Көпұрпақты ғарыш кемесі: Жұлдыздарға саяхаттың "Нұхтың кемесі" жолы

Proposed ark method of interstellar travel in which humans regularly develop and reproduce

A generation ship, generation starship or world ship, In this he described the death of the Sun and the necessity of an "interstellar ark". The crew would travel for centuries in suspended animation and be awakened when they reached another star system. He proposed to use small moons or asteroids as ships, and speculated that the crew would endure psychological and genetic changes over the generations. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, considered a father of astronautic theory, first described the need for multiple generations of passengers in his essay, "The Future of Earth and Mankind" (1928), outlining a space colony equipped with engines that travels thousands of years which he called "Noah's Ark". In the story, the crew had changed so much over the generations at so many levels that they did not even acknowledge Earth as their home planet. Another early description of a generation ship is in the 1929 essay "The World, The Flesh, & The Devil" by John Desmond Bernal.

According to Hein et al., a "generation ship" is a spacecraft on which a crew is living on board for at least several decades, such that it comprises multiple generations. Gregory Matloff's concept is called a "colony ship" and Alan Bond called his concept a "world ship".

For a spacecraft to maintain a stable environment for multiple generations, it would have to be large enough to support a community of humans and a fully recycling ecosystem. A spacecraft of such a size would require much energy to accelerate and decelerate. A smaller spacecraft, while able to accelerate more easily and thus make higher cruise velocities more practical, would reduce exposure to cosmic radiation and the time for malfunctions to develop in the craft, but would have challenges with resource metabolic flow and ecologic balance.

Generation ships traveling for long periods of time may see breakdowns in social structures. Changes in society (for example, mutiny) could occur over such periods and may prevent the ship from reaching its destination.

The radiation environment of deep space is very different from that on the Earth's surface, or in low Earth orbit, due to the much larger influx of high energy galactic cosmic rays (GCRs). Like other ionizing radiation, high energy cosmic rays can damage DNA and increase the risk of cancer, cataracts, and neurological disorders.

The success of a generation ship depends on children born aboard taking over the necessary duties, as well as having children themselves. Even if their quality of life might be better than, for example, that of people born into poverty on Earth, philosophy professor Neil Levy has raised the question of whether it is ethical to severely constrain life choices of individuals by locking them into a project they did not choose. A moral quandary exists regarding how intermediate generations, those destined to be born and die in transit without actually seeing tangible results of their efforts, might feel about their forced existence on such a ship.

Project Hyperion, launched in December 2011 by Icarus Interstellar, was to perform a preliminary study that defines integrated concepts for a crewed interstellar generation ship. This was a two year study mainly based out of the WARR student group at the Technical University of Munich. The study aimed to provide an assessment of the feasibility of crewed interstellar flight using current and near future technologies. It also aimed to guide future research and technology development plans as well as to inform the public about crewed interstellar travel. Notable results of the project include an assessment of world ship system architectures and adequate population size. The core team members have transferred to the Initiative for Interstellar Studies's world ship project and a survey paper on generation ships has been presented at the ESA Interstellar Workshop in 2019 as well as in ESA's Acta Futura journal.