Interplanetary Colony Ship

[Duckytrask]

Imagine that one day the Human race pooled together all of our resources and we had a reason to build a ship that could take enough humans to a habitable planet.

What I'm asking is:

How many humans would make the trip (From departure from Earth)?

Who goes?

Would the passengers be in cryogenic sleep, or active as in awake and need life support?

The destination?

Assuming the passengers were awake, would there be gravity and how?

How would food be supplied, water, power, oxygen?

Propulsion?

Sub light or faster?

Feel free to and another concerns you would like to add.

[Nibb31]

It depends on what's needed for the plot to work. This is fiction after all, so anything goes. You can just make it up as you go.

Edited May 9, 2014 by Nibb31

[Seret]

Indeed. Realistically though you're probably going to want to reduce the humans down to a compact, lightweight form that can be stored for long periods. Even travelling at superluminal speeds the travel time is likely to be very long, possibly longer than a human lifespan. Candidates for that include things like frozen embryos and digitised brain scans.

Another point to consider is that unmodified Earth humans are unlikely to be compatible with the environment of an exoplanet. Unless you fancy living in a bubble for all eternity you're likely to have to make modifications for things like gravity, atmospheric gas mix and the specific microbes and pathogens of your destination. Permanent settlement implies a genetically customised population (in the same way our current genome is customised for Earth). To pull this off would require considerable study of the destination, so there would likely be a fair amount of infrastructure already available at the other end.

[FREEFALL1984]

firstly the number of humans would depend on the nature of the mission, if the mission was to set up a small colony and terraform the planet, then perhaps only a few hundred would be sent in some kind of stasis. However if the mission was to populate and colonize an already habitable planet then there would likely be a few thousand, as well as donor DNA to ensure genetic diversity. The mission would require a crew capable of being woken from stasis at the first sign of a problem and be fully up to speed with the ships systems although the bulk of operations would be automated, at the same time the colony or cargo could be kept in stasis for the bulk of the voyage. The crew would be able to live in an artificial gravity environment provided be a huge centrifuge. The types of people selected would be naturally physically fit, highly intelligent people from excellent genetic stock, they would all be extensively screened for recessive congenital genes to ensure no genetic imperfections or diseases reached the target planet. The stock of colonists would be split about 60% females and 40% males to encourage reproduction and genetic diversity. The voyage could operate at about 10% light speed and reach the nearest systems in about 60 - 80 years. Although the first and manned phase of the mission where the crew remain active would last about 2 or 3 years as the vessel uses numerous gravity assists to build up the speed to leave our system likely making several passes around Jupiters moons and the inner planets. It would likely use some form of high efficiency microwave resonance chambers to provide a small amount of thrust in interstellar space. While for the departure it would use a series of conventionally fueled booster stages to gain speed while a simple RCS system would ensure the vessel meets its transfer keyholes. When arriving at the target system the vessel would use the gravity of other orbiting bodies to reduce its speed to achieve an orbit around the planets sun, it would then transfer to the target planet at the next viable window using the microwave resonance engines to provide just enough thrust. on arriving at the planet it would initially use the microwave resonance engines to slow its decent and use the planets moons to provide additional braking allowing it to brush across the target planets atmosphere and perform a gentle aerobrake into a circular orbit. Now there would be extensive surveying while the colonists are woken, and a network of communications satellites would be deployed to provide a communications grid and allow 2 way communication with earth (although there would be an 12-16 year delay so internet browsing would be limited to microsoft internet explorer) An alternative would be to develop a communication system based on quantum entanglement which in theory would allow instant communications with earth although this is entirely theoretical since quantum entanglement cannot be maintained for extended periods (yet)

Now the colonists start making there way down to the surface in drop ships, each of which is capable of permanently housing several hundred colonists, These would all land withing a few hundred meters of each other on a site best determined from orbit. The main mothership, which would now be little more than an oversized laticework of space junk and communications relays would extend vast solar panels and a microwave beam to send power to each of the colony ships while retreating to a geostationary orbit. This should be able to provide power throughout the nights.

Each of the colonists would be trained in basic survival in hostile environments as well as the maintenance of the drop ships themselves, They would be trained in farming, resource gathering and the many other skills to survive on the long term. The drop ships would each be packed with large quantity of GM seeds, designed to survive in the planets soil, as well as a diverse selection of livestock DNA which could be synthesized in an artificial womb, The DNA itself could also be modified to ensure the livestock can best survive its new environment.

