Had this idea bouncing around for a type of space adventure/horror(?) game. You are arriving late to a star system that humanity had sent several waves of colony ships millenia before you got there. This is a hard-science fiction world, so no Faster-Than-Light travel. You arrive there the old fashioned way (Generational ship that took a few thousand years) and explore the star system to see what, if any, colonialization attempts took hold.
I’m thinking it would be similar to uncovering vaults in Fallout, but with a somber tone. You do not find crazy experiments on captive populations (although that is a possibility) but instead discover the aftermath of failed attempts to establish a foothold for humanity out among the stars.
To help me come up with what colonial remnants you are liable to stumble across, I decided to break down space colonization into groups: how far away is the destination, who/what is going to be doing the colonizing, how many are you bringing along, how to get them to the destination, the design of the ship(s), who/what is running the ship, the length of the journey (in terms of how long it takes to an outside observer vs. how much time the ship experiences), where the colony is going to exist at the destination, and most important of all; what the colonists are hoping to achieve.
As to the question of how long of a trip we’re planning, for the game I’m envisioning has this as Humanity’s foray into space colonization. That means we’d be leaving from Earth and the destination will be Proxima Centuari, 4.25 Light Years away. Depending on the speed we go, and assuming that travelling faster than light is an impossibility, that can be anywhere from 5 years on the short end to over 80,000 years using current speeds we’ve attained.
Fortunately, we can assume that by the time we’ve gotten technologically advanced enough to be doing this we would be able to attain speeds that will put that to at least in the thousands of years on the long end rather than several tens of thousands of years.
Colonists
So who, or what, is actually going to be traveling to this distant star system and setting up a colony? One would assume humans, but that need not be the case. Humans can be a fragile bunch and very difficult to transport across the cosmos intact. You might want, or need, to send a genetically or technologically modified group of colonists to better ensure they survive the trip.
And what if the goal is to settle an subsurface ocean like Europa has? Why send humans when you can send genetically modified, super intelligent whales instead? Perhaps it’s another extreme in tempurature, or pressure, or gravity. Somewhere that a normal human would die instantly, but a modified/engineered lifeform would thrive?
Or perhaps this trip you aren’t sending the actual colonists yet, but a construction crew. It arrives first to build and staff the colony, then you send the colonists. You might not want to send anything organic at all, in that case.
Here are a few variations on who might be going to this new home:
- Natural Humans – regular humans that live normal human lifespans (80-100 years)
- Rejuvinated – some method of consciousness transfer to clones, embryos, or other human bodies
- Augmented – altered humans with extended/indefinite lifespans
- Evolved – lifeform altered past point of being considered human, but still intelligent life.
- Robotic – no physical human component involved (either uploaded human consciousness or A.I.)
What you are bringing will directly affect how many of them to bring, and will also depend on the goal of the mission as well. If you are bringing regular humans, you’ll want a lot of them: we’re talking several thousand individuals.
Colony Travel Methods
So, now that you have yourself the colonists, you need to get them there. The best way to do it will probably depend on what you are transporting, but here are the methods I’ve devised:
- Conventional/Generational – colonists live aboard ship in real time during entire journey.
- Cryogenic – colonists in suspended animation for all or part of journey
- Genetic Library – colonists stored as genetic material, no physical bodies present during trip
- Robotic – no organic component involved (either uploaded human consciousness or A.I.)
Ship Designs
- Mothership/Ark – ship is colossal, maintains an earthlike environment on board with artificial gravity
- Seeder ship – ship is compact, no artificial gravity or living environment
- Flotilla – fleet of ships separating out functions by ship (fuel storage, colonists, living areas, cargo, supplies, power gen, defense, etc.) artificial gravity and living environments vary by ship function.
Ship Maintenance Methods
- Rotating crew – regular humans run ship throughout regular human lifespans.
- Rejuvinated or Augmented crew – ship run by same group of humans throughout journey. done thru either lifespan augmentation, periodic rotating suspended animation, or cloning to preserve original crew.
- Automatic – ship run by automated systems (Either A.I., uploaded human consciousness(es), or regular computer systems)
Ship speeds
- Conventional – runs at relatively slow speed (1% C) travel time measured in centuries/millenia and little to no time dilation
- Relativistic – runs at 10%-20% C, travel time measured in decades with low dilation measuring months or days time difference between Earth and onboard
- Near Lightspeed – runs at 50%-90% C, travel time measured in years with mid time dilation (1.5x-2x amount of time on earth vs. onboard)
Colony Locations
- Planet surface – colony can be either underground, underwater, on land, or suspended in atmosphere inside the influence of the planet’s gravity well.
- Asteroid – colony is an asteroid either hollowed out and used as a protective shell or built upon the surface
- Planetary orbit – colony is in close orbit with a planet, moon, or asteroid. The interior is not under the gravitational influence of the planetary body directly (inhabitants only experience micro-gravity)
- Stellar orbit – colony is orbiting the system’s star(s) and not subject to any other planetary body’s gravity well
- Comet-like orbit – colony that has an extreme elliptical orbit, taking it to the extremes of the system’s area
- Wandering orbit – colony takes artificially-controlled paths throughout the system, varying their speed and location (can be proactively done for resources or trade, or done as a necessity to avoid solar flares or other hazards)
Colonization Goals
- Terraform – remake a planet or asteroid to have survivable conditions
- Recreate – replicate earth as much as possible (simple as comparable air/water/gravity conditions or complex as rearranging continents to mimic Earth’s surface)
- Sister City – Duplicate a culture/society/state to preserve/promote way of life
- Utopia – create settlement that solves the problems plaguing human society
- Coexist – adapt human life to survive/thrive at new destination
- Uplift – provide an existing lifeform at the new location with tech or genetic engineering to be on par with humanity
- Turn back the Clock – revert to a ‘simpler time’ for humanity or earth (middle ages, Eden, Jurassic epoch, etc.)
- Play God – establish own little world where the fantasies of one or a few are indulged