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.
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.
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
generationsleeper ship please.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.
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).
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.
Damn now that’s an interesting story
Admission: I stole it.
qntm’s cool science fiction stories are my favorite.
I really don’t see the problem here. They did all the hard work for you and they probably all pity you.
Elite Dangerous players flying loops around generation ships while listening to their horror downfall logs.
When your daughter looks like this
Sorry too soon
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.
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.
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.
Oh, I misremembered then. Still kinda fits tho.
Whut
It still fits because it’s still people from a previous era being awoken in the sci fi universe, even if I misremembered the details and they weren’t literally on a sleeper ship.
Keep telling yourself that
If you have working FTL now, though, and can get there faster why not also intercept the sleeper ships and bring them with you?
Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.
I don’t think that, because it’s not the 1930’s any more.
