When we have interstellar travel — you can be older than your mother, but younger than your son
How our society will be different once we can travel closer to the speed of flight
Once upon a time, a very long time from now — humanity will be spread across the stars. I don’t mean all of them; maybe just the nearest ones. In the beginning anyway. In the beginning of the future.
Gilese 832C, a habitable planet about 16 light-years away is home to millions…nay, billions of humans. As such, it will be home to centres of industry, education, governments, and tourism. People will need to regularly traverse between Earth and Gilese to capitalise on opportunities availed by this.
To do this, you will, of course, take interstellar capable space ships. These ships travel at a considerable fraction at the speed of light — say 0.5c (half the speed of light). As such, the journey between these two worlds will take 32 Earth years to complete.
To ensure commuters don’t waste their lives away on the spaceship, they are put into near stasis for the duration of the trip. Thus only age a few months whilst everyone not on the ship (back on Earth or Gilese) age the full 32 years.
Now imagine this playing out with multiple other star systems in the mix. Some would require less travel time (Proxima Centauri b would only take 8 years at this speed for instance), and others more. You, your family and your friends would all visit these at different times in different orders for different lengths.
Consider also what that means for relationships. You might only run into your friends every few decades — with them sometimes looking physiologically older than you and at other times becoming younger than you again. Each time you meet, your relative ages will change!
Due to the distances involved and message transmission speeds being limited to the speed of light — your messages would take years to be delivered. You won’t be able to have real-time conversations with them like you can on earth over the telephone or Skype.
Societal systems will also need to cater for such long periods of inactivity. How long would bank accounts hold records for; what term can you get a mortgage for? How will demographic based civic planning work with such unpredictable death rates?
Will humanity be able to adapt to a non-continuous existence? Or will each colony of people stay on their own side of the milky way to live out their lives to avoid such complications? What do you think?
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