We couldn't even build the ship, never mind put people on it. We're a long ways off.

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Hopefully, by the time we start making generation ships, we'll have started genetically altering our children so whoever lands on whatever planet will be as smart and physically able as humanly possible.

Before we could even begin to discuss crew for a generational ship. We would need to develop technologies that would mimic a complex, fully enclosed ecosystem, the infrastructure to safely transport that ecosystem through the many dangers of space outside of our heliopause, and the tech to maintain that structure. When we say a “long way off”. What you should read is “not within a generational time line where the details of our lifetimes would be remembered accurately”. The people that will successfully pull this off are so far in our future, they won’t have an accurate understanding of what our lives are currently like or the events that make up our lives. So their decision criteria is probably beyond our ability to guess.

Are we though? The technology exists. The distribution channels exist. We just lack the drive to funnel a huge amount of our global gbp into any longterm project for which we won’t see the reward.

Edit: I think you guys are thinking too short term. If you’re going for a generation ship with todays tech, it’s going to be in the scale of thousands of years between stars with non-stop probe resupplies or tricky asteroid mining operations (tricky because they’ll be traveling a percentage of the speed of light). Project Orion or solar sail powered by laser is currently achievable though extremely impractical for interstellar travel

I'd imagine that if you're making generation ships, the only group that needs to be physically able is the group that's going to land. Everyone else, it would behoove the mission to have people who are as small as possible, so as to conserve resources.

i think it falls under the definition of physically able lol. you could genetically modify a bunch of little strong boned spaceship dwellers :D

...The technology most definitely does not exist...

The technology doesn't exist.

Heck, the knowledge we would need to start to think about what kind of future technological breakthroughs would be necessary for generational ships doesn't even exist!

Which part of the technology exists? We use gravity to throw shit around the solar system because it becomes exponentially harder to launch a ship with enough fuel to do anything else. The space station is constantly resupplied. I'm curious which part of this is feasible to you.

By the time generational ships are a thing we probably would have cured aging and / or developed wormhole generators / warp drives so we wouldnt need the ships.

The weird thing to consider is once we send one ship out, before that ship reaches its destination we very well could invent a faster way to travel and surpass it. Imagine being 'the first generational ship' and arriving after preparing and training for years to a civilization that barely remembers you were coming.

Dammit, I love this so much.

We'll have prototypes orbiting Sol for decades before we send them out, we'll have plenty of time to pick who goes.

We need stronger metamaterials, life extension and power sources (likely fusion). Not a forever away but I'd guess a century or two.

Well, so far the entire concept has been stalled on the question of who would go.

Scientists have calculated that the person would need to be big. And of Scots descent. And come from a line of about 755 predecessors.

So far no one has been found who meets these exacting standards. It has been incredibly vexing and has stalled interstellar exploration completely.

Why, do you know anyone who might qualify?

Space dwarves?

Is this real or a joke?

Technically, the generational ship would leave with you in it. Then your great, great, great, great grand children would land where we had already colonized due to better tech. That said, the only practical use for a generational ship is to send it out with no intention of landing anywhere for long. Which would require the tech to make what you need along the way from whatever you find.

There are some cool scifi series from years ago about generation ships arriving on time but being badly outdated by the time they got there and their people archaic compared to their now faster than light travel counterparts. Divergent genetics and more. Creepy stuff to contemplate.

The Project Orion is one example of something we could build with todays tech that could reach a decent percentage of the speed of light. It’d still be a crawl compared to scifi, but it’s achievable

I recon if we where gonna die we could build the ship in a month and manage it. It'd be miserable and we'll probably die even if we get on it.

LOL my god man , go outside or do literally anything else

I’m not the OP, but…

I guess it depends on what the “generation ship” is doing, how many people are actually aboard, and how much cash we want to throw at it.

Just hanging around our solar system in a graveyard orbit with a fairly small generational crew? Probably doable with current tech if money was no object. You don’t even have to do much recycling if you don’t care about the cost. A human only needs 700-800kg of oxygen per year. Water can be recycled, but a human “only” needs 30,000 gallons for a lifetime. That’s 250,000 pounds of water… but you could launch that with a single ares V. Food is a challenge (between 70,000 and 80,000 pounds needed for a lifetime), but you can probably put enough raw nutrients up there to make an edible slurry drink that would stay viable for a few centuries… and you’d have plenty of light and water for hydroponic greenhouses for additional variety. Energy isn’t that hard, either. If we didn’t care about the obvious safety risk, we could launch enough nuclear fuel to run a ship for centuries using current tech, with plenty of spare reactors and fuel shot up there just in case. Use the water in the hull as rad shielding and micro meteorite protection (ice makes a decent shell that can be “repaired” with a little heat and a squirt gun). Build a nice sized space station for everyone to live in, put plenty of spare parts up there, and you’re golden.

