trans-generational interstellar spacecraft

I was listening to David Bowie as I was going to sleep last night, and a thought entered my mind; the only way to colonize other star systems with current technology is to create a craft that could sustain life for many generations. Furthermore, all sorts of medical problems emerge as a result of long periods in 0-g environments

the obvious solution to the gravity problem is a rotating ring, and I've worked out it's inner radius to be 134,897.18 meters (~83.82 miles) with a rotational period of 24 hours.

I'm looking to pick your brains to find nuggets of solution-stuff for the outstanding problems: stable ecology, energy supply, social organization, etc.

who knows? Maybe if we band together, our great-great-grandchildren will see sunrises in Alpha Centauri.

 

How would you protect the ship from the endless amount of debris shooting through space? With our current (public) technology I don't think any ship any size would fare for long with the interstellar debris. The 0g habitat would make us look like Wall-E humans after centuries.

But if shows like The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits have taught me anything, it's hulking generational ships with optimistic outlooks almost always end up arriving years too late with unrepairable damage, obsolete technology and specters of their former selves.

 

is there even anywhere that's been confirmed as habitable to send such a spacecraft yet?

fuck my great great grandkids, i want to see my own sunsets. maybe my kids will be better men than i am, and my great great great grandkids can see those alpha centauri sunrises.

 

This has always been one issue I could never understand...

Like in movies when they make the jump to FTL travel and somehow they manage to come out the other side without having hit a single object? Seems like they would constantly have to duck and weave in between asteroids and other space debris, yet somehow they just happen to be going faster than the speed of light and magically avoid any collisions with other objects....

I think we're still a LONG way off from our peak of space exploration.. thousands of years before we'll be sending people off to other planets in my opinion... and by that time, who knows? We might be bashing each other in the head with stone clubs after World War 5 ....

 

This sounds really interesting but I can't really offer any intelligent thoughts about it.

 

Yeah, there should be repair kits on boards... bigger asteroids can be avoided the mini ones are the problem
Or use a material that wouldn't be damaged by it.

Don't worry about most of the medical problems. Those genarations would be 'space people' which might not be able to live on an earth-like planet anymore without some special outfit.

energy supply - solar panels

social organization - you are what you can do

stable ecology - not my branch, some plants that wouldn't mind 0-gravity would be needed unless anyone actually makes this ring work. Shrooms don't require too much.

If there is gravity, you could theoretically breed animals

 

read some Robert Heinlein if this sort of stuff interests you.

(it's fiction though)