The Project
Going on the theme of this thread, Dr. Steven Kilston came out in 1999 with a multigenerational starship idea he called The Project.
He envisioned a vessel carrying one million people ready to launch in the year 2500 that could give humanity something grand to focus on as well as preserve a fair fraction of life from Earth.
Here is a PDF slide presentation on the highlights of The Project:
http://web.archive.org/web/20030420125612/http://www.interstellar-probes.org/resources/TheProject.pdf
If anyone has any more information on this concept, please send post it here, thanks.