Would you join a colonization voyage?

[Syn]

Pretty simple premise to this: assume that a 'habitable' planet has been discovered. Not quite like Earth but we've advanced enough that you can survive in a prefab as you set up terraforming equipment. You'd be the first so there's no precedence for success... or risks. Everything is a total unknown.

You're offered a seat on the voyage. You'd leave Earth with a few hundred of your peers and, likely, never be in contact with those back home ever again during your lifetime.

Would you join? Would you say goodbye to life on Earth and, regardless of the unknowns, embark on such a journey?

[Buster's Uncle]

My fantasy life is da outer space - but nossir, I ain't doin' the Jamestown stuff with the 80% mortality the first year - and all they did was a boat trip to somewhere they could breath the air and eat the food.

[Geo]

I'd be more inclined to partake in an expedition voyage over a colonization effort.

[Rusty Edge]

When I was about 8 years old that's what I wanted to do when I grew up. Become a pioneer starting a colony. Trouble was the space program dried up before I started high school. Now I am too old,probably unqualified, and it's not my wife's thing.

[Buster's Uncle]

YOU'RE your wife's thing - and congratulation on that.

[Rusty Edge]

Thanks. That is how I won at life.

[Buster's Uncle]

Yes.  Yes, you have.


Outer Space is full of charm and win for a fantasy life - but cold and utterly inimical to your survival, and any faintly plausible tech for traveling in it -including fast FTL realistically-treated- still has a horrific claustrophobia/cabin-fever/boredom factor built in.

[E_T]

I would still want to go, if anything, as my ashes (or compost, whichever would be best for a starting colony) so that I could contribute in some fashion to whatever Brave New World that we finally attempt to settle...

[Buster's Uncle]

Well, you have mobility issues currently, don't you?  I don't like to leave the house, but I can and Hell is Other People, assuming the ship isn't one-man, in which case too lonely for me.  One could easily imagine, though, someone, say, confined to bed or a wheelchair anyway, liking shipboard life just fine, given stuff to do and maybe a huge movie library...

[E_T]

Don't really need a bed with micro gravity...  Just something to keep you from banging into the walls...

[Green1]

If I was younger, heck yes. Older, less so.

But something tells me getting on a ship like that would be hard.

I could imagine:

- Fill out, fool, or get past a 50 page application software designed by Miriam's people, Yang's people, and scanned by Zach's computers. Any obvious red flag, the application never gets seen unless you know someone. And yes, full physical, short psych eval, and drug test.
- any real job, you need the highest credentials of that job. Lots of folks want adventures in space.
- Of course, a few billion or being a genius head-of-your field gets you past that.
- Knowing, being a colleague/ valued employee of, or being related to mission critical people already accepted may get you past the BS on a case by case basis. seats limited.

[Buster's Uncle]

No doubt.  Not a soul here would even be allowed on the grounds to watch the launch, and some of us are closer than most people to being right for it (brains, patience and affinity for detail work being 4x TBS gamer traits).

Me, my depressive phase is a way better fit for the trip -passive and waiting it out, though quite capable when strongly enough motivated, like say, a meteoroid puncture air leak- but I've little or no charm when I'm like that, and wouldn't pass any interviews.  Right now, in the best sort of manic (a smidge volatile and definitely way too talky, but very positive and industrious and realistically confident, and have navigated a couple Transcend-difficulty people situations lately, and am full to the brim with productive energy and win) nobody in their right mind would choose to be trapped in a spaceship with me...

[Syn]

I wouldn't choose to be trapped on this planet with you, yet here we are...

[Buster's Uncle]

And I like that pushy [feminine washing] Vincour.  A lot.  Whoo'da figured?

[Rusty Edge]

It occurs to me I wouldn't pass a genetic screening. I lack a successful mutation 98 percent have. I wouldn't even make a good source of spare parts.