You guys think KFC is still open?
Such a plot device has been used in every sci-fi universe I’ve been interested in. It’s not even funny.
Yeah generation ships and surprises are old.
A classic example, non-stop, goes back to the 1950s, for example.
Galaxy’s Edge did a pretty cool take on this with the billionaires who fled a dying earth and became the Savages who lost their minds in the deep black. The remaining humans on earth built FTL like 20 years after they left and had like 3000 years to establish a galaxy wide Republic before they encountered the insane Savages who spent all that time experimenting on their own and trying to become actual gods.
Back in my day the quest to reach spiritual enlightenment by ascending to divinity was a proletariat tradition. Is there nothing these bourgeois assholes won’t co-opt?
Wow. This is actually the plot for one of the side quests in Starfield. Neat idea; i’d like to see it done in a better game.
It’s a widely talked about issue with deep space travel.
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.
Mm yes they definitely stole this decades old concept from 2014’s Elite Dangerous.
I mean fair, but the original ELITE was released in 1984 and is essentially the same science fiction universe. You’re right though, it’s not a new idea
There is a recent-ish game that uses this exact premise
Outriders
It’s actually a pretty common sci fi scenario, I remember reading about it in a pop science book in school
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.
I’m surprised this isn’t the central plot device of some blockbuster property.
It’s an important world building device in the book Chasm City, by Alastair Reynolds. Which is a fantastic book, highly recommend!
They didn’t make a movie, but The Forever War is one of my all time favorite novels and deals with this situation exactly.
Attempts to prevent this phenomenon involve using what is called the “wait calculation” to predict how long to wait to launch an interstellar journey.
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?
I liked how it was in raised by we wolves where everyone shared a dream so the kids where technically older than their bodies.
I know another shared dream hyper sleep where the guy in control went mad and tortured the crew until they band together to stop him. Then he arrived dead. I dk name.
Shouldn’t all biological processes be stopped. I’d assume you can’t even dream. You just go under and get back up instantly.
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.
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.
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.
50 years is terribly short. 500 maybe.
Also, resolvable. Space beacons, stone tablets, etc.
If you can think of it, so can they.
And 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.
There’s a huge debate on how to communicate the simple idea of “danger, don’t dig here” on top of nuclear dumps.
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.
, 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
How would a space beacon be detected by an FTL ship? Unless there’s some sort of weird quantum entanglement communication with some paired exotic material, whatever data (probably a waveform of some type) would be so fractional it is unlikely to be useful or even detectable.
But on top of that, if we still contend with inertia, a ship has to slow down precisely to the velocity of the slower ship or do it multiple times to detect it somewhere and then speed back up again.
But then, we’d also have to figure out why the resources are even worth it to spend and weigh the chances of success and the risks of failure.
Unless the problem is arbitrary for everything involved it is doubtful that regardless of what the future holds for technology that we just wouldn’t pick up the other ship/passengers.
Space beacon can be in our solar system. It only needs to give start date, end point and route.
We can make-up FTL rules. They can use future magic tech to send probes out ever X distance to look for sleeper ship. Or not.
Well if you want to hand wave stuff for a story, sure. The issue with the beacon is a few fold though. So, let’s say they use something close to the speed of light to communicate like a laser and there happens to be no obstructions and the beam is so narrow and powerful it just works. Being even a few light years away just isn’t accurate enough to know exactly where something is going to be in space. Sure, if it travels in an exact straight line (so it’s not near any massive bodies) there’s likely to be some sort of drift, even slightly angular. That’s going to translate into likely at least kilometers in the 10k range between the time it takes the data to be known vs. how many years have already passed from that last bit of data.
Sure though, take away any need for inertia or fuel and yeah, they can just stop somewhere, figure it out and go again and grab it or better yet there’s just some technobabble thing that can instantaneously keep Sol updated in near real-time but also the ship coming to get it. That’s just plot devices for a story though and an author can hand wave away anything they want, so there’s no need to say that if we just talked about a problem in advance, we would just figure it out and make it happen because that only needs to be done in some made-up fantasy if that’s what the author wants to do.
Yes. I agree. Lots of hand waving.
I have lost track of the full conversation, but I was meaning beacon as a lighthouse, not as in lowjack. Both are good though.
I think better stories come from “adults did planning and communication, but shit went wrong” than “fuckers didn’t read any SciFi and assumed shit would just work.”
brittleness of civilization? last i checked civilization has managed to survive 12’000 years since it first came about.
Is that so? Then how is Akadia doing currently? And what’s up with the Hittites? Are the geometry nerds in Egypt still in power?
