FAQs - "First Ark to Alpha Centauri" by A. Ahad

AA Institute of Space Science & Technology

			"First Ark to Alpha Centauri" - by A. Ahad. Article posted: 22 November 2004 Copyright © 2004-2005 by Abdul Ahad. All intellectual property rights on this movie script, the proposed motion picture to be made therefrom and the spaceflight concept depicted herein are fully reserved by the author under contract with his literary management agents in the United Kingdom. Any sharing of this work is only permitted for personal, non-profit and educational use. Redirecting to the ads-free version... Frequently Asked Questions How far is Alpha Centauri from Earth? Why a journey time of 50,000 years? The Alpha Centauri system marks the nearest shores in the vast interstellar emptiness of space stretching out beyond our solar system into eternity... Alpha Centauri shines as the third brightest star in our night sky, a triple star system, and lies 4.3 light years from Earth. Now considering that light travels at an astonishing speed of 186,000 miles per second, it takes 4.3 years for the light from Alpha Centauri to reach Earth. 4.3 light years equates to 25,000,000,000,000 (twenty five million million) miles! That is an almost humanly unimaginable, vast distance. In the current era, the fastest speeds we've ever achieved with any spaceflight to date are with the two unmanned Voyager spacecraft, which are currently heading out of our solar system towards the stars. Even at the fastest possible speeds accessible with our current technology, a voyage to Alpha Centauri would take something like 30,000 years - yes that is a well known scientific fact. Since the mission concept here is relying on stopovers along the way to mine comets and planetoids for fuel and life support resources, a journey time of 50,000 years sounds 'about right'! Of course there may be theoretical methods of travelling much faster in the future, but the generational voyage concept will certainly give you a lot more fun and adventure along the way, as depicted in this fictional story. As advantageous as they might be, magine how boring it would be to simply leave one Earth here... only to step out of your ship onto another Earth at the other end! Besides, even if such high speed missions do come to fruition, there will be significant compromises on safety when one travels at fractions of light speeds as I discuss in more detail here. They would, however, be better suited to robotic missions for fast, remote colonisation of our corner of the galaxy. Why do you have such a bleak view of a future Earth? Is there a hidden political message here? This is just pure fiction. I could just as easily have said, we're leaving Earth on this ark for pure adventure and fun... But would that sound half as compelling? I don't think so. No hidden messages, I am an eternal optimist and I see us advancing our technology indefinitely into the future. Over time, we will head out towards the stars, and more than likely that will be under much happier circumstances. If disease and climate change on Earth make life difficult here, why not simply quarantine a small section of our society on Mars or another planet within our solar system? I guess members of the think tank behind the "Centauri Princess" project saw this as an ideal opportunity to throw our seeds far and wide. If you're going to spend $trillions$ building something on that scale over a quarter of a century, you might as well aim high to an order of galactic scale. It actually goes a bit deeper than that. If you quarantine a small section of our species on a nearby planet, the likelihood is the strong bond between mother Earth and her children will soon force them to re-establish a link. The emotional ties toward the cradle where you are born can only be severed through some compelling force...like a one way trip to the stars. The society looks a bit primitive... where's all the hi-tech action in this futuristic ship? The starship community has left Earth in 2275 AD - just 270 years from now - hence you cannot expect Enterprise-style transporter beams or Star Wars like light sabers. Nevertheless the residents are an advanced culture utilising state of the art technology for all aspects of the ship's operations in such areas as propulsion, comet-mining operations, automated day/night cycle control, robotic interstellar navigation, recycling/purification drivers control around the ship, biosphere daily/seasonal temperature control, etc. all automatically performed by computers. There are some pet robots for day to day housekeeping duties and forestry monitoring, etc. But equally, the "Centauri Princess"'s folk have to maintain an ecologically friendly culture, and are totally dependent on preserving their plants, animals and forests to safeguard their own survival. Hence, once trees are felled, they are used to build wooden houses. The society is advanced but equally at the same time fairly basic. You mention 'controlled ecological life support' (CELSS) as the mechanics for the ship's biosphere. What progress are the world's space authorities making in this area of science? I am sure NASA and some of the other large space agencies around the world are committed to CELSS projects of many different kinds already. (Try a Google search to find out the