General Question
Someone offers you and your partner a last-minute ticket (great deal!) to board a generation starship. Would you go on this trip?
From Wikipedia: A generation ship is a hypothetical starship that travels across great distances between stars at a speed much slower than that of light. Since such a ship might take from as little as below a hundred years to hundreds or even tens of thousands of years to reach even nearby stars, the original occupants might either grow old or die during the journey and leave their descendants to continue traveling, depending on the life span of its inhabitants and relativistic effects. It is estimated that, in order to assure genetic diversity during a centuries-long trip, a generation starship would require at least 500 inhabitants. Sperm banks or egg banks can drastically reduce the requisite number. Additionally, the ship would have to be almost entirely self-sustaining (see biosphere and life support), providing food, air, and water for everyone on board. It must also have extraordinarily reliable systems that could be maintained by the ship’s inhabitants over long periods of time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_starship
This is a hypothetical question, because today no one would fund such an effort even if we already possess some of the technology to build a generation starship. What are your thoughts? Be spontaneous. Take it or leave it!
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