Two hundred colonists screened to weed out genetic defects, or a crew that's been designed specifically to have a healthy genome, is all that would be needed to start a new civilization in another star system. Place them in suspended animation and use all of the weight saved on life support and essentials for equipment and supplies to build their new society once they arrive.
In a short story I once wrote, an advanced thermo-nuclear pulse propulsion ship is sent to Delta Pavonis. It traveled at .2c and had a crew of 200 transgenic colonists onboard in cold sleep. The vessel carried 20,000 metric tons of equipment and supplies that would be needed to setup a new society once they arrived. Several stores of frozen eggs and sperm from the colonists were also stored throughout the ship in case some of them didn't survive the trip. This would insure that their genetic legacy would be saved and passed on even if they didn't make it.
Space/Science » in reply to Why 1 Million?
A few hundred will do.
The whole thread (38 posts)
- The Ultimate Project: 10000 Year Journey
- re: The Ultimate Project: 10000 Year Journey
- suspended animation, virtual reality, bootstrapping,...
- Rama redux
- 1000 year plan
- The human attention span is inadequate
- What humans want is freedom
- What would actually happen
- Ship of fools.
- It would be a prison of sorts...
- Orphans of the Sky
- Why 1 Million?
- Once CATS becomes a reality, anything's possible.