You can reduce those needs significantly if you do even a bit of work trying to recycle and reuse water/air and focus on things like lab grown foods and growing spaces.

None of that is impossible with current tech. You could lob enough food, air, and water to keep a small crew alive for generations… if you wanted to… and had an insane amount of money to spend.

Going to another star? Forget about it.

I have nothing going on and nothing to lose I'm willing to go

The feasible part is the fictional part. Unfortunately real spacefaring has to deal with any problem that could happen, not just the ones the writers researched and thought were interesting enough to include.

I'm aa I would

Very realll

That sounds interesting. Do you remember what it was called?

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We don't have the technology or destination...so...1000+ years?

The biggest problem is not picking the kids it's coming up with a way to get the next generation.

In case you have never raised kids they are notorious for not doing what they are wanted to. So two generations in and the ship is chaos. It had better be self relent because so few of the kids will be qualified.

What we need is a stable social system and a proper education system that has a much higher success rate. Or a very very very big ship.

I've been looking for it recently. I read it in the 80s when I was on a huge timescale kick with sci-fi. I can't dig up the name yet, but.

One that was good this conversation brought to mind with generation ships was the Helliconia Trilogy. The generation ship ran to an absurd conclusion.

I don't think there will be a lot of people wanting to go on the first generational ship or even the second. Lets say we develop some tech that will get us to say alpha centari in 800 years. In that amount of time we will certainly create better and faster ship technology so the first group to leave will be the last one to get there and when they do there will already be multiples generations of established traditions and way of life.

I for one woudn't want to be on that first ship knowing I will never see the destination. Being one of the middle generations would be a nightmare You never knew earth and you will not live to see the destination. You would have no purpose other than to grow up in a tin can have several kids and then die.

I'm a moron.

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Just off the top of my head though....we would need something like 75,000 years with current technology to get anything to the next star system.

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We don't have the technology to withstand the radiation we'd encounter.

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We don't have the technology to keep our ships from being completely destroyed because they happened to run into a pebble in deep space.

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I don't know how we'd have the space for soil, seeds, water, food, clothes, spare parts and literally everything else you'd need on a long journey through space. How long could a ship even last in space before it just naturally erodes? Surely a ship flying through space, even with minimal life support and navigational functions, would need some maintenance over the course of several thousand years?

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Or....and I know this might be silly....but can you imagine, we send some lumbering ship with a skeleton crew of comatose people, unarmed no less, out into the cosmos and encounter some other intelligent beings. Can you imagine what would go through some advanced aliens minds seeing our primitive shit go floating by with a bunch of unfortunate souls strapped in for the next 50,000 years?

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To even try to answer this question I feel like we'd need to know what the scientific community thinks is a reasonable amount of time to get from point A to point B with a reasonable amount of resources and what hazards we'd need to deal with along the way. At least the ones we know about.

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Maybe I'm wrong but it seems to me, as a moron, that we barely know what's floating around space beyond the Oort cloud as far as small shit we could run into and be destroyed by in a ship. It also seems that space is much denser than previously thought so just flinging ourselves in a straight line from one star to another is probably going to be way too risky to ever be a proper way to travel through space.

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I wouldn't be surprised that if we ever do reach an age where deep space travel becomes common and "easy" we'll have proper charts through space to make the ride as smooth as possible much like we do when navigating anything else.

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True generational ships though? I feel that chances are far more likely that we'll never end up doing that. At best, we probably do some space mining locally, colonize a few moons or mars and maybe....maybe find some primitive life on one of Saturns moons or something.

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I kind of doubt humanity is ever going to send a manned craft to another star. Probes, probably. We'll probably at least launch them.

