The Universe Within 12.5 Light Years

I’d be pretty pissed at my parents if I was born on a Starship and condemned to die on it too. Imagine living your entire life in a Winnebago and you can’t even go outside.

I follow what you're saying, but many folks on this planet have far less opportunities than such a trip might provide. Guaranteed food, housing, access to cutting edge healthcare, a likely united community. I'm assuming these ships would be fairly big. It would definitely be different but-- would it be as bad as we think?

It would be better than living your entire life in a literal cage on earth. But I think it would be worse than even being a slave on earth. A slave can touch grass and hope to run away. A person born on a generational ship would be effectively enslaved (to perform necessary ship duties). You mention 'cutting edge healthcare', but on earth that requires the substantial and diverse resources of an industrial civilization. The research of millions of people and the infrastructure to breed nuclides and manufacture precise machinery. Does this generational ship have a modern chip fab on it!?

Would you really? when it's the only thing you've ever known you'd probably just accept it as normal.

I hate to break it to you, but that's also your current fate on Our Winnebago Earth.

Yeah but it's a BIG Winnebago.

Unfortunately, I suspect that any starship that could bring with it all of those services would also bring with it the economic and political strife of Earth. The are lots of examples of democratic states turning into oligarchies or worse in recent history so that can't work in it's current form at least.

The closest analogue in the real world to the ideal that you describe is, I think, Cuba. It does guarantee food and housing, and it does have a remarkably advanced healthcare system plus what is reportedly a united community. Perhaps most interesting of all, it's politically isolated like a starship would have to be by its nature. Even then, one would have to be either pretty brave or desperate to go along on the journey, as modern Cuba has only been around for half a century and that's at the absolute minimum of an intergalactic starship's practical mission duration.

... which begs the question of who would really arrive at the destination. Our own civilization starts to rebel at things that were heralded by the previous generation because the current generation doesn't remember the problems that were solved. In two generations, the humans that remain might not leave the ship at all despite having a whole planet (or multiple) to inhabit.

Their kids will leave the spaceship though. And some dare devils of their generation.

I doubt that number would be sufficient. Such ship would have to be very stable society. So getting enough people to harshness of unsettled planet is very tall ask.

I believe historically it was either for profit, which there is unlikely to be much in medium term. Or because the new place was expected to be better. Mostly due to resource constraints. But generation ship should be quite optimal. And well outside magic level tech there is not much to do on empty planet.

I think you'd have to manufacture a culture, with rituals and habits designed to keep people focused so that the meaning of their lives was tied to the end-goal. It would make a good story :)

you could say the same for being born on Earth instead of a 10x bigger planet. Also starships don't have to be that small.