Sleeper Ship



A sleeper ship is a type of manned spaceship in which most or all of the crew spends the journey in some form of hibernation or suspended animation.

The most common role of sleeper ships is interstellar travel, usually at sub-light speeds. Travel times for such journeys could reach into the hundreds or thousands of years, making some form of life extension such as suspended animation necessary for the original crew to live to see their destination. Suspended animation is also required on ships which cannot be used as generation ships, for whatever reason.

Suspended animation can also be useful to reduce the consumption of life support system resources by crew members who are not needed during the trip.

About a third of all sapient species who achieved TL 4 on their own, or were allowed to remain independent after they reached that point with help from a more advanced culture, produced, at least for a short period of time, Sleeper Ships with the purpose of colonizing other planets.

United Earth's Second Exodus project produced thousands of Colonist Arks, eventually transporting nearly 7 billion people to over 2000 worlds was one of the biggest surges in sleeper ship production in the past million years.