"What Would You Expect To See On An Alien "Ark Ship"?" Topic

They spotted Earth hundreds of thousands of years ago, saw it as their last best hope of survival, and launched a giant ark-like ship our way. Their scientists found no other world with a suitable atmosphere and gravity, so their world invested all its resources and energy into this desperate one-way trip to save their race.

The ship is now finally entering our Solar System, and getting closer to Earth. On board are hundreds of thousands of their kind, in some sort of "stasis", but there seems to be a lot more in their cargo holds.

So, what kind of stuff would you expect to see on board?

Would they have brought along every little creature from their world, or just the ones that would make the initial re-settlement period bearable?

Dan

Hmm… maybe some of the invasive species they're planning on using to destabilize/alter our ecosystem? For a good example (although used for different reasons), the Swarmer/Skimmer plotline from Gregory Benford's "Across the Sea of Suns."

Cappuccino maker.

An Ark of Orks? Space Orks and Space Ork accesories?

Like a cappucino maker…

A green skinned, quadruple breasted female warrior nymphomaniac!

You know…an alien Preying Mantis…what youse guise were thinking the hot green chix from Star Drek?

A Starbuck's and an Apple Store.

I'm guessing that they would also bring along a lot of their native micro-organisms, at least down to bacteria-like ones. We are finding more and more that we are very dependent on the little guys.

I don't think they would burn cargo space on live samples of their native fauna; I would expect something more akin to a DNA bank, with a fair portion of the ship given over to advanced growth acceleration suites. Once they've purged Earth, they could go about their business of duplicating their world. Leaves more room for advanced warmachines this way.

Rows and rows of telephone sanitizers.

All the best,

John.

If they could travel between stars to a carbon based life form planet compatible with their species they would not bother to bring their own food chain. They would simply need to bring their condiments of choice. Pass the "grey poupon" please.

Toilets.

"Cappuccino maker"

Yeah right like there such a thing as an Ork Barista. You know it has to be something simple for the simple-minded. So it has to be a Keurig machine.

8)

The wrinkle I would add: no one can reach the bridge. The ship's computers are still running things, but refuse to cooperate as to the question of who/what is in charge.

And I am sure at least one wing of the ship broke down "a while" ago, leading to an entire wing of escapees that have been scratching out a living for half the duration of the trip across the stars, and man, they're likely pretty cranky about that.

As it enters the solar system, a couple dozen small pods separate from the ship. These will arrive and impact on Earth almost a year early.

The pods have 2 missions: advanced scouting for suitable landing locations, and spread fast growing microbes to start to bioform the Earth's ecosphere.

A lot like David Gerrold's War Against the Chtorr series, except it remains to be seen if there is a spaceship in its way in that series.

An ark traversing the stars for millennia would require a VERY big bucket.

A lot of junk mail at the PX office.

Lots of shiny little boxes. Some incomprehensible do-dads… And everything they would need to whatever-form the lucky ball they land on….

Virus bombs

I would think they brought the lot. From viruses up. Plants animals everything they could. If its your one and only shot you woul leave nothing if you could. It would make a good film. Better than invading the earth for our water!

Tony: " It would make a good film. Better than invading the earth for our water!"

Plus, the fact that they set out when, for all intents and purposes, humans were nothing in the world, almost clears them of planning any real evil against us specifically.

And, because we have ourselves contemplated the idea of making such an Exodus if our planet ever becomes unlivable, readers/viewers might sympathize further with the occupants of the alien ship.

Sounds like a good movie idea for sure, if I may say so myself!

I guess the big issue is what happens to public perception once we get a good look at them and see them as they really are. We are such a petty race, aren't we?

Dan

Dan, if you haven't read Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's Footfall, you really, really need to. They play out exactly your scenario. What I propose below is an alternative that will keep players guessing a bit because the aliens won't be behaving logically without knowing their plan.

