Engineers have designed a spacecraft that could take up to 2,400 people on a one-way trip to Alpha Centauri, the star system closest to our own. The craft, called Chrysalis, could make the 25 trillion mile (40 trillion kilometer) journey in around 400 years, the engineers say in their project brief, meaning many of its potential passengers would only know life on the craft.
Chrysalis is designed to house several generations of people until it enters the star system, where it could shuttle them to the surface of the planet Proxima Centuri b — an Earth-size exoplanet that is thought to be potentially habitable.
This plan is purely hypothetical, as some of the required technology, like commercial nuclear fusion reactors, don’t yet exist. However, hypothetical projects like this one can still add to our existing knowledge base and help engineers improve upcoming designs.
Their presentation on Canva
One-way trip to an exoplanet? Sounds like a perfect fit for billionaires!
the planet Proxima Centuri b — an Earth-size exoplanet that is thought to be potentially habitable
I feel like we might want to double check this before launching the Chrysalis. Cool concept, though.
We haven’t sent even a probe. No wait, sending a probe is not even on our current plans.
The people are the probe
Well, that’s a way too expensive probe then.
I believe i read somewhere that a light probe, accelerated by a laser beam, could make a flyby there as close as 27 years from launch.
Oh, neat, well it was too early in the morning, but true, you can make things faster if you don’t care about the survival of prganic matter.
There is the Starshot Breakthrough project that study the feasibility of sending probes to our closest stars.
Imagine if they had a means to communicate with Earth when they got there. Their first message: “We made it.”
I believe we gonna solve interstellar communication way before even launch something towards another star.
The mormons are gonna be pissed…
It is the year 0079 of the Universal Century. A half-century has passed since Earth began moving its burgeoning population into gigantic orbiting space colonies. A new home for mankind, where people are born and raised.
And die.
Nine months ago the cluster of colonies furthest from the Earth, called Side 3 proclaimed itself the Principality of Zeon and launched a war of independence against the Earth Federation. Initial fighting lasted over one month and saw both sides lose half their respective populations. People are horrified by the indescribable atrocities that had been committed in the name of independence.
Eight months had passed since the rebellion began. They are at a stalemate.
This reminds me of Orphans of the Sky by Robert A. Heinlein. The inhabitants of the ship descend into barbarism over several generations and eventually forget there is a universe outside the ship.
Yeah, i think psychology is the biggest danger. A lot could happen in 400 years. Look what happened here on earth since 1625. lmao
I love the idea of generation ships, and I think we should use them even if they don’t end up being as important in the long run.
Bold claim, when electronics can’t even last for 10 years in consumer devices.
I don’t know, voyager is still working (although it had problems in the past). The plan is that they will produce new things in the way. It is a 400 year old journey after all.
tbf that’s on purpose
No, it’s just normal behavior. Soldering joints tend to break after a number of hot and cold cycles such as a PC that runs hot for 8h a day. The chemistry in capacitors breaks down after some years. Solid state drives, CDs, DVDs and magnetic storage also has a limited life. This also applies to parts that have never been used since they left the factory, it just happens because the chemistry inside degrades.
Voyager I and Voyager II begs to differ.
We are able to build things that last decades, we just don’t want to do it.
I am not saying it is simple nor that we have all the tech yet, but we demonstrated it could be done.Moreover, I think that people make a basic error when talking about generational ships: everyone think that it would be something like Star Trek or any other SciFi movie, but in reality it should be build to be maintenable without any external support so it must be simple, don’t require high tech to function and redundant. So forget modern processors, the computer, like everything else, should be reparaible without any external assistance (and I agree that mayba a processor don’t last anywhere near 400 years even if not used).
in reality it should be build to be maintenable without any external support so it must be simple, don’t require high tech to function
A generational ship is still a spaceship though, which requires a pretty high level of tech. You can’t build a spaceship out of sticks and stones.
I suspect generational ships will have to be like small cities, with fairly advanced and extensive manufacturing capabilities.
It’s called planned obsolence, and it is absolutely a common theme in consumer products. It’s not exactly new either. We were taught about it in Design & Tech classes here in the UK.
That’s not to say general wear and tear in soldered joints and so on doesn’t also happen, of course it does. But often, this is seen as a feature, rather than an issue by the manufacturer, and thus becomes a part of the design, rather than something to improve upon.
When we were taught this some 20 years ago, I remember the teacher showing us one of these lemon juicers and pointing out the biggest design flaw was its lack of failure points. The likelihood is, it will last years; ensuring no repeat custom… Stick a hinge on it like this one, and you’ve gone from a product that will be handed down a generation; to one that will likely fail after X amount of uses. Companies often test for X too, when designing, And will aim for a window slightly larger than any warranties, in order to protect themselves from having to pay out, but also giving the customer a false sense of security.
Sorry, but I don’t believe in entropy.
they do have a physicist in the design team but how do you plan this without at least a couple engineers?
Well they have a space mission engineer. But the project is not technical, like how to build it, its more like a master plan.
I perhaps don’t quite get what the end game is with such projects but if it critically depends on multiple processes/components which is very hard to achieve (say there has been minimal progress on it until now ex: teleportation) then I feel like it undermines the project. Ofcourse a physicist might help with such stuff when it is science related but there will those that pertain more to engineering.
I think the future technologies that they rely on are mainly the fusion power generation and fusion propulsion. I wouldn’t say that they are far future technologies.
