Ship cryptosleep is kind of unnessacary

[TheMeInTeam]

Human interstellar travel is impossible.

Humans won't ever be able to live on other planets for anything other than short lengths of time.

Once Earth is over, we're over.

So let's enjoy our gaming shall we?

That's going a bit far.  Transhuman solutions and generational ships are on the table in principle (we'd need an insane amount of energy for the latter).  Maybe freezing people like "cryptosleep" but right now it's not clear how we'd ever bring them back.

Going faster than light is impossible per our understanding of physics so you'd instead need some way to make humans live longer/be less like humans if you can't do freeze/revive.  There's nothing in real physics that says it's impossible, though there is good reason to doubt if humanity ever actually does it. 

[Shurp]

Well, seeing this is Rimworld I'd say one of the biggest reasons to use cryptosleep is to prevent the pyromaniac going nuts mid-route.

LOL, so true, the only way to make sure someone doesn't go nuts and decide to open the airlock doors to get some fresh air is to keep everyone on ice for the journey.

As for realistic probability of humanity going to the stars... well, it makes a lot more sense to send robots to make robots to make more robots... and if we're feeling sufficiently narcissistic, add some frozen embryos to the package for the robots to raise once they've terraformed a planet for us.

[Planetfall]

oooh I think this is a good place to plug this vid. It goes into the pros and cons of different types of interstellar travel (sleeper vs generation etc) By Isaac Arthur
https://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_288558347&feature=iv&src_vid=THqtAQOicQI&v=3y3MmmfZmP8
this video discusses a fifth method of colonization
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THqtAQOicQI The first half talks about interplanetary colonization. If you want to skip straight to interstellar stuff, it starts at 14:12

[NoQ]

As far as i understand, Cryptosleep is not about freezing; otherwise it would have been called "Cryosleep". Cryptosleep sounds as if it has something to do with cryptography. Probably the sleep is induced by distracting the brain into computing cryptographic hash collisions, which, well, additionally makes space flights mildly profitable

[5thHorseman]

As far as i understand, Cryptosleep is not about freezing; otherwise it would have been called "Cryosleep". Cryptosleep sounds as if it has something to do with cryptography. Probably the sleep is induced by distracting the brain into computing cryptographic hash collisions, which, well, additionally makes space flights mildly profitable

I thought it was a portmanteau of cryo and crypt, implying that when you went under you were technically dying.

[Shurp]

Yes, especially since the cryptopods originally showed up only inside the crypts.  And "crypt" is just greek for "hidden".

But I like the idea of using sleeping (but not inert) brains to mine cryptocoins for the interstellar financial system.  That's one trade good that *can* travel at the speed of light!

[CucumberedPickle]

Portable hiveminds.

Now THAT'S something you can market.

[Tynan]

The term cryptosleep comes from cryptobiosis, which refers to organisms being alive yet appearing dead. For example, sea monkey eggs.

As for the ship, there's lots of reasons cryptosleep would be optimal:
--Much smaller mass than a full enclosed living space
--Built-in protection for extreme g-forces, both for takeoff/landing as well as potential evasive maneuvers versus attacks or late-detected rocks/gravel in the travel path
--You can't assume the ship has infinite antimatter fuel so it can't expend infinite energy to accelerate towards c
--Same as above, but for reaction mass
--Interstellar dust and gravel. The limiting factor can be the ship's ability to deflect these.
--Easier to stay stealthy when not under power, which may be tactically advantageous when entering a system you know nothing about, or escaping hostiles (which may be present in the rim world system). But not being under power means not accelerating, so you need time.
--Totally unknown journey distance - you can't know what you'll find in a given system and it may take several tries to get somewhere you want to stay. This means multiple rounds of deceleration/acceleration, taking lots of onboard ship time. Cryptosleep means you won't run out of living supplies.
--Pyromaniacs can't set your ship on fire
--The engines may be nuclear rockets, not antimatter anyway, which limits fuel

[Wanderer_joins]

What always bothered me with ship cryptosleep caskets is they really look like standard cryptosleep caskets, i've already built them on my ship like many other players I think. They could have been redesigned with the new ship structure.

[CucumberedPickle]

--The engines may be nuclear rockets, not antimatter anyway, which limits fuel

But why do the research topics point to an antimatter fueled rocket ship?

[Shurp]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fission-fragment_rocket

"The efficiency of the system is surprising; specific impulses of greater than 100,000s are possible using existing materials. "

So nuclear will get you there.  But I imagine finding a uranium-rich asteroid to refuel at could be a challenge.

[5thHorseman]

--The engines may be nuclear rockets, not antimatter anyway, which limits fuel

But why do the research topics point to an antimatter fueled rocket ship?

I don't see antimatter mentioned in any of the ship research nodes. The only thing that mentions fuel is the reactor that states it's nuclear.

[Tynan]

You can also use antimatter to ignite a nuclear reaction, I believe.

Like a campfire, where antimatter = match, uranium nuclear fuel = wood.

[Canute]

But it is much more complicate to create antimatter first.
A nuclear fission reaction start itself when it becomes a critical mass.

And when a civilisation manage it to use antimatter for energy production, it might discover the direct way to create propusion from energy too.

[Shurp]

No need for antimatter to trigger a nuclear reaction.  High explosives will compress a plutonium sphere into a big bang.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding-bridgewire_detonator

Antimatter is really only relevant as a really *light* fuel -- maximum bang for the buck if you're trying to minimize your fuel load.  And if you have a big scoop on the front of your spaceship you can fuel as you go from interstellar hydrogen.