If you have the technology to transport hundreds of thousands of people (ie the leaders of your race and their families, plus any skilled civilians they require), then you have the tech to do a lot of other things that would obviate the need to have a seedship try to conquer a habitable world in the first place.

So how about this? Upload people's intelligence. Then you have mining equipment, some robot factories and a ton of computers as payload. The rest are engines and fuel tanks. You get a smaller, more feasible ship, and get to carry far more people. PLUS you don't have to explain why they'd conquer earth: they could have sent several missions, all with copies of the same passengers!

Along the way, you'd have genetic databases of all your passengers, plus all the life on your world. This lets you grow everything: insects, pirhanas, shrubberies, etc, once you arrive and once you need it.

Anyway, when you arrive, I very much doubt that the Earth's ecology will be compatible with theirs. You'll get about as much nutritional value from eating a soda bottle as some alien fruit. So they'll have to eradicate all life on earth, plus eliminate the intelligent inhabitants who will resist the attack. So why not kill all the birds with one asteroid?

Dropping a few dinosaur killers would eliminate all life on earth, and in a couple thousand years things would settle down and their own lifeforms would have the upper hand. The problem is that it takes time to move those asteroids, and all the while the locals will be taking pot shots to stop you. Damn humans! The planet didn't have intelligent life when you'd launched, in fact it had just had a major extinction event so your Greens weren't as upset about taking a world that was half-ruined anyway. Now there are intelligent beings and the whole thing is a major ing .

So revised plan: on arrival, you camp out in the asteroids or rings of Saturn build a massive invasion fleet, and grow bodies for your population's consciousnesses to be downloaded into. They've been living in VR (depending on the race, either a simulated utopia, an endless series of training simulations/wargames or simply left in storage), and now are in fresh bodies, preparing for battle (if copies of their personalities are recorded for later use if they die, so much the better-- they'll take risks that no sane human soldier would and seem all the more alien for it!)

The mission isn't to conquer Earth (ridiculous considering the numbers involved). It's to tie the humans in knots and eliminate their space capability-- hold them off while your astroengineers get things squared away to sterilize the planet.

At first, the mission is diplomatic. You may even grow simulated human-like beings to act as ambassadors and lull the humans into complacency while you get your industrial infrastructure in the asteroids/kuiper belt/saturnian system/whatever off the ground. With decades spent approaching the system and an army of uploaded intelligence experts and scientists working the problem, expect the aliens to be pretty sophisticated about human biases and weaknesses. (Forge of G-d by Greg Bear and its sequel does this particularly well. The aliens use a series of lies and moral quandaries to paralyze the human defenses.) The idea isn't that they think they can stop humans from figuring it out and attacking; it's to hold them off while the aliens build up until they're unstoppably strong and it's too late.

They then bombard all our major telescopes, and keep the sky lit up and busy with all kinds of weird traffic.

Then you'll see landings and attempted "occupations" of major industrial centers and centers of political, economic and intellectual influence. Bombardments will just push the humans underground. Invasions keep them focused on driving the aliens back or trying for a negotiated solution. They don't realize that it's all a distraction and the aliens are just playing for time.

Wellspring,

Dude, you're scaring me. That is a very insightful strategy. Love it, love it, love it!

Thanks,

Dan
PS. As for what other critters they may have brought with them, to make them feel right at home:
TMP link

Alien Noah?.

Dweebs (reference: Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy)

I'd still expect to see Toilets.

I'd still expect to see Toilets.

But would we even recognize them for what they are? Do you know how to use the three seashells?

Alex, the beauty of my plan is that you won't need any toilets. Or toilet-related accessories.

Guys,

Check this out:

link

I guess those things are really called "generation ships":

link

Dan
TMP link

Great pics!

Here's Winchell Chung's take on it, with great pics:

link

Strictly speaking, generation ships are closed ecologies on their own. A generation ship could (and probably should) park in an uninhabitable system and live off asteroid mining. Expansion and population pressure lead you to build more generation ships, not wage wars of conquest.

