Latest By
Category:
Armor
Artificial
Intelligence
Biology
Clothing
Communication
Computers
Culture
Data Storage
Displays
Engineering
Entertainment
Food
Input Devices
Lifestyle
Living Space
Manufacturing
Material
Media
Medical
Miscellaneous
Robotics
Security
Space Tech
Spacecraft
Surveillance
Transportation
Travel
Vehicle
Virtual
Person
Warfare
Weapon
Work
"We each live in a somewhat unique world of our own psychological content."
- Philip K. Dick
 |
| Generation Ship | ||
| A spacecraft that carries a complete social group over many years. |
| ‘What I can't understand is why, if the Builders had perfected suspended animation, they had to have personnel at all. Why not staff the Ship with men and women in deep-freeze, send off the Ship, and let them waken when they had arrived?’‥
‘First, there are two ways by which men can reach the stars. One is by suspended animation as you have suggested, the other is by generation ship, which this is. We have combined both and so avoided the weaknesses inherent in either. The generation ship depends on new blood replacing the old, but the danger is that the new blood will forget what it should remember. Sixteen generations is a long time, Jay. Even with continual use of educational tapes it is still hard for some people to accept the fact that the Ship is nothing but a metal can drifting in the void. To them the Ship is the universe and they just can't imagine anything possibly being bigger. The Deep-freeze method is just as bad. Then the personnel have to rely wholly on automatic machinery, even as we do, but they are far more vulnerable than a generation ship could ever be. And there is another thing. We still aren't certain that they will be fertile after deep-freeze. The animals are, the men and women should be, but no one has ever rested in suspended animation for more than three hundred years before. It was a chance we dared not take.’ |
| From Star Ship,
by E.C. Tubb. Published by New Worlds Science Fiction in 1955 Additional resources -
|
Compare with the city ship from Star of Wonder (1953), by Julian May. The New Frontiers from Robert Heinlein's Methuselah's Children was effectively a generation ship - except everyone lived so long!
Robert H. Goddard was perhaps the first to write about multi-generational interstellar voyages in his 1918 essay "The Last Migration". He described the death of the Sun and the need for an interstellar ark. The crew would face the centuries of travel by sleeping and would be awakened when they reach another star system.
Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky described the need for multiple generations of passengers in his 1928 essay "The Future of Earth and Mankind". A space colony called Noah's Ark travels for thousands of years.
Comment/Join this discussion ( 0 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This |
Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Star Ship
More Ideas
and Technology by E.C. Tubb
Tech news articles related to Star Ship
Tech news articles related to works by E.C. Tubb
| Space Drones - UK's Effective Space To Launch Rocket Tugs |
| ELROI Satellite 'License Plate' |
| Bezos Invites You To New Life In Off-World Colonies |
| Build Your Own Space Suit For Cheap |
Want to Contribute an
Item?
It's easy:
Get the name of the item, a
quote, the book's name and the author's name, and Add
it here.
| <Previous | Next> |
|
|
|
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
|
'I'm afraid to tell you this Mr. Quaid, but you have suffered a schizoed embolism...'
'It drew its power from six square yards of sunpower screens on its low curved roof.'
'...lifted themselves to skimming flight upon whirling helicopters."
'Twenty rocket tugs towed it from its Earth hangar out into space.'
I don't need it to go fast, it just needs to amble along.
'The program raced up the screen one scan line at a time, subtly smoothing, deleting and coloring.'
