Manned interstellar flight has been a dream since the late Industrial
Age, ans was first described in fiction in the early twentieth century
(possibly before, as many historical records are now lost from that
era). However the extremely high energy cost of any kind of
interstellar flight meant this idea was to remain a dream for many
centuries, even after the development of interplanetary flight.
Apart from energy another problem that faced the mission designers was
the interstellar medium: because of the danger of impact even the top
speed seemed likely to be no more than 0.3 c (even with heavy
shielding).
The energy requirements limited interstellar speed even further; the
most efficient drives available could barely reach ten per cent of
light speed.
This meant any interstellar flight would be a long one, several decades
even to the closest stars. Several theoretical strategies were
developed to ensure that a journey lasting decades or centuries would
finally result in the establishment of a human colony;
1/ Methuselah ships. During
the time that the first interstellar craft were being
designed life extension technology was becoming increasingly
effective. Long duration voyages could be crewed by long lived
individuals. One problem would be boredom; this is where virtual
reality tech would come in handy; over a voyage of hundreds of years
long lived individuals could practice terraforming techniques in
simulations over and over again. In the event few of the first colony
ships were crewed by life extended humans; at that time they were
cautious and risk-averse. More recent colony ships are often crewed by
long lived clades, many with the ability to slow their own subjective
time.
2/ Hibernation ships.
Cryostasis technologies also emerged during the Interplanetary age,
particularly vitrification, a way of immobilizing the cells contents
using amorphous ice assisted by low temperature nanotech.
Vitrification was not always reliable, and many early colonists were
lost or damaged. In fact most early colony ships such as the
Tau Ceti Shuttles
used vitrification; later more advanced nanostasis ensured a better
survival rate. It is important to realise that maintaining a human body
in good condition while inactive is basically an information issue; if
you can preserve information against the interstellar medium and the
effects of cosmic rays then theoretically it is possible to preserve a
human
body and mind using
nanotech
biostasis with little or no alteration. Information protection is
discussed below in a little more detail.
3/ Generation ships. Enormous
constructs supporting a breeding population of humans and associated
food producing systems; they are extremely massive, and take
fantastically large amounts of energy to accelerate up to interstellar
speeds. Slower ships use less energy for propulsion, but they then have
to support populations of people or much longer- perhaps thousands of
years on a typical slow interstellar flight. Long flights require much
more energy to achieve a closed ecological life support system; the
absolute minimum energy requirement for a human is eight megajoules per
day. None were launched before the Great Expulsion, some few were
launched after that event, including
Valhalla
Habitat. In most cases the Generation ships arrived much later than
the lighter, faster hibernation ships and others.
4/ Seed Ships The size of
the payload of an interstellar ship is extremely important, as a small
increase in the mass of the payload can lead to a large increase in
the mass of the fuel. So lightweight ships carrying only embryos or
gametes were developed, equipped with artificial wombs and robot or
vec
carers to look after the developing infants when they were 'born' at
the destination system. The parental robots in early seed ships were
sophisticated devices with artificial bonding emotions and other
instincts; in some cases (such as at
Diwali)
the sophisticated vecs declined to activate the zygote cargo, creating
a society of their own. In fact many interstellar ships often included
zygotes
or gametes as a valuable part of their cargo, even if they were not
strictly seed ships.
5/ Data only ships. A
relatively small starship can carry massive amounts of data; digitized
DNA, blueprints for automated factories to build space colonies, even
perhaps electronically recorded human mindstates; these would be
reassembled at the destination using nanotechnology into an entire
civilisation.But how would a data-only ship preserve its cargo against
degradation? Cosmic rays would destroy a simple database over time.
Luckily this is an engineering problem; multiple copies of all data,
parity checks and self repairing equipment could in theory resist data
loss for millions, or even billions of years. Data-only ships were
uncommon before the Second Federation, although most unmanned
probes and advance exploration ships carried some nanofacture
capability. In many cases this capability could be upgraded by
interstellar laser message, upgrading a simple probe into a
data-transfer station; but in many other cases the probes themselves
went rogue after contact with a-human AI entities (often from the
so-called
Diamond
belt.)
The first successful manned interstellar flight was that of the
Tsiolkovsky launched in
387 a.t to Tau
Ceti. Similar missions followed to Sigma Draconis,
Epsilon
Eridani, Epsilon
Indi, Psi
3 Orionis and elsewhere, before the Nanoswarm attack threw Earth
civilisation into chaos. The Great Expulsion that followed saw the
hasty construction of many ark ships, like the Starlark and
others of similar design.
A Data-only ship