Civilization as a whole might survive, but civilizations are constantly going under. Just think about how much knowledge was lost during WW2 or after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
There’s exactly two locations in this world still having samples of small pox. Do we know that the location in Russia is still operational? They might as well lost power in 1991 and had their Diesel stolen.
We’ve actually had multiple civilizational collapses. Just because humans survived doesn’t mean the knowledge or civilization did.
I’m still waiting to see civilization start…
faster ships pickup the slower ships on the way
That’s not how space travel works, at all, unfortunately.
With 2 jumps it is. Jump to calculated position of old ship. Load cryo beds onto new ship. Jump to destination.
I think the problem is more matching velocities so you can make the pickup. Also, a certain compatibility between vessels for any kind of docking/passenger exchange.
Even then, there’s a huge energy cost to slowing down mid-flight. It might actually be faster to drop off improvements as you fly by and let the slower vessel upgrade itself using the improvements.
This also opens up a big question of extra-solar transportation economics. If you’re planning to develop Vehicle Y that can outpace Vehicle X, why would anyone get on X to begin with?
I kind of picturing it like how planes refuel in the air.
Cause it’s 50 years later. 50 years ago they thought we have flying cars but no one thought of smart phones. Stuff happens. Plus this way you can less people through the ftl because the rest are on their way. something like raised by wolves with androids and human incubators prepping for the rest. Also no gaurentee humans can survive that kind of trip. Could only be able to send a bunch of walle’s setting up the town.
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.
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.
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.
The closest thing in terms of a novel would be “Far Centaurus” by A. E. van Vogt
ECS Constant in Starfield.
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.
Children of Earth is sort of like that. Amazing book.
Children of Time, not Earth! Also gets my highest recommendation.
Damn now that’s an interesting story
Basically the premise of Mass Effect Andromeda
Not really, the Angara, Kett, and Remnant were already there. You’re just showing up in the middle of their dispute. The comment was implying your own people developed FTL and fucked everything up, not that you landed in a shit show
Yeah, was gonna say. It’s more like Outriders than anything.
Maybe that’s what happened to us already.
Admission: I stole it.
qntm’s cool science fiction stories are my favorite.
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.
When your daughter looks like this
Sorry too soon
Oof, right in the feels
MURPH
If FTL is impossible (as is likely the case) there is a point where a better ship can’t catch up, even if its going like 0.9c.
Every time I read about or listen to someone’s explanation of why faster than light travel is completely impossible it always makes no sense to me.
I have tried to understand it more times than I can count but every explanation seems to revolve around faster than light travel breaking causality because of information traveling back in time due to relativity. Granted it’s always physicists who are explaining why faster than light is impossible and I’m a complete layman so there may be a translation issue there.
See Orion’s Arm’s explanation:
https://www.orionsarm.com/xcms.php?r=oa-faq&topic=FTL in OA
And related concept’s like a wormhole’s failure mode (EG they immediately collapse if ever positioned in a way that allows for actual FTL travel):
https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/48545a0f6352a
https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/4754be03eb3bc
Orion’s Arm is really cool because it’s set in the far future, but it tries to limit AI engineering to what’s theoretically possible with current physics (just not with current engineering), and they have good explanations for it all. For example, warp drives are a thing, and theoretically plausible, but they do not allow for FTL travel.
Yeah the explanations in that page are even worse than any of the ones that I get from actual physicists. Several of the explanations say “FTL is not possible because physics” others simply use equations in place of an explanation.
Well the jist of it is in one sentence:
The net result is that I have transmitted a message into my own past.
Basically, FTL automatically lets you make time machines, and this is bad™. It just doesn’t make any physical sense, so the consensus is bad things happen (like black holes forming) when you actually push against the speed of light, with very reasonable explanations for why this happens.
The exception is wormholes ,which are theoretically possible “FTL” travel, but only if you are very very careful about where you put them. Otherwise they explode.
They didn’t dock and help you out? Rude.
Who launches a space ship only half full?
No room to take a second crew/passengers+their supplies (food/water) onboard, can’t exactly tow a space ship either (esp FTL)… So, help how?
People who know there’s another ship on the way
That’s an awful lot of cost and effort to launch a ship specifically for ‘rescuing’ another ship that’s not really in any trouble, it’s just a bit slow.
It’s already got the supplies it needs, a set course, and a plan for when they arrive at their destination. It doesn’t really need help.
Then there’s the problem of docking one ship with a second ship that likely wasn’t designed to/with a dock. That’s not a trivial task in a vacuum.
TBH unless they are in some sort of distress; it seems better to let their plan play out. They’ll arrive when they were expecting to, and will have less work to do setting up a settlement when they arrive.
Or you arrive to find the civilization has had time to collapse and given way to the rise of damned dirty apes.
It’s still likely the only way you could have made the trip.