It’ll be 10 years from the day we discover oil somewhere else in the universe

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There are psychological considerations way over my pay grade, but even with the most chill cooperative people, conflicts arise, fights break out, factions form. When you're a billion miles from the nearest police station, shit is gonna happen. People from any given current society might be wholly unsuitable because their entire worldview has a foundation unlike what you'd have in a spacefaring colony. You might have to create an isolated society, kick it off on Earth or nearby, and watch how they do before sending them off. I think, even a Mars colony is going to be very tricky for this reason. Everyone here is used to a stable society with a more-or-less reliable police force/medical establishment for the difficult edge cases.

Explain the miracle you’re holding in your hand to someone in the 1950s. I think we’re closer than you think.

That rock Definitely needs democracy ;p

OR those who develop it will actually be A.I. which we may be on the verge of creating here in the next few decades or so. The potential for a being like that far outstrips our own. It really could speed up this entire timeline and hopefully save us from ourselves. But since I'm not an optimist, it'll likely be infected by our biases and dark traits and just destroy us.

What you need to remember is that variety is nature's way of coping with unforeseen circumstances. So be careful about leaving certain types out.

Well I think we're pretty far off, but, just a few starters that came to mind: probably people who are extremely psychologically stable, highly agreeable, and socially well adjusted. Also, (depending on the size and spaces onboard the ship) you'd probably not want anyone prone to claustrophobia, or agoraphobia onboard.

No idea but they probably won’t even be born till at least 2050

What a wild read to have before bed. Stuff I’ve never thought of.

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Recommend reading "Forever War", damn it takes the time-lapsing from near light speed travel to crazy limits.

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I think this is fine. The 2nd ship may colonize first but they would still be aware of the arrival of the 1st ship.

There's probably a limit on the number of people and resources that can be carried. The 1st ship would probably still be useful as long as it arrived decades, instead of centuries later.

The series "[Ascension](http://Ascension (miniseries) - Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascension_(miniseries))" is worth a look.

If you're not already familiar with it Project Orion is worth a look. One of the theoretical applications was to power a multi-generational ship.

Edit: typo

> what would the criteria be

You've already seen it. It's the people riding penis rockets into orbit. God help any living planet they land on. Tasmania all over again

space dwarves.

We should send a bunch of frozen in-vitro human embryos along with robots who are programmed to raise them. Keep them in stasis until shortly before arrival. Then only one generation is needed for the transit.

I don't know, ask OP.....

Whatever other criteria there might be, there will be no men. Uteri are at a premium, since science can't duplicate the functions of the uterus, while a 'man' is just a horribly inefficient, 200lb storage system for sperm. GE/Whirlpool can store a lot more sperm, from a genetically diverse array of sources, and for a lot longer, than any number of men. Y-chromosome sperm would be filtered and stored separately (if not just flushed into space) to ensure that no inefficient, resource using men are accidentally born....

Personally I would think you would have habitats all over the solar system for centuries first. The tech that went into those would naturally be what you needed for long term travel.

Before that you would also have waves of robotic probes doing the journey. You might even send fertilized eggs or frozen embryos a long with them with means to colonize that way instead like another commenter said.

Imagine being an alien world, then this ship arrives from Earth, and everyone in is inbred since no one realized that after a few generations it would be impossible not to inbreed.

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That's not a miracle dumbass, it's science. The same science that says a generational ship is not remotely possible right now.

Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaannn!!!!!

To soon?

Forget about choosing who would go. We're nowhere even remotely close to even beginning the process of designing such a ship.

We need certain fundamental technologies to even think of building a generational ship. Like a power source that can last thousands of years. we haven't even built a spinny space thingie yet. Also, we lack the rockets to get that amount of material in space—also lack of space fabrication.

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Right now it would be a pipe dream at best or a suicide trip at worst.

Going to another star would be feasible if you did all of the above to a captured asteroid. A captured asteroid, 10km diameter (which is pretty BIG, and massive) could provide enough space and shielding for an interstellar journey (you could hollow out the inner 9.5km worth of asteroid and still have a radiation/micro-meteroid shield that was 'only' 250m (800ft) thick of solid silica-aluminate. You could is the ablated material of the asteroid as propellant for an electro-propulsive rocket system. Rotate the asteroid for gravity on the inner surface of the shell, etc...

A sustainable generation ship would probably require DD fusion. You just couldn't carry enough fuel to do it with fission or DT fusion...

The problem is coming up with an asteroid that big in a captured orbit (i.e. captured by Earth or possibly the Moon), and then supplying the necessary ∆V to break the capture and start the thing on its way....

About the biggest delta v thst anyone has any idea how to build is 10% light speed which is still generational. Something like fusion drive.

I Imagine it would be like if the pilgrims set out for America in the 16th century, except the boat ride took so long that the British were able to invent airlines and fly colonists over and by the time the pilgrims got there they'd be seeing sky scrapers, and a society with way different technology and values

Do you think that makes you a good candidate? LOL.

I personally think of Pandorum when I think about "slow" space travel. Though we are just as far from developing FTL as we are Cryogenics like those seen in the movies. That being said, I'd personally want to see these sorts of ships be accessible to all the people of the world after they've been tested to be safe and reasonable. I'd say the first ship should have the astronaut level requirements that we have today at the very least. Then the second ship to have people who are definitively healthy but not necessarily up to those standards for astronauts. Hopefully before we have generation ships going to other star systems we will develop gene therapy for conditions that would hinder people from embracing space travel and make general well being much better. That being said, I don't think people like myself will likely be able to join said ships if they were available today, considering my hearing issues and weight problems. However, none of this is prudent to explore until we have eradicated income inequality and create a system that benefits all people even if that means lowering the ceiling to raise the floor.

what is the destination ?

that will determine what your population should be besides the people to operate the ship

If you don't care about time passing on Earth, and you can get close to the speed of light, then you don't need a generational ship because you can reach anywhere in the galaxy within a human lifetime.

Sure, if you are measuring time on Earth, then going 100 light years distance is going to take at least 100 years. But if you are measuring time on the ship, aging happens much slower relative to Earth, so it appears, to the people on the ship, that they are going much faster than the speed of light ((another way to look at it is that the distance contracts, so, mathematically, you are still going the speed of light, but the distances are much shorter).

there is a book about this.

You will enjoy this: https://imagecomics.com/comics/series/invisible-republic

Man, the last time I answered a question about generation ships was 13 years ago. It was a joke that went like this:

>Would it be a sleeper ship or a generation ship?
>If generation ship: Fuck no.
>If sleeper ship: Let me sleep on it.

I think choosing who to go is the last thing to consider and when we are ready to choose the choice itself would no longer be relevant.

There’s so many things that can go wrong in the vastness of space. Storms, meteorites, solar flares, your ship is completely exposed to the harshness of space and there’s no way out if something goes wrong.

I think what makes more sense is like a generational convoy travelling a fair distance away from each other, and people set up stations on planets along the way in case there’s an unforseen scenario.

I think food printing needs to be invented. I think VR needs to be fully realistic and immersive. Kinda like what’s possible in the orville. I think society’s mindset needs to have a giant shift.

I think choosing people shouldn’t be important. There should be everything sufficient in order for any kind of person to go. For example robots/cybernetic enhancements/ genetic modification. There needs to be a legal system and a way to enforce laws. I think general space travel should already be common prior.

I think it will likely be fully privatised or an international effort because there’s no way to prevent the future generation from just seceding. Any attempt to send ships to go after them will also risk those seceding. Therefore it’s never a worthwhile venture for any government.

Yeah I'd worry for women and girls especially in this situation. No thanks.

Surely the FTL ship could and would rendezvous with the generation ship along their journey and at least give them the option or technology to join them.

Presumably they would make living on a generational ship reasonably comfortable before they'd be asking anyone to get on one knowing they'd be committing themselves and their descendants to a lifetime of living on board.

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Loved that book. Also liked Starship Troopers and Armor. Not sure if you have any other suggestions for books along those lines. But if you do please share!

As captured in Heinlein’s ‘Rocket Ship Galileo”.

Even before they land they need to be genetically modified to survive long periods of space travel when bone and body growth is affected by the lack of gravity.

lol ya, i covered that in an earlier reply but ya I agree.

We will snuff out the sun before that. The sun is like a super nuclear power station.

Imagine the morality question of how you commit generations of beings to life in a fucking rocket ship.

That’ll be fun in a few dozen centuries.

Imagine trying to draft the regulations for conduct on a fucking generational ship. What’s the breeding process? Are we exporting eugenics to outer space? How many kids does each crew member get to have? How many kids do those first kids get to have? Who decides how the education is done for the next generation? Who decides what roles can be created as the culture on the ship evolves? Are we exporting a fucking caste system to space?

I don’t know how I keep winding up in “Generational Ship” conversations on this site, but goddamn the tech is not the only question you people need to be spitballing.

