Tweens and teenagers in space: What can possibly go wrong?
I thought preservation of the species was the goal
Teen angst with no personal space or privacy. Seems like torture for everyone.
Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition
81–90 of 330 posts
Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition
#82Link to Canva presentation for the winning entry https://www.canva.com/design/DAGmr3ubC8E/LHHAeeAIGGQe_TkZVs-...
Where is the propulsion system design?
Are all of these handwaving propulsion? They seem to all be habitat designs.
Ok I'll take my shot at propulsion:
Pulse nuclear BUT:
For acceleration, we have a launch gun that fires more fuel at the ship, and the ship catches the fuel, imparting momentum from the catch, and more fuel for acceleration.
For deceleration, we have pellets that it catches up to and uses the catching to slow down with, AND gains fuel to decelerate.
If the catch can be done like an ion drive in efficiency, then you get ion drive efficiencies while gaining fuel for the pulse nuclear accelerations/decelerations.
The real problem would be timing the deceleration "catches", and a HELL of a railgun.
We aren't really doing this in current physics without a massive and functional orbital/planetary economy that gives cheap nuclear fuel and materials. We'll probably need solar wind antimatter harvesters as well, if those are actually a thing.
Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the problems would come in the 2nd generation, who didn't choose to go on the mission.
To be fair, no human born on our current Earthship asked to go on our current mission.
What's our current mission? "Keep society running" and "don't fuck up the planet" don't seem to be going super well, but that's just my cynicism talking. I need a nap.
Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 an…
The people who had to migrate had a front row seat (and supporting role) to the greatest show in the known universe: life on earth. Nature produces a truly unlimited amount of novelty, especially if you’re moving through it.
> Nature produces a truly unlimited amount of novelty, especially if you’re moving through it.
I'm sure it was a lot of fun, in the Dwarf Fortress sense.
Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It would be cruel to their children.
Would it be any more cruel than having children as a serf on a farm, where your family has worked for countless generations, knowing that they're likely to have the same fate?
Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition
#86I 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…
Yup.
All it takes is one short-sighted group to break something important to protest real (or perceived) injustice.
It already happens in the real world all the time.
Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition
#87Link to Canva presentation for the winning entry https://www.canva.com/design/DAGmr3ubC8E/LHHAeeAIGGQe_TkZVs-...
Reminds me of the probe from Star Trek IV
Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
We're one good new religion away from colonizing the solar system. Cathedrals were built over 100s of years. Imaging just living in a massive one and your whole holy purpose is to survive and thrive and spread. It's entirely reasonable we'd have the will to make it happen, and pretty reasonable we'd be able to build it with planet scale effort, but sadly quite difficult to imagine it surviving even dust impacts for 4…
> 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.
Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition
#89I love that most of those designs give bigger houses to people in a spaceship than modern houses in the UK on planet earth. Love the designs, doubt democracy would get them through more than 250 days, let alone 250 years.
Hypothetically, if you designed something that resembled the UK and tried to have humans live in it, that would not be ethical.
Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition
#9058km long, 6km diameter cylinder. 60km is about the distance from central San Jose to SF, as the crow flies.
Yes + Appears it's a rigid structure w/ the engine pushing from the back? At 0.1g I suspect even with advanced composites only a few km would be possible.