space ark n.

What we have here is undoubtedly a ‘Space Ark’. It’s an old idea in the astronautical literature; I've been able to trace it back to the British physicist J. D. Bernal, who proposed this method of interstellar colonization in a book published in 1929.

Some writers suggested that these Space Arks should be built in the form of concentric spheres; others proposed hollow, spinning cylinders so that centrifugal force could provide artificial gravity—exactly what we've found in Rama…

These include generation travel (space arks) and the use of cryogenics (suspended animation).

By contrast to what has traditionally been known as the large, slow-moving ‘space ark’ approach to interstellar flight, Valkyrie becomes a low mass speedboat.

Most readers will resolve the instability of science and fantasy by developing a rational explanation, first by hypothesizing that this ‘whorl’, as it’s called, with its cities visible above in the night sky, is some sort of space ark (generation starship) illuminated with the futuristic equivalent of a huge fluorescent light bulb.

People who fled the Eschaton in their primitive space arks did so because they believed that anybody who stayed behind would die, along with the rest of humanity.