Your goal is no longer colonization of worlds, but instead creation of habitation pods.

Maybe you give the pods religion.

It's not a huge stretch to interpret "go forth and multiply" as directing your pod to go spawn other pods all across the galaxy...

It would make more sense to send 10 - 20k frozen embryos that can be grown in a lab.

I think you missed the reasons.

The point is not to have the bodies. A proper mix of genders can produce babies easily enough.

The reason for all the people is the knowledge and experience they bring. You have people who can pick up equipment and immediately be functional. You arrive at the planet and have geologists and biologists and miners and architects and environmentalists who can start to work, coordinators and planners who can manage the projects. People limited to physical sciences tend to overlook other needs, so you need artists and psychologists and people who study aesthetics to provide alternatives to large gray boxes the scientists tend to create. You'll also need entertainment for the people, food beyond "nutritional supplement 24", and so much more.

Even if you bring a bunch of books, there is still much that needs to be learned through experience and there is currently no substitute for it.

I think you are not considering the additional problems, as mentioned in this thread, that a colony sized vessel would bring.

For starters the experienced people who set off from earth would be dead on arrival, their children would only inherit a small percentage of that person skills and the remainder, like today, is learnt through digital media and practice. They too would be dead on arrival and their children would also inherit a small percentage of their skills. There is no guarantee that their children would have any interest in the optional additional curriculum (stuff that will not give them a position of authority on the vessel) or that the resources will be available down the line to teach this. If forced to learn that stuff it is purely a political stance.

A larger ship means more mass, fuel, expense and things that can go wrong. Problems could result in food shortages.

As well as the necessary engineering spaces you will also need in great supply of hospitals, schools, religous areas, sports arenas and many other conventional social spaces which would require many doctors (skilled in a wide range of issues), clerics, teachers, arbitrators, logistics staff - basically an economy of people. Is money as issue?

Is there potential for a disease outbreak?

Survival is significantly more important than bringing people fluent in shakespear. Non critical skills can be developed (and developed in its own unique way rather than a poor copy of earth cultures) over the many generations that they will have together once they make the difficult journey to their destination. And the embryos can be processed in batches, obviously 200 adults could not rear 20,000 babies.

There are so many possibilities for amazing games introduced in this thread. Please get to work developing them (I know I already am, but thanks to you people my attention once again has wandered to new ideas so I will likely never finish my current projects).

If you think of them as ships that roll out of a dry dock, get loaded with passengers who are treated like cattle with the purpose and design of spitting colonists out on another planet where they then establish a new outpost of civilization, then you hit on weird and awkward issues.

However I find it makes far more sense if you think of them as communities from the get go, with a large collection of resources. The ship very much does not need to be 'complete' when it leaves the Earth System, but rather it just needs all the resources it can expect to require for the long term survival of the community.

On earth we don't 'build a city' that is then finished and done, and then fill it up with people. We build core services and structures, and then expand from there over time with new structures and renovations. Styles and tastes change, and people build new things to suit their current needs. Nothing says that a large generational ship needs to be any different really. - Engines, core systems, initial living spaces, initial hull, industrial services (colonists will need the industrial stuff for when they get where they're going, they're not just 'getting off the boat' and planting crops in the ground.) and large stockpiles of resources. The initial families board, start burning for the new system, and then expand/restructure the ship while underway. Civil engineering would be a 'bit more interesting' to deal with on such a vessel as compared to back here on earth, but there is no reason for colonists to show up at the far end of the trip without skills or experience.

When it comes to advanced automated orbital manufacturing you become freed from a lot of the economical issues we currently have. Building a bigger ship isn't really an issue of needing more money, it becomes an issue of needing more time. It could take hundreds or thousands of years to bring all the materials into the same point in orbit and configure them into a useful form for the trip, but if putting humans in another solar system is deemed "A good idea" by a large enough part of the population, then it will eventually be done.

Building a bigger ship isn't really an issue of needing more money, it becomes an issue of needing more time.

Time is money, hundred thousand years is a long time to feed people and you can't do that without cost regardless of the economic conditions.

It would make more sense to send 10 - 20k frozen embryos that can be grown in a lab.

I think you missed the reasons.

The point is not to have the bodies. A proper mix of genders can produce babies easily enough.

The reason for all the people is the knowledge and experience they bring. You have people who can pick up equipment and immediately be functional. You arrive at the planet and have geologists and biologists and miners and architects and environmentalists who can start to work, coordinators and planners who can manage the projects. People limited to physical sciences tend to overlook other needs, so you need artists and psychologists and people who study aesthetics to provide alternatives to large gray boxes the scientists tend to create. You'll also need entertainment for the people, food beyond "nutritional supplement 24", and so much more.

Even if you bring a bunch of books, there is still much that needs to be learned through experience and there is currently no substitute for it.

I think you are not considering the additional problems, as mentioned in this thread, that a colony sized vessel would bring.

For starters the experienced people who set off from earth would be dead on arrival, their children would only inherit a small percentage of that person skills and the remainder, like today, is learnt through digital media and practice. They too would be dead on arrival and their children would also inherit a small percentage of their skills. There is no guarantee that their children would have any interest in the optional additional curriculum (stuff that will not give them a position of authority on the vessel) or that the resources will be available down the line to teach this. If forced to learn that stuff it is purely a political stance.

A larger ship means more mass, fuel, expense and things that can go wrong. Problems could result in food shortages.

As well as the necessary engineering spaces you will also need in great supply of hospitals, schools, religous areas, sports arenas and many other conventional social spaces which would require many doctors (skilled in a wide range of issues), clerics, teachers, arbitrators, logistics staff - basically an economy of people. Is money as issue?

Is there potential for a disease outbreak?

Survival is significantly more important than bringing people fluent in shakespear. Non critical skills can be developed (and developed in its own unique way rather than a poor copy of earth cultures) over the many generations that they will have together once they make the difficult journey to their destination. And the embryos can be processed in batches, obviously 200 adults could not rear 20,000 babies.

Well the problem of sending embryos still remains that you have to set up a colony with more or less modern amenities and there is a need for at least some knowledge. You still need to be able to set up and run the tech. Then there's the question of how much you bring with you and how much you have to set up/build there.

3D bodyprinter on Mars.

Your brain in a tube on earth with nanotechnology connected.

Just trying to be realistic.

Better stay on earth.

I hope Mask's plans, about Mars to be realized.

Space colonization is cool but where are we going to live? Mars? Give me a break - not even oxygen there. We need like a planet or something. Best chance we have, realistically, is with current technology. What? Current technology? Yes. There is a technology call nuclear pulse propolsion. With this you can explode a series of hydrogen bombs behind the craft and absorb shock with pusher plates. Doable with our current technology. This will take you to about 10% the speed of light. In 50 years we'll get somewhere. But now if you explode the Tsar bomb behind the craft how fast will you go? 20% the speed of light? 30%?

I'm confident that one day we'll colonize space. Not because we need to, but because want to. We'll be driven by the sense of adventure.