Worse: your sleeper ship arrives at what should be a pristine planet. But FTL capable ships beat you there. And they ruined the planet over a few thousand years. And now they’re sending out refugee ships of their own.
The problem with sleeper ships
Submitted 9 months ago by The_Picard_Maneuver@lemmy.world to memes@sopuli.xyz
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/b45bd4a7-637c-4798-b878-e6756413c459.jpeg
Comments
becausechemistry@lemm.ee 9 months ago
Krauerking@lemy.lol 9 months ago
Damn now that’s an interesting story
becausechemistry@lemm.ee 9 months ago
Admission: I stole it.
qntm’s cool science fiction stories are my favorite.
BakerBagel@midwest.social 9 months ago
Basically the premise of Mass Effect Andromeda
morbidcactus@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
There’s a side quest chain in Starfield that has a generation ship arriving at a planet they claimed centuries ago only to find it’s a corporate owned resort planet.
jaybone@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Maybe that’s what happened to us already.
CitizenKong@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Children of Earth is sort of like that. Amazing book.
AlolanYoda@mander.xyz 9 months ago
Children of Time, not Earth! Also gets my highest recommendation.
SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 9 months ago
I really don’t see the problem here. They did all the hard work for you and they probably all pity you.
Frozengyro@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Yup, civilization is already set up and you don’t need to scrape by in the wild for the rest of your life. Plus you get 3000 years of memes to catch up on!
LoreleiSankTheShip@lemmy.ml 9 months ago
Imagine how pissed someone who wanted to get away from civilization via the generation ship would feel
rickyrigatoni@lemm.ee 9 months ago
Buddy that’s all I wanted to do.
BruceTwarzen@lemm.ee 9 months ago
What even is the alternative? Wait 50 years and be too old for space travel?
nm0i@sopuli.xyz 9 months ago
There was a sci-novel about that, I don’t remember who wrote it. Essentially, after FTL got invented they caught up with generation ships and retro-fitted them with FTL drives; overall message of the story was that humans are a valuable resource and they should not be discarded lightly, especially in a mission to seed the galaxy.
Anticorp@lemmy.world 9 months ago
message of the story was that humans are a valuable resource
HA! Fiction indeed.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Sometimes I’ll be in an office building, or on a job site, or in a hospital room, or even just taking a big shit.
And I’ll look around and think to myself “Everything here is man made. It all comes from people.” And then I’ll just kinda marvel at the productive and transformative nature of human beings.
Spacehooks@reddthat.com 9 months ago
They made it make sense in the outer worlds
SSJMarx@lemm.ee 9 months ago
It happens in Star Trek. They find a 1980s style businessman on board, who is apopleptic to learn that humanity doesn’t care about investment portfolios anymore.
teft@lemmy.world 9 months ago
The Neutral Zone (the episode in question) has people that died and then were frozen to try and revive later. The space capsule was in orbit above a planet not en route to another planet. Not exactly the same situation.
IMongoose@lemmy.world 9 months ago
At least he didn’t have boneitis.
Anticorp@lemmy.world 9 months ago
you don’t need money anymore, everything is free and you can do whatever you want.
"Damn it! How am I going to be better than people then?
buddascrayon@lemmy.world 9 months ago
It wasn’t a ship full of people heading to a distant star, that was a bunch of dead people who were frozen at the moment for their death in hopes that sometime in the future a cure for their ailment would be found and then they were set adrift in space.
frigidaphelion@lemmy.world 9 months ago
There is an aspect of the plot in Alastair Reynold’s novel Chasm City (part of the Revelation Space series) that also has to do with this concept.
baltakatei@sopuli.xyz 9 months ago
I think it was the planet called …
spoiler
… Sky’s Edge, if I recall correctly. Except the “new tech” was not FTL (not a thing in Revelation Space canon) but the practice of ejecting a significant fraction of colonists and their supplies in order to get a few years “edge” in lead time over other generation ships of a fleet to build up military forces to raid the slower latecomers.
Gert@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
Galaxy’s Edge
MNByChoice@midwest.social 9 months ago
Or you know, this is discussed in advance and the faster ships pickup the slower ships on the way (if possible).
I get the world is a shit show, but it is less so when we discuss.
Fun meme though.
leisesprecher@feddit.org 9 months ago
Given the brittleness of civilization, chances are the backup tapes with the exact flight planes get lost during a thunderstorm and 50 years later nobody remembers this ship even exists.
MNByChoice@midwest.social 9 months ago
50 years is terribly short. 500 maybe.
Also, resolvable. Space beacons, stone tablets, etc.
If you can think of it, so can they.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 9 months ago
50 years later nobody remembers this ship even exists
Famously, nobody knows about the Apollo Moon mission today, because we lost all the records from 60 years ago.
Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 9 months ago
brittleness of civilization? last i checked civilization has managed to survive 12’000 years since it first came about.
CileTheSane@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
Or you know, this is discussed in advance and the faster ships pickup the slower ships on the way (if possible).
Or in an infinite universe just go to a different planet.
Saledovil@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
If we assume that the ship, while traveling, always moves towards its destination, but it might be off by up to 1 degree. Then the margin of error for its position would grow until about the midway point in the journey. I have no idea how to calculate this, unfortunately, but I’d image there’d be a lot of space you need to cover if you want to find the ship.
MNByChoice@midwest.social 9 months ago
Yes. That is a problem. Not least of all for the sleeper ship.
I am going to assume any higher technology follow-up ship will only do best effort.
So, then there is a good window for memes about “lost” sleeper ships.
Hupf@feddit.org 9 months ago
faster ships pickup the slower ships on the way
That’s not how space travel works, at all, unfortunately.
skeezix@lemmy.world 9 months ago
With 2 jumps it is. Jump to calculated position of old ship. Load cryo beds onto new ship. Jump to destination.
Kolanaki@yiffit.net 9 months ago
Wow. This is actually the plot for one of the side quests in Starfield.
abbotsbury@lemmy.world 9 months ago
It’s actually a pretty common sci fi scenario, I remember reading about it in a pop science book in school
IMongoose@lemmy.world 9 months ago
It was in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, or in the series at least. His scenario was two warring planets sending out armadas to fight each other, but while they were on their way faster ships were created and sent so when they got there the battle was already over.
curiousaur@reddthat.com 9 months ago
It’s a widely talked about issue with deep space travel.
Naz@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
It’s stolen from Elite: Dangerous. You can find a few of those colony ships drifting around deep space, but you’re warned with heavy penalties to not interact with them, for this exact reason.
androogee@midwest.social 9 months ago
Mm yes they definitely stole this decades old concept from 2014’s Elite Dangerous.
Croquette@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
There is a recent-ish game that uses this exact premise
Outriders
atro_city@fedia.io 9 months ago
Imagine trying to escape humanity only to end up being surrounded by humans again. Nightmare fuel.
blanketswithsmallpox@lemmy.world 9 months ago
That’s what humanity is best at though. It should be no surprise.
possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 9 months ago
urda@lebowski.social 9 months ago
MURPH
Thorry84@feddit.nl 9 months ago
Oof, right in the feels
TallonMetroid@lemmy.world 9 months ago
If you have working FTL now, though, and can get there faster why not also intercept the sleeper ships and bring them with you?
SOB_Van_Owen@lemm.ee 9 months ago
Or you arrive to find the civilization has had time to collapse and given way to the rise of damned dirty apes.
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Such a plot device has been used in every sci-fi universe I’ve been interested in. It’s not even funny.
mlg@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Elite Dangerous players flying loops around generation ships while listening to their horror downfall logs.
Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
And for the only time in your life, you’re SO well rested!
Oof, what if it turned out you get 3000 years of nightmares and wake up insane?
unsubtle@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
Outriders. Absolutely underrated game
SkyNTP@lemmy.ml 9 months ago
I’m surprised this isn’t the central plot device of some blockbuster property.
airbreather@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Attempts to prevent this phenomenon involve using what is called the “wait calculation” to predict how long to wait to launch an interstellar journey.
argh_another_username@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
ECS Constant in Starfield.
SteveFromMySpace@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 months ago
But you’d also be 50 years older so there’s that
someguy3@lemmy.world 9 months ago
They didn’t dock and help you out? Rude.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 9 months ago
It’s a neat idea from a sci-fi perspective, but when you think about the most efficient forms of space propulsion (slingshots around large gravity wells) I’m not sure how we’ll manage to do much better.
Either you catch up to someone before they leave the solar system or you’re just going to shorted the time needed to reach their terminal velocity.
There’s a diminishing return as you approach the speed of light, and FTL travel isn’t exactly a trivial hurdle.
troglodytis@lemmy.world 9 months ago
It’s still likely the only way you could have made the trip.
ygurin@lemmy.ml 9 months ago
The closest thing in terms of a novel would be “Far Centaurus” by A. E. van Vogt
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 9 months ago
If FTL is impossible (as may be the case) there is a point where a better ship can’t catch up, even if its going like 0.9c.
JizzmasterD@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
You guys think KFC is still open?
MudMan@fedia.io 9 months ago
It's a good argument against trying sleeper/generation ships.
In practice, though, the actual sleepers would be so happy to arrive to find a nice McDonalds and a charming small town instead of shuttling down into the middle of uninhabited Arrakis with a 3D printer and a prayer.
voracitude@lemmy.world 9 months ago
As a guy who sometimes gets told “Hey, don’t worry about that work you had to do, you can skip it”, hard agree. No better feeling in the world. And after thinking you’d have to build a whole civilisation from scratch? Yeah, nah, sign me up for the generation ship please.
GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
A generation ship and a sleeper ship are two different things (that we can’t yet do). In one, you live on a ship so your kids can go to a new place. In the other, you don’t really live on a ship so you can go to a new place.
baltakatei@sopuli.xyz 9 months ago
Imagine if a lost Spanish armada finally arrived at Florida, centuries late, musket-wielding conquistadors raiding a coastal naval academy while a prominent political VIP was giving a speech, taking them hostage like Hernán Cortés did with Moctezuma II (Aztec Empire) or Francisco Pizarro with Atahualpa (Inca Empire).
driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br 9 months ago
Going back to the sleep pod for another 50k years.
Stupidmanager@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Only the finest restaurant for me. Tonight, we dine at Taco Bell
Transporter_Room_3@startrek.website 9 months ago
I’d argue the type of people who sign up to be first on an extra-solar planet to settle are exactly the kind of people who would rather shuttle down with a printer and a prayer than find a small town.
I mean, if I were to sign on, I would want to know what the settlement plan is (Like who’s doing what jobs, how will we produce food assuming there is 0 viable land to grow on, what’s the worst case scenario that has been planned for, etc) as well as having a say in said plan… And I know plenty of people who would happily sign on knowing it’s gonna be just them, a tarp, and a Gransfors Bruks axe vs everything the planet can throw at them and they might die inside a week if they aren’t careful.
And yeah, I imagine if I showed up and all the super hard work was done but everything was still getting started, I’d probably be a little more upbeat. But in no way would I want to see a planet filled with people who got there first. Worse yet, got there by being the 8th generation to be born there.
I guess it depends what stage of the colonization effort you’re on. People signing on for the tail end would be ecstatic, probably.
Thorry84@feddit.nl 9 months ago
But is it a good argument? What are the chances a new technologies will be invented that allow for ships that are actually substantially faster? And what are the chances of some conflict or disaster or combination preventing any ships from being built regardless of how fast those ships are?
My view is: As soon as technology is ready there’s an actual 1% chance of a successful mission, launch right away. And keep on launching till you can’t launch anymore. Sure maybe something better will come along, but maybe it won’t. If the window of opportunity is open, don’t wait for it to close.
But in reality I don’t actually think interstellar travel for living humans is possible. There are so many issues, it’s hard to see us overcoming us all. But maybe the state of the world has left me jaded and the future will be bright somehow, who knows. I’d love to be proven wrong, but for now I lean of the side of impossible.
MudMan@fedia.io 9 months ago
You kind of answer your own question there, honestly. If you're at the point where you can somehow convince hundreds to thousands of people to get a one way ticket to turning into a space popsicle for the chance of eventually turning into xenomorph chowder, then you can probably also do better than that eventually.
So from that perspective we both hard agree that interstellar travel is probably not practical to any degree of technology below full-on Star Trek. But also, we both hard disagree that "shoot people into space to die as soon as you have the ability" is something that any society is ever going to do. If some modicum of a survival instinct is needed to evolve intelligence, then the answer to the Fermi paradox is that aliens looked at the practicalities of actual interstellar travel and went "Hell, no".
If anybody out there is willing to do interstellar colonization you better believe that it's because their star is about to pop and they'll try that exactly once.
pretzelz@lemmy.world 9 months ago
There is also the possibility of information transfer so the people on board the ship (or an automaton) could enhance the vessel and make it faster mid flight
Artyom@lemm.ee 9 months ago
As a rule of thumb, I’m never happy to find a McDonalds.
Jarix@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Why waste your hate on it? I haven’t had McDonald’s in over 25 years now and it causes me no problems to just go past one and not think about it
nicknonya@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 months ago
i mean, you better hope the civilization you find is a good one.
makyo@lemmy.world 9 months ago
That’s what I was thinking - so I got the free cryro without the hard work?
jaybone@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Humans being humans, I bet there would end up being some huge animosity between the two groups.
MudMan@fedia.io 9 months ago
I mean, we're halfway through... not sure if a novel, but it's surely like a young adult TV show or the setup for a looter shooter or something.
someguy3@lemmy.world 9 months ago
But then you never send out ships.
Jarix@lemmy.world 9 months ago
The obvious solution to this is to just not send the faster shios to the new planet, or do but use it as a hub for further travel, and let the sleeper ship people fulfill their literal purpose.
Celebrate them and support them theres more planets why even bother?
The sleeper ship people would be going to a planet chosen because it was able, the faster ship people would likely be able to choose a better planet anyway.
But also could just meet up with that sleeper ship and like take them with you
buddascrayon@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Dune: Fremen Origin, by Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson.