How will sleeper ships travels be funded?

[Zixinus]

The thing about funding is that unless there is something that the slow-ship colonists can send back (like Avatar's Unobtanium), it is an empty question. It will be a venture where you don't money back, you get a result you want: colonists in an other solar system.

If it is part of a greater project (again, if you want to talk about funding you have to talk about why you are sending a slowboat in the first place) then you must also question what benefit do you get from that. Will the colonist mine for you? Will they make you a jump-gate? Will they explore alien life and send the discoveries back home?

Then you reached a problem of how do governments justify spending so much money on very few people who will see the benefits of sleeper ships in their lifetime? Our entire modern economy and public spending is based on fairly short term goals and short term return of investments. How would an elected government even justify that spending when people can't even live long enough to see the success of sleeper ships?

The answer is very simple: it is funded by a government whose priorities and goals are not reset at every election cycle. One that is able to commit to long-term plans. It may not be a democratic government or a government we recognize. Maybe run by humans who live for many centuries long and thus are able to one day see the benefits of a slowship.

[ray245]

The thing about funding is that unless there is something that the slow-ship colonists can send back (like Avatar's Unobtanium), it is an empty question. It will be a venture where you don't money back, you get a result you want: colonists in an other solar system.

If it is part of a greater project (again, if you want to talk about funding you have to talk about why you are sending a slowboat in the first place) then you must also question what benefit do you get from that. Will the colonist mine for you? Will they make you a jump-gate? Will they explore alien life and send the discoveries back home?

The problem is most people will not be able to benefit from the venture in their lifetimes. As we can see from how people responded to global warming, humans are quite bad at being concerned for the well-being of things in the far future.

The answer is very simple: it is funded by a government whose priorities and goals are not reset at every election cycle. One that is able to commit to long-term plans. It may not be a democratic government or a government we recognize. Maybe run by humans who live for many centuries long and thus are able to one day see the benefits of a slowship.

Unless humanity can somehow live a few hundred years, which would defeat the point of sleeper ships. If humanity aren't able to extend our lives to such an extent, I doubt we can agree to a government that set long-term plans on a scale of several hundred years.

For most people, investing in a sleeper ship without being able to get onboard is basically equivalent to burning cash.

[Simon_Jester]

Ray, there ARE organizations and entities that are capable of making plans on this timescale. It's a product of certain specific cultures and attitudes, but it's a thing that human beings are capable of. We're not all, automatically, all the time, hardwired to ignore things that we expect to happen after the day we die.

Do you actually have anything to say here, besides "it seems impossible, and it seems impossible, and I'm pretty sure it's impossible?"

[Zixinus]

The problem is most people will not be able to benefit from the venture in their lifetimes. As we can see from how people responded to global warming, humans are quite bad at being concerned for the well-being of things in the far future.

I think you are limited in your perspective of your government's short-term nature and thus unable to imagine any other form of government. Do you honestly believe that your current form of government is the pinnacle of civilization?

You also have to keep in mind that creating space infrastructure is also a multi-generational thing.

Unless humanity can somehow live a few hundred years, which would defeat the point of sleeper ships.

No, it wouldn't because of the life support cost of keeping thousands alive versus a few hundred or less (for a skeleton crew).

The purpouse of transporting people in a frozen state isn't just to preserve them for hundreds of years but to lower life support cost. Keeping a cryo-pod at low temperature and other things is more economic then providing everyone with a room, food, water, etc.

If humanity aren't able to extend our lives to such an extent, I doubt we can agree to a government that set long-term plans on a scale of several hundred years.

Pessimistic much? I mean, if you really believe this then the species is doomed to be unable to manage itself to leave Earth.

For most people, investing in a sleeper ship without being able to get onboard is basically equivalent to burning cash.

Let me repeat myself: a slowship is a "input: money, output: colony on another star system" deal. Like the moon landings or space programs in general. This is an incredibly mayor project.

I really find it a little depressing that you really believe that there can be no other perspective about this than a "get rich quick" investor's.

The whole thing CAN be made profitable IF there is something that colonists do that is valuable to the society that built the slowship. It's just an extremely long-term investment. You also have to keep in mind that to a society that can build interstellar slow-ships, what is valuable may be different than a modern man's.

[ray245]

Ray, there ARE organizations and entities that are capable of making plans on this timescale. It's a product of certain specific cultures and attitudes, but it's a thing that human beings are capable of. We're not all, automatically, all the time, hardwired to ignore things that we expect to happen after the day we die.

Do you actually have anything to say here, besides "it seems impossible, and it seems impossible, and I'm pretty sure it's impossible?"

Like what? NASA and other organisation doesn't really count because they've added new useful technologies within poeple's lifetime. And the investment in public space agency is nowhere as massive as a sleeper ship venture.

Our failure to commit on any major venture to the moon or Mars today is pretty much an indication of the limitation of our current society.

I think you are limited in your perspective of your government's short-term nature and thus unable to imagine any other form of government. Do you honestly believe that your current form of government is the pinnacle of civilization?

No, but I don't believe we are capable of developing a government that could manage interest on a time scale of several hundred years.

You also have to keep in mind that creating space infrastructure is also a multi-generational thing.

Yes, but look at the projects that failed to take off the ground on the account of cost. We do benefit directly in the short term, like the GPS.

No, it wouldn't because of the life support cost of keeping thousands alive versus a few hundred or less (for a skeleton crew).

The purpouse of transporting people in a frozen state isn't just to preserve them for hundreds of years but to lower life support cost. Keeping a cryo-pod at low temperature and other things is more economic then providing everyone with a room, food, water, etc.

That still assume that the technology needed to preserve human in statis for several centuries is cheap. For a technology like this to work, it would require massive amount of reduancies.

Pessimistic much? I mean, if you really believe this then the species is doomed to be unable to manage itself to leave Earth.

Kinda. Humans have certainly been shown to fuck the future because of short term benefits.

Let me repeat myself: a slowship is a "input: money, output: colony on another star system" deal. Like the moon landings or space programs in general. This is an incredibly mayor project.

Those are projects that had short term benefits. Moon landing was driven by the cold war to beat the Soviets. Once the cold war was over, funding for the Apollo mission was cut.

I really find it a little depressing that you really believe that there can be no other perspective about this than a "get rich quick" investor's.

The whole thing CAN be made profitable IF there is something that colonists do that is valuable to the society that built the slowship. It's just an extremely long-term investment. You also have to keep in mind that to a society that can build interstellar slow-ships, what is valuable may be different than a modern man's.

There's no reason to assume human society would be fundamentally different in any major way. Investment in technology are made because they do provide short term benefits.

[Zixinus]

Our failure to commit on any major venture to the moon or Mars today is pretty much an indication of the limitation of our current society.

It is the failure of the USA, not humanity as a whole.

No, but I don't believe we are capable of developing a government that could manage interest on a time scale of several hundred years.

But you are willing to believe that if there was one, the actually construction of a slow-than-light spaceship is no problem?

Do you have an argument other than sheer pessimism?

Yes, but look at the projects that failed to take off the ground on the account of cost. We do benefit directly in the short term, like the GPS.

Benefits that were only possible or only even conceived after (or during) the infrastructure that was developed.

But really, if you believe that the entirety of humanity is cripplingly unable to commit to anything long-term, what are you doing here discussing SLT ships?

That still assume that the technology needed to preserve human in statis for several centuries is cheap. For a technology like this to work, it would require massive amount of reduancies.

I'm assuming that its cheap relative to the whole cost of the STL ship. Again, compare the redundancies needed to keep thousands of unmoving popsickles intact versus keep them regular-old alive for hundreds of years.

[LaCroix]

Another fun possibility is that the first sleeper ships will actually not arrive first. Tech might improve during their travel time in a way that makes later ship arrive there years faster.

Imagine - you embark on the first vessel to a new system, and on arrival, you wake up to the sight of an orbital spacestation waiting for you to dock with a huge MacDonalds sign spinning at the commercial end of it...

[Simon_Jester]

Ray, there ARE organizations and entities that are capable of making plans on this timescale. It's a product of certain specific cultures and attitudes, but it's a thing that human beings are capable of. We're not all, automatically, all the time, hardwired to ignore things that we expect to happen after the day we die.

Do you actually have anything to say here, besides "it seems impossible, and it seems impossible, and I'm pretty sure it's impossible?"

Like what? NASA and other organisation doesn't really count because they've added new useful technologies within poeple's lifetime.

That's a stupid argument- and I don't say that lightly.

What, "because they've added technologies" means that they or any group like them never "don't really count" and could build a sleeper ship? That's an absurd argument.

And the investment in public space agency is nowhere as massive as a sleeper ship venture.

In a society that could BUILD a sleeper ship, there is no reason to assume that the costs of doing so would be proportionately higher than, say, the Apollo program.

Obviously we can't build such a ship today, which is why the price tag associated with it is effectively "infinity." Since no one will ever invest "infinity" in anything, no one is investing in sleeper ships.

Sort of like how in 1936 the price of a moon rocket was effectively "infinity" because rocket technology was in its infancy. And yet we have private individuals investing in space travel, and serious plans on their part to develop up towards (if not all the way to) a moon base. Which was unthinkable sixty or seventy years ago, because the technologies they rely on to do this didn't exist.

You can no more predict what will and will not be economically possible in 2216 than you could have predicted in 1816 that space tourism would be a thing.

Do you not comprehend how this works?

Our failure to commit on any major venture to the moon or Mars today is pretty much an indication of the limitation of our current society.

If by "our" you mean "the United States under its historical 1968-2020 leadership," yes. But that's a really, really parochial and weak argument you're making if you try to extend it to all of human civilization.

And I repeat Zixinus's point:

Do you have any actual argument, other than pure pessimism?

I haven't actually seen you say anything other than "I don't think this is possible."

It seems like there is absolutely zero content in your argument besides this big blast of "I can't imagine it happening right now, so it's impossible."

[ray245]

It is the failure of the USA, not humanity as a whole.

And when have we committed to long term projects successfully?

But you are willing to believe that if there was one, the actually construction of a slow-than-light spaceship is no problem?

Yes, but we've yet to see any society that could manage such a task.

Do you have an argument other than sheer pessimism?

My point is there no real indication that human society is capable of such a feat yet, at least based on our current understanding. I would love to be wrong, but there's nothing I've seen so far that indicate otherwise.

Benefits that were only possible or only even conceived after (or during) the infrastructure that was developed.

But really, if you believe that the entirety of humanity is cripplingly unable to commit to anything long-term, what are you doing here discussing SLT ships?

I'm asking if they are even viable, as a concept.

I'm assuming that its cheap relative to the whole cost of the STL ship. Again, compare the redundancies needed to keep thousands of unmoving popsickles intact versus keep them regular-old alive for hundreds of years.

The redundancies for the ship and the passengers are both going to be expensive.

[Zixinus]

And when have we committed to long term projects successfully?

CERN.

I did a quick google search and there is a trust fund that has been operating since 1868.

Yes, but we've yet to see any society that could manage such a task.

Two hundred years the same was true for moon landing and sending robots to make photos of the planets in the solar system. Or building the Panama Canal. Or building an underground tunnel between England and France. And so on. All of these required long-term planning, even if only for decades rather than centuries.

My point is there no real indication that human society is capable of such a feat yet, at least based on our current understanding. I would love to be wrong, but there's nothing I've seen so far that indicate otherwise.

Do you have an argument besides sheer pessimism, yes or no?[/color]

Because I am not obligated to argue against your pessimistic opinion.

I'm asking if they are even viable, as a concept.

Was that ever really the question? Yes, there is nothing stopping in terms of physics that prevent it.

Your original question was how is the thing going to be funded. Again, you first have to answer why you are sending a STL ship to begin with. Once you have a real answer to that, you can answer how the money will be raised (if that society even has money as we understand by that time). It is also there where you have to answer whether there would be a return of investment.

For an STL ship to be made, you need at least a partially colonized solar system. You can't have that without some kind of governing body that can plan ahead decades at least to create the infrastructure necessary for that to happen.

Planning a centuries-long venture might be a big stretch even for such a civilization but that is assuming that things remain the same. Who knows, that society might be partially controlled by AIs at that point or humans have digitally uploaded themselves or genetically engineered themselves to live in vacuum.

The redundancies for the ship and the passengers are both going to be expensive.

And that is an answer to my point how?

You seem very confused about this point: nobody is saying that building redundancies for cryogenically preserved humans is going to be cheap. It is just that building a massive ship that can get to a significant fraction of lightspeed is going to be so humongously expensive that the human freeze fridge will be small compared to that cost. You are wondering the viability of a skyscraper because you have uncertainties about the plumbing.

[Solauren]

Actually, considering plump is important to the building, wouldn't be be better to say

"You are wondering the viability of a skyscraper because you have uncertainties about the PRICE of plumbing."

??

[Khaat]

First and foremost, you must disconnect from thinking this STL colony ship is a cruise ship or supertanker built to make a buck. This is a ridiculously expensive time capsule, for lack of a better parallel. Except instead of items of pride and quaint historical significance intended to be unearthed in a century, this is the survival of humans beyond Solspace forever.

Q: Is it possible, as a mental exercise, for us to postulate?
A: Sure, have you met this board?

Q: Who will pay for it?
A: Probably the United System (or whatever the entity will be called), the only geo-political entity IN SPAAACE! with the resources and know-how on the scale required.

Q: How expensive?
A: Very expensive, with costs dropping as the human sphere of resources and technology grows, provided it becomes and remains cooperative.

Q: What's the return?
A: Humans survive beyond Solspace.

Organizationally, there could be a "child company" that administrates the colony growth and priorities (rather than a government - but why?), but any "parent company" in such a situation would not see a return. These issues would have been encountered in the expansion and development of Solspace: colonies vie for independence or equal status, rather than being Banana Republics of their "parent" nation/world. If the cyberpunk-genre multi-national capitalists won that fight, we're never leaving Solspace: there's no profit in it.

[Sea Skimmer]

The problem is most people will not be able to benefit from the venture in their lifetimes. As we can see from how people responded to global warming, humans are quite bad at being concerned for the well-being of things in the far future.

People benefited from Apollo how? Oh right, not at all, unless they were employed by the program directly, or are smart enough to understand how much technology it enabled the consumerization of later. Yet that was not only funded to the tune of 1% of the US GDP, but a rather popular project in fact and much of the tech gain like digital cameras was absolutely NOT foreseen by the average joe, or indeed realized for consumer use until decades later, so long that most people certainly have no idea of the link.

By the time anyone could even think of building a sleeper ship the economic cost of designing, testng and building a fleet of them will be more like .1% of the GDP. The world GDP right now is over 60 trillion dollars, a solar system spanning human civilization could plausibly produce 10 times that much wealth. In fact by its very nature a project like this just won't happen until the cost isn't that big a deal and most of the groundwork technology already exists.

Unless humanity can somehow live a few hundred years, which would defeat the point of sleeper ships. If humanity aren't able to extend our lives to such an extent, I doubt we can agree to a government that set long-term plans on a scale of several hundred years.

For most people, investing in a sleeper ship without being able to get onboard is basically equivalent to burning cash.

Lol, so that's why WAR has never happened right, because its just a pointless cash burn? And government R&D has never ever produced any kind of useful anything right? The internet sprung from nothing in a week, and wrote a check to the taxpayer?

Nobody needs to plan shit for hundreds of years, they just need a plan until the ships are done, and realistically they'd spend decades on low key but vital component testing before that which would consume much more time then money due to the limitations of our ability to speed up fatigue and reliability testing. Actually building and testing the final ships would probably not take more then 10-20 years.

Oh also we founded NASA in what, 1947? That's not centuries no, but its a fucking long time now they've been pushing forward their core missions. Your entire argument is basically tantamount to claiming NASA can't exist.

[Cykeisme]

Sea Skimmer makes a good point, about the ratio between the cost of an undertaking with no immediate return, and the GDP of a country/civilization.

Building an interstellar sleeper ship would need more resources, technology and expertise than we even have at the moment.
But if all goes well, a future human civilization that has colonized some of our solar system would have access to additional resources (due to accessing more of our solar system), more technology (due to having a better grasp of routine of intra-system space travel), and more expertise (reasons same as previous).

So instead of being something that we view as taking a huge double-digit percentage of the total product of a government, the first sleeper ship may only be 1% or less of the government's resources, like the Apollo program.
Sending subsequent ships may take even less, once some initial costs are laid down already.

The survival of the human race is a pretty rational thing for a government to spend money on, if you consider, like Sea Skimmer pointed out, that even mid-20th century governments were able to get the space race going.
Even if the solar system had several "nations"/governments, there could be a prestige/pride race going, much like the 50s-60s USA and Soviet Union trying to get a man into orbit, then to the moon, etc.

The idea that humans are too irrational to complete undertakings with returns and results that will not be seen within the current generation's lifetime is flawed. I think it's precisely because we have the right amount of irrationality that we would do it. I mean, having people planting your nation's flags into faraway planets is kind of a ridiculous motivation.. but a plausible one.
Once the engineering needs for working sleeper ships are known, I can imagine claiming habitable planets in a sort of "land grab" could be a big reason for competing governments to shoot off more and more sleeper ships to various star systems.


