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
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.