12-09-2024, 08:02 AM
Offhand I think the premise is flawed. But it's the same flaw that I also see in OA's assumptions and planning.
When we talk about humans going from one solar system to another I think in terms of an armada of thousands of low-velocity habitats - not a centrally organized expedition, but more like a herd or flock of ships that, on balance, treats the whole of interstellar space the same same way their ancestors have been treating Sol's own outer Hill Sphere for generations. Harvesting resources from rogue bodies, building new ships as population expands, making repairs, casting off or scrapping ships that are too badly damaged, and generally behaving like people who LIVE WHERE THEY ARE, who have a sustainable life in interstellar space. And those habitats have very little in common with what these guys are asking people to design.
For starters they'd be long-haul vehicles on ten-thousand year journeys, not on some high-vee 'dash' to get from the middle of one gravity well to the middle of another within a single lifetime. They would not be moving at a speed which transforms every stray scrap of useful resources they might come across into a potentially fatal hazard, and they'd be composed entirely of moving habitats that don't want to get "too far" (whatever that is - possibly a few hundred million kilometers) from at least a few dozen other habitats.
At some point, people will start making decisions to mine rogue bodies that have hyperbolic orbits, usually with intent to abandon them later when, centuries down the line, they start getting too far from the markets and infrastructure which, eventually, extend all the way to the edge of Sol's Hill Sphere. But centuries later, when the markets and infrastructure have continued to move outward, some of them won't get abandoned.
And when someone notices that the thing most recently colonized or harvested or mined is now gravitationally bound to Alpha/Beta/Proxima Centauri, it'll be a thousands of years on, and they may not treat the knowledge as much more than an interesting curiosity. They may be interested in heading further in system where resources are more densely distributed, but that's just routine decision making on their part to keep going where the available resources are, not the culmination of a thousands-of-years-long mission.
When we talk about humans going from one solar system to another I think in terms of an armada of thousands of low-velocity habitats - not a centrally organized expedition, but more like a herd or flock of ships that, on balance, treats the whole of interstellar space the same same way their ancestors have been treating Sol's own outer Hill Sphere for generations. Harvesting resources from rogue bodies, building new ships as population expands, making repairs, casting off or scrapping ships that are too badly damaged, and generally behaving like people who LIVE WHERE THEY ARE, who have a sustainable life in interstellar space. And those habitats have very little in common with what these guys are asking people to design.
For starters they'd be long-haul vehicles on ten-thousand year journeys, not on some high-vee 'dash' to get from the middle of one gravity well to the middle of another within a single lifetime. They would not be moving at a speed which transforms every stray scrap of useful resources they might come across into a potentially fatal hazard, and they'd be composed entirely of moving habitats that don't want to get "too far" (whatever that is - possibly a few hundred million kilometers) from at least a few dozen other habitats.
At some point, people will start making decisions to mine rogue bodies that have hyperbolic orbits, usually with intent to abandon them later when, centuries down the line, they start getting too far from the markets and infrastructure which, eventually, extend all the way to the edge of Sol's Hill Sphere. But centuries later, when the markets and infrastructure have continued to move outward, some of them won't get abandoned.
And when someone notices that the thing most recently colonized or harvested or mined is now gravitationally bound to Alpha/Beta/Proxima Centauri, it'll be a thousands of years on, and they may not treat the knowledge as much more than an interesting curiosity. They may be interested in heading further in system where resources are more densely distributed, but that's just routine decision making on their part to keep going where the available resources are, not the culmination of a thousands-of-years-long mission.