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THE LAST FRONTIER PROJECT
The Last Frontier Project was a space mission of the Humans in the Alpha Age. The starting point of the project was the worsening climate crisis on Earth, as a result of which the Earth became less and less habitable for mankind. To create a new home for humanity, the goal of the Last Frontier project was to create a multigenerational spacecraft to carry 30,000 selected pioneers to the star system Trappist-1, 40 light-years from Earth, where astrophysicists had discovered seven Earth-like planets. On one of these planets, the pioneers were to lay the foundation for a new home for humanity.
The initiator of the project was the European Space Agency (ESA). It worked closely with NASA, Russia's Roskosmos, China's national space agency and the Japan Space Exploration Agency on the project. Together, the five agencies selected the 25,000 most suitable passengers from among several million applicants for the journey of the first multigenerational spacecraft.
After twenty-one years of research and development, the Last Frontier launched in the year 2421 from the ESA-spaceport Kourou in North Africa towards Trappist-1,
The journey of the Last Frontier ended with the landing of the spaceship in the year 2625 on the planet VOI 700 D. Since the spaceship caught fire during the landing, it was forced to make an emergency landing. The fire destroyed a large part of the spaceship. Its wreckage has been on the planet VOI 700 D ever since.
The maximum cruising speed of the Last Frontier was half the speed of light.
Selection criteria for passengers
The following criteria were applied in the selection of passengers:
- Health and genetic diversity: To ensure that future generations on the spacecraft are healthy and genetic diversity is maintained, health screenings and genetic testing were conducted. Individuals with genetic diseases or health risks were excluded from participation.
- Skills and knowledge: In order to have a diverse group of people on board with a wide range of skills, knowledge, and experience, attention was also paid to the composition of occupations among the passengers.
- Age structure: Care was taken to ensure that both young and older adults were on board to ensure community continuity and to preserve the experience of different generations for the community,
- Social and psychological factors: Social and psychological factors were also considered in the selection of passengers to promote a harmonious and cooperative community aboard the spacecraft.
- Ethnic and cultural diversity: to ensure a rich, diverse, and pluralistic culture on board, passengers of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds were selected.
The Spaceship - designed as a home for generations and building material for a new beginning
The Last Frontier multigenerational spacecraft was the first of its kind built by mankind. It could accommodate a total of 30,000 passengers and had a usable area of 600,000 square meters. It was cubical in shape and had a base area of roughly two soccer courts, and 42 decks in total. The average deck height was three metres, with 2.5 metres for crew quarters and up to five metres for special multi-purpose decks. The Last Frontier's propulsion system was a tribid system consisting of an antimatter drive, solar panels on the outside of the spacecraft, and ion thrusters.
For propulsion and energy generation the Last Frontier relied on a threefold system consisting of an antimatter drive, solar panels on the outside of the spacecraft, and ion thrusters.
The entire spacecraft was designed to serve its passengers as a supplier of raw materials and ready-to-use building modules upon arrival on the new planet, based on the Human Settlement Plan (HSP). This means that the Last Frontier was to be built completely from scratch and that it was to become dwellings, industrial complexes, mines, machinery and administrative buildings.
The control of the spaceship, the coordination of the non-human workforce as well as the organization of the social interaction was taken over by an artificial intelligence. The so-called GAIA system. The GAIA system had also been designed to help the people on the new planet implement the Human Settlement Plan through calculations and blueprints.
To meet the needs of its passengers, the Last Frontier included the following areas:
- Living and Recreational Areas: The Last Frontier's living areas included family and single sleeping cabins, common areas, recreational zones with a total of four movie theaters, a bowling center, a library, three recreational gymnasiums, two swimming-pools, four gyms and an artificial cross-country ski area. In addition, there were various dining areas and even five artificial garden areas designed in the style of parks on Earth.
- Medical Facilities: To ensure the health of passengers, several medical facilities were available on the Last Frontier. These included three doctors' offices, a maternity ward, a spa center for the regeneration of illnesses, a hospital with operating rooms, and an intensive care unit.
- Educational facilities: Given the long duration of the voyage, the Last Frontier also had educational facilities to ensure that each new generation aboard the starship also received a comprehensive education. The educational facilities included an elementary school, a secondary school and a university.
- Cropland: To support self-sufficiency, areas were established on the Last Frontier for growing crops and raising livestock, which provided a continuous food supply for passengers.
- Police and firefighter zone: To ensure order as well as security on board, there were 500 armed Guarding Troopers and 100 firefighters on board the Last Frontier. The troops were housed in the so-called “p and f zone”. There was also a prison wing with cells for passengers who had been sentenced to prison by a starship court, which was also located in the police and firefighter zone.
- Disposal and recycling area: The Last Frontier had a recycling facility capable of recycling materials that were no longer needed, such as metals, plastics or paper, and returning them to the production cycle. There was also a hall where organic waste was composted to produce nutrients for plants and life support systems. Waste that could not be composted or recycled was burned in an incinerator.
- Life support systems: The Last Frontier also had extensive life support to produce and recycle air, water, and food for passengers.
- Burial and memorial area: On the Last Frontier there was also an area where the dead among the passengers were composted through a so-called “ecological burial” in containers provided for this purpose. In addition, in order to commemorate the dead, there was a room specially set aside for this purpose.
Armament of the Spaceship
The Last Frontier was not built as a warship but as a passenger transport ship. For this reason, above all, had an extensive defense system against the possible dangers in space. This included:
- A fully automatic laser defense system against asteroids and space debris.
