Generational Starship

[Slappy The Vulcan]

Another thread on here gave me an Idea for a Story....I'll probibly never actually write it, unless I can get my writer friend in on it. but, if I was planning a mission that would take 200 years (perhaps longer) and would involve a generational crew, 2-3 generations being raised SOLEY on the ship, would I have the technology to pull it off and have the ship be completely independant. (my 2 biggest issues would probibly be fuel and recuperation from serious damage if sustained during the course of the mission. for all intents, it appears the borg probibly have the tech to go on a 200 year journey. I assume the ship going on this mission would have to be a galaxy......

 

[Slappy The Vulcan]

What I'm trying to ask is...from what we know of the technology in the trek universe in the 24th century...(say, post nemesis) could the federation modify a galaxy class starship to go on a mission that could last 200-300 years with minimal outside support? (quite possibly no outside support) barring the ship sustaning massive damage of course.

 

[Timo]

I'd vote yes. There would be some modes of operation we never saw in TNG, such as refueling from the upper atmosphere of a gas giant, or temporarily setting up a mine and a refinery on some asteroid to extract raw materials. But the basic design might very well be up to the task of being a generational vessel.

It might well also be the minimum design required for such a feat, tho. I'm not sure a Constitution could have gone generational, at least not with great odds of success. And you'd want to wait for good odds unless you were on some sort of a species-saving flight á la Battlestar Galactica.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Wingsley]

I'd suppose the big question is fuel and other raw resources.

If your multi-generation galaxyship is supposed to make a multi-generational journey, it might have to carry a vast quantity of matter/antimatter fuel and also base raw materials for use by on-board replicators for the duration of the journey, and then some. Would this mean using new technologies for power and subsistence? Possibly.

I would think that the Federation, or any alliance including them, that would make an attempt at multi-generational intergalactic flight might use a central mothership, but they would most likely not put all their eggs in one basket. I think they would probably go out of their way to build a highly structured squadron of galaxyships, with built-in redundancy for survival. These galaxyships would fan out upon arrival at their destination, to begin "an angle of attack" meant to efficiently explore and possibly colonize worlds in the new galaxy as quickly as possible.

Galaxyships may be huge, almost like mobile space stations that can hangar smaller exploratory starships that could disembark at the destination.

Compare Archer's NX-01 and Kirk's Enterprise. Now compare these starships with Picard's Enterprise-D and -E. A galaxyship would have to be a comparative leap beyond these forebears.

 

[jolau]

Perhaps if you were constructing a generation ship that's designed to circumnavigate the galaxy, a Galaxy Class Starship would be a feasable design for a generation ship. Assuming the Galaxy Class can indeed find a means of replenishing supplies by trading with the various races it encounters or by collecting needed raw materials as it travels, but what about a generation ship for making a voyage from one galaxy to the next where there is nothing between galaxies?

One would have to essentially have the needed supplies for the entire journey from one galaxy to the next rather than a Galaxy-sized starship that would need to make stops along the way to replenish supplies, fuel supplies, and raw materials.

 

[Timo]

That would be one of the cases where it could be reasonable (rather than just fanboyish) to use dozens of warp nacelles...

Redundancy and robustness would be necessary in every respect. In things like life support, one might devise backups to backups, all the way down to making the ship's innards big enough to actually self-support an ecosystem the same way a planetary surface does. That is, assuming that there was a reliable power source that could stand in for the sun. Computing could be backed up, too, down to the good old trick of using a thousand abaci in case everything else fails. Power systems might be redundant, with fusion and fission and perhaps chemical processes for transforming an internal type of fuel into desired energy, and with taps for harnessing the energy of cosmic rays.

But it's difficult to see any sort of a backup for the drive system. If primary warp fails, it's not as if the mission could succeed on some sort of a "secondary warp" that only gives half the speed; doubling the travel time might well mean death to all. It wouldn't be trivial to have the ship withstand six centuries of travel when she is intended to do the trip in three, I'd think.

Also, primary power for the primary drive might be a tad of a problem with 24th century tech. Antimatter fuel would only last for so long; certainly one wouldn't lightly store 100% extra fuel aboard in case the travel time gets doubled, and the ship might run into deeper trouble than that... The interstellar medium wouldn't cater for fuel replenishment, even if cosmic rays might keep low-power systems such as life support running.

But wait fifty years and the Federation might have a working system of zero-point energy taps - assuming that the noncanon idea that ZPE systems are use in the quantum torpedoes holds true. Those would then be a plausible primary power source for an intergalactic vessel. I wonder if the Kelvan device from "By Any Other Name" was of this sort?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Meredith]

They would need to bring a couple dozen extra warp cores along with them those things seem to fail all the time!

Also some extra shield generators and maybe a cloaking device to avoid any potential bad aliens out there with harm in their hearts.


I would say you would need some sorta really good replication system, maybe you could have a crew of 10,000 on a galaxy class and only have 1,000 of them out at any one time and put the rest in stasis and rotate them out every year, that way a 200 year trip only seems like a 20 year trip for everybody, that is a good way of "cheating" the old age issue, we know stasis pods are common in the 24th century from VOY and TNG and DS9. Just put 10 of them in each person's quarters and the active crew member gets the rest of the crew space. then you rorate out 3 people per day from statis so there is a constant rotation of crew. Each year a person goes into stasis for 10 years. That way they all get to their destination. Troublemakers get no stasis and get to die of old age, mwahahahaha

 

[Tigger]

One wonders if you would want to "put all your eggs in one basket" and send a single ship. Perhaps a fleet of three or four - one with the people (and additional genetic material) and two or three "cargo" ships with plenty of raw materials and spare parts plus the machine shops and replicators to help out. That way, if you do encounter a problem, you have more then one vessel to support you and you can make the "people ship" less complicated and more robust, increasing the chances it will make the trip successfully. And if you do lose one or even two cargo ships on the way, you still have one left to support the mission.

 

[Deks]

Hm ... - I don't see why a smaller ship with a smaller crew wouldn't be able to pull of multiple generations.
The D7 class ship did it after all (4 generations in 80 years).
Voyager was facing a journey of 75 years at the beginning and the crew was willing to travel for that long ... not to mention their technology was more advanced/adaptable than the Klingons of the D7 vessel.

However, if SF would want to adapt one of the existing designs to be self-sustaining for generations ... then anything along the lines of Intrepid and larger ships with suitable modifications would do the trick.
Packing it with redundant systems, better automation/self-repair facilities, 2 warp cores per ship ... better armaments/defenses, capability to set up temporary facilities for resource gathering (any large enough starship can have an industrial replicator installed), onboard systems that don't waste energy in large amounts but in smaller quantities.
If generational ships have been portrayed in scifi with far less sophisticated tech than Trek, then I'd say that SF can do it rather easily.