This of course is assuming that the target planet is perfectly habitable, and is an almost perfect analogue with earth (ie abundant fresh water, breathable air, oceans, tides, and wind and precipitation)

Edited May 9, 2014 by FREEFALL1984

[Ralathon]

Imagine that one day the Human race pooled together all of our resources and we had a reason to build a ship that could take enough humans to a habitable planet.

What I'm asking is:

How many humans would make the trip (From departure from Earth)?

Who goes?

Would the passengers be in cryogenic sleep, or active as in awake and need life support?

The destination?

Assuming the passengers were awake, would there be gravity and how?

How would food be supplied, water, power, oxygen?

Propulsion?

Sub light or faster?

Feel free to and another concerns you would like to add.

It kind of depends on how far this habitable planet is. In your title you state interplanetary, so within the same solar system. That's a stone trow away in cosmic terms, a trip from earth to Mars takes about 7 months with a simple Hohmann transfer. So you wouldn't have to muck about with cryogenics or anything.

So lets say we desperately want to establish a human colony on Mars for whatever reason. Mars is convenient for a colony since it doesn't have to be self sufficient. It is close enough that we can regularly ship goods from earth to Mars until they get their own production lines into gear. This means the colony could start out small and slowly build over time. Therefore your life support can be bare bones and you can work with a skeleton crew. You wouldn't need anyone specialized into construction or catering in such a setting, you can just send over scientists and geologists to gather scientific data. You also don't need to worry about artificial gravity along the trip, or making the life support completely closed loop. So colonists would likely live like people in the ISS during the trip. With lots of daily exercise and with a relatively normal day-night rhythm.

The ISS would be a good example of how such a base would look. A 6 man crew mostly focused on science. As the base grows larger with added modules you can ship over specialists for those modules as needed. The first 2 things you need to make such a base self sufficient would be agriculture and a production line. This means your first modules will likely be inflatable greenhouses to lessen the amount of food resupplies you need. You also need some kind of mobile scoop to gather metal ores to serve as the basis of your production line. This also marks the point where you are going to need a nuclear reactor as a power core. Melting ores in an arc furnace is too expensive in energy to rely on solar or radiothermal.

So at this point you have a base with about a dozen inhabitants that is half self sufficient in terms of life support and capable of building structural systems. From here on out things can go much faster. Since your base can make its own structural bits you don't have to worry about room and the framework for your tech. So you can send much more tech and crew per supply run. This means you can quickly snowball the production capability and carrying capacity of your base. Now you need to start worrying about genetic diversity. You're going to need about 4000 individuals to have enough diversity to allow for a sustainable population. Since it is very expensive to ship that many people to Mars I suspect they'd just send frozen embryos instead. At this point the colony would be truly self sufficient. If the earth suddenly got destroyed humanity would live on. A long term goal could be to terraform Mars, but that's optional.

If you want a interstellar colony things get a lot harder. You need to do all of the above steps, but without any contact or supplies with Earth. This is a very hard challenge that will probably require universal constructors to reliably pull it off.

Edited May 9, 2014 by Ralathon

[Nuke]

i prefer to aim to for a massive ice dwarf sized generation ship built out of an actual ice dwarf. the reasons are:

almost the whole thing can be used as propellant (thinking nerva or mpd)

some of it can be used to fuel fusion* reactors to power life support/engines

any remaining materials can be used to build and maintain infrastructure or simply thrown overboard

its easy to build tunnel complexes which protect passengers from radiation

plenty of room inside and on the surface for habitation and food production

* fission can be used but it is unlikely an ice dwarf would have very much fissile material on board, so this needs to be pre-stocked prior to the voyage.

[NASAFanboy]

Mars Colonial Transporter, being worked on by SpaceX. Musk says he won't sell his stock until the MCT is making regular trips to Mars. That's a pretty good concept for a interplanetary colony ship.

[Nibb31]

Mars Colonial Transporter, being worked on by SpaceX. Musk says he won't sell his stock until the MCT is making regular trips to Mars. That's a pretty good concept for a interplanetary colony ship.

It's amazing that you're able to judge the concept of Musk's MCT without knowing anything about it. SpaceX has published no plans at all about it. The only thing that we know SpaceX are working on is the Raptor. Anything else is pure speculation.

[NASAFanboy]

It's amazing that you're able to judge the concept of Musk's MCT without knowing anything about it. SpaceX has published no plans at all about it. The only thing that we know SpaceX are working on is the Raptor. Anything else is pure speculation.

Any information about the MCT is usable information.

I was simply suggesting that one google the subject and check it out since it might be of interest. I was not presenting it was a all-out concept that SpaceX will have working by 2020.

Edited May 9, 2014 by NASAFanboy