100% Proof of Alien Life - Or Not. Y'all Bear With Me

IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO SAY WHAT IS FUTURISTICALLY IMPOSSIBLE(howsat
for my Gemara of the day?)

Geez, you don't look Jewish.

The people who would otherwise be cooped up in the spacecraft for hundreds (maybe even thousands) of years are the only ones who really need to benefit from it.

Good thinking, Boss, i'm impressed.

Well, I'm glad somebody noticed it, I was beginning to think I was on ignore or something

I read it, but was unable to post at the time. I like that idea. I read a story when I was in my twenties, I guess, in which a space craft contained a city that had seen some generations in its journey. I doubt if in the beginning travelers could expect there would be a return trip for anybody on board.

I think I stole the idea from a Star Trek episode from The Original Series, "For the World is Hollow and I have touched the sky" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_the_World_Is_Hollow_and_I_Have_Touched_the_Sky), and extrapolated how I thought that situation might evolve.

I see generational asteroid "ships" like this happening more by chance than as some Grand Plan to inhabit the galaxy. Asteroid mining seems like a plausible economic endeavor for our future, and after asteroid miners go through longer and longer shift rotations the asteroids may evolve into orbiting communities. After a long enough period of time they may find themselves to be self sufficient, and grow tired of listening to Republicans and Democrats blame each other and decide to "fire up the Ion Drives" and go for a galactic Walkabout.

Conversely, such "ships" from other (possible) alien cultures may be out there already, slowly plowing their way through empty space, seeking neither contact or attention and going nowhere in particular.

True that it would be some period of time before a colony would be able to mount the sort of effort a return trip would entail.

However, given the effects of time dilation, there will probably not be much in the way of return trips ever, even when they have the resources for it.

What may seem a short span of time to the travelers, might see Earth age 800 years over the journey, with another 800 years passing if they were to make a return trip.

Anyone returning to Earth will not be coming back to the same planet that they left behind.

Related article from one of our more respected online media outlets:

Meeting Aliens Will Be Nothing Like Star Trek

Only way to know is by experiencing, way I see it.

The great thing about this subject is that it is all speculative. Anyone who attempts to declare certitude, deserve the mantle of Supreme Assh*le.

There are far less than crazy notions that the window of life is sufficiently narrow within our universe that the differences will be not much more significant than what Star Trek suggests. Ripply noses, big craniums, and an occasional reptilian sentient.