Comment on The problem with sleeper ships
leisesprecher@feddit.org 4 months agoAnd I can think of just as many ways how it can get lost.
Stone tablets break, and how can you even communicate abstract concepts like spacetime coordinates on a slab of stone? There’s a huge debate on how to communicate the simple idea of “danger, don’t dig here” on top of nuclear dumps.
Beacons require enormous amounts of power. We can barely communicate with voyager, and that thing is just outside of our solar system and we know exactly what and where to look for.
Think about hieroglyphs. Those were out in the open for centuries and only through a lucky accident we stumbled upon the Rosetta stone. Otherwise we would have no idea what these weird symbols might mean.
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 months ago
actually it turns out the answer is quite simple, do nothing, you don’t want anybody digging there, and why would anybody dig there if nothing is there.
And if they are capable of digging down to where the waste lies, chances are they’re advanced enough to know about radiation and other relevant risks, so we don’t really have to think about it all that hard.
also voyager 1 was launched in 77, we’re coming up on 50 years, so we could use voyager as a stand in for that specific ship, it’d be weird if we just, sent someone out into space, and didn’t ask any questions, or try to get any follow up information or anything.
The human race is much too nosy for that.
leisesprecher@feddit.org 4 months ago
I think you kind of missed my point here.
Think about the infrastructure needed to communicate with Voyager. How many people would be capable of rebuilding it, if it would break? Given something like a major war, or a pandemic, might those people die or simply be shifted to more pressing issues? Since a sleeper ship doesn’t have an active crew, stuff might simply break on their side too. Maybe an asteroid hits the dish.
I’m not arguing that it’s impossible to build technology to keep in touch, I’m arguing that those who do the touching vanish. That’s a different angle.
MNByChoice@midwest.social 4 months ago
The space beacon doesn’t have to be far out. Just far enough no one nukes it in WW3.
The FTL civilization will likely notice a radio signal from within our solar system.
leisesprecher@feddit.org 4 months ago
You’re looking the wrong way, literally.
It’s not about us being found by another civilization, it’s about a sleeper ship being forgotten by us.
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 months ago
voyager still works today, so no problems there. It’s had a few issues, but those were able to be fixed remotely, interestingly enough.
It’s unlikely that the entirety of humanity would ship itself off in one go, it would take hundreds, probably thousands of ships to remove humanity from the planet, and even then not everyone would want to leave.
So as far as managing infra, it would be fine, those would be the last people to leave, simple as that, and even beyond that some remote communication and admin would be possible.
You could easily keep like 5% of the sleeper ship population up and working on it, i would expect that to be the case frankly. You could likely manage it pretty effectively from that point on, if certain services fail you could automatically wake up a maintenance team i suppose.
I think you’re thinking way too 21st century, when this post is thinking 77th century.