Probably becasue Mormons will survive as a religion into the future where scientology obviously will not.

Something the Mormons have will prove important as the series moves forward.
-"Honesty is the best policy, but insanity is a better defense." -Steve Landesberg

Mormons, to me at least, are seen as pioneers in the 19th century due to the migration to and settlement of the Utah territory. I'm guessing they are intended to be space pioneers in this show.

All I know is they're going to be pissed.

what's wrong with Mormons? I'm a Jewish Israeli and most Jerusalemites I know love 'em! it's kinda cool that it's them planning this exodus, like the 6 months of food that's recommended, or whatever.
and unless i miss my guess, they're about to prove extremely useful to all of humanity, within this series.

What's with the space Mormons?
They are a pain in the a.., like in real life too.

I appreciate that this sounds funny, but in truth Mormons aren't looking for the planet Kolob. There is only one reference to Kolob in Mormon scripture, where the prophet Abraham sees in a vision of the heavens it being the place "nearest to God," and Mormons think of "finding Kolob" really only in the figurative sense of seeking to become closer to God spiritually in this life, and ultimately wanting to live in God's physical presence again in the life to come.
Source: Am lifelong Mormon.

Yeah they even talk about it in the show: "What if you get there and there is nothing?" "Well I guess we'll just keep on searching" hahaha. Crazy folks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolob

It's because their ultimate goal is to find planet Kolob. That's where Jesus and Donny Osmond live. Marie went to Mormon hell.
http://www.top10craziestmormonbeliefs.com/a/93

• I have a giant soap box and I intend to smash you with it.

Well I only read the first book, but I still kind of hope they can, uhm, recover the Nauvoo after it's "unscheduled test flight" haha. Would be such a shame even if it's Mormons.
Wait I take that back. It's better if humans sort out there crazy problems before spreading their beep all over other star systems.
I think it's definitely a dig at religion from the author. Some things you'll just not get out of people. It would be such a shame if the first interstellar colony would be by religious governed people that follow the teachings of a scam artist.

Well if you have read the book, what happens to the Nauvoo is kind of ironic. It's not funny when you think about how those Mormons must have felt as to what happen yet it kind of is.
And it's not strange at all they are the also the religion that believes in planets of beings etc. etc. and going there. Plenty of sci-fi have exclusively religious colonies it what they likely do if they can get enough money for an interstellar ship, and the Mormons have a lot of money.

Say what you want about them, at least the LDS(Mormons) are about religion.
Scientology, isn't a religion, no matter how much they thump their chest about it. It's a scam. It's a self-help group that got way out of control. I give them another 20 years.

Scientologists
2 reasons

1. if they mention the SS Xenu or whatever, they probably have to pay royalties.
2. no way it will be a thing in a few hundred years
   As for Mormons, consider the whole idea of spreading the gospel etc that is the idea of the ship to continue their mission. Plus it I guess keeps them separate from us bad normal sinners. Missionaries once traveled to Africa, the Pacific Islands, South America, Asia etc, after Earth is done, the belt, the moon and Mars another planet is the only place left to go.
   It's a moderately common trope - arc ships with missionaries.
   But South Park did it best with their Starvin' Marvin in Space episode.

This is a thoughtful response, I'll just add that the Mormon objectives in The Expanse mainly seem to be a pretty clever reflection of the Mormon concept of exodusthat idea that occasionally God leads his chosen people to a "promised land" in order to facilitate the growth of his chosen people and the subsequent spread of the gospel from the chosen people to all of his children. It's reflected in the Bible with the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, in the Book of Mormon with several groups of people traveling from the old world to the new world, and in modern Mormon history with the migration to the American west. I'm still working my way through the books, but give the authors a lot of credit for apparently incorporating this idea so well into their portrayal of Mormons as a group.
P.S. Mormons aren't required to keep reserve food on hand, but are encouraged to plan ahead for unanticipated hardshipsgenerally a "year's supply" is the ideal. It's part of the concept of "provident living" that most Mormons aspire to, with the encouragement of the church. See: https://providentliving.lds.org/?lang=eng
Source: I am a lifelong Mormon.

