Editing Sleeper ship

{{Short description|Hypothetical type of crewed starship}}
{{More citations needed|date=March 2011}}
A '''sleeper ship''' is a hypothetical type of crewed [[spacecraft]], or [[starship]] in which most or all of the crew spend the journey in some form of [[hibernation]] or [[suspended animation]]. The only known technology that allows long-term suspended animation of humans is the freezing of early-stage human embryos through [[embryo cryopreservation]], which is behind the concept of [[embryo space colonization]].

==Description==
The most common role of sleeper ships in fiction is for [[interstellar travel|interstellar]] or [[intergalactic travel]], usually at sub-[[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 that cannot be used as [[generation ship]]s.

Freezing the astronauts would probably involve whole-body vitrification and would, most likely, be frozen at 145 [[kelvin]]s to reduce the risk of fracturing.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.americanantigravity.com/documents/Ralph-Merkle-Interview.pdf|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060830123325/http://www.americanantigravity.com/documents/Ralph-Merkle-Interview.pdf|url-status=dead|archive-date=2006-08-30|title=Ralph-Merkle-Interview|page=4}}</ref>{{Better source needed|date=November 2021}}

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, or by an author as a [[plot device]], and for this reason, sleeper ships sometimes also appear in contexts involving travel within the [[Solar System]] or any other system of planets orbiting one star.

== Examples in fiction ==
There are numerous examples of sleeper ships in science fiction literature and films. Some of the best-known examples are:

* "[[Far Centaurus]]", published in ''[[Destination: Universe!]]'' by [[AE van Vogt]]
* The interplanetary sleeper ship [[Discovery One|USSC ''Discovery One'']] is one of the main subjects of the whole ''[[Space Odyssey]]'' franchise. As it is told in ''[[2001: A Space Odyssey]]'', six crew members are on the spacecraft: Commander "Dave" Bowman and Frank Poole were de-hibernated before the others; Victor Kaminsky, Jack Kimball and Charles Hunter were killed by the sixth member: the [[Psychopathy|psychopathic]] [[artificial intelligence]] [[HAL 9000]].
* ''[[Pandorum]]''
* The TV series ''Lost in Space'' used a sleeper ship, the ''Jupiter II'', intended to hold the crew for the five-and-a-half-year journey to Alpha Centauri.  Dr. Smith, a saboteur and accidental stowaway, is forced to revive the crew to save the ship from meteors.  
* The film ''[[Lost in Space (film)|Lost in Space]]'' in which the suspended animation system fails, bringing the crew of ''Jupiter 2'' out of sleep prematurely.
* ''Nostromo'' – The sleeper/cargo ship in the film ''[[Alien (film)|Alien]]''.
* ''Sulaco'' – The sleeper/war ship in the film ''[[Aliens (film)|Aliens]]''.
* The ''Hunter-Gratzner'' in the film ''[[Pitch Black (film)|Pitch Black]]'' transports a number of its passengers in [[Cryonics|cryostasis]].
* ''[[Planet of the Apes (1968 film)|Planet of the Apes]]''
* ''[[Avatar (2009 film)|Avatar]]''
* ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' – A ship is found with its crew in cryostasis.
* ''[[Gauntlet (Stargate Universe)|Stargate Universe]]'' – The crew of the ''Destiny'' enter stasis in order to sleep during a potentially millennia-long trip.
* ''[[Prometheus (2012 film)|Prometheus]]''
* SS ''Botany Bay'', a sleeper ship from the ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series]]'' episode "[[Space Seed]]" (it is also mentioned in ''[[Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan]]'' and ''[[Star Trek Into Darkness]]''), transporting a crew including [[Khan Noonien Singh]].  [[One (Star Trek: Voyager)]] illustrates a similar technique.
* Called a "sail-ship" by [[Cordwainer Smith]] in ''[[Think Blue, Count Two]]''
* ''[[Cargo (2009 film)|Cargo]]''
* ''New Mayflower'' and ''Ark'' from [[Frederik Pohl]]'s novel ''[[The World at the End of Time]]''
* ''[[After Earth]]''
* ''[[Homeworld]]''
* ''[[Freelancer (video game)|Freelancer]]'' – Five sleeper ships built by the Alliance: the Bretonia, the Rheinland, the Hispania, the Kusari and the Liberty. Of these five, all but the Hispania go on to found different star systems, each named after them: the Hispania can be found in the game as an abandoned derelict, the descendants of its passengers having become the "Outcast" and "Corsair" pirate factions.
* The space station-starship hybrid ''Endurance'' from ''[[Interstellar (film)|Interstellar]]'' is used by NASA astronauts to travel through a [[wormhole]] to another galaxy in order to find a new planet for humanity or bomb the planet with human [[embryo]]s.
* ''[[Event Horizon (film)|Event Horizon]]'' – The vessel ''Lewis and Clark'' is dispatched to find what happened to the ship ''Event Horizon''. The Crew is put in hibernation. 
* In the official trailer of the video game ''[[Civilization: Beyond Earth]]'', a sleeper ship was seen sending humans from Earth to an alien planet.
* ''[[Mass Effect Andromeda]]'' – Representatives of the human race, in addition to that of other [[Milky Way]] Galaxy races, travel to the [[Andromeda Galaxy]] aboard a series of arks, with the aim of colonizing a series of new homeworlds. The travel time is only 600 years due to the discovery of a form of faster-than-light travel that cuts down the time to traverse the 2.5 million light years between galaxies (by comparison, it is mentioned in the game that a cargo vessel, also sent in the direction of Andromeda, will not arrive for more than two million years.)
* ''[[Halo (franchise)|Halo]]''
* ''[[Hyperion (Simmons novel)|Hyperion]]'', a novel by [[Dan Simmons]]. The Seed Ships are a type of slower than light travel that put the passengers into a fugue-like state for the length of the trip.
* ''[[Heaven's Vault]]''
* ''[[Passengers (2016 film)|Passengers]]'' – It features the sleeper ship ''Avalon''. The suspended animation system, which keeps 5,000 passengers in hibernation on board the ''Avalon'' during its 120-year trip to the planet Homestead II, fails as a result of asteroid collisions causing a mechanical engineer to be awoken prematurely.
* ''[[Don't Look Up]]'' – The US president and some of her inner circle escape an extinction event where a large comet hits the Earth.

== See also ==
* [[Embryo space colonization]]
* [[Generation ship]]
* [[Interstellar ark]]
* [[Self-replicating spacecraft#Replicating seeder ships|Seedship]]
* [[Torpor Inducing Transfer Habitat For Human Stasis To Mars]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

[[Category:Fiction about suspended animation]]
[[Category:Fictional technology]]
[[Category:Hypothetical spacecraft]]
[[Category:Interstellar travel]]
[[Category:Fictional spacecraft by type]]
[[Category:Sleep in fiction]]