Ark Battles

Another story idea for today.

This one takes place in the near future.  Planet Earth discovers that it's going to die through our observations.  We have to build a space ship that can house people in it, indefinitely.

I was thinking of going with an asteroid event, but I've been playing with the idea of global warming or another human caused catastrophe.  A lot of the initial drama is people fighting to be the ones to go.  I would love to get in to the details on how this would be proposed.  I also need to find out how many people would be required to get enough diversification in the DNA of the population.  How much room would be needed for plants and animals?  Which plants/animals should be taken?

Do the people take tests?  Olympic style challenges to see who is the best from each nation/race?  IQ tests?

What would be done to prevent any unnecessary diseases or ailments from coming with?

How big would it need to be to house everything required where the life could survive indefinitely.

Hypothetically, what if we never really got any new huge breakthroughs when it comes to technology?  What if we're almost at the top and we're just refining what we have?  There is a wall when it comes to technology progress, every research tree has to come to an end eventually.

So if that is the case, how could we build this ship using what we have, now?  How long would it take?

I was thinking of writing about multiple generations of people, where it takes hundreds of years to build and thousands of years to get anywhere.  The initial construction takes place in space, using robots to build it out of an asteroid.  The humans go through test runs, living in isolated facilities.  They have conflicts and there are fights about which families should go.

People on the Earth that didn't pollute/harm it so much are upset because it's mostly the rich who are going and they are the ones that could have helped the planet but didn't.

So, I was thinking of making this a surprise to the reader later, but it turns out they built a second ark and they both used the same "exit strategy" on leaving the solar system.  They end up leaving in a long orbit of one another, where they pass close by each other every X amount of years.  They fight each other when this happens.  At some point, the power goes out, everything but the emergency stuff.  This cuts off the information and over time, they forget who they are.  It turns out that the other ship has hacked their system, even turning their robots against them before they board and try to take over.