ALSO.
The entire argument revolving around "not seeing returns in one's own lifetime" really doesn't apply anymore, because the cryogenic (or whatever) technology used on the sleeper ships will work even without a ship.
Companies may have shareholders who choose to freeze themselves right here on Earth for decades at a time, only waking up for a few months to enjoy their wealth and attend shareholder/board meetings, then go back to sleep.
I recall Passengers mentioning that it was a private company that was running the colonization efforts and making insane amounts of money from it. It's possible that the executives and board members of the company might be prolonging their lifespans by spending a lot of time in "hibernation".

[jwl]

It is the failure of the USA, not humanity as a whole.

And when have we committed to long term projects successfully?

How about the building of the ming great wall of china?

[Knife]

Even more than the problem of funding - we don't have any sort of "sleeper" technology.

I know. This is just some purely theoretical idea. The problem with many of those theoretical ideas is people often neglect to think about how those technology will be funded.

If you have the tech to pull people out of a cyro, you have the tech to elongate lives anyways. Might as well build a generation ship where the generation can last 100-150 years to the next planet as something like an attainable speed.

[His Divine Shadow]

Such a mission would have to begin by supporting itself from a small outlay.

Basically we'd send a completely automated thingamajigg into the asteroid belt or some other suitable location and it'd start mining asteroids and stuff and build the colony ship on it's own. Then when it goes *ping* it's ready, we'll put people on it and send it away.

We'd need such advanced fabricator technology to make it feasible anyway, they will need to be able to make almost anything from raw materials.

And if it can't make something, it should be able to make the machine that can make a machine that can then make the stuff that's needed, or however many recursions are needed.

[Knife]

Such a mission would have to begin by supporting itself from a small outlay.

Basically we'd send a completely automated thingamajigg into the asteroid belt or some other suitable location and it'd start mining asteroids and stuff and build the colony ship on it's own. Then when it goes *ping* it's ready, we'll put people on it and send it away.

We'd need such advanced fabricator technology to make it feasible anyway, they will need to be able to make almost anything from raw materials.

And if it can't make something, it should be able to make the machine that can make a machine that can then make the stuff that's needed, or however many recursions are needed.

I'd be more worried about food, water, and air

[FedRebel]

Sleeper ships are probably the main means of space travel if there is no real workaround to build any sort of FTL ships. The problem is, who is willing to fund such an endeavor? The cost of building the ship and to keep it running for several centuries would be rather astronomical even for the wealthy. Their wealth would have to last them for several hundred years when they are being kept in stasis.

So is there any realistic means which would actually incentivize human civilisation to fund such travels?

Generation ships are more viable, the whole "HyperSleep" concept is magic. Reducing metabolic processes per the Sci/Fi concept would kill the occupant and would not slow the aging process one bit. Cryo is worse, it out right kills the occupant.

Some theoretic propulsion systems could manage 50% the speed of light, an Orion Drive with Antimatter could get that on the low end (per Freeman Dyson's math.) We could push as far as Epsilon Eridani without putting anyone in ziploc freezer bags, just a matter of keeping people alive in an O'Neil type habitat cylinder for ~21 years, more or less Babylon 5 in form and population...only difference is ours farts antimatter reactions (we could cut down the size and population for economy...but Orion Drives thrive on mass, bigger the colony ship the faster the acceleration...could even get better than 93,000 miles per second, and cut a few years off transit.)

[His Divine Shadow]

Such a mission would have to begin by supporting itself from a small outlay.

Basically we'd send a completely automated thingamajigg into the asteroid belt or some other suitable location and it'd start mining asteroids and stuff and build the colony ship on it's own. Then when it goes *ping* it's ready, we'll put people on it and send it away.

We'd need such advanced fabricator technology to make it feasible anyway, they will need to be able to make almost anything from raw materials.

And if it can't make something, it should be able to make the machine that can make a machine that can then make the stuff that's needed, or however many recursions are needed.

I'd be more worried about food, water, and air

That's pretty much covered under what I wrote. Atleast air and water will be easily manufactured from raw materials. Then it depends on how they'd make food. Traditional agriculture style, hydroponics, or something different entirely? Maybe then stuff like vat grown meat will be common and other stuff too.