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Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition

projecthyperion.org

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Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition

#111

Post by nradov »

simonh wrote: post #60
trvz wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be cruel to their children.

As adults we make our decisions as best we can. We can’t not make decisions, and the ones we do affect future generations whether they like it or not. That’s just life. Having said that I worry about the sustainability of these projects. If these are not indefinitely sustainable on arrival, then future generations are doomed to die out with no hope of survival. I’ve no problem with a carefully judged risk, there are…

There's no need to worry about something that will never actually happen.

Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition

#112

Post by JumpCrisscross »

munificent wrote: post #100
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I am increasingly certain that culture is by far the biggest limiting factor when it comes to large-scale problem solving now and in the future. We couldn't even reliably get people to put a piece of fabric over their face to stop killing their own relatives. Even if we could build a generation ship, it would turn into an Event Horizon hellscape if we don't figure out better cultural, communication, and sociological…

> We couldn't even reliably get people to put a piece of fabric over their face

Rural Americans couldn’t. But I don’t see anyone proposing we put high school dropouts and polio patients in space.

China, India and Japan managed to pass that test just fine. I imagine one of the former two will be the first to colonise deep space.

Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition

#113

Post by JumpCrisscross »

privatelypublic wrote: post #88
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> quite difficult to imagine it surviving even dust impacts for 400 years Whipple shields [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whipple_shield

Whipple shields are consumed by impacts.

> Whipple shields are consumed by impacts

Everything is consumed on such a voyage. If we can send a generation ship at 0.01c, we can send replacement parts quicker and probes ahead to verify our estimates even faster.

Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition

#114

Post by JumpCrisscross »

jvanderbot wrote: post #92
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> quite difficult to imagine it surviving even dust impacts for 400 years Whipple shields [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whipple_shield

> up to 18km/s Vs > 0.1c Off by quite a bit

Where are you getting either of these figures?

Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition

#115

Post by JumpCrisscross »

os2warpman wrote: post #97
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

If you can build and maintain a system capable of sustaining the lives of 1,000 humans for 400 years, why do you care about interstellar travel anymore? “The indefatigable spirit of exploration” isn’t the answer. People, as a mass, only explore to find new resources due to scarcity. There are exceptions, but they tend to be thrill seekers or publicity hounds seeking to capitalize on a measure of fame upon their retur…

> People, as a mass, only explore to find new resources due to scarcity

Empirically totally untrue as to be trivially disproven by like half of wealthy social media.

> thrill seekers or publicity hounds seeking to capitalize on a measure of fame upon their return

Everyone on these ships would be a celebrity on Earth. (Ideally, if they so chose.)

Again, a simple reading of one-way trip settler-explorers across history similarly rejects this notion.

> If you can build a spacecraft capable of sustaining 1,000 human lives for multiple centuries, you’ve solved all local resource scarcity problems

The first several of these ships are likely to end in catastrophe. The first to succeed will be breaking down on arrival. If we learn to build luxurious space habitats it will be through these endeavours.

Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition

#116

Post by WalterBright »

My design would be to send a nanobot builder. Then you could beam it instructions on what to build, based on what it finds at its destination.

Sort of like sending a cell capable of life and creating more life.

Aliens are always sending such probes here in scifi, so why don't we do it, too?

Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition

#117

Post by namanyayg »

cvoss wrote: post #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 s…

It was indeed incredible. Battled out in a pan Asia round, won it, and got invited to the ISSDC at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Felt so fortunate learning from engineers at Boeing and NASA. Incredible experience for a 15yo kid from India.

Coincidentally, it has been exactly 10 years since and my photos app resurfaced some of the memories. Good times.

Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition

#118

Post by Mistletoe »

ctchocula wrote: post #94
Mistletoe wrote: post #61

What's the cost for getting all that to space? Is it still about $4,000/kg? What's a rough idea about how much Chrysalis would weigh? 2.4M tons it says. ~2.2B kg = $8.8 trillion dollars just for the launch costs alone? I also thought this was interesting from the 2nd place booklet. Did not know this. >The chance of a successful pregnancy in deep space without a geomagnetic field is essentially zero. >During mitosis a…

>During mitosis and meiosis, microtubules depend on a stable magnetic field to orient the mitotic spindle and ensure accurate chromosome segregation — processes critical for embryonic growth. A spacecraft lacking any magnetic field would halt human reproduction, dooming both the mission and the survival of the colony. That seems wrong to me. The last time I calculated it out, the Earth's magnetic field isn't that str…

You know I think you are right and it really doesn't speak well for these submissions that they are getting stuff like that wrong. I was stupidly taking them at their word that they had researched this.

https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5h9is2/why_does...

It makes sense because if any of what they said was true we would have to constantly be worrying about magnetic fields around us, which are much stronger than the earth's, affecting our mitosis and meiosis. Your sperm would be completely screwed up if you had a magnet in your pocket when they were created.

Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition

#119

Post by 9cb14c1ec0 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #56
Paul_S wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you telling me a country is more constrained by space than a spaceship? As for democracy "These sorts of societies propagated for hundreds or even thousands of years in antiquity just fine" - I don't know of any that practised the consensus driven democracy that almost all these proposals use. Ant if you're reaching into antiquity then not even normal democracies. Unless you're talking about a Athens with their s…

> a country is more constrained by space than a spaceship? At the point that we're building 60 km spaceships, yes, I think that's a possibility. > you're reaching into antiquity then not even normal democracies The further back we go the more consensus-driven small societies get. I'm also reaching back due to familiarity. There are plenty of small island communities that did fine for generations on their own. > They…

> Sorry, I missed this in the winning design. Where does it say that?

I didn't notice any prisons included in the design, so that assumption seems fair.

Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition

#120

Post by dylan604 »

hermitcrab wrote: post #39
poisonborz wrote: post #13

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…

Polynesians took enormous risks to populate the pacific. Medieval builders built Catherdrals that they knew wouldn't be finished in their lifetime. Heading off on a multi-generation mission with no guarantee of success is not for most people. But there are billions of us. I'm sure they would easily find enough people to crew a mission.

I have a feeling that life on a spaceship like this would be an improvement for a non-trivial amount of those billions.
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