It's a relatively old sci-fi concept. the idea of sending off a space craft, a starship, out into space with the capabilities of sustaining life indefinitely aboard it. The ship is basically a cradle, containing self contained ecosystems and environments, with room for people to live aboard it.

The idea of a generation ship, is not that it can travel faster than light and reach worlds to offload its cargo, but that the people living on the ship will live their lives out aboard it until they die, fostering continuing generations of people aboard the starship until it eventually reaches its destination, and is then able to finally offload itself.

Space, for lack of a better term, is space. And we can't even truly grasp how enormous the distances are, so vast that the fastest known thing to us, light, is painfully slow. The only viable application of light speed would be travel in a solar system.

But beyond solar systems, and between them, the greater the distance the lower the viability of traveling at light speed to a destination.

So what's your take on the idea of a generation ship?

I thought Wall-E was a good film too.

I personally wouldn't be a part of it because I dislike the idea of complete isolation.

I believe that it is viable and could happen but if there is no defined outcome with benefit to those who are a part of the activity/lifestyle people won't opt-in unless something has happened to make living on Earth or any of the colonized planets not enjoyable. Because living on a ship would mean complete isolation there would need to be enough people for it to be it's own colony so somewhere from 1,500-4,000 people and with that many people there is a likelihood for quarrel and issues between citizens. I feel the only downfall would be people not liking being around each other and the possible sabotage by people with unstable minds.

I thought Wall-E was a good film too.

I didn't even watch that movie. I was just basing it off a really old sci-fi novel I read a long time back. In the unlikely event that we even reach the ability to travel at light speed, let alone bend the rules to move even faster than light, eventually some serious talk will be laid down about colonization and expansion.

Which is why I posed the question in the first place.

I think suspended animation would be a more successful route, with a skeleton crew rotation. The resources required to sustain multiple generations of people seems insurmountable.

a sleeper/seed ship combo would be a good bet.

A Gen ship probably isn't impossible. Really the only things stopping us from being able to do it now (aside from money)are life support and self sufficiency issues. I bet if we start getting serious about arcologies and space station building we'll get that stuff ironed out pretty good.

Edit: I should say technologically, there's a sociological aspect to Gen ships that surprisingly few people have explored.