A Giant Spaceship for a Long Trip to the Stars

A team of engineers has come up with a plan for a massive spaceship that could carry thousands of people on a one-way trip to Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system to ours. This spaceship, named Chrysalis, is designed to travel an incredible distance of 25 trillion miles (40 trillion kilometers) in about 400 years. The idea is that the people on board would live and have families on the ship for many generations before reaching their destination. The final goal is to land on Proxima Centauri b, a planet that might be able to support life and is similar in size to Earth. Before the journey, the first group of people would spend 70 to 80 years in Antarctica to get used to living in isolation. This would help them prepare for the long trip ahead. The spaceship itself would take about 20 to 25 years to build and would be as long as 36 miles (58 kilometers). The design of the Chrysalis is like a set of Russian nesting dolls, with different layers for living, working, and storing things. The innermost layer would be for growing food, including plants, animals, and even insects. The next layers would have parks, schools, hospitals, and homes. The outermost layer would be for storing resources and could be run by robots. The ship would use nuclear fusion reactors for power, but this technology is not yet available for commercial use. The team behind the project also suggests using artificial intelligence to help manage the ship and its people. They believe this would make the whole system more resilient and help different generations work together. Even though this project is just a concept and not yet possible with current technology, it can still help engineers learn and improve future designs. The team that designed Chrysalis won a competition called Project Hyperion, which focuses on creating multigenerational spaceships for interstellar travel.