Society rules for marriages and love on multigeneration ship
Earth, far future: We built multi generation ship which can get 20 000 people to another solar system in next 20 generations (600 years)
For scope of this question assume that ship itself is well built and it will indeed be able to carry people and material to its destination and technology wise, the mission will be success.
But what about the people? Some of the things about multi generational ships were talked in separate questions, but one I believe was not:
What cultural norms would be best to follow on multi generational ship regarding marriages and love?
Questions to be attacked:
- How should we treat marriages and love, given the fact that we do not want to cripple during the flight?
- Should we force anyone into having kids, even when they might not want to have any? (Again, we kinda need diversity in DNA after 20 generations)
- On above: Should we ban gay people and asexual people?
Personally I have an idea that best would be to create religious cult and let only those people in the ship as generation 1. Is there better idea how to tackle behavior on relatively closed area?
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/33662. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
1 answer
20000 people is a huge population on a generation ship.
With careful breeding 200 people have enough genetic diversity to support 80 generations (~2000 years) without running into problems.
With 20000 people, you'll have no problems, so I wouldn't worry about it.
As I Stanley said, you could also include more genetic samples in the form of sperm easily enough. Not eggs though, as I believe those have a frozen shelf life of 20 years with current technology.
Your biggest problem is space and resources. While population will fluctuate, the ship won't be getting any bigger, as there aren't really any resources to add on with in interstellar space.
You'd probably want a 2 child limit, with additional child bearing privileges given out through a lottery or something to make up for accidental losses over time and to make up for people that can't/wont have children.
A population spike would be a bad thing unless you're anticipating losses in the near future.
I wouldn't bother with a cult, as that could lead to other problems.
You could get the result you want by just drilling the rules into everyone, and starting young with new generations, so that when they are of age the idea of only being allowed 2 kids won't be questioned.
Another benefit of the birth lottery is so that people have hope. That way it's not the leaders of the ship telling you that you can't have that baby, its just luck not going your way this time. Maybe next time though!
Another thought is that there will be people that just don't want kids.
These people might not make the best parents if they are forced, so allow them to give/sell their privilege away to someone that really wants it.
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