Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to It takes a village.

One thing the members of an interstellar ark will have...
Socrates II — (archived)

Is a definable purpose and ultimate goal.

Yes, people on this planet have "purposes" and goals, but a lot
of them are immediate or short-term or self-beneficial and even
those who think their ultimate goal is eternal life after this one are
always left with a bit of uncertainty that after they die they won't
be going anywhere. And let's face it, life these days as to whether
we or our children will still be here or not is always a crap shoot.

With the crew of a multigenerational starship, they know that their
ultimate goal is a new world, even if it takes a long time to get there.
Even for the ones who will die before arriving, they will have the
satisfaction of knowing that their children will help make those
distant descendants be the ones who achieve the ultimate goal
of this mission. And the place they are going to is real and one
presumes that well before the ship arrives the crew will know it
is a good place for them to be (no earlier occupants or climate
hazards, etc.).

Of course there is always a chance of the mission having problems
that keep it from reaching that star system, but the point is the
ship's residents do have an ultimate real goal, a purpose for their
lives and their descendants.

On this planet, however, things keep seeming iffy all the time.
Yeah, we seem to have survived nuclear annihilation, but the
Cold War has been replaced with other threats that aren't so
easy to contain.

And of course having at least a few interstellar arks sent out into
the galaxy ensures that at least some of our species will survive
in case the home office goes down.

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