latest). Establishing a correctly balanced 'controlled ecological life support system' (CELSS) that can function as a self-sustaining cycle with the minimum of external input will be the holy grail that eventually aids humanity to escape from this planet in a permanent way. Finding such an optimum CELSS model will be absolutely fundamental to all future space colonisation visions, be they within an Earth circling space station, a base on the Moon or a base on Mars or, ultimately, on a long duration voyage to the stars lasting thousands of years - as depicted in this story. There is a certain 'magic' that exists in the many symbiotic relationships we see in nature between all the creatures of this planet. The bees pollenate flowers to help propagate plants. Light from the Sun photosynthesises the leaves of plants which give off oxygen and produce food. The microbes act on the minerals contained in the soil to provide the plants with nutrients for growth. The heat from the Sun warms the lakes and rivers causing water to evaporate up into the sky and form clouds. The rains fall from the sky to water the plants. Humans and animals consume the food and oxygen from plants and breathe out CO2... and so on. This global harmony can be modelled on a miniature scale within a confined enclosure, initially with the aid of artificial recycling, monitoring and adjustment. We don't necessarily need to build a colossal orbital station around the Earth and then ferry up hundreds of tons of soil to overlay every inch of its cylindrical interior to see if the biosphere cycle would work with plants and animals by way of a 'CELSS' arrangement, as I envision in my "Celestial Titanic" web article. We can do this inside a closed, fully sealed underground cave or other excavated facility right here on Earth. Pressurise it to one atmosphere, stick some plants and animals in there and seal the entrance. Then start adjusting the 'levers', use fans to create winds, use sprinklers to create rain, use light bulbs to simulate sunshine. Too much CO2? Reduce the number of animals. Too much oxygen? Get rid of a few plants...etc etc You get the general idea? Through extensive experimentation and 'fine tuning' to get the balance between all the components just right, it may some day be possible to arrive at a working model calibrated to the 'critical mass' equilibrium that triggers whatever that 'magic' is and the cycle starts to take over running all by itself. With the biosphere experiments done in the Arizona desert a couple of decades ago, I don't think the cycle was engineered properly and the goals were nothing like what I am envisioning here. On the strength of its utterly fundamental importance to all future off-Earth settlements, I personally wouldn't blink twice even if as much as 20% of a space agency's fiscal budget were diverted towards a CELSS program year after year... until we arrive at that optimum 'holy grail' model that is so desperately needed. I'd say this is just as fundamental as building rockets to take us out into space and possibly just a tiny bit more fundamental than doing microgravity science on the International Space Station today. You create a "miniature Earth" on this ship... hmm, so how do you simulate sunshine for your forests? In this futuristic starship sailing trillions of miles away in space, from where the Sun is just another pin-prick of light in the black sky exterior to the ship, sunshine will need to be simulated throughout its vast interior using artificial lights, as described in the story. To light up the entire 600 square kilometres of biosphere will call for just under two million such light clusters, supplying the equivalent of the solar constant on the Earth's surface of 1,350 watts/metre^2 of flux. In total, these light clusters will require some 850 gigawatts of electricity! For ecological conditions balanced to those of "our" Earth, there is diurnal simulation of a 12-hour night cycle followed by a 12-hour day cycle operating across the biosphere, so the lights are only kept "on" for half the total journey time to Alpha Centauri. Seasons are simulated by the starship's central computer system's biosphere control mechanisms by adjusting temperatures and lighting levels. The whole process taken collectively therefore controls the flowering and fruiting cycles for trees and plants. Lighting simulation - click to see a larger image. [Copyright: Abdul Ahad] Through the collective contributions from every cluster of light and the 'additive' properties of light, the forests and lakes are seen to be lit up by an ambience of "sunshine" throughout the ship, which is virtually indistinguishable from natural sunshine we enjoy here on Earth - click to see a larger image. [Copyright: Abdul Ahad] The artificial sunshine produced by the lighting methods illustrated above will be sufficient for growing fruits and vegetables for the communities, grass for cattle, in the "Centauri Princess" farming complex, as a self-sufficient colony. I have dabbled a little in this area with my own simple experiments back in 2002-2003 to know that it works, at least in principle. When looking up into the ship's "sky" from a specific point on the biosphere floor, the super-bright light clusters mounted on posts protruding from tops of tall pine trees will