Hyperion project, competition results.

On July 23 of this year, 2025, the result of the Hyperion project ideas contest was given. This project was organized by the initiative for interstellar studies. The contest initiative was launched on November 1, 2024. The project was for teams of architects, engineers, and sociologists of all kinds to present designs for a viable generational ship for interstellar travel. By the way, Hyperion comes from the Greek and means the one who goes above or the one who walks in the heights.

This project also proposes creating an experimental colony in Antarctica, where around 1000 -1500 people would be locked up for 80 years to study social reactions, how it is maintained, it would be a hermetically closed colony in Antarctica, to extrapolate it to a generational ship, for me, it is a type of ship that I consider conflictive and that I do not believe will work, this is my point of view.

In the film “Passengers” a type of colonial ship is used to go to an exoplanet, but the people are sleeping inside, they are in suspended animation or hibernation, a system that maintains that the people who leave Earth are the same as those who arrive and during the trip, which can last centuries in that type of ship, they would be sleeping, they would not be aware of the trip and their biology would be stopped, however, a generational ship is something quite different. Here the people who leave the Earth, live inside the ship, reproduce, die and the next generation is the one that takes their place, reproducing and dying and so on for perhaps several centuries until they reach their destination, that is, those who leave are not the same ones who arrive, and this is a bit tricky from my point of view.

First, because those who leave are committed to their trip to that new planet, obviously, if you get on the ship you will be forced, you go because you want to go to that world, those who are born later, why will they be committed to that idea?

And two, tensions can arise within the ship after several generations and as I told you before, within that closed environment, a revolution or a social conflict can end very badly, because you also have to force those who are inside that generational ship to limit their way of reproduction to a very certain level, because if you go too far, if the number of population inside that ship increases a lot, the resources become in a degree of danger and if you fall short, you can arrive at the destination with too few humans to be able to create a colony. viable

So I see the conflicting issue, I prefer hibernation, in either case, this type of ship would be useful both generationally and in hibernation or suspended animation, because during a season and a season that could be a lot of years, the target planet would have to be terraformed and would not be habitable, perhaps you could go down to do mines or studies, but you could not inhabit it with a normal quality of life.

So the habitat, the city, the place that houses these humans for a long time is going to be that ship, so these projects also serve in both cases.

The winner of the initiative is Chrysalis, the design is quite simple, it is a gigantic tube, 58 km in diameter long, and it would be a generational ship designed for a 400-year trip to the next Centauri B, where there would supposedly be a habitable exoplanet that has not yet been discovered, I don't know why they set this specific objective, because it has not yet been discovered, there is a suspected planet around that star, but it is not confirmed.

This project was awarded and is the one that has won, it is inspired by a Russian doll with several concentric layers that rotate to generate artificial gravity, the team is multidisciplinary, there is an architect, an economist, an astrophysicist, an environmentalist and a psychologist.

The design is modular, according to these authors, it allows the use of centrifugal force to create an artificial gravity effect and in addition each layer would have a specific function to guarantee long-term sustainability. It must be taken into account that those who go in there will have to live for 400 years reproducing, dying and passing the baton to the next generation, and then, when they reach their destination, they will also have to live in there for perhaps several centuries until they can terraform the target planet.

There are several areas dedicated to food production with ecosystems that include plants, fungi, insects, it seems that there will be no beef steak or fish, terrestrial environments such as tropical and boreal forests are also created to preserve biodiversity, keep in mind that, although seeds and genetic material of terrestrial species, it is interesting to maintain certain ecosystems, an ecosystem or an animal or a species is not only its genes, it is also the relationship it establishes with other species. and it would be interesting to keep that inside the ship so that when the destination was reached, it could be reproduced in that world.

It is estimated that between 1,500 and 2,400 people could live inside this ship, literally, “to ensure social cohesion during the long journey, governance is proposed with the assistance of artificial intelligence that acts as an advisor and mediator.”

This would also create another problem in these generational ships managed by artificial intelligence and that is that in the long term, with several generations, the humans who are born there will become accustomed to living inside their wonderful ship, so, when they arrive at their destination and see that they have a planet that is hell and that they have to terraform and that there are a lot of ways to die in space or on that planet by working, perhaps they will not want to do anything, they will simply stay inside their ship and at most take some resources from that planet to improve their ship or whatever they need.

That is why the approach to the test in the Arctic, I am more in favor of the issue of hibernation, of the humans who leave being the same as those who arrive, because those who leave have the intention of colonizing, of occupying that world and are not used to living inside a ship.

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