Why? and I mean that seriously, not naively. I think I must have missed moral burden 101 to not understand why you have a problem with it. Afterall, the people who go on this mission know they have to make sacrifices. And sacrificing having all your own genetic material in your children, so that your grandchildren's children don't have webbed feet, is one I think people could make without too much dilemma.
Except, that those grandchildren (technically) won't be their grandchildren.
Now, of course the colonists would be willing to make this sort of sacrifice at the start, but that does not mean it won't dwell on them later- it will. And it essentially does make everyone into baby-making (and raising) machines, even if they are not having a high volume of children themselves.
People who use donor sperm/eggs or make use of the services of a surrogate mother do so out of choice, (mostly) because they have no other alternative. It is not a sole means, to start an entire society. In that regard you can even call it unnatural.
In addition, if you want to maintain the genetic diversity of 10 000 individuals, over three generations of 250 couples, you already have nearly 6 children per couple. I'd classify that as "baby making machines".
I think your analogy is a bit off there. But to keep with a military slant, let me give you another example back. It is more like training soldiers to get used to being cold, damp and hungry. So that when they spend their careers cold, damp and hungry they know how to cope.
Except, that it is like training soldiers to get used to being cold, damp and hungry when they're hot, dusty and under enemy attack. Or even worse, putting soliders through training that makes them incapable of actually being useful during their careers. Or worse still, killing them before they can start their careers.
All generations will eventually become a 'burden', it is a fact that colonists will need to learn to deal with, in fact pre-plan for. Now admittedly, it is more of an issue on board the ship, but given the starting age of say 40, it is unlikely to be an issue until landfall.
With a starting age of 40, you already have a huge population of people around their 80s onboard the ship! The starting age has to be lower, and that presents a qualification problem... the advantage of some kind of suspended animation, is that you can launch people in their 40s- even their 50s- and they will still be at that biological age at the destination. That is pretty useful.
A crew of 25 year olds (let's assume that the bulk of the colonists are relatively young, commanded by experienced astronauts, through their late 30s maybe even into their early 50s) kept in suspended animation during the journey, reach 60
35 years after they arrive. In other words, they live the physical primes of their lives at the destination,
where they are needed.
Well I'm sure all the poor souls that died furthering mankind would love to die knowing we attempted to learn diddly-squat from their sacrifice.
I'd rather have 500 people die in their sleep, so they would not have to suffer so not at all. Even more, I would rather have 500 people die in their sleep, not living in a cramped spacecraft with hundreds of other people for decades...
This is a fair point, and again I guess it comes back to our perception of what the ship is designed and capable of doing.
Exactly. And when it comes to these things, it's important to consider "as capable as possible", not "as capable as convenient". In other words, the ship
isn't that capable (similar to real spacecraft), because there are a huge amount of things that are limiting it. You're carefully trying to milk every last bit of capability out of the ship, that is really scary (as well as exciting, for engineers- both at the same time).
Yeah thanks for the economics lesson, but I do understand economies of scale. That quote is actually from that film where they build that spinning thing and that women drops through it and goes to see aliens...
And the larger anything becomes the more complex and unwieldy it is, not just spacecraft. I totally get the fleet idea and think it would be the way to go... providing it is feasible.
Ah yes, Contact... I had a feeling that sentence came from somewhere, but I couldn't quite pin it down...
If the fleet isn't feasible, then travelling isn't feasible. The issues with building a fleet are probably an order of magnitude lower than building a single, monolithic vehicle.
In addition, one needn't think of the endeavour as a single event, but the production and launch of ships could instead be continuous, spanning decades... not only would it allow a continuous immigration (and thus larger population size/diversity) but also allow the colonists to see new faces- something that could be all too important.
's are not enough, since they will lack the local brainpower (TM) to handle contingencies, and trusting them the fate of thousands of people is not a good idea. That's why exploration has to include three phases - automatic probes, manned reconnaissance missions and (perhaps) fleet colonization. Any way one puts it, manned scouting missions are not relying on the law of large numbers and have to be done almost on a shoestring, by picking the top of the crop crew and multiroling them.