be generally kept concealed from view. The light clusters and the "posts" on which they are mounted are very small in comparison to the overall tree folliage; hence they will be totally camouflaged and even a lateral view across the ship will not show the ugly posts and artificial lighting to the un-discerning eye. Can you simulate clouds and rainfall in this ship? Hopefully... yes. The clouds will form out of water vapour evaporating up from the river and lakes, much like what we have on Earth. There are aerial robotic devices suspended inside the ship's "sky" at high altitude which then electrostatically stimulate the clouds to release their water content as rainfall. These UAVs maintain their centralised positions evenly some 3 miles above the cylindrical floor using laser ranging altimetry - the kind of technology NASA uses to guide spacecraft descent onto planetary surfaces, in present day solar system exploration. Since the gravity vectors are constantly changing in the "Centauri Princess" artificial gravity spin, the rainfall and winds will be sure to cause some exotic weather phenomena throughout this ingeniously designed starship of the future. Rainfall is produced by electrostatic stimulation of high altitude clouds using UAVs - click to see a larger image. [Copyright: Abdul Ahad] How do you decide which 900 lucky people get to go from Earth? That is a very popular question! As the World Space Agency spokesperson emphasises near the beginning, the first thing the applicant must show is that he/she and their family members are all in a good state of health. The other criteria for choosing families are: cultural diversity (to ensure a wide gene pool from all sections of our society), skills and qualifications to perform specific duties on the ship, a strong sense of adventure, being from an ancestral background of social cohesion within a tight-knit community, highly leaning towards humanism and philanthropy. Plus others... How are law and order enforced on this ship? Anyone who causes trouble will be thrown out, it's as simple as that! The MMC has a small force of police officers who patrol the streets of Utopia, and law and order are legislated the same way as in a small state here on Earth. There is a court building in Utopia with a couple of MMC appointed judges, who exercise judicial duties in conformance to the starship's robust, computer guarded, computer enforced, statute books. How does the economics work? Do the residents use a single currency? A single currency is in use throughout the ship and residents are paid a salary based on the role they perform. An electronic payment system is in use throughout the ship and a number of banks facilitate the monetary process very similar to here on Earth. What happens when there are cultural/religious conflicts? "You don't make enemies on a small boat." This line is more true here than anywhere else. People go through life knowing their vulnerabilitities if they rock the boat in the middle of nowhere... thousands of years and trillions of miles from the nearest planetary shores. From an early age through school, college and university children are brought up in a culture of understanding and mutual respect for one another and the community is very cohesive as a result of their complete isolation. There are strict surveillance and monitoring methods in place along with robust security systems enforced by the MMC throughout the ship. The ship computer and central nervous system is wired up to monitor every square inch of its biosphere with CCTV and such like. You don't mess about on Ahad's starship! How will the population growth be controlled? TBC (Use your imagination!) How do you contain the problems of 'inbreeding' with just 900 people? With an initial crew make-up of just 900 people, they will have "inbred" hundreds of times over that expected for natural conditions on Earth, right? And they'll be all diseased and weak, when they arrive at New Earth? Fortunately, in this mission concept there is a way around this: you take a reserve bank of frozen eggs and sperm from a much wider gene pool on initial departure from Earth. The 'Centauri Princess' central computer system then monitors births and deaths along the voyage for each person/family. It calculates roughly after how many natural births one needs to expand one's gene pool. The ship's medical team then advise passengers when they should start drawing on the frozen fertility ingredients. It should be noted that only one member of a couple needs to resort to the frozen fertility ingredient during any one pregnancy; that way half of the offspring would be genetically natural in the relationship, making the regime totally acceptable. That regime is successfully operated on this voyage to ensure no loss of immunity to hereditary diseases on such a lengthy voyage. Is there any manufacturing facility to build/replace technology hardware? There are few hardware and technology components on this ship that cannot be repaired/replaced by the occupants. Everything from sun-simulating light bulbs to the textile machinery needed to manufacture clothes are available on board. Robotic observations platforms, missiles for comet disintegration, cryogenic fuel production for space shuttles, etc. are all recycled/manufactured onboard. Why