Could a species with a lifespan of 20 years achieve enough technological progress to reach space?
I'm current planning a story which includes a race of diminutive humanoid aliens, one of whom crash-lands on Earth. They're fully sentient, and have the same average intelligence level as humans. The other main difference from humans, besides their height, is that their lifespans are much shorter.
Using sols (Earth years) as a comparison: an average human reaches maturity around their mid-to-late teens, and has a life expectancy of 70-80 sols. An average member of the alien species reaches maturity at around 4 sols, and has a life expectancy of about 20. 30 is almost unheard of. The crash-landing alien is therefore astonished that the first human he runs into is 36 sols old.
This raises an interesting problem. 20 years isn't an awfully long time to do anything at all. If they spend the same number of sols in education as we do, they won't have much time to do anything with that education by the time they graduate. If they spend the same proportion of their lives in education as we do, that's about 3-4 sols, which is nowhere near enough time to actually learn a whole lot.
So I imagine, compared to humanity, these relative mayflies are going to find technological progress quite difficult. It won't be so much "standing on the shoulders of giants" as "balancing precariously at the top of a chain of fifty aliens, all standing on each others' shoulders". So I ask you: could a species whose average livespan is only 20 years ever progress far enough to reach space?
You may assume the following:
- By "reach space", I mean a program comparable to the Apollo missions - if they can get that far, I'll make the bold assumption that they will eventually reach interstellar travel.
- Their resources, planetary environment, and desire are all sufficient for space travel.
- Their discoveries are sufficiently documented to be remembered and built upon, as mankind's discoveries (generally) have been.
- The aliens do not have the means to artificially extend their lifespans (be it via DNA modification, cybernetic enhancement, or whatever).
- They do not have the assistance of other alien races who are trying to "uplift" them.
I'm aware of this question, but there, the "shorter lifespan" is that of humanity. I'm going 3-4 times shorter than that, and I want to know how far they could progress, not how fast.
2 answers
As an interesting aside, it's worth mentioning that, at certain points in history, humans have had a similar lifespan to what you're proposing.
For example, the average life expectancy from birth in classical Rome was just 25 years old, and their society helped to shape the modern world, so I don't think a short life span precludes anything you're stating in your question.
Perhaps the life expectancy of your aliens will change over time, as the environmental factors they are exposed to change (such as being on a different planet).
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I think this would be do-able - it might take them a bit longer (in terms of generations certainly!) but it would be do-able, partly because I'd anticipate such a society adapting to their limitations and partly you could do some relatively minor biological/neurological tweaks.
Societal
Awareness of mortality - A race that is aware of their average lifespan can plan for what happens after an individual died - humans already do this: finding ways to efficiently record information so that the next generation aren't beginning from scratch is a good example. Once they started getting into more and more complex areas of science and thought that were taking longer than the productive lifespan to deal with I imagine they would have prioritized this aspect heavily. They are also likely to have focused heavily on time-saving technologies, perhaps sooner than we did. There are things that we developed post-Apollo that would have sped the process up (advances in computing, knowledge-sharing etc), have those developed first and the job of getting to space is much less time intensive.
Procrastination - We humans procrastinate alot, think about your average undergraduate university course (~3 years), it's really not three years of full-time work. Were it not for the cultural expectation of there being a large amount of time spent having fun at university you could do a bachelors degree in two years easily. We just have no need - because we have the time and we know it.
Biological
Increased neural plasticity - while not binary on-or-off the human brain's ability to form new new neural pathways and learn things drops significantly relatively early in our lifespan (somewhere between 20-25 years old). Keep the alien brains highly elastic until they die and they will be able to get more learning and development done.
Increased maturation rate - you've already alluded to this but I think you missed one of the key benefits, if offspring are mature in just four years that means that the parents are going to have to spend significantly less time looking after them and raising them. Freeing them to return to a more complete focus on their "work" sooner.
Increased decline rate - make the same true at the other end of the scale as well, while humans may live to 79 years on average most start to experience noticeable health decline much sooner, limiting our effectiveness in the latter stages of life (and average retirement age is between 59-70 so at least 9 years of that aren't really counted for things like, say, Apollo programs). We've managed to extend human life expectancy significantly over the last few decades (the US male average was 66 when Apollo landed us on the moon!) but we haven't solved the general issue of decline in old age. If your Huminis can remain effective and efficient up untill say a few weeks or months before death that will help.
Reduced need for sleep - humans generally need 6-8 hours out of every 24 to be healthy, if your aliens can do the same on say 1-2 hours out of 24 then over a 20 year life span they have 36,500-43,800 extra hours in that 20 years than we do that's another 4.2-5 years they are effectively getting for "free"
Smaller size = smaller travel distances - humans like a lot of personal space for living in and so on. Even if the Huminis want proportionally the same the actual physical distances are going to be much shorter, but physics doesn't really care about that - if they make a car or train that goes at 50 mph but the distance they need to commute to work is say 20 miles less than an equivilant human they are going to get there sooner. Spending less time moving from place A - place B would free up a hell of a lot of time that can be better utilised for achieving things.
Smaller size = lower mass to lift to space - The nature of the rocket equation means that a massive barrier to human spaceflight has been that we need to lift massive amounts of mass up to space (the spacecraft needs to be big enough for say 3 humans and humans are bigger = more mass, the humans need more oxygen, food, etc = more mass) and the bigger the mass you need to lift the more complex the engineering challenge is in doing so. And a simpler engineering challenge can usually be resolved in less time.
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