[ WP ] You were born on a colonizing spacecraft on your way to a distant star . You are the middle generation of history ; born to late to have seen Earth , and to early to live to see your destination .

I feel as though this journal may be found someday, by descendants, or perhaps by a different form of intelligent life altogether, so here ’ s where I ’ m at mentally on this journey. 
 
 Life really doesn ’ t feel too different here, as far as I can tell. We have our civilization archived and most of the data from the probe to our destination has been extrapolated to recreate realistic conditions in the artificial reality chambers. 
 
 From text, we know the centripetal force on the inner ring is the same as is on earth. The outer ring ’ s force is same of that as our destination planet. Although I ’ ll never truly experience it, I know roughly what experience on earth was like. 
 
 I would suspect a passenger who left earth knowing they ’ d live out the rest of their life aboard would be homesick as the technology for recreating environments hadn ’ t been perfected until only a few centuries ago. Which makes me wonder what technology we ’ ll be able to invent in the coming generations. 
 
 This is one of my philosophical queries, we are a self-sustaining ship, capable of synthesizing resources from hydrogen picked up. I understand why we left earth, or why we thought we should have left, that is. The thing about life aboard the ship is that nobody has gone crazy, unlike what was predicted, I suppose they are doing a good job of keeping us sane with the help of artificial reality. I question whether or not we are even approaching a destination sometimes, we are capable of progressing as a civilization and thriving aboard this floating boat of the stars, so why even bother landing it at all? 
 
 From what I ’ ve read, life here isn ’ t unlike that of the early 21st century, when we began to prepare for departure. I was born, I have a family with siblings, I went through grade school, I attend the university focusing on engineering, naturally. The funny thing is, the technology here is so powerful and complicated most of the inhabitants shy away from technical focuses. Most simply spend their time in artificial reality. The elderly stay mostly on the inner ring, or back on “ Earth ”. The young and anxious stay on the outer ring where they impatiently wait to reach a destination they ’ re not likely going to survive to see. And there is nothing wrong with this, we have sufficient food so we can sustain most of the population. We are assigned a reproduction requirement, to keep a constant in and out flow of resources and to ensure capacity doesn ’ t reach or surpass its limit so most live and die on either earth or our destination without leaving the ship. 
 
 Each generation has a fraction of those that go on to make scientific breakthroughs as doctors, engineers, mathematicians, and scientists. I suspect however, regarding my point made earlier, that we ’ ll soon collectively realize a destination isn ’ t necessary. Our advancements in technology are bringing us closer to synthesizing hydrogen out of thin air which will lead to creation of any element we ’ d like. With this technology, why not build another ship? We have the tools, resources, fuel, and the technical skill to replicate our ship, why only one. We could send another to a different destination, do the same thing until we realize it isn ’ t necessary and keep building and building until we soon colonize the whole galaxy in these giant, floating centrifuges. 
 
 We ’ re far from that now, but I ’ ve read excerpts of those who left earth on this ship who had wondered if their primitive artificial reality would ever be good enough to fool them from the real thing, and we have that so I ’ ll just keep studying. 

