to survive. Yet why hasn't Haven and the rest of humanity continued to look for new worlds? Those early crude hyper ships were dangerous and less advanced. With present technologies, why hasn't a new era of exploration ships been launched to find new worlds? A generation ship built with hyper technology could cover even vaster distances much faster and incomparably safer than those early ships. And the first crude hyper ships, which were little more than death traps became the earliest forms of survey ships.

It seems this would be the job of current survey ships. But there seems to be so few of them, unless most are simply "gone where no man has gone before" and haven't reported back and the little mention we do hear of any survey ships they seem to be busy putting their talents to searching for wormholes and surveying them.

Also, I came across this on a fan site.

It was Doctor Cadwaller Pineau of Tulane University who, in 305, finally cut the Gordian knot of cryogenic hibernation by going around the crystallization problem. He found that by lowering the hibernator's temperature to just barely above the freezing point he could maintain the physiological processes indefinitely at about a 1:100 time ratio. In other words, a hibernating human would age approximately one year for every century of hibernation, and his nutritional and oxygen requirements were reduced proportionately. Over the next several decades, Pineau and his associates further refined his process, working to overcome the problem of muscular atrophy and other physiological difficulties associated with long comatose periods, and eventually determined that optimum results required a hibernating individual to rouse and exercise for approximately one month in every sixty years (ie., after six physiological months), which remained a fixed requirement throughout the cryogenic colonization era.

How would the effect of prolong work in conjunction with this?

What makes you think there isn't any new colonization going on? The whole point of the Verge is that it's constantly expanding as people look to get away from the Core and Shell.

cthia wrote:MODERN HYPER SHIPS USED AS GENERATION SHIPS

Why has the attitude of generation ships been cast aside? As a result of Earth's final wars mankind had to take to slow generation ships in order to seed the galaxy and survive. After landing on these newly discovered planets, the attitudes regarding generation ships has been discarded because the pressing need has been eliminated. Yet, Haven was an expansionist society. They needed to conquer to survive. Yet why hasn't Haven and the rest of humanity continued to look for new worlds? Those early crude hyper ships were dangerous and less advanced. With present technologies, why hasn't a new era of exploration ships been launched to find new worlds? A generation ship built with hyper technology could cover even vaster distances much faster and incomparably safer than those early ships. And the first crude hyper ships, which were little more than death traps became the earliest forms of survey ships.

I'm a little confused. Are you just asking about colonization ships, or do you actually want people traveling in cryo for a couple generations through hyper?

Duckk already covered that there is a low level of continued colonization. But it's usually just moving a little beyond the current reach of the OFS -- not far enough to cut off all contact with the rest of humanity. So you're looking at more months of hyper - so you're probably talking no more that 500 lightyears out.

But I'd think that some of the pressure for colonization has diffused. It's probably hard to raise the critical mass of people and funding for a potentially successful expedition -- there are probably a far greater absolute number of people in the Honorverse willing to form a new colony, but scattered across a far greater number of planets. And it's cheaper and easier for dissatisfied families to move to a new established system than it is to pioneer a new one.

If you're looking for people heading a generation or two out in hyper you're talking about taveling over half way across the Milky Way (65,000 ly in 60 years in the Delta bands). But the risks of that are very high. As safe as hyper travel has become, through relatively charted areas, you still have risks of rogue waves - you wouldn't want to be coasting through uncharted space at high velocity and have one pop up on your sensors too close to evade (remember how slow Wayfarer and convoy had to creep through the Selker (sp) rift.
Plus we know you can't use hydrogen scavenging fields in hyper, so sufficient fuel to run your reactors for decades is going to be highly problematic. And of course with that far a jump you'd be exiting blindly and just praying all the dice didn't come up against you and have you attempt to leave hyper too close to a star.
Actually, for a jump that long you'd probably have to spend at least half your time in n-space dropping out, doing a astrographic sighting, going and getting a cross bearing to confirm star distances for the next 400 ly or so, jumping to another surveyed to be clear spot. Occasionally entering a system to scavenge hydrogen from its gas giants (or spending even longer in n-space with hydrogen catcher fields up to refuel the bunkers for you reactors)


Basically there's no major reason to try to colonize a generation or more out; not with so many easily terriformable planets vastly closer to home. So as hard as it would be to finance and man a normal colonization mission it would be exponentially harder to scrape up interest in a generational hyper-ship colony.

