If you’ve ever wanted to be a spaceship architect who can design ships that transport colonists to different star systems on journeys over the centuries, check out the Project Hyperion Design Contest. This competition is looking for teams to plan a generation ship.
There is talk of colonizing other worlds as an insurance policy to protect humanity from extinction, such as a giant asteroid hitting Earth. The problem with this is that there is nowhere else in the solar system that can support human life. So the obvious next step is to find a new home on a planet in another star system.
Unfortunately, as The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy says, the universe is vast. It’s really big. The closest star to us is Proxima Centauri, which is 4.246 light years away. To put it in some perspective, Voyager 1, the farthest space probe ever launched, will take 70,000 years to cover that distance, but it didn’t go completely in the wrong direction. I’m here.
If we stay within the laws of physics, things like hyperspace, warp drives, Erhaft generators, and other sci-fi staples are off the table, and there aren’t many options that don’t rely on technologies that simply don’t exist.
The most likely way for humanity to reach another planet is through something called a generation ship. Originally conceived by American rocket pioneer Robert H. Goddard, this giant space ark is like a sealed, self-sustaining world with its own ecosystem, and a destination It would take centuries, even millennia, to meet all the requirements of the crew. destination.
At this point, it’s just a thought experiment, the stuff of tons of science fiction novels, movies, TV series, and radio dramas. Even if we stayed within the laws of physics, building such a ship would require a spacecraft several miles long that could generate incredible amounts of electrical power and reach speeds at least 10% of the speed of light. This is not surprising as it would require technological advances such as being able to build .
Even designing a powerboat is a difficult challenge, to say the least. Because of the energy required to propel such aircraft, passengers may have to prepare for their entire lives in extremely confined spaces. There is also the problem of building ships and their systems that can operate flawlessly for centuries, not to mention being able to maintain and recycle things like air and water with perfect efficiency and zero leakage into space.
This also doesn’t address the challenge of keeping the crew healthy and mentally stable and not trying to annihilate each other for generations. This requires careful social engineering, which has not had a good track record.
Nevertheless, Project Hyperion is enthusiastic enough about the idea of turning this into a design contest. Hyperion, founded in 2011, has been researching the feasibility of power-generating ships and is now sharing this work with the public. The new challenge is to bring together a multidisciplinary team, including at least one architectural designer, an engineer, and a social scientist, to come up with a 250-year voyageable habitat design that can meet the requirements of architecture, life support systems, and society. Recruiting a team in the field. It will use technology that has already been validated as a concept to provide structure and cross-generational adaptability for a crew of approximately 1,000 people.
Each team is expected to submit a 30-page booklet, sketches, renderings, technical drawings, and design descriptions. These will be evaluated with respect to their ability to adapt to different building codes, ability to provide artificial gravity and radiation shielding, and cultural and biological changes in the crew.
According to Project Hyperion, registration is now open, with Phase 1 submissions due on February 2, 2025, and Phase 2 on May 4, 2025. Prizes range from prestigious awards to a grand prize of US$5,000. Winners will be announced on June 2, 2025.
Source: Project Hyperion
