Starship Asterisk*

Designing a Sustainable Interstellar Worldship
Discovery News | Rachel Armstrong, Project Persephone Lead, Icarus Interstellar | 2012 Sep 20

Guest contributor Rachel Armstrong introduces Project Persephone, an initiative to design the living infrastructure of a multi-generational starship.

[i]An illustration of living materials inside a worldship. A living infrastructure would help keep the worldship occupants healthy and may have significant benefits when applied to Earth-bound megacities. (Image courtesy Dan Tassell)[/i]

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Project Persephone, a new Icarus Interstellar initiative for the DARPA sponsored 100 Year Starship (100YSS), lead by TED fellow Dr. Rachel Armstrong, considers the application of living technologies such as protocells and programmable smart chemistries in the context of habitable starship architecture that can respond and evolve according to the needs of its inhabitants.

This project has direct relevance to the challenges of the 21st century where our megacities and urban environments continue to grow at astonishing rates. Yet the building industry, utilities and energy companies lag behind the physical demands of a growing city. When inflexible infrastructures become inadequate or inappropriate then urban decay sets in -- crime, homelessness, waste and resource management issues and traffic congestion can have crippling effects. The consideration of living infrastructure technologies on interstellar worldships can therefore have a positive feedback to our current way of life.

Keeping the Worldship Alive
Centauri Dreams | Paul Gilster | 2012 Sep 21

Designing a sustainable interstellar worldship is ridiculous. Where are you going? However, designing sustainable worldships or cities for the Earth's surface does make sense. I prefer to call them asteroid shelters. The worldships would be completely independent and supported by most of the planet's populations. Several worldships would be erected at various longitudes and latitudes with some completely submerged under oceans. All digitized data would be protected against severe magnetic storms. In case of an asteroid attack, a solar ejection, nearby supernova blast, or gamma ray burst one or more worldships may survive to carry on humanity and its present collective consciousness on our spaceship, Earth, that hopefully recovers.

Let's save the "Alexandria library" for the future, if not ourselves,

dougettinger wrote:Designing a sustainable interstellar worldship is ridiculous. Where are you going?

On a truly sustainable interstellar worldship, anywhere you want to go. And why not?

I like your idea of using similar technology to preserve life here on Earth, but I think it would be much easier to do the preserving in space-based habitats, whether in Earth orbit or elsewhere in the Solar system. We'll be building them anyway, and they will also be the learning labs and building blocks for any sustainable interstellar worldships so it's not an either/or choice, but a gradual process.

Rob

The beauty of using Earth as your spaceship is that it already has built-in radiation shielding. Even in spite of total disruption of the Earth's surface, a surviving worldship on Earth's surface will still be shielded from internal radiation of nuclear decay and from interstellar radiation by an atmosphere and a magnetic field that should recover from the Earth's catacylsmic event.

If I can have my druthers, I will choose the Earth-spaceship. It seems like a no-brainer.

Doug

Hello to all interstellar explorers,

I guess I stopped the "worldship" dead in its tracks. Yes, indeed we have found the "worldship" and it is Earth. The "worldship" is already designed and traveling through intersteller space (orbiting the galaxy every 250 million years) and traveling through time amongst the other galaxies. But we have to learn to duck when an asteroid hits our spaceship. Mankind should be building specially shielded, sustainable cities protected against asteroids and other calamities so we do not have to start all over again as we most certainly have already. I'd truly hate coming back as a caveman.

Doug

dougettinger wrote:Hello to all interstellar explorers,

I'd truly hate coming back as a caveman.

Doug

Then start moving away from Earth and explore and colonise other world. That way mankind will survive. Staying here will kill us all someday.

It's better to be everywhere instead of being all on one spot.

Mankind colonized all the land masses on Earth. Now you say its time to colonize the solar system except its other bodies are not hospital - not at all. Now you say its time to colonize other star systems. If there is a star system that has a habitable planet, then I am sure it is already inhabited. So what you may be asking is for us beings to go from world wars to star wars. And of course, one needs a lot of time on their hands to visit any other star system.

I like your spirit; it can be very useful for science fiction books. But your spirit could be useful for finding out how we got here in the first place.

Doug

Doug

dougettinger wrote:Now you say its time to colonize the solar system

The sooner the better. But we can't right now. By saying start exploring and colonise, i mean developing technology to do so.

dougettinger wrote:Now you say its time to colonize other star systems

I did not want to mean its time. i want to say the sooner the better for mankind. So research for space engine and space technology is imperative. When will it happen? Time will tell.

dougettinger wrote:So what you may be asking is for us beings to go from world wars to star wars

No i am not asking that at all. Just thinking of it is weird. Ethics is essential for exploration of an inhabited planet. I hope human will have develop it a bit more then today.

Doum wrote:It's better to be everywhere instead of being all on one spot.

What i mean is as you said that earth will always be at risk of being hit by something and since all human are on it, mankind might disappear like the dinosaur disappear or we might go back to caveman like you said. if it happen then thats it. But if we human go live in space then humankind will survive when earth will be hit by a big asteroid or other calamities as you mention. Dinosaur were'nt smart. We are. Lets use it to not finish like them.

i dont think we will be able to protect us from all big calamity here on earth. We can try the best we can of course but not being where calamities happen mean more chance of survival for mankind. Going out into space is better then duck here. But for now we can not even duck here on earth.

i took too much time to write the post ( too many thing to do at same time). I'm the guest above.

Real thinking does take time. Keep doing it.

Doug