Hypothetical: SETI discovers an alien civilization. A ship is constructed that can take 10 people?

Question

What s*x ratio should the crew be and what occupations? You may assume the ship itself requires no maintenance or direction. The trip will last 10 years. Each crewperson may have 2 specialties.

Answer 1

Its quite a similar question to the ones asked at job interviews to assess an applicants grasp of creativity and practicality.

The best answers i have heard (and i can remember them all off the top of my head) are:

Law Enforcer

Religious Leader

Military Personnel

World Leader

Diplomat (arguably opposite the of a world leader)

Actor/Entertainer

Physiologist/Shrink

Foe/heal/Bad guy (ie a bad person so the rest of the crew can unite together against him - gives the crew a commen cause over the 10 year journey, we all need a bad guy to keep us busy, just ask the world leader)

Biologist

And finally the best answer-

A prostitute to keep the crew 'entertained'. Also if the alien civilization are hostile she can get together with the biologist to create a biological weapon from her err... 'diseases' to wipe them out!

Answer 2

Megadumb

Answer 3

I've wondered about this before, too, Richard.  

The one who listed all the people a job interview would expect you to say, has shown something I have discovered over the years: People who write questions like that, and who score them for job interviews seldom have any idea what they are talking about.

You don't need any political or religious leaders.  We shouldn't be in a hurry to advertise our faults. Additionally, there would never be any way to resolve which religions or political points of view should be represented.  You also would have no reason for military personnel, as this would convey potentially hostile intentions.  Surely, some of your people would have had military backgrounds, but that would only be secondary to their primary roles.  Entertainers won't be necessary. Of all the qualified people for a trip like this, there are bound to be several with a sense of humor or some talents others might enjoy en route.  For example, Judy Resnick was a concert pianist.

http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/re...

Law enforcement is also a waste.  From among the tens of thousands of candidates from around the world, you just have to find ten who will never require enforcement. You also have to find people who are generally good-natured and have always been regarded as easy to work with.  They should be people who are not easily annoyed.

What you need primarily are scholars, mostly of the technical type, who have interests or secondary degrees in a variety of humanities.  A ten year mission would require a considerable crew of experts.  Among those technical experts, you would probably need two or three surgeons.  Here, a good example would have been David Brown.

http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/br...

The s*x issue is the one that gives me the most problems.  It would be difficult to pair people up by sexual compatibility from among your best candidates.  I think many of your best choices would have to be bypassed because they are not sexually attractive to or attracted to any of the other crew-people.  Then there's the question of marriage.  Most candidates would already be married.  This would present major problems.  I think clear pairing would be necessary, because despite how sophisticated these people are, there is bound to be competition and possibly even conflict, if it's all just a big sexual commune.  I think it would have to be five monogamous pairs.

I see this crew as consisting entirely of people with MDs or PhDs in engineering and/or science.  Then you would look for a mix of talents and interests from among those.  Finally, you are somewhat limited by age.  You would have to work from a relatively young crop of candidates.

Answer 4

8 women and 2 men, then women will be kept in hibernation for 10 years, while the two men will take turns in hibernation so one person will be awake at all time to repair the ship and make course corrections, the women will be revived 4 at a time every 5 years to prevent radiation damage to the cells, once to this new alien world all the women will be revived and impregnated with genetic material from several pre screened male subjects, a minimum of 180 people are needed to create a stable gene pool so the women would be expected to give birth once per year until the end of there days.