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An open competition has been launched to design a so-called generation spacecraft that could take humans to distant planets outside our solar system. These types of spacecraft – even though they are still conceptual – have generation in the name because it would take several lifetimes to cross the unimaginable chasms of interstellar space.
During that long voyage the original inhabitants would grow old and die, but their children would take over the ship's management. By the time they reach another star system, the great-great-grandchildren of the original pioneers would take their first steps on an alien planet.
Project Hyperion is an open competition organized by an international think tank of experts in the fields of architecture, technology, anthropology and urban planning. It offers $10,000 in prizes, shared among the top three designs of a spaceship that could transport a thousand people to a distant galaxy, along with ideas on how to maintain a peaceful, orderly community throughout the journey.
Of course, we are still far from having the technology that could propel a spaceship.
Our current rockets, the fastest machines we build, are remarkably slow when it comes to space exploration. It will take us three days to get people to the moon, a walk around the block compared to traveling outside our solar system.
Our most distant object ever, Voyager 1, is currently in interstellar space more than 15 billion miles from Earth. That may sound far, but it took 47 years to reach that distance, and at that rate it would take tens of thousands of years for Voyager to get close to another star in our Milky Way.
The competition sets aside many technical issues, including the propulsion system, the power system and basic life support. Instead, it focuses on the design of the living environment and society. The premise is that the spaceship's journey will take 250 years to reach its unspecified destination.
Similar ideas have been depicted in science fiction, such as the 2016 film Passengers and Arthur C. Clark's 1973 novel, Meeting with Rama. Those stories are about huge ships where most of the crew members are in hibernation and the ship flies automatically.
This new design challenge involves colonists who would not be in suspended animation during the journey. Instead, they would live out their lives aboard the ship and have children who would in turn take over the new crew when their parents die. This raises the problem of the crew having to live together in a confined space for several generations.
We have limited photos of the types of challenges such a squad might face. In 1991, eight people entered Biosphere 2 in a two-year experiment to live in a large-scale closed environment designed to simulate a self-sustaining colony in space.
Located north of Tuscon, Arizona, the habitat was intended to be completely self-contained. The only energy coming in was sunlight. The glass-covered habitat contained a miniaturized rainforest, an ocean with coral reef, desert and living quarters. The crew grew their own food and plants were intended to rid the air of carbon dioxide and provide oxygen.
But not long after starting the project, the crew discovered that carbon dioxide levels were rising and oxygen levels were dropping from the normal 20 percent to a dangerously low 14 percent, which became bad for their health. It turned out that composting and the soil released more CO2 into the enclosed environment than the plants could absorb, so oxygen had to be supplied from outside.
This was not considered a failure, but rather a deeper understanding of how difficult it is to replicate Earth's natural biosphere. And that experiment was conducted with the benefit of Arizona's bright sun and all its plant-cultivating and energy-generating superpowers. In interstellar space, the sun is just a star in a permanently dark sky.
Ecological issues aside, managing human factors in a closed, multi-generational environment is perhaps the greatest challenge of all.
At a basic level, the ship itself should provide everything the residents need: breathable air, water, food, living space, and be large enough for people to spread out and get away from each other. That means they need recreation areas, green spaces and entertainment centers – the kind of places people like to go when they're not working.
Unfortunately, when large groups of people come together for extended periods of time, disagreements or personality conflicts can arise.
In his science fiction novel Red Marchauthor Kim Stanley Robinson described the first colony on Mars where the inhabitants became divided between those who wanted to transform the red planet into a more Earth-like world and those who wanted to preserve the natural features of Mars. This led to conflict and violence.
On an interstellar spaceship, similar divisions could arise with the possibility of a mutiny where one group decides the whole endeavor is a waste of time and attempts to turn the ship around and return to Earth.
These are the types of problems that the competition participants are asked to solve.
One of the key elements of the competition is planning how the society of space travelers would be organized, governed and controlled. Teams should consider what languages would be spoken, what cultures would be represented, and what form the family structure would take.
And they will have to imagine how that society could be maintained by generations of children born into that environment, who would never know planet Earth, and might or might not remain interested in their ancestral world and its traditions.
Would you go on a one-way trip to the stars, a journey where you would not reach the destination yourself?
If you're interested in trying the competition, it's open now, with the first deadline on February 2, 2025. You'll need a team with at least one architectural designer, one engineer, and one social scientist, such as an anthropologist or sociologist.
If viable solutions to space's technical, environmental, and social complexities are found, perhaps the lessons learned can be applied to Spacecraft Earth, where many of these problems remain.
