Thus The Guardian today. “Architects and scientists mull designs for an ark in space,” elaborates the newspaper. Early designs envisage a spinning ball fifteen kilometers across filled with soil that will support a complex ecosystem, including microbes, plants, animals, and up to five-hundred humans. “We need to think how we might live in space long term,” explains Rachel Armstrong, lead researcher on Project Persephone at Greenwich University. The project will take a few generations to come to fruition. It is a part of an international non-profit foundation called Icarus Interstellar, which is concerned with starship research and development. As the article shows, there are other projects with an eye on interstellar travel. The 100 Year Starship is an equally ambitious project funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency in the States. Steve Fuller, a sociologist at Warwick University who works on Persephone, argues that all such efforts take seriously the idea that humanity may face a global catastrophe in the not too distant future. The survival of humanity is at stake. Now, I am quite delighted by all such projects. The only advice I would have is that much thought should go to the delivery of a handful of people selected for survival to the lifeboat once it gets ready for departure. The small and apparently trivial step from the surface of the earth to the starship in space is the key to any such project, for it is certain to be exposed to every subterfuge the human species is capable of. And it is capable of subterfuges galore.