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Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition

projecthyperion.org

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Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition

#21
This feels like the grown-up ideological successor to the International Space Settlement Design Competition for high school students. That was (is? anyone still in the know?) a competition that ran for years out of NASA Houston as a pet project of some engineers and contractors who wanted to engage and cultivate the next generation of aerospace minds.

Teams would submit proposals for the design of a permanent space settlement (sometimes on the surface of a body, sometimes orbiting). Winners from across the world were invited to compete together live in 4 huge multi-national teams to design and pitch another settlement over a long sleepless weekend. As a two-time finalist, I can say it was an incredible experience for so many reasons.

This new competition seems like its goal is to actually take the design/ideation of working professionals as a serious output, as opposed to the educational value of simulating this sort of thing for students, which is what drove the ISSDC.

Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition

#26

I doubt the human psyche is capable of such a voyage while being awake the whole time. Even with all the toys and biomes, life will get boring and pointless fast, producing unfulfilled needs, disorder, conflict and revolt. People can't be ants in a colony working for such a narrowly defined goal through a lifetime, especially not multi-generationally. Our existence is based on constant questioning and revolutions. A…

Give the people some Minecraft on steroids and they wouldn't notice how half-century flew by.

Or those people of the past who would for generations not leave their village/county doing the same thing generation after generation.

Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition

#27

I doubt the human psyche is capable of such a voyage while being awake the whole time. Even with all the toys and biomes, life will get boring and pointless fast, producing unfulfilled needs, disorder, conflict and revolt. People can't be ants in a colony working for such a narrowly defined goal through a lifetime, especially not multi-generationally. Our existence is based on constant questioning and revolutions. A…

> doubt the human psyche is capable of such a voyage while being awake the whole time

The human population fell to fewer than 10,000--possibly under one hundred--in the last Ice Age [1][-1]. There were almost certainly bands of fewer than 1,000 individuals who had to migrate for generations.

> life will get boring and pointless fast

Maybe on v1000. The first tens could expect a constant war footing against entropy and the unknown.

[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2012/10/22/163397584/h...

[-1] Possible counterfactual: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44818098

Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition

#28

I doubt the human psyche is capable of such a voyage while being awake the whole time. Even with all the toys and biomes, life will get boring and pointless fast, producing unfulfilled needs, disorder, conflict and revolt. People can't be ants in a colony working for such a narrowly defined goal through a lifetime, especially not multi-generationally. Our existence is based on constant questioning and revolutions. A…

You're on a voyage through space in a big spaceship right now!

Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition

#29

Link to Canva presentation for the winning entry https://www.canva.com/design/DAGmr3ubC8E/LHHAeeAIGGQe_TkZVs-...

Reading through this in detail just cements that we are never leaving this solar system unless we discover some new physics to get around our speed limitations.

> we are never leaving this solar system unless we discover some new physics to get around our speed limitations

The winning proposal coasts at 0.01c. Propulsion systems--not the speed of light--and thus engineering, not phsyics, are the relevant limitors.

Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition

#30

> Habitability for 1,000 ± 500 people over centuries Is this enough for a healthy breeding population?

bruh noah did it with 2

There were 8: Noah, his wife, their three sons (Shem, Ham, and Japheth), and their three wives. If so, there must have been a whole of inbreeding in later generations.

Aside: The biblical story of the Ark and the flood in ripped off wholesale from Sumerian and Akkadian narratives.

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