An alien civilization that had passed through the industrial revolution might see the need for mining of the other planets, satellites and remaining objects of its own solar system. As the civilization moves into and through the genetic grand transition, they may need more resources, and have to go to distant planets or even objects beyond the range of their furthest out planet. It might well be assumed that just like our solar system, the typical solar system will have many objects farther out, where their orbits are not sorted out by the main planets, but still within the gravitational grasp of their star. The period of time to go out to these planets might be quite long, compared with the lifetime of an alien. Is hibernation the answer?
Recall first that there are less expensive ways to move within a solar system, once travel becomes necessary and not too infrequent. As discussed elsewhere, putting a transport vessel in an elliptical orbit and using the gravity of the target object to resteer the trajectory back to the home planet, and then doing the opposite, cuts the propulsion mass and propulsion energy down to that needed for just steering operations. These orbits are long, however.
For comparison, the New Horizons spacecraft flew nine years to get from Earth to Pluto, even with a gravity assist from Jupiter. That’s an example of a direct flight. For these cheap orbit transport times, we might use the orbital period of Pluto, which is about 248 years. It might be thought that these cheap orbits are too long to use for supplies, but remember that they would be like pipelines. It doesn’t matter how long a pipeline takes to move something, as long as there is a constant flow in and a constant flow out. They take time to fill up and get moving, but an alien civilization, planning on lasting for the order of a million years with these resources, wouldn’t have any problem with this. So, if aliens need to be move from their home planet out to some distant mining station, they need some trick to help them survive the journey, and intergenerational ships are just a ridiculously expensive idea. Hibernation is not.
Some alien civilizations might have evolved to hibernate before they became intelligent, and kept that going during all the civilizational transformations that they passed through. Even so, seasonal hibernation, if it were anything like what happens on Earth, aren’t exactly what is called for by interplanetary flight. An Earth bear hibernates by slowing down his respiration rate, his metabolism rate, and his activity level. Cellular processes are still going on. The bear uses up stored energy, fats and then whatever else provides energy, as it hibernates. If there was an intravenous supply of energy, hibernation might be extended, provided the external signals to wake were excluded. The bear is still aging, although at a reduced rate.
Hibernation for interplanetary flights might involve some other technology developed by the alien civilization during the genetic grand transformation. Aging might be eliminated, or at least reduced in impact, by genetic changes. The metabolic changes for hibernation might be written into the aliens’ genetic code, or perhaps if they can achieve genetic fluidity, it could be an option rather than a necessity. Again, speciation is a possibility, and one new species of aliens would be created for interplanetary work. Many changes in the structure and chemistry of an alien might be made for this species, but one of the changes might allow episodes of hibernation.
Elsewhere it was discussed how species might be created, intelligent to whatever degree desired, distinct from the aliens for the purpose of performing work for their civilization. These were called “intellos”, who are disposable creatures, might like humans regard cattle, sheep, dogs, and other domesticated or farm animals. Instead of aliens being transformed into a more suitable species for interplanetary travel, a separately designed species could be formed, completely tailored to the tasks and travel necessities for interplanetary mining. It is almost a policy decision, as to whether such creatures would be classed as aliens or intellos. How the alien civilization would treat them would be quite different. Either way, hibernation would have to be a technology that was used to enable aliens or intellos to be transported via cheap orbits out to the more distant objects of their solar system.
There are social aspects that crop up if it is aliens who do the hibernation and travel. These social aspects seem extreme to us, living in the industrial era, but after an alien society passes through the genetics grand transition, they would not have such an extreme impact. For example, suppose an alien is living on the home planet, decides or is chosen for an interplanetary mission, and goes to sleep on a transport vessel for two hundred and fifty years one say, and the same for the return. Assume their lifetime was only a hundred years. This means when they returned, five lifetimes would have passed. No one they knew before would still exist, except if there was some home planet hibernation for some reason unfathomed by us. But after the genetics grand transition, aliens are much more fungible. Everyone would have the same basic genetics, the same intelligence, the same health, the same education, the same training, and so on; each one of these would have been optimized to grant each alien the best possible life. But this means that there is not much difference between aliens after the genetics grand transition as before.
There would also be industrial gestation, meaning families would not exist, so relatives would not exist and there would be no parting with relatives at the start of the trip. Other things would be nearly indistinguishable, as the technology would have stopped changing, so society would have stopped changing. Population would likely be the same, at some optimum level. The cities would be continually regenerated, so there would be only a few details different, rather than whole new cities formed and other ones shrunk or otherwise changed. There would be no upgrade in education, as everything would have been known before the alien left on his voyage and it would still be know when he returned. So the impact of hibernation and extended life and interplanetary voyaging would be fairly minimal, both to the alien and to the civilization in which he lived.
Instead, the pressing question is whether it is better to create aliens on the home planet and ship them out to the mining colony, or ship out enough equipment to create aliens there, train them, and let them live their whole lives in the colony. This is an economics question, and likely depends on the size of the ore deposit, plus a large number of aspects that we haven’t begun to think about yet. So, hibernation is possible, technologically and socially, but may not be used for economics reasons.
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