They require members to keep something like 6 months of reserve food
They do NOT require a six month, or even one year food storage plan. They teach that it is a good idea, but they don't require it.

Gotta say genius thinking here. Seriously.

Maybe they are just practical enough to accept these boundaries as long as they have to.
Ich bin kein ausgeklgelt Buch, ich bin ein Mensch mit seinem Widerspruch.
Conrad Ferdinand Meyer

Yeah, that was definitely the case in
Ascension
, with even further DNA-based restrictions placed on with whom you can procreate in order to prevent inbreeding.
Your replies will be graded and possibly used as material in future projects.

Never thought of that, you're right. Unless The Nauvoo is intended to be a relatively sparsely crewed ship at the outset, later generations of Mormons on it are gonna be much different than their Nauvoo forefathers, at least in their attitude toward being fruitful and multiplying.
What happens if enough of them call BS on their religion and the demographics change after several generationsooops, so far out for no real good reason, too late to turn it around.

Ironically, being in a generational ship, they would have to practice precisely the kind of population control they seek to avoid. They would have to enforce those controls for GENERATIONS. By the time they arrived at a new world, birth control and abstinence would be fundamental to their doctrine.
~ UNLESS ~ The ship is only partially crewed when it departs, allowing a lot of the volume to be filled later with new births.

30 billion? Wow.. It has been estimated that the Earth can handle up to 12 billion people, with all the crop lands maxed out. After that the $hit will hit the fan big time.
Just FYI the book talks a lot about yeast creating food replicas. We are really close to be able to genetically engineer the perfect food for the human. So you'd end up with something far more energy efficient that needs only a small area and water to feed tons of people. You won't need tractors and stuff.
How that food will taste is another matter
But currently I have already switched to "soylent" which is a powder you mix in water. It's not the perfect diet, but you'd need to invest a lot of time to eat healthier. There are variants that have lots of different tastes. Right now it uses conventional agricultural products and is almost vegan, in the near future you will have genetically engineered food that will give you a perfect diet and requires almost no land.
The bigger problem really is how to keep all those people sane lol. And what to do with the 90% that don't have any jobs to do. And with those addicted to living in a virtual reality.

I'm reading the book now, and I'm kind of confused about why the Mormon ship has to be a generation ship.
The ships they use in the book use constant acceleration drives and are capable of greater than 1G acceleration. At 1G constant acceleration, Tau Ceti should be about maybe 20 years away factoring in deceleration.
Fuel consumption by a ship that size is probably a factor, although the Rocinante they escape from the Donnager in was said to have 35 years worth of fuel pellets in reserve although there was no mention of what 35 years worth of use was meant to be.
I'm sure there are other engineering factors taken into consideration, such as the risks of very high speed and dust or other objects they might run into which would rip the ship apart.

Why would they do that? The Mormons are good at technology and they like it. Are you making the assumption that every religious person wants to ban technology? If so you need to get out more.
Read the books and find out what their motivations and goals are. My comments were about a fictional group in a fictional story and you still manage to get upset over them. Amazing.

There's some interesting info about a celestial object mentioned in the book of Abraham: Kolob.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolob
"Kolob is a star or planet described in Mormon scripture. Reference to Kolob is found in the Book of Abraham, a work that is traditionally held by adherents of the Mormon faith as having been translated from an Egyptian papyrus scroll by Joseph Smith, the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement. According to this work, Kolob is the heavenly body nearest to the throne of God.While the Book of Abraham refers to Kolob as a "star", it also refers to planets as "stars", and therefore, some Mormon commentators consider Kolob to be a planet.
Whether the series or books makes any connections to that name, belief or not remains to be seen.
As is, it's an interesting part of the story.