Six Reasons your Sci Fi Setting Might Require Cold Sleep During FTL Travel

We've seen and read it countless times: our protagonists, be they Ellen Ripley or Richard Riddick, need to go in to some sort of deep sleep, either by means of stasis, cryosleep or "other" until they arrive at their remote destination light years away. Sometimes it's a rather formal process and lots of wires, diodes and catheters are involved. Other times it involves being frozen in some substance or even locked in to some sort of "between time" state. Or maybe it just involves a wrist-attached device pumping you full of stasis-inducing fluids. Who knows!

The question though is....why?

Sure, space is ridiculously big, and it is often the case that SF writers realize this enough to decide that concepts like cryosleep make sense when your implied universe requires a journey lasting months or decades. Maybe the ship needs to keep its resources to a minimum, and hauling ten months' of supplies for a live crew is precious weight that the ship can do without, so locking everyone into a dreamless sleep where they don't wake up, die, or even age is a good idea from the point of view of the bean counters. But.....maybe there's some other, possibly more unusual, even sinister explanation....

Here's six I can think of:

1. Hyperspace Warps the Brain

When you tavel at FTL speeds the human mind can't take it. The technology for FTL travel might put you into another higher dimensional space, or maybe it cuts corners through a neighboring universe. Either way, the implication is that humans can't handle the trip awake, and maybe not even physicially. Something bad would happen to them if even one of the human woke up in the middle of hyperspace....

2. FTL Travel would Cripple or Crush You out of Stasis

Advancing faster and faster to travel into FTL space could take time. Maybe the actual "journey" from point A to point B takes mere minutes, but it's the first light year out and the last light year in where the steady acceleration and sudden deceleration are most taxing. Once you're in hyperspace it's nearly instant....but the before and after would leave a person not in stasis a smear on the wall.

3. The Hyperspace Parasites Will Get You

Long ago space travelers figured out that the dominion of Hyperspace, wherever it is, is rife with mysterious alien parasites that latch on to wakened human minds and ride back in to "normal space" to start zombie apocalypses, wars, or just become serial killers. To solve this issue, everyone has to be locked in stasis for the duration of the journey.

4. Event Horizon and Doom were Right

It turns out there is a parallel dimensional space that makes FTL travel fast...but bad news! It's the dimension which has lent our collective memories to the concept of hell, and hideous entities exist over there which seek to infiltrate our minds (sort of like the parasites, but demons) and ride back to normal space to start the End Times. Your friendly Megacorporation realizes this is not in their profit margin, so they figured out that a dreamless passenger in stasis does not attract the attention of the demons in hell. Usually. Don't worry, they've got specialist cleaners for the "special exceptions."

5. Actual FTL travel Leads to Quantum Displacement

Actual FTL travel in this case is a bit like quantum teleportation....where you "destroy" the entity in one region and remake it in an exact duplicate somewhere else. Hyperspace is just the "journey" through which the quantum process takes effect. No one like experiencing utter destruction and reconstitution, so stasis is the only solution. That, and even moving around slightly during this process can lead to you're particulate matter being stretched out over a few light years' distance so everything, passengers included, has to be locked down for the ride.

6. FTL Travel really does Take a Long Time

Turns out your universe's FTL travel still takes enormously long times. Moving at twice the speed of light might let you imagine ways that relativity is ignored or bypassed, but 2Xc. is still a 2+ year journey to our nearest neighbor star, Alpha Centauri. In a case like this, it may just be that the resources for such a journey are at a premium, and stasis is far preferable to an aging crew arriving years later.

Alternative Concept: The Bioformation Process

It's been suggested that realistic space travel, especially at STL speeds, would need to be conducted over decades or centuries. Even in a matter of years, it might make sense for a future transhumanist society to send out AI-controlled ships with the digital recordings of human explorers ready to upload into freshly grown bodies on the other end, tailored specifically for the environment they will soon be facing. And when those explorers are done? They can retire those bodies (or leave them to their fate), and move on to the next destination, with uploads in the next new bodies....

Dark Stars XIV: Kedrak Prime

37 Kedrak Prime

The Kedrak system is doomed. The main star is about to go nova, and is an immense, ancient red giant which has engulfed much of the interior system. The gas giant Kedrak IX  has two dozen moons, and one inhabited moon called Kedrak Prime.  This civilized local world is unaware of what is about to happen; locals are a humanoid aggressive alien species of felinoids called the Keddirak, a lost colony from thousands of years ago during the pre-commonwealth expansion of the old keddirak Federation (which eventually collapsed, leaving countless felinoid worlds seeded throughout the galaxy).

Physically the keddirak are classic cat-men (Felinoids, see White Star core). The people of Kedrak Prime are survivors of a lost era of their expansionism….they have vague records of this time period, but no memory of how the old Federation collapsed (but war is a likely reason). There are relics of this ancient period still visible, including three immense terraforming atmospheric scrubbers. The machines failed long ago, and the keddirak regard them as almost mystical relics of their forgotten age, proof that they came from greatness and will one day ascend again.

Kedrak Primeis currently dominated by two world super-powers locked in a perpetual conflict: the Order of the Claw and the Razor Union. This has motivated them to spread in to space, and they have sophisticated late 21^st century equivalent technology, cybernetics, and efficient nuclear power. However, advanced weaponry, foldspace technology and more have eluded the keddirak.

Among the keddirak is a growing movement of scientists and free thinkers called the Science Union who stand in opposition to the perpetual cold war. They are aware of the dire predicament that their world faces, and know that it is only a matter of time before the red giant star collapses on itself, blowing its matter out in to space and leaving a white dwarf in its wake….the entire star system will be dead at that point. They have engaged in active searches and broadcasting in to space on primitive radio transmission in search of the ancestors of the keddirak, but without success….so far.

Possible Plots:

Quinlon imperials are offering foldspace technology and weapons in exchange for slave recruits in their armies (the quinlons love using keddirak catmen as shock troops and have taken keddirak from other lost colonies for this purpose).

Chilopteroids have been studying the keddirak with the intent to harvest them for slaves, albeit secretly.

The Science Union will attempt to contact PCs who enter the system and beg for assistance in fleeing their world, emphasizing that the system could perish any day when the red giant goes.

A black ops branch of the Order of the Claw has hatched a plan to capture an alien vessel, and needs a target. They are using highly experimental technology recreated from a hidden vault in one of the terraformer ruins to create an incredibly dangerous and unstable quantum teleporter. Those who use it do not intend to return without a captured starship, and they go armed with the toughest armor and slug throwers the keddirak can make. The transporter range is limited….a target vessel needs to be within 1,000 km, so a separate diplomatic division is prepared to try to convince any alien contacts to come in close enough to use the device.

Star knights entering the system who investigate the local culture may be shocked to learn that there is an order of keddirak star knights….alien mystics who study The Way and appear to have learned how to manipulate dark energy without exposure to the Dark Stars…..

Keddirak Characters: Keddirak can be alien star knights (from Between Star & Void), alien brutes (core), alien mystics (core), the quixotic alien from Five Year Mission, and possibly others at the GM's discretion. Keddirak have nasty claws that deal 1D4 damage on a strike, and an uncanny sense of smell.