- A missile defense system based on laser cannons
- Laser cannons and microwave weapons to defend against enemy attackers such as spacecraft
- In addition to the fixed defense system, the 500 Protection Troopers on board were armed with Laser Guns.
Communication with Earth
Because the Last Frontier was on a long interstellar journey, it could not maintain continuous real-time contact with Earth - due to the vast distances involved and the limited speed of communications technologies. Nevertheless, various methods were used to maintain limited communication between the spacecraft and Earth:
- Laser communications: Using laser pulses that the spacecraft exchanged with special observation stations on Earth, the Last Frontier was able to send encoded data packets in the form of light pulses to Earth's observation stations, where they were decoded. The signals enabled a relatively fast communication speed of one second per light-year distance. This means that at a distance of 10 light years between the spacecraft and Earth, the transmission of a light pulse took 10 seconds.
- Microwave communications: * In addition to laser communications, the Last Frontier always used microwave communications as a backup solution for data exchange with Earth. This involved exchanging data packets using microwave transmission between the spacecraft and ground stations on Earth. This method enables reliable data transmission over longer distances, but is generally slower than laser communications.
- Long-range radio as an emergency solution: In the event that the laser or microwave communication was not possible, the spacecraft was also equipped with powerful communications equipment to send and receive signals over long distances. This included the use of directional antennas and high range, low attenuation radio frequencies. However, due to the long distance, radio signals could only be exchanged with significant delay as the travel time increased. Thus, it can be roughly said that each light-year distance between Earth and spacecraft means about one year delay in radio transmission. At a distance of, say, ten light-years, this would mean that a radio signal sent from the spacecraft would take ten years to be received on Earth.
The legal system on the Spaceship
To strengthen togetherness and establish rules, a so-called Starship Council was set up on board the spaceship. The council consisted of 14 members and a council chairman. It was elected every two years and is considered a model for the so-called Federal Council, which is elected by the settlers in the Gamma Age on the planet VOI 700 D.
The first official act of the first Starship Council is the ratification of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United NationsExternal Link as the basic law for the coexistence of the Last Frontier community in space. Subsequently, a comprehensive Civil Code and an extensive Criminal Code were created by the various councils on the Last Frontier's 200-year journey, both of which - based on the Human Rights Charter - regulated everyday interaction.
Culture on the Spaceship
The culture on the spaceship was primarily characterized by the limited living space as well as the close coexistence of different ethnic groups and cultures. For this reason, adaptability and tolerance were the most important core values for the pioneer community.
To promote tolerance, there were some fixed rituals and ceremonies aboard the Last Frontier: The most important holidays of the world's cultures were basically celebrated together - no matter which original religion or culture a fellow passenger belonged to.
Another important ritual was the morning service: All passengers gathered every morning in the Common Areas to conduct a morning service together with the Council, which was connected via screens, at the end of which the names of passengers who had a birthday or who had recently died were read out. Weddings and births were also announced at the morning service.
Birth control and common family planning on the Spaceship
The original passenger count at the launch of the Last Frontier was 30,000 passengers. Of these, 15,000 were young couples who wanted to implement their family planning on the spacecraft. This was to ensure that there would be a basic potential for a new generation on the spaceship. The other 15,000 passengers, who were not couples, were divided into 7,250 men and women each and 500 members of the “third sex.”
To ensure that the resources as well as the space available on board the Last Frontier were not overly burdened and, on the other hand, that the future viability of the rice mission could also be ensured, family planning was a “community matter”. This means that at the beginning of each new year, the artificial intelligence GAIA calculated how many newborns would be needed by the community.
In principle, GAIA based its calculations mostly on an average number of children per woman of 1.2.This value varied depending on the mortality rate.
Couples who decided to have offspring (again) had to seek permission from the Spaceship Council to do so. To avoid too few couples coming forward on the other side, it was always ensured on board that parents had access to a functioning childcare and childcare infrastructure. In addition, there were regular information events on how important targeted family planning is for ensuring the future of a multigenerational ship.
Health care and life expectancy on the Spaceship
During the 204-year voyage of the Last Frontier, the average life expectancy of the passengers was 92 years. The value increased from 87 years in the first generation to 92 in the second generation. Since the third and fourth generations are still alive to a large extent, no conclusive value is available here yet.
The high life expectancy in comparison with the human population on earth was due on the one hand to the fact that health and genetic criteria were also taken into account in the selection of the passengers, and on the other hand to the fact that the living conditions at on board were constantly optimal. Every passenger had access to a first-class health care infrastructure.
Moreover, since the food was organized collectively, the passengers ate a balanced diet for the most part. And the environmental conditions in the artificial environment of the spaceship were constantly in an ideal state for humans.
Working life on the Spaceship
Most of the physical work on board was done by so-called Maid Bots. Maid Bots are robots that are connected to the GAIA system and perform tasks such as cleaning, cooking, farming, waste disposal and manual labor for humans. In addition, there were also so-called Med Bots aboard the Last Frontier that took care of basic medical care.
Nevertheless, work played an important role for people as an occupation during the long travel time as well as a structuring element. Each adult passenger was required to spend at least four hours a day serving the community and assisting the other passengers. This commitment was fulfilled mainly through social activities. Thus, there were many people who worked as nurses, midwives, social workers, librarian, psychologists, chaplains, or even companions for the dying.
In addition to these more voluntary occupations, there was also a contingent of five hundred Guarding Troopers and one hundred firefighters selected by the GAIA system, each serving four years of mandatory service.