Project Hyperion explores the feasibility of crewed interstellar travel via generation ships, using current and near-future technologies. A generation ship is a hypothetical spacecraft designed for long-duration interstellar travel, where the journey may take centuries to complete. The idea behind a generation ship is that the initial crew would live, reproduce, and die on the ship, with their descendants continuing the journey until reaching the destination. These ships are often envisioned as self-sustaining ecosystems, featuring agriculture, habitation, and other necessary life-support systems to ensure survival across multiple generations.
A generation ship is a theoretical type of spacecraft designed for long-duration interstellar travel, where the journey may take centuries or millennia to complete. The idea behind a generation ship is that the initial crew would live, reproduce, and die on the ship, with their descendants continuing the journey until reaching the destination.
The mission duration is 250 years from launch to arrival at the target star system. (Flight speeds of a few %c to the closest stars).
The habitat provides Earth gravity via artificial gravity via rotation but parts of the habitat can have reduced gravity.
The habitat shall provide accommodation and decent living conditions for 1000 +-500 people over the entire trip duration.
The technologies used shall have a TRL≥2.
REGISTRATION PERIOD
Competition announcement : 1st November 2024
Phase 1 Deadline : 2nd of February 2025
Phase 2 Deadline : 4th May 2025
Winners Announcement : 2nd June 2025
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
There is no need. Just carry some frozen embryos. Birth them when the ship reaches its destination. Robot nursemaids and teachers with raise and educate the children. This way your have much smaller and cheaper starships.
I would hope anyone thinking about this would go for at least a century of experience with lots of rotating space habitats within the solar system first.
Related: I always wondered why the Biosphere 2 people didn’t just say up front we are not going to get it right the first time. Lets close it up, see how long it takes for something to go wrong, open it up and fix whatever that was, rinse & repeat until it goes for decades without needing to be opened up. THEN we can try duplicating whatever worked in a rotating space habitat or a moon or Mars base.
Would we want a single ship?
It seems to me a fleet, per Battlestar Galactica c.1980s is more robust, redundant, and easier to construct; assuming a significant orbital or cis-lunar or inner-solar system shipyard infrastructure.
And… not convinced on the emptiness of interstellar space or the low likelihood of significant, frequent, and destructive particulate, radiative, or destabilizing entities/ fields; we are certainly flying bloated shells/ forward-facing umbrellas — though the idea that one or both Voyagers are still transmitting considering how far into the Kuiper is unexpected…
And… what is our minimum complexity intelligent roster/ cargo – a couple-hundred, fully alert, permanently-awake, middle-aged, normal-lifespan professionals/multi-skilled crew members seems an inefficient ‘society-starter’.
Propulsion design and ship configuration seem the easiest of the objectives.
tothatl commented, “Not bad to update our dreams of greater things, even if they turn out to be rather unlike we thought. I suspect when this really happens, the technologies and method for doing it will be nothing like we believe today.”
A “dream of greater things” that is “nothing like we believe today” would be to completely bypass a generation spaceship and achieve unbelievably rapid interstellar travel using the Riemann Hypothesis (which could also give us intergalactic travel to anywhere in the universe and time travel to both the past and the future). The only design necessary would be that of today’s ships which achieve Earth orbit – minus the chemical propellents, and with the as-yet-uninvented addition of materials giving Riemann’s hypothesis practical application.
The Riemann hypothesis, proposed in 1859 by the German mathematician Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann, is fascinating. It deals with the distribution of prime numbers and is concerned with “nontrivial zeros” on the “critical line”, stating that these zeros lie on the vertical axis of the Complex Plane i.e. on the y-axis in then-undiscovered Wick rotation. Planet Mercury’s particles and orbit are related to Wick Rotation since they rotate and precess. Since the critical line links Wick rotation to the Riemann hypothesis, Mercury’s particles/orbit – and spacetime in general – may be describable by Riemann. The critical line pertains to zeros – so the distances in space-time that could be described by the Riemann hypothesis might equal zero, making time travel to both the past and future possible as well as making instant intergalactic travel feasible. This seems to be related to cosmology’s Holographic Principle stating that the 3rd dimension is a projection of information from the 2nd dimension. Distance in the 3rd dimension can be circumvented by reprogramming the ones and zeros in the precise, merely superficially probabilistic Quantum Mechanics proposed here (exact calculations can be attained by considering the electronic BITS of 1 and 0 as Hidden Variables compatible with quantum mechanics).
