***Memo from the Office of Human Exploration and Operations***
***United Nations Aeronautics and Space Administration***
***Vienna International Centre, Wagramerstrasse 5, A-1220 Vienna, Austria***
Hello, my name is Doctor Rebecca Kimble, executive director of Human Exploration and Operations at UNASA. I’d like to thank you again for taking part in the Planetary Coalition’s Recolonization Program. This important and historic undertaking will ensure the survival of our species.
During this video I would like to discuss the colony ships constructed by the Planetary Coalition, a joint effort of the governments of Earth, Mars, and the Belt. You will definitely get to know these ships, as they will be your home for the next 3000 years. Oh, don’t be alarmed, you’ll be spending most of that time in cryogenic stasis, or coldsleep, as we like to call it.
As you are well aware a spatial anomaly appeared next to the sun approximately 150 years ago. This anomaly ejected large amounts exotic dark matter that destabilized the sun and started the clock to its eventual supernova.
In order to combat this threat the Planetary Coalition has constructed 20 massive colony ships that will transplant humanity to its new home in the Theta Carinae cluster. Each ship has over 100 levels and is about 800 meters in diameter by 5000 meters in length. The levels correspond to concentric rings that rotate about the ship’s central axis to induce gravity between 0.8 and 1.2g’s. There’s enough living space in each colony ship for its full complement of 1 million people.
The colony ships are also called slowboats, due to their relatively slow interstellar speed which maxes out at about 15% the speed of light.
There aren’t just people on board. Each slowboat has thousands of animals and greenhouses that contain nearly every plant on Earth and Mars, a veritable Noah’s Ark. In addition, each slowboat will have DNA samples of every plant and animal found throughout the solar system. State of the art sequencing and recombination will ensure that we can recreate Earth life anywhere in the galaxy.
Each slowboat has 16 engines, in banks of four. Each engine is about the size of an arcology. The propulsion system of the slowboats takes advantage of matter-antimatter interactions to provide thrust. Unlike the chemical engines of two hundred years ago, massive cyclotrons smash hydrogen atoms into ionized heavy metals to produce anti-hydrogen. The anti-hydrogen is collected in electromagnetic Penning traps and funneled into the reaction chamber of the engines. There it is combined with a fusion reaction to produce thrust. Luckily, all of this fuel is available in the interstellar medium. Each slowboat has an array of magnetic Bussard scoop fields to funnel ionized particles into an on-board containment field until they are needed.
The hull of the slowboats is made of composite Rindlerite, which magnifies the Casimir effect to create inertial damping for their interiors. That’s how they can travel so fast without being damaged. In addition, the intensely powerful magnetic Bussard scoop fields serve to deflect particles that would otherwise damage the hull.
Each slowboat is fully equipped with the latest in science and engineering technology. There are multiple fabrication bays where nearly any item geometry can be 3D printed in metal, plastic, or composite. This area also allows for semiconductor and integrated circuit manufacturing. There are several tons of raw elemental caches accessible, but should these run short the slowboats have fleets of mothballed terrestrial, submersible, and interstellar mining vehicles.
Each slowboat has six medbays which can act independently as fully-fledged medium scale hospitals. There they have latest in MRI and PET-CT imaging, autodocs, and pharmaceutical manufacturing,
The slowboats are equipped with artificial greenhouses that run on recirculated grey water hydroponics. While these will remain dormant during your cryosleep journey, they are fully automated and can be activated prematurely should the need occur. In addition, there are 2000 vertical fermentation tanks which will sustain 4 million tons of bio-engineered, nutrient-rich microalgae for consumption.
Despite being constructed in space drydock, each colony ship was designed for terrestrial landing, where it can serve as a metropolitan and manufacturing hub once you arrive at your new homeworld. If you’re reading this, you’ll be boarding the PCS Dauntless for its voyage to LV-34, humanity’s Colony Alpha.
Again, thank you for joining us in this momentous undertaking and good luck!