can't we just zip across to Alpha Centauri in a light sail ship that could get there in just 5,000 years? Firstly remember technologies required for such speeds are still only in the realm of theoretical spaceflight. With a starship catapulted on a high speed 'whizz' mission straight from Sol to Alpha Centauri, the following are just a few of the things to bear in mind:- There is an 'Oort cloud' of comets and planetoids between us and Alpha Centauri which one has to cross safely on any outbound interstellar journey. If the Sun has an Oort cloud, there is nothing to suggest that Alpha Centauri does not have it's own Oort cloud of comets, making the environment separating us from that star system potentially even more risky. The interstellar medium is very dark with an estimated light flux of just 1/300th of a Full Moon illumination, making it next to impossible to see and avoid hitting any upcoming micro-meteoroid or comet at those speeds. High speed missions of even 5,000 years' duration will require extensive amounts of shielding and onboard multi-generational provisioning, all of which will call for a large scale vessel and add up to a substantial spacecraft mass. All of the above, taken together, will make it a "catch 22" situation on speed vs safety vs journey time. What happens if there are no comets or planetoids up ahead? First and foremost I should make it clear that this is a voyage completely into the unknown. Whether it is possible to keep the ship's extensive biosphere and ecosystem 'alive', 24 hours per day, 365 days per year... over thousands of years... on recycling initial reserves taken from Earth, breaches the limits of our current known science. Should refuelling become necessary along the journey, there are provisions as follows. The "Centauri Princess" interstellar command & forward navigation systems operate on a unique regime of forward planning which offers clear visibility and is therefore fully robust. The starship's onboard computer maintains continuous radio contact with a series of remote sensing, robotic "observation platforms" which operate at t+10 days, t+50 days, t+200 days,... ahead of the starship's current position (where 't' is the current ship time). These observation platforms (dubbed Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta,...) are critical "trailblazers" and serve as effective early warning alert systems for upcoming cometary bodies (or lack of them). At each mining/refuelling rendezvous point, the ship's navigation team weighs up information relayed back by these robotic platforms to determine potential risks to projected resource requirements. This decision process is handled by the onboard computer system, with manual input and overseeing by the navigation team. The ship is thus continually moving forward on known resource islands charted way ahead in its forward path (see the mission's scientific blueprint where I first conceptualised this system back in August 2004.) Trailblazing a course through the darkness of interstellar space - click to see a larger image. [Copyright: Abdul Ahad] "First Ark to Alpha Centauri" will only become first if the starship can successfully navigate a path through the totally dark and foreboding territory of the illusive Oort cloud, completely unseen and uncharted from Earth... Wouldn't it cost an enormous amount of fuel to slow right down to rendezvous with comets/planetoids? Remember, comparatively speaking, this is a very 'slow' mode of interstellar travel and the ship never attains speeds much greater than those of the Voyager spacecraft presently leaving our solar system (at less than 40,000 km/hour). The mining is going to be very infrequently needed, and in most cases the comets are going to be disintegrated in front of the ship and their icy fragments scooped up by funnels extended around the ship's outer bodywork in-flight. This is demonstrated in Chapter 5 in the story. In the event the starship is completely drained of vital resources like water, chemical fuels, raw materials, nuclear reserves, etc. there will arise the need to break the journey completely and stopover on an orbital encounter with a planetoid (the Oort cloud 'island hopping' strategy I envisioned in my original mission blueprint back in August 2004). In this fantasy voyage, I envisage at least three such full refills of resources for the "Centauri Princess" to be necessary en-route, between departure from our solar system and arrival at Alpha Centauri. By 'full' I mean refuelling to the original levels with which the ship initially left our solar system. One such refuelling is demonstrated in Chapter 6 - "Mining on an ice world by the illumination of pure star light", the fleet of shuttle craft and their cargo of surface rovers (one rover carried inside each shuttle) I would envision as follows:- The shuttles used for Oort cloud planetoid mining - click to see a larger image. [Copyright: Abdul Ahad] The surface rovers used for Oort cloud planetoid mining - click to see a larger image. [Copyright: Abdul Ahad] Above all, as factual as it all may sound, people should remember this is still only a "fantasy" concept, as we just do not know how much material is likely to be found in the Oort cloud circling all the way around our Sun at those enormous distances, impenetrable by