[Idea File]
Dec. 17th, 2009 10:45 pmFrom reading up on The Great Filter...
1) What if we mastered slower-than-light colonization (via processes like generational ships) but didn't have the advanced technology needed to maintain communications to those colonies? How would that effect colonies essentially cast out from Earth into the void to fend for themselves and develop in isolation?
1a) What happens to those generational ships once they reach their destination? What of people who don't want to settle down planetside?
1aa) Or what if they decide to drop off a core of planetside colonists and head somewhere else? What if they head for another planet slated for colonization and their descendents arrive in orbit of that colony? What if they arrive in orbit of that colony to find that something horrible has happened?
1aaa) Like the Wraith. ...or, really, any alien species invested in keeping the universe at a low stage of development.
2) Riffing on the God in the Sky idea, what about an Earth where we began to see evidence of things like solar harvesting or Dyson Swarm construction around distant stars, with full knowledge that such evidence, visually observed, would represent events from hundreds of years ago? "Yeah, whoever's out there... well, they were disassembling solar systems back when we were inventing the trireme. GOD KNOWS WHAT THEY'RE DOING NOW."
1) What if we mastered slower-than-light colonization (via processes like generational ships) but didn't have the advanced technology needed to maintain communications to those colonies? How would that effect colonies essentially cast out from Earth into the void to fend for themselves and develop in isolation?
1a) What happens to those generational ships once they reach their destination? What of people who don't want to settle down planetside?
1aa) Or what if they decide to drop off a core of planetside colonists and head somewhere else? What if they head for another planet slated for colonization and their descendents arrive in orbit of that colony? What if they arrive in orbit of that colony to find that something horrible has happened?
1aaa) Like the Wraith. ...or, really, any alien species invested in keeping the universe at a low stage of development.
2) Riffing on the God in the Sky idea, what about an Earth where we began to see evidence of things like solar harvesting or Dyson Swarm construction around distant stars, with full knowledge that such evidence, visually observed, would represent events from hundreds of years ago? "Yeah, whoever's out there... well, they were disassembling solar systems back when we were inventing the trireme. GOD KNOWS WHAT THEY'RE DOING NOW."