Put together the improvements in acceleration/velocity/speed add 3rd gen prolong and a normal space journey for 1 generation would be quite a fair ways out.

Far enough for anyone wanting to get away from it all? I wouldn't know but it must be a decent way out there.

(mmm... gives me an idea of what to do with those Solly SDs)

theres not much colonization going on for the simple reason that the people who could afford it are decadent multimillionaers in the core systems having no interestin colonization when they can reap the wealth of slavery in the verge, living of caviar and lobster .

the people who want to get away are too poor to afford good colonization and go out in marginal efforts

The problem is that I can't quite wrap my head around the notion either. It isn't that I don't think colonization is still going on. Just not outside of the inner circle that is the Honorverse. In the settlement phase and not the surveying phase. And I also rather assumed, erroneously maybe, that current colonization efforts are on worlds that have long ago been discovered, mapped, and waiting to be settled. At this point, I would imagine that there are way more worlds awaiting settlers than expeditions to claim these virgin systems.

My notion is more concerned with "hyper generational survey ships" to extend mankind into a totally brave new world -- where (even though RFC has said there would never be any aliens) would be where they more likely could be found if there were. Please don't misquote me, I'm not advocating a search for aliens. I'm simply using that as a yardstick to the type of distances surveyable this way -- for any advantages in medicine, tech, materials location or nexuses of wormholes.

Also, there were long stretches of peace in the Honorverse. During peacetime, many of these modern survey ships could have been built from Haven, Grayson, the Andermani, and Manticore. Yet, we only ever hear about a handful and it had to be borrowed (I get the impression they are of limited availability of numbers.) Actually, the only one I can remember is Harvest Joy.

*Grayson is a wild card, because their logic would be shaped by faith and as a result, I cannot see their society turning to surveying the far reaches of unknown space for virgin systems, even though it would have made sense on many other levels for them.

Why? Because curiosity was never genengineered out of the "human" cat.

*As an aside, I wonder if that particular aspect of Grayson thinking will ultimately change, fundamentally, as a result of Protector Benjamin's new direction which could lead to Grayson one day surveying.

cthia, That's it! a perfect use for at least some of the captured Sollie SDs!

RedBaron wrote:cthia, That's it! a perfect use for at least some of the captured Sollie SDs!

Darn, you see there! This is a perfect example of how a patent can be stolen right out from under someone. Because they fail to "see" exactly what they've found. And now you've beat me to the punch to the resolution of the captured Solly junk. Hyper Capable Generational Survey Ships.

Stolen right out from under me.

I'm gonna get you Red Baron!

Perhaps even the MAlign used the concept to find Darius.

I imagine there are a few, but they're the equivalent of Grayson, colonists who want to get away from everyone, and not interested in trade.

More normal colonists are moving out into the verge, into suitable worlds that are still half wild and see a ship once a year. We know some are being settled from the Basilisk system, and the Phoenix Stars are also kinda on the edge of main human space. We also see that there's more daughter colonies, as the prime worlds were targeted often first (like Haven and Manticore). From there, other good worlds were settled. We see in the TQ worlds settled as the 'frontier' expands, and settled worlds become big enough to gather interest.

I'd imagine there are groups like the original founders of Grayson, whose ideology and desire for isolation would be interested in such a journey. But thinking about it, even a 6 month voyage could get you via freighter beyond the frontier from the core, quicker via wormholes. Anything that far would only be groups that truly crave isolation. Either religious, or something where it's a religious like devotion. (Like I could see a faction of the MA choosing exile).

cthia wrote:

RedBaron wrote:cthia, That's it! a perfect use for at least some of the captured Sollie SDs!

Darn, you see there! This is a perfect example of how a patent can be stolen right out from under someone. Because they fail to "see" exactly what they've found. And now you've beat me to the punch to the resolution of the captured Solly junk. Hyper Capable Generational Survey Ships.

Stolen right out from under me.

I'm gonna get you Red Baron!

Perhaps even the MAlign used the concept to find Darius.

"You snooze, you lose"

Good thing for you I'm not really that type - if you look on that topic, I actually gave YOU credit for it.

WWMD?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db_tuGDkC60



(What Would Macgyver Do?)