- Generation ship
- A vessel whose voyage includes multiple human generations.
- Worldship
- A very large, self-contained traveling habitat; usage varies by author.
- Light-year
- The distance light travels in one year, not a unit of time.
- Delta-v
- The total velocity change required by a mission architecture.
- Specific impulse
- A propulsion-efficiency measure related to exhaust velocity.
- Mass ratio
- Initial vehicle mass divided by final mass.
- Beamed propulsion
- Propulsion receiving energy or momentum from an external source.
- Deceleration
- The often-neglected requirement to slow at a destination.
- Interstellar medium
- Gas, dust, plasma, and radiation between stars.
- Habitable zone
- A stellar-flux region where surface liquid water may be possible under some atmospheric assumptions.
- Biosignature
- A potentially biological signal that requires contextual interpretation.
- ECLSS
- Environmental control and life-support system.
- Bioregenerative life support
- Use of organisms and ecological processes to regenerate air, water, food, or materials.
- Loop closure
- The fraction of a defined material flow recovered and reused.
- Makeup mass
- Replacement material needed to compensate for losses.
- Carrying capacity
- Population supportable under explicitly stated ecological and resource assumptions.
- Ecological resilience
- The ability of an ecosystem to absorb disturbance and recover function.
- Artificial gravity
- Acceleration designed to reproduce some effects of gravity, usually through rotation.
- Galactic cosmic rays
- High-energy particles that create difficult long-duration radiation hazards.
- Solar particle event
- An episodic increase in energetic particles associated with solar activity.
- Effective population size
- A genetic measure distinct from simple census headcount.
- Founder effect
- Reduction or skewing of genetic diversity in a newly founded population.
- Cryobank
- Stored biological material such as cells, gametes, or embryos.
- Planetary protection
- Practices intended to limit harmful biological contamination.
- Fault tolerance
- Continued operation despite specified failures.
- Common-cause failure
- One cause defeating multiple supposedly redundant systems.
- Graceful degradation
- Retaining reduced safe function rather than failing catastrophically.
- Verification
- Evidence that a system was built correctly against its specification.
- Validation
- Evidence that a built system addresses the actual need.
- Technology readiness level
- A maturity scale, not proof of safety, affordability, or integration.
- Autonomy
- Capability to act without immediate human direction.
- Model drift
- Deterioration or change in model behavior as conditions and data change.
- Safety case
- A structured claim supported by evidence that a system is acceptably safe.
- Defense in depth
- Multiple independent or diverse security barriers.
- Cyber-physical system
- Computation whose behavior can change physical processes.
- Digital twin
- A maintained model linked to a physical system; not necessarily complete or predictive.
- Intergenerational justice
- Duties and distributions of risk, benefit, and power across generations.
- Reproductive autonomy
- The right to make reproductive choices without coercion.
Foundation terminology; domain-specific usage may differ · Owner-alpha foundation · Independent review pending · Suggest a correction
