Beam me up, jellyfish: experts unveil spaceships to take us to the stars | Space
Spatial vessels modeled on jellyfish, 3D -printed houses, polyamarious relations and vegetarian diets are among the ways that experts have planned to make interstellar trips feasible.
The ideas of scientists, engineers, architects and social theorists came in response to a global competition to develop plans for “generation ships”, autonomous professions capable of supporting up to 1,500 people on a 250 -year trip to a habitable planet.
Participants in the Hyperion Design project competition, launched last year, could not integrate current technologies or those that should emerge in the near future, such as nuclear merger, in their proposals.
A panel of experts, including scientists from NASA, judged the viability of nearly 100 submissions, assessing how their habitats, architecture and social structures would allow the crew not only to survive but to flourish as a company through several generations of space flight.
The winner was Chrysalis, a 58 km cigar -shaped profession, designed around a series of concentric cylinders, each dedicated to a different function: 3D printed housing; municipal spaces, including parks, libraries and galleries; And farms and biomes of different earthly environments, such as tropical forests.
As animals would only be brought on board to maintain biodiversity, a vegetarian diet would be necessary.
The design was rented for its detailed plans, in particular the way in which the psychological resilience of the crew would be verified by living in isolated antarctic bases.
The proposal also explained how family structures would change, with the feeling of belonging of individuals by being more part of the vessel community. Residents would be allowed to have children but not necessarily with the same partners.
The design of second place was Hyperion, a spaceship that looks like the 2001 space station: a space odyssey. The twin rings of this conception are designed to generate an earth -shaped magnetic field, which would be essential for a successful pregnancy in deep space, without which the mission would be condemned.
The proposal also includes conceptions for loose clothes with large sealing pockets to prevent items from falling to low gravity. The mission would include three pairs of turtles, chosen for their longevity, relatively inactive and resistance to disease.
The design of third place, Systema Stellare Proximum, is modeled after the shape of a jellyfish and uses a hollow asteroid as a shield against the impacts. He envisages a society guided by a non -human collective intelligence and a human council, as well as the potential emergence of new religions, such as neopaganism which desals “nature and man, in all its forms”.
Other notable enthusiasts included an infinite beyond the stars, which includes a floating light created from biogas, generated from the bodies of the dead.
Dr. Andreas Hein, Executive Director of the Initiative for Interstellar Studies, who directed competition, said that it was “part of a broader exercise to explore if humanity can travel to the stars” and how “a civilization could live, learn and evolve in an environment very limited to resources”.
He added: “We asked participants to integrate architecture, technology and social systems to conceptualize a functional society covering centuries – and the result was beyond expectations.”
