Interstellar Ark

xantox writes "There are three strategies to travel 10.5 light-years from Earth to Epsilon Eridani and bring humanity into a new stellar system : 1) Wait for future discovery of Star Trek physics and go there almost instantaneously, 2) Build a relativistic rocket powered by antimatter and go there in 22 years by accelerating constantly at 1g, provided that you master stellar amounts of energy (so, nothing realistic until now), but what about 3): go there by classical means, by building a gigantic Ark of several miles in radius, propulsed by nuclear fusion and featuring artificial gravity, oceans and cities, for a travel of seven centuries — where many generations of men and women would live ? This new speculation uses some actual physics and math to figure out how far are our fantasies of space travel from their actual implementation."

Comments

Sounds Familiar...

[martyb]

For an interesting read on what such a ship might be like, take a look at: Rendevous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke. I read it not long after it came out and thoroughly enjoyed it. Highly acclaimed, too:

• Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1973
• Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1974
• Jupiter Award for Best Novel in 1974

Re:Humans can handle more than 1 G

[Anonymous Coward]

The nine G figure is unrealistically high

Yes, because jet fighter pilots only have to endure it for a few seconds and even then require special suits to prevent them from passing out.

but there are no reasons to assume you can't have a realitivistic rocket that starts out with six G for a short while

That's still too much for humans to endure for months or even weeks.

and then drops its acceleration off to about two G.

That would be more realistic over a longer period of time though there may be a lot of medical repercussions.

Combine this with some form of suspended animation, which we can already do for mice

This helps a bit but extremely high forces still cause damage, even when people are suspended. On the other hand it solves other problems (travel time is less important, no problem with food, biosphere etc.)

and all of a sudden the relativistic rocket becomes less far out.

What's far out about a relativistic rocket are primarily two things: 1. Massive amounts of fuel are required, we don't even come close to solving that problem yet. 2. Radiation shielding needed to ward off gamma rays resulting from background radiation subject to the relativistic doppler effect and impact of cosmic particle when traveling at relativistic speeds when the ship is in mid-trip (at top speed).