Like, who has authority over things like breeding & family patterns. Just because you can technically build a generational ship doesn’t guarantee it will last more than 2-3 generations before descending into outright civil war.

No generational ships until we have a few different habitats in orbit and on the moon.

Tons of stuff to work out for a trip of that length.

But in all reality the generational ships are going to be scientific arks that are gathering data and sending it back to earth. But probes would be more feasible, and cheaper.

One often considered possibility, is we figure out how to go ftl, but we need to have a portal at each end. So we'd need to send a ship to build one at the destination. But at the point we're doing that, it's likely going to be a fuily automated ship.

Human bodies and lifespan, just dont fit with our current tech and space travel.

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This is exactly why I have no interest whatsoever in being in a rocket owned by Elon Musk sent to a planet he wants to colonize. Nope.

There is definitely a minimum of one if not more Star Trek episodes with this exact kind of situation. “Up the Long Ladder” immediately comes to mind, but I swear there are a few others.

I mean it would pretty much be the same criteria as being an astronaut or working in Antartica. You’d probably need a large percentage of the engineering team that built it to be passengers because if something goes wrong, they aren’t going to be able to get tech support.

There will be no people on the first generational ship - we will be sending microbes to kick start "life as we know it" and make it "paradise" for the second ship we send.

For all we know, that could be how life on earth started, and the aliens owners of earth is about to arrive next week.

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I just hope the reject ship ala Douglas Adams will be similar with no skill ppl but they will be bezos, musk, and the like

Well we can’t even send robotic spacecraft to other solar systems yet so I wound say quite a ways.

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Life on Earth would have to be pretty shitty for people to volunteer for that.

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All You Need is Kill. It's the source material for the movie Edge of Tomorrow. Very similar vibe as Starship Troopers and Armor.

It is an interesting approach - you're expected to have children. Like...I struggle to find a partner right now and to think how I could live on a generation ship with that requirement looming over my head. And would being single disqualify me outright?

Consider a society where every person setting the rules for 20-30 years is a parent with a partner who have at least 2 children; Theoretically with young, similarly aged children to that of their peers. That kind of dynamic would be interesting to see how it influences lifestyle and government far down the line.

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Elite dangerous

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You would still need cleaners and cooks right

People who wanna go

Why fuck no

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Laws space is like the old west theirs no laws

No I don't

I guess one of those super earths I hear about

Only children smart workers

It's a generation ship why not

Only people like me would volunteer you're literally not gonna ever be see your family again

The problem with a generation ship is that I don’t think the actual hardware could survive for the time required to reach its destination.

I'm thinking something like nuclear power but not as bad

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I'm sure if that was to happen the second ship would radio the first and offer to pick them up!

So I could make it

That’s one generation. You’re literally confining future generations to an environment they didn’t choose. I get that that is the nature of life, but we aren’t talking about an exceptionally finite environment. (I get that the earth is finite.) There’s an immeasurable morality gap here that probably exceeds even the tech gap.

That's because it's so much competition if you're on a ship it's so much less

Yes their was

With current advancements in artificial wombs, I wouldn't be surprised if that isn't a problem. Children will be born, and people do like to be teachers. Also, I wouldn't be surprised if AI tech makes the Humans just kinda unneeded.

Your right no laws

If that’s is true then there’s no value for governments or companies to try to build them in the first place because they would be literally throwing money into space.

If that’s is true then there’s no value for governments or companies to try to build them in the first place because they would be literally throwing money into space.

It would be all day now kind of like people who are raised on the island and all they know is the island

It would be like Christopher Columbus they paid for the get the take it

People have been doing this forever - not so different from getting on a sailing ship 200+ years ago and leaving to start a colony on a new continent. Your shipmates become your new family, and everyone else is left behind forever. Lots of people did that.

Even Christopher Columbus had to return to his sponsor Spain. But this is a one way ticket. If a regular joe like me can see it’s a bad investment without rules, a potential generational ship sponsor will avoid it like a plague. Fact is, the only reason why a company would do it is because they would be able to set up sovereignty in a new place/planet.

I would expect that a generational ship would only accept married couples for that very reason.

That's the plan only issue is see is it would be like You're basically owned by the company

Sure there would be many people who would be against it but there would also be many people who would be up for. What makes you think you aren’t already owned.

