What will spaceships look like in the future

The reality of starship design is more complex than anything Hollywood has dreamed up and implanted in our collective unconsciousness. While a manned interstellar mission isn't exactly on NASA's upcoming schedule, researchers haven't abandoned the topic to science fiction.

In fact, the Year Starship initiative—which began as a DARPA-funded contest to lay the foundations for a flight across the stars, gathering physicists, entrepreneurs, and anyone seriously interested in long-distance space travel—just finished its annual symposium this past weekend. One of the participants of the Year Starship project is Marc G. Millis, founder of the Tau Zero Foundation.

The foundation has proposed candidate technologies and designs, including the Icarus unmanned fusion-powered probe, which would accelerate theoretically, of course to one-tenth or one-fifth the speed of light.

Icarus, as it's currently envisioned, isn't the sleekest space ride. The skyscraper-size behemoth is comprised almost entirely of rows and clusters of spherical fuel tanks. But according to Millis, Icarus isn't a definitive, catch-all prediction of what an interstellar craft might look like. It's simply the design that might make sense to build first. One look at the Icarus design—or its predecessor, the Daedalus—and it's clear what starships don't need: wings. The only real-world spacecraft that bother with wings are ones designed to make regular landings on runways, such as the retired Space Shuttle, the upcoming Lynx a suborbital two-seater from XCOR or the Dream Chaser, an in-development orbital craft from Sierra Nevada.

And wings aren't even required for landings. Like the Russian Soyuz capsule, SpaceX's Dragon currently splashes down in the ocean though SpaceX plans to move toward rocket-powered launchpad landings. In both the near and far-term future, experts such as Millis imagine interstellar vessels won't spend much of their time in an atmosphere. Perhaps the small ships that carry people from surface to starship will remain winged, but truly interstellar vehicles can scrap aerodynamics and all of the design principles that are beholden to reducing wind resistance.

A starship doesn't need to be sleek or have a pointy nose—even the stocky Battlestar Galactica is pointlessly aircraft-shaped. If anything, the equivalent Cylon ships in the rebooted TV series are more rational interstellar travelers, with their spindly arms and flagrant disregard for the entire air-centric history of aerospace. Predicting what the first unmanned starships might look like is relatively simple. In the case of Icarus, for example, the entire structure is devoted to propulsion.

It's a colossal rocket, albeit a weird fusion-powered one. Millis says the first person-carrying starships, however, will be dominated by the technologies that keep those passengers alive. Consider gravity, a necessity on long-distance spaceflights. In prolonged zero-g, the human body erodes, losing bone and muscle density. The spinning disc on the Jupiter-bound Discovery One in A Space Odyssey illustrated this concept well, but Millis says that to better simulate Earth gravity, the real thing would actually have to be much larger.

The smaller the centrifuge, the less consistent the centrifugal force is across a crew member's body—the head, in other words, will feel lighter than the feet. Aside from being disoriented by chronic light-headedness, if the goal is to re-create the way blood circulates under the influence of gravity, consistency is key.

Of course, mankind can't survive on gravity alone. A starship designed to keep its occupants alive for years, decades, or even centuries, would require systems unheard of in current spacecraft. The TED Fellows program hand-picks young innovators from around the world to raise international awareness of their work and maximize their impact. The TED Fellows program is a global network of visionaries….

The TED Fellows program is a global network of visionaries in their fields who collaborate across disciplines to create positive change around the world. Sign in. Ever fantasize what it might be like to live life hurtling through deep space? Meet the space systems researcher who prototypes interstellar habitats that are out of this world. Karen Frances Eng Follow. Conceptual model of a growing and evolving asteroid starship. The image of comet 67P by ESA is used as a placeholder for a large asteroid.

What you need to build a starship Once a location and a collaborating local group is identified—such as an arts group or academic institution—the process begins with spreading the word in the larger community to build interest. A starship for the people of Earth So what does a typical Seeker starship look like? Closed-loop ecosystems and eating bugs While every Seeker project is unique, certain principles are always addressed, such as core sustainability.

Ted Space Art Science Humanity. TED Fellows Follow. Written by Karen Frances Eng Follow. More From Medium. Llowell Williams. Hustle AM. Leaders who are shaping the future of business in creative ways. New workplaces, new food sources, new medicine--even an entirely new economic system. Within years, humans may venture beyond the solar system.

What would it take to make it possible to actually live there? Scientists and architects are designing an ecology from scratch. So our design involves reconceptualizing our relationship to ecology. Sensors in the soil monitor activity and communicate with plants and help the system evolve. The system is designed to ultimately be self-sufficient, so it could support human life for generations. It looks nothing like the visions of space from the s, which essentially put American suburbia on other planets.