A sleeper ship is a hypothetical type of manned spaceship in which most or all of the crew spends the journey in some form of hibernation or suspended animation. As there is currently no known technology that allows for long-term suspended animation of humans, the term is usually only found in science fiction. Ariane 5 lifts off with the Rosetta probe on 2nd of March, 2004. ... Hibernation is a state of regulated hypothermia, lasting several days or weeks, that allows animals to conserve energy during the winter. ... Suspended animation is the slowing without termination of life processes by external means. ... Science fiction is a form of speculative fiction principally dealing with the impact of imagined science and technology, or both, upon society and persons as individuals. ...

The most common role of sleeper ships in fiction is for interstellar travel, usually at slower-than-light speed. 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. Interstellar space travel is unmanned or manned travel between stars, though the term usually denotes the latter. ... Cherenkov effect in a swimming pool nuclear reactor. ... Life extension refers to an increase in maximum lifespan or average lifespan, especially in mammals. ... A generation ship is a hypothetical type of starship that would travel much slower than light across great distances between stars (see interstellar travel). ...

Suspended animation can also be useful to reduce the consumption of life support resources by crewmembers who are not needed during the trip, and for this reason sleeper ships sometimes also make an appearance in the context of purely interplanetary travel. Life support, in the medical field, refers to a set of therapies for preserving a patients life when essential body systems are not functioning sufficiently to sustain life unaided. ... By definition, interplanetary travel is travel between bodies in a given star system. ...

Sleeper ships in specific works of fiction

• The famous movie and book 2001: A Space Odyssey, for example, features a ship travelling to Jupiter (Saturn, in the book) with most of its crew in suspended animation and only a handful remaining awake to operate the spacecraft.
• A sleeper ship named S.S. Botany Bay is seen in the Star Trek episode "Space Seed".
• The Nostromo in the film Alien, and the Sulaco in the film Aliens, are sleeper ships, as are all vessels encountered in the Alien franchise (the sleep cells are portrayed in every movie except Alien: Resurrection).
• In Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri computer game, the colonists arrive at Alpha Centauri on a sleeper ship.
• In Iain M. Banks' book, Excession, a large craft known as the Sleeper Service is portrayed as an eccentric artificial intelligence which travels from system to system, picking up humans for long term suspended animation and eventual deposit elsewhere (at its discretion).
• In Freelancer computer game, a large group of humans leave the earth in 5 sleeper ships to colonise the Sirius Galaxy.

Atmospheric characteristics Atmospheric pressure 70 kPa Hydrogen ~86% Helium ~14% Methane 0. ... Atmospheric characteristics Atmospheric pressure 140 kPa Hydrogen >93% Helium >5% Methane 0. ... The SS Botany Bay The SS Botany Bay is a starship in the fictional Star Trek universe. ... The starship Enterprise as it appeared on Star Trek Star Trek is a culturally significant science fiction television series created by Gene Roddenberry in the 1960s. ... Space Seed is a first-season episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, that was first broadcast on February 16, 1967 and repeated on August 24, 1967. ... The USCSS Ulysees Nostromo is a fictional starship, featured in the 1979 film Alien. ... The science fiction/horror film Alien (1979), directed by Ridley Scott, has become extremely popular and influential, and has spawned several sequels and imitators. ... The Sulaco was a fictional spaceship shown in the movie Aliens. ... Aliens is a 1986 science fiction movie starring Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, Lance Henriksen, Carrie Henn, Bill Paxton and Paul Reiser. ... Film poster Alien: Resurrection Alien: Resurrection (1997) is the fourth movie in the Alien series, preceded by Alien, Aliens and Alien³. Synopsis Spoiler warning: Alien: Resurrection takes place 200 years after the events of Alien³. Ellen Ripley has been cloned using blood samples from Fiorina 161, on ice so that... Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri (sometimes abbreviated to SMAC) is a turn-based strategy 4X computer game created by Brian Reynolds and Sid Meier under the auspices of Firaxis Games in 1999. ... Iain M. Banks at 63rd World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow, August 2005 Iain Menzies Banks (born on February 16, 1954 in Dunfermline, Fife) is a Scottish writer. ... Excession is a science fiction novel by Iain M. Banks and the fourth published to feature The Culture. ... Hondas intelligent humanoid robot Artificial intelligence (AI) is defined as intelligence exhibited by an artificial entity. ... An artists concept of a protoplanetary disk. ... 1. ...

See also

• Embryo space colonization
• Generation ship