Stellar Nomads



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In the future, we may colonize other planets or build artificial worlds for people to life on, but some may choose a nomadic life on spaceships instead.

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Credits:
Stellar Nomads
Episode 462a; September 1, 2024
Produced, Written & Narrated by: Isaac Arthur
Editors:
Donagh Broderick
Graohics:
Bryan Versteeg
Fishy Tree
Jeremy Jozwik
Ken York
Udo Schroeter
Select imagery/video supplied by Getty Images
Music Courtesy of Epidemic Sound http://epidemicsound.com/creator
Stellardrone, “Red Giant”, “Ultra Deep Field”, “Cosmic Sunrise”
Sergey Cheremisinov, “Labyrinth”, “Forgotten Stars”
Lombus, “Cosmic Soup”, “Hydrogen Sonata”

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26 thoughts on “Stellar Nomads”

  1. There is ONE alien civilisation who are stellar nomads in science fiction I immediately had to think about: the Cygnans.
    In the scifi novel The Jupiter Theft, written by Donald Moffitt in 1977, a large object close to lightspeed arrives in our solar system, slows down and stops at Jupiter. A human spaceship is dispatched and discovers an alien fleet of huge ships. The aliens use gas giants as fuel for their interstellar drive. The giant they used is now depleted, and to the Cygnans, Jupiter seems to be a very nice replacement…

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  2. The way atheist and agnostics talk about their negative belief(s) is completely different from how they talk about their positive beliefs. They'll say we don't know that God exist because there is no repeatable empirical evidence for the claim. But when it comes to their explanations for the Fermi Paradox — and all their speculations about alien life on other planets — they rely on exactly the same thing Aquinas, Augustine, Aristotle, Plato and all other philosophers relied on to prove the existence of the supernatural — logical argumentation. Which is perfectly fine. If you want to use logical argumentation to talk about the existence of alien life on other planets, be my guest. You can even believe it if you want because the arguments are logically constructed. But, if you're going to believe in aliens without empirical verification and simply based on logical argumentation, you have to examine the logical arguments for God as well.

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  3. Something to consider when discussing a million Oniel Cylinders vs a single planet: Terraforming is one of those things that takes a LONG time to provide any real benefit. On the other hand, you can build one artificial habitat and use that as a jumping-off point for the next habitat. People inside a habitat likely have a better standard of living than folks on a planet being terraformed. Also, if you have a million habitats and one gets taken out by a rogue comet or industrial accident, you lose a millionth of your people and resources. If such a thing happened on a planet, you might lose much more. If one habitat developed some sort of illness, it could be isolated to reduce the spread. This is something else that is difficult to do on a typical planet.

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  4. The solution to FTL and large space habitats can fly interstellar travel is cross train lawyers with the appropriate science skills and mention how big their per hour billable pay could be. They will find the ways and the loopholes in the rules. I just do not have the headolgy skills to organize it all.

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  5. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad to be born early enough to experience life on Earth prior to human colonization of space. In saying that though, I am very upset that I likely won’t live long enough to be a space nomad.

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  6. A nomad space ship might be loosing/leaking 1% of stuffs like breathable air/year. But that would be the habitat areas, where it's also being used. Bit any slightly less-brain-dead alien (or future hooman) would most likely store those kinda slightly important resources, in solid/frozen form. And that should probably be easy enough, cuz it's cold out there in between the stars.

    Re-do the math please!

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  7. Good as usual. A couple of ideas occurred to me here, that I freely share.
    The first is the idea, assuming you believe there are other intelligences out there, that First Contact might come in the form of interstellar nomads/traders coming into the Solar system. There is a whole lot of stuff you could load onto stories around that.
    The second one was the thought of Cyclers. Myself I think of them as massive ladder of bed frame with small thrusters attached. You can then take anything from an ore ship, or even just a great glob of ore, to cruise ships strap it to the bed frame; and pay for your passage with thrust or even basic maintenance of the bed frame.
    These could spend centuries doing loops between Earth and Mars or the outer planets. When they lose their usefulness, you sell them as the base frame for an Interstellar Nomad ship.

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