Or here me out we just find an atom that is neutral and can be used for entanglement. Then using currently development and progress of quantum entanglement i.e. hydrogen teleportation (so far) using it to entangle our human information. Pass it on to the tracer atoms at said destination lock on and teleport. Also can be done with our construction materials/ fuel and supply’s maybe even water and oxygen just gotta get to testing and maybe bend a few ethical guidelines. To get it moving long faster. 🤷♂️
It sounded interesting, and I do have a friend who has worked as an architect, but the requirement for a social scientist on the team might be a stretch given my circle of acquaintances.
Certainly, I do have some well developed notions in this area.
It may be better to genetically engineer plants and animals for near zero Gee, rather than have rotating structures to supply pseudo-gravity. So much less structural mass is needed if the ship is not applying centripetal acceleration.
As a first try, an asteroid, or comet could be mined for materials, loaded with equipment, and started on it’s way by gravity assist maneuvers. Part of the equipment would be “bindings” for the bolide to lower the Roche limit of the “ship” that would be repurposed after launch is over.
On it’s journey outward from the sun, the former asteroid would be mined for reaction mass, and what ever other elements are needed. Facilities will be inside the body of the ship, with nuclear reactors of some sort providing work, and heat for the ship. Thrust would be provided by a omnivorous VASMIR rocket, which could ionize, and eject most materials.
Acceleration would be low, so at least for a while the ship could serve as an outgoing research base with traffic between it, and the inner system. Well equipped parties could be dropped off at outer planets on the way.
One day, humanity will make the big jump to other star systems. No doubt about it.
Just not that soon, though.
Space is so vast and we are just getting the tip of our toes wet in the cosmic ocean.
This century will be the one where we finally dive into it again, trying our first steps and braces into the deep.
Mars, the Moon, orbit and the inner solar system will be our playground. And that will keep us busy enough.
Not bad to update our dreams of greater things, even if they turn out to be rather unlike we thought. I suspect when this really happens, the technologies and method for doing it will be nothing like we believe today.
I’ve often thought that any such ship would need to be mostly cubic kilometer iceberg to deal with small/moderate/ionized impacts.
I tell my son we’re on a world ship named ‘Earth’ and we have only vague ideas about its trajectory within our galaxy.
The interstellar medium has a density of about one atom per cubic centimeter, and consists almost entirely of hydrogen and helium. A fraction of a percent of higher elements present mostly as small molecules. You’re looking at maybe each square meter of the ship encountering 40mg of gas over the course of a 250 year trip. The odds of actually encountering anything substantially larger than a molecule are not great, a grain of sand would be classed by insurers as “an act of God”.
Mind you, at even 20% of light speed, that tiny flux of mass represents a very high radiation environment, (100Rem/s at 10% of C!) so you do have to do something to block it.
So, you’d throw a disk of foil in front of the ship, suspending it there with light pressure. Neutral atoms passing through would have an electron stripped, and become ions. Then you put a decent strength magnetic field between you and the foil, and magnetically deflect the incoming ion ‘beam’. Any dust particle would blow a very tiny hole in the foil and become a blob of plasma, also deflected. Grains of sand? Still just a small hole, but they’d probably hit the field hard enough to go through, you would want a physical barrier. But hardly a kilometer of it! Layered sheet metal would do the trick.
Whenever you got a hole in the foil, you’d push a little patch up against it using lasers, no problem.