Centuries gap

rmgil04 said:

I'm thinking of saying the main story begins around 500-600 years later. Too long or too short?

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Depends on where the non-terrestrials went and how long they stayed away before coming back to earth to ask for help. If they found a planet a hundred light-years away, and current technology doesn't permit them to go faster than one third of the speed of light, then it would have taken at least 300 years just to get there. If they turned back to Earth right away, then you've got a 600 year round trip unless they invented some kind of plausible FTL tech along the way.

rmgil04 said:

The lost ship was one of Earth's first attempts at long-range FTL.

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OK. I didn't know that.

They're coming back to Earth for help? They went out into space, stayed for X years, and have returned now. What has changed on Earth that they think coming back would help? They've got the best and brightest minds (or had) and they have the genetically engineered who should be faster/smarter/better than any Terran. Why come home?

The answer to that question should also fit into your time gap. If it takes them less than 300 years to travel one way, how long were they in the cluster? Also, depending on why they return for help, the longer they've been away, the more time there has been for things to change radically on Earth (global disasters, wars, etc), though those things could also happen within 100 or 400 or 600 years.

Are these scientists going to be frozen for the trip, kinda like in Alien, because no human could make it on a 300 year trip (that being the minimum). I'm assuming, if genetic engineering was outlawed on Earth (and there's a likelihood there will be certain bans on its use in the future), then these scientists would live just as long as any other human.

So how long does it take them to get there? Have they've been to this planet before in the past or at least sent probes/robots to test out if the environment is suitable for human life?

I'm just asking because you do need a strong foundation (even if it doesn't show up in your story) for why it happens and how is it all possible.

I think what you actually want to know is: how long does it take for humans to evolve? In which case, you'd want to find a geneticist. From what I know, a lot of it depends on the environment and its influence on our DNA as well as who we breed with.

well I'm not sure about space travel and how long that would take, but if it's a bunch of scientists and engineers manning this colony, then it shouldn't take at least 200 years for them to be in a completely different society. For a minimum it could be around 50 years, but I'm only counting the colony time.

Smart people tend to make societies fast, especially with little to no interference from Earth.

rmgil04 said:

... what is a reasonable amount of time it might take to build up a society assuming the ship had equipment and the colonists had the appropriate knowledge?

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Here would be my issues: It wouldn't take them very long at all.

When WE look at "building a society" I think we're meaning something very organic and gradual, something that is as much about forgetting past traditions as it is about "building" something new. And we're talking about that change from past to future society having to spread haphazardly amongst people holding a variety of different (and perhaps conflicting) views.

But maybe what YOU'RE proposing would be a small group of people (one ship's crew) who already hold very common shared goals and beliefs (having self-selected themselves to all be on one ship for one mission)

We might expect they would be predominently rational people, who wouldn't be shaped by and thoughtlessly passing on the existing culture's hodgepodge of beliefs and motivations.

Add to your mix that they're actually transfering THEIR OWN MEMORIES to future generations? So that even increases the emphasis and focus of that one society's mores and manners.

If they're messing around with future generations' genetics, which gene or behaviour is increased or reduced ... it could happen as quickly as the first pre-designed generation is born and matures, imo.

All this might help create a new "society" among them far more swiftly than it would back on Earth.

I'll say 150 years, if you WANT it to be a short time. If you want it to take longer, then it can take as long as you the Writer wish it to.

ETA: And Khimera9 said it faster and better while I was typing mine!

I assume (correct me if I'm wrong) that you want them to have developed their own society so there is some distinct differentiation between their society and Earth's society. I think I would give it at least 4 generations (however long that is, since a generation is varying) so that the youngest generation could not actually talk to the original generation, or at least only to a few of them. After all, if you think about it, our generation's society is very very different from that of our great-grandparents. It also will mean that their language will have diverged somewhat. Probobly not enough to be mutually unintelligible, just enough to cause misunderstandings (yay plot points!) and some confusion.