Seedships are filled with genetic material and incubators. They aren't designed to operate indefinitely on their own. Instead, on arrival the ship grows an ecology from raw materials in the target system-- including possibly the crew!

You can go one better and not bother bringing the incubators; instead you use robots to build the incubators on site. Your crew might be trained in VR or by robots in nurseries, but they could also be downloaded consciousnesses stored in computers on board. Since you have manufacturing facilities on board in any concept, then building wombs is a trivial problem once you've arrived.

Such a ship could travel millions of years essentially dormant. It might be small enough to look like it holds only a couple hundred people, and yet have a crew in the millions (their consciousnesses running in VR) with genetic material to populate a whole planet.

The downside is that the generation ship is viable during transit. If it gets attacked or encounters trouble, it's hauling a fully capable crew. With a seedship, you are very vulnerable in transit. If you get attacked before you can get a mining/industrial operation going, your defenses are very thin. A smart seedship parks in the outer system, too small to notice, and builds a colony that becomes the basis of the invasion.

Check this out:

Looks like some of the fauna/flora in the cargo holds has escaped and taken over the ship. The creeping organisms seem to have started infiltrating the stasis chambers where they keep some of the alien specimens they captured in their previous travels.

Dan

Maybe those creepy tendrils are part of the ship's maintenance systems? Repairing the ship and monitoring the sleepers.

I remember a short story (can't recall title or author) about a biological starship that needed aliens of different types to be its various components, their 'pusher' creature who piloted the ship died and a human was selected to fill the role.

Wow. Sounds like a cool setting!

Dan

Space Ardvark – I remember that story. I read in high school in my science fiction literature class. Really cool how the hull was made up of one type of creature. Atmosphere processing was done by others.

-Eli

Eli, its been a while since I read it, so details are fuzzy. But yeah a collective of aliens all working together to make a starship is very cool.

I saw Steven Hawking's Universe DVD recentley and loved the idea of a near immortal alien race going from star system to star system, stripping whole planets for resources before using the local star to create a wormhole before going onto the next one. Cool, bit scary.

"alien race going from star system to star system, stripping whole planets for resources before using the local star to create a wormhole before going onto the next one"

That is a brilliant strategy!

Dan

It could be a part of their culture that dictates whether any of the aliens organic life remains at all. If they do not wish to be destroyed they could suspend their life functions; if they could replace their whole bodies their could only be brains in the ship, ready for the industries onboard to make them clone or borg bodies; or if they have no care for themselves to see and colonise the target the ship may simply have biotech facilities to simply create new members of their race, with no contact with the originals beyond any educational software install to teach the new beings skills. Orphans born on Earth, who may as well be thought of as Terran because they never were anywhere else.
If they were just software copies of the originals, they may create cloned children with real minds instead of simulated ones, or ditch organics completely and, if they must leave the ship themselves at all, become robots.
Unless they were programmed to, there would be no reason for them to try to make themselves into organic beings again, as their minds are just simulations; if that could actually be really them in the computer, not just a copy of the data in their brains being run as a program, we may as well say they don't need an ark as they would have FTL!

I think the "pusher" story was by Harlan Ellison.

I think so, I'll have toi look at my Holdstock Encyclpedia of Science Fiction.

Give them central Australia in exchange for their ship and HLV tech. Or we could offer them West Texas but they'd say no.

We could trade them California . . . or just give it to them for the heck of it.

Dan

The 'pusher' story was "Specialist" by Robert Sheckley:

link

So how about this? Upload people's intelligence. Then you have mining equipment, some robot factories and a ton of computers as payload. The rest are engines and fuel tanks. You get a smaller, more feasible ship, and get to carry far more people. PLUS you don't have to explain why they'd conquer earth: they could have sent several missions, all with copies of the same passengers!

Interesting scenario, but if they have uploaded consciousnesses, then why even bother with planets?

Unless of course the uploaded consciousnesses were already loaded into the environment into biologically compatible hosts that closely resembled their original bodies (and God created Man in His own image etc etc).