Filed under: Real Science Content, science fiction, Speculation,
Worldbuilding | Tags: interstellar colonization, science,
science fiction, worldbuilding Let’s assume, for the moment,
that interstellar travel is possible. Let’s further assume that
there’s no magic wand of teleportation or FTL, traveling to
another star takes a looong time, and it basically means
colonizing your starship (or gaiaspore, if starship is too passe
for you). The ship may be Charlie Stross’s hollowed out
asteroid, or a comet, or something similarly large, but whatever
the ship looks like, the basic idea is that people don’t put
their lives on hold for the duration of the trip. Rather, they
settle into their ship, and then they (or their distant
descendents) settle another world elsewhere. The two-step is an
environmental filter. Many technologies that are ubiquitous on
Earth, such as cooking knives or internal combustion engines,
are non-starters in free fall (where scissors work better) or in
small biospheres (gasoline engines). Co