even the most sensitive telescopes of our present era. In the real world, it is likely that many high speed robotic missions will have been launched for reconnaisance well before a human mission is launched. Where do the generations bury/cremate their dead? There is a dedicated crematorium/cemetery corner on the ship to cater for all religious faiths when it comes to respectfully disposing of their dead according to ethical traditions/customs presently observed on Earth. Will the ship's body work withstand the stresses for 50,000 years? The material science technology on Earth is a lot more advanced by 2275 AD (starship launch date). Stress tests on the synthetic outer construction confirm the structure to be fully robust, unless there is a meteoritic impact of sizeable proportion - but that is a risk with any mission out into the great unknown. My initial blueprint for this mission concept was to utilise the interior of an asteroid - excavated and captured from within the asteroid main belt between Mars and Jupiter. So why did I change my mind and opt in favour of a synthetic construction for the "Centauri Princess" outer body? Well, to generate 1g of Earth gravity equivalent, the rotation speed "v" would be v = (Rg)^0.5. So for my ship design where the radius of the internal biosphere floor is about 3 miles (4.8 km), v = (4800 * 9.8)^0.5 = 217 metres/second. That is no less than 500 miles per hour! At that speed a low density object of 2.9 grams/cm^3 (a typical chondrite asteroid) would not be likely to hold itself stable under the differential inertial stresses, it's sheer high rotation speed is likely to shred the thing apart. Are there any sports facilities on the ship? Certainly. The 600 square kilometres of pine forests, open prairies and lakes in the starship's interior provide ample space for many "Earthly" sports. Many authors in past sci-fi generational fantasy ships have pointed to "boredom" as a downside to this kind of long duration spaceflight. Not in my ship! Okay... you cannot play football or basketball very effectively. An object thrown upwards into the air generally will not land in the spot intended, since there is very little natural gravity to pull it down. However, ground or water based sports like athletics, swimming, rowing, gymnastics, etc. would be perfectly okay within measured parameters. Most notable of all, the magical 'weird gravity' environment inside my "Centauri Princess" will make it absolutely heaven for anyone into paragliding and aerial excursions. These winged, wolf-like creatures that haunt the starship in nightmares... are they aliens? I am not ready to give the story away! The high levels of mysticism once a major part of human society not so long ago: spirits, ghosts, poltergeists, recurring nightmares,...all appear to have receded after the invention of the electric light bulb and the higher levels of illumination that we now enjoy in modern times here on Earth. In this story, as the ship heads deeper and deeper into dark space, the old mystical phenomena naturally re-surface. The dream creatures are true "aliens" in the conventional sense and they have a physical presence on their home planet. But equally, they also have a "pure energy" component to their total existence which gives them the capacity to travel freely through the darkness of interstellar space and roam between solar systems attacking any potential threats... I love this whole concept and can't wait to see it on the screen! When exactly is the movie due out? The movie is still a huge dream. Realistically, to do the story proper justice we need a big Hollywood-scale budget approaching $100 million... If the likes of George Lucas, Stephen Spielberg or some other wealthy person in the movie industry wants to take the script and start filming... then there may be hope. If you feel enthusiastic about this concept, why not write to the BBC's production team in the UK... or one of the large film companies in and around Hollywood. You can also write to various well known film directors and actors like George Clooney or Jennifer Lopez via thier fan clubs... ask them if they would like a starring role?! All invited onboard! What happens to the people at the end of the mission? Once the Centauri Princess starship is swept up on the nearest cosmic shores beyond our solar system, its occupants face a roughly equal, two way split in their future destinies. In this particular story, half of them choose to go down and build settlements on New Earth and the other half decide they like the interstellar adventure and continue onward in search of other worlds and solar systems seen rising in the night skies above New Earth. I have two future short novel sequels already planned in and partially scripted that will track the progress of our distant descendants way beyond the ending point of "First Ark to Alpha Centauri"... Copyright © 2004-2005 by Abdul Ahad. All intellectual property rights on this movie script, the proposed motion picture to be made therefrom and the spaceflight concept depicted herein are fully reserved by the author under contract with his literary management agents in the United Kingdom. Any sharing of this work is only permitted for personal, non-profit and educational use.

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