Out of this world: the winners of interstellar spaceship competition

Spaceships modelled on jellyfish, 3D-printed homes, polyamorous relationships and vegetarian diets are among the ways in which experts have envisaged making interstellar travel feasible.

- David Batty

Scientists, engineers, architects and social theorists responded to a global competition to develop plans for "generation ships", self-sustaining crafts capable of supporting up to a total of 1,500 people over a 250-year journey to a habitable planet.

Entrants to the Project Hyperion design competition, launched last year, could only incorporate current technologies or those expected to emerge in the near future, such as nuclear fusion, into their proposals.

An expert panel, including NASA scientists, judged the viability of almost 100 submissions, assessing how their habitats, architecture and social structures would allow the crew to flourish as a society across multiple generations of space flight.