See what I mean

We are soooo far. At least 20 years. Artists and astro physicists. Gurus and personal trainers. Whatever. Whomever you are, when it all lands, is whom you will be. You'll have the benefit of having asked this question early.

Maintaining good genetic diversity in a small population is easier without monogamy. Marriages might remain just for social stability and maintaining traditions but I wouldn't expect it necessarily.

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Yes we are

So I'll be 60

I'm not what I've ever considered to be old.. I'm 39. I've seen the world flip. It moves so fast. We'll walk around in Mars. I'll just have a shitty-ish job. It's fine

Well we would basically need to be able to effectively colonize a nearer celestial body, then be able to refine and miniaturized THAT tech, as well as refine and miniaturized the tech used in the transport ship so that we could build something massive and efficient enough to house multiple generations of people. And for a generation ship to work ot would have to accommodate both a large number and handle a wide variance of growth, as birthrates become less predictable the smaller the gene pool gets.

Personally I would think if we could develop that tech, we should just live on space stations.

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I was thinking this would be something to ask a lot of musk on Twitter

How many people with promising careers, like astronauts, would just go to sleep? Forever?

The part I don't understand about generational ships is why the first crew would volunteer. You're locked in a ship until you die and your great grandchildren might get somewhere?

Also, 60 won't hurt much by then

I hope not

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What do you mean by promising careers? This is the 1st ship my ideal would Be you take orphans or other people and you take them like a military school and you raise them up All they'll know is the mission. But that would be my last resort

That's gonna be for the top people you're gonna have bottom people too basically it would be like What was that movie when I never stopped snowing and they were on the train

What a quaint idea.

This is a theory in that we are unlikely to actually invent a faster way to travel than a solar sail, which is probably how a generational ship would travel. I'm not saying never, but the ability to catch up to light is pretty rare.

Evolutionary wise this would be jackpot, your genes will not only survive, but found a whole civilization (at least during the journey).

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hundreds of years. if not millennia... i think we'll get there. but not anything for any of us to need to think about.

Seems like a great premise for a sci-fi story

It's usually in a scenario where you're escaping a civilization with zero opportunity for status growth. Your DNA has been found to be acceptable and you are blended into the future. Out of 1000 or 5000 people, your kids will be a Genghis Khan level of influence on a new planet. Maybe.

Far Centaurus is one that deals with this.

Can you imagine what the political views of the crew would be after 3 generations, without any outside stimuli the ship would act like a huge echo chamber. Kind of like old lonely people in the uk watching GB News all day.

They would most likely be young, like 15 years old and not related to each other. They may come from orbital space colonies, because they would be used to that lifestyle. Orbital space colonies would help us learn how to keep people alive in space so they would probably predate a generational ship by 30 years. Frozen eggs and sperm from 1000 people would help us maintain genetic diversity. Robots could be sent ahead to build an orbital space colony from asteroid material.

Could work

You also have to maintain a minimal viable population genetically. You must have large genetic variability. I think it would be required that you would need to have lots of children with lots of partners.

Once read a book about a generational ship that had society collapse. People started denying there was even an outside. That their entire universe was The Ship.

Then someone starts reading the manuals, starts getting in the "Forbidden Areas" (cockpit), notices that they are close to a habitable planet and presses the big illuminated button that says LAND.

Just a simple button would need to not rust/wither over the course of the duration.

I’m pretty sure like some 56th Gen AI will have figured it out a few centuries in maybe less

Why was the post removed? Other people may want to take part of the information in the future.

I was about to this exactly this. Just like I’m HALO without AI YOU’RE not getting shit done in under 500 years. They’re probably gonna do most of the work with people around to do hard math should an emergency happen. Also thankfully they’d probably have memory to store all of earth’s data so you’d have shit tons of stuff to read and watch. Hell they’d probably start making their own stuff

Typically, the only people who got onboard with American colonization wanted to get rich, had nothing left to lose, were convicts so didn't have a choice, or were actively facing persecution back home.

Not really people one would want to pick for a generational ship.

And comparing colonization of the Americas to a generational ship is disingenuous. It was still possible for them to come back home. They even maintained allegiances and contact with the homeland. The reason colonization even kicked off after the initial successful colonies, was for economic exploitation; something that won't be possible with generational ships.

Yeah but that would make it kinda dumb in my eyes. I feel like the smarter you get the less you’d fight unless it’s 100%. Like how in anime the old powerful dudes have a mental battle and figure out who can win before even breathing