Pulling together different technologies to make interstellar colonization possible

Submitted by matthewgdick t3_101f9z4 in Futurology

Here are some fascinating articles and links about seemingly unrelated technologies:

  1. Babies being born 30 years after being frozen as embryos.
  2. Seeds that are thousands of years old being able to sprout and grow.
  3. Impressive advances made in humanoid robots by Boston Dynamics.
  4. Uploading memories into the cloud using Nuralink.

So here is the concept to pull it together:

  1. Use Neuralink to make a digital clone of a colony builder’s mind, by uploading a lifetime of data into the cloud and making a digital clone of the person using the latest in deep learning neural network AI.
  2. Put it in the body of a humanoid robot.
  3. Send it with frozen human embryos and seeds on a seedship to an exoplanet hundreds (or thousands) of light years away.
  4. Land on an earth-like exoplanet and build a new civilization with the human minded robot serving as caretaker to get the first round of people born and raised until they can take over.

I found this idea interesting enough to write a sci-fi book about it. Do you think the concept is possible or would it just be science fiction?

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ActonofMAM t1_j2nngy3 wrote

You also need to invent an artificial womb between steps 3 and 4.

For the overall plan, I too am skeptical. Murphy's Law goes double for spacecraft.

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Spacellama117 t1_j2rzi69 wrote

Presenting, outer space! The one place where saying 'everything is out to get me!' is in fact 100% correct!

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BarGamer t1_j2n2ivt wrote

Sounds about right, but you need another source of conflict to jazz up the inevitable boring bits. Maybe something goes wrong with the caretaker robot, maybe something's wrong with the planet, maybe something wrong with the babies, maybe all of the above. Think The Martian, then go from there.

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matthewgdick OP t1_j2n9vg6 wrote

It’s already published and you’re spot on!

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StantonExit t1_j2o1280 wrote

This idea sounds like Raised by Wolves on HBO.

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matthewgdick OP t1_j2o1gsd wrote

Yep, but my book came out before Raised by Wolves. Great show. Sucks it got cancelled.

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Muesky6969 t1_j2nx3ti wrote

So I am probably going to be down voted to Hades but all the time, money and research spent on interstellar travel is ridiculous. How about we take those resources and fix the mess we have made of the one planet we know for sure is inhabitable for humans and cure the diseases that plague humanity, first?

Then once that is done we focus on space travel. With a healthy world population and thriving planet, who knows what advances in science, medicine and technology we could make. This all seems, as my grandmother used to say, “Putting the cart before the horse.”

Understand I am just tired of seeing wonderful human beings living in poverty, homelessness and with diseases, while we kill our beautiful planet for greed.

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Mr_BamDeano t1_j2o0hdl wrote

This is a washed argument. There are enough resources and brain power on this planet to work both in parallel.

The sad part is, colonizing other planets (interstellar is a toss up) is very likely a simpler feat than fixing the entire human condition on this planet.

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UniversalMomentum t1_j2p3rz1 wrote

We will have unlimited robotic labor by the time we are doing stuff like this so there is no need to worry about those issues. You will have so much cheap production that everything will be dirt cheap and people will be bored enough to try crazy space exploration ideas.