The book opens with one of the most harrowing stories from the very beginning of interstellar travel. Prometheus was the first ever international co-operative effort to start colonizing space. The ship was so large it had to be manufactured in orbit over the course of twelve years. The design was ingenious. Physicists designed a propulsion system that made it possible to reach the nearest stars in less than ten years, but when the ship reached its destination, a new home, at least eighty-five percent of its power would be depleted. Now what do you do with a useless spaceship once you've reached your final destination? You land and use it to build your new colony. It was designed to be disassembled and used to build a new city to pave the way for subsequent waves of colonists who, understandably, wouldn't start their journey until the safe arrival of the first wave could be confirmed.
Construction on the second ship began three months after the launch of Prometheus. The new project manager, the original decided to follow his ship to the stars, discovered a flaw in the dis-assembly mechanism. Radiation from the engines would immediately start to erode several seals in the bulkhead resulting in initial microscopic air leaks into the vacuum, and radiation leaks into the rest of the ship. Unfortunately, due to the nature of the ship's engines we had no way to communicate with the Prometheus. All we could do was fix the problem on the new ship, Redemption, and hope the previous crew found a way to deal with the problem.
Redemption launched as soon as it was tested and ready, eight years later. It's main goal was still to bolster the new colony we hoped would be waiting for the ship's arrival, but everyone understood that it was also a rescue mission. They carried supplies to repair the faulty seals and for any number of other contingencies, but all hope was lost when they caught up with the ship three years and two months into the journey.
The twenty-three survivors recovered by Redemption were fairly tight-lipped, but flight recording equipment and interviews years later shined light onto the past eleven years. The slow failure of the seals became apparent after the first year. Repair efforts failed, and in one case backfired to make the radiation leak worse. There were several mutinies over the years as whole sections of the ship had to be sealed off. The engine was sabotaged by a small group convinced it would be better to wait for the next ship to pass than to continue on into failure with the seals degrading (which they weren't after the bulkheads were sealed.)
During another mutiny, fifty-seven percent of the remaining supplies were jettisoned into space by accident. The book tells the ensuing events much better than I can in a summary, but I can tell you that people became more and more selfish and suspicious. Even before supplies ran dry, the crew became a militaristic Donner Party. The commanding officers of Redemption tried to keep events aboard Prometheus a secret, but it leaked out and outraged just about everyone. A couple were murdered before being sequestered in the hospital ward.
We all know that the story ends with humanity's first successful colony orbiting another star, but Wilkerson reminds us that we will always carry our human demons to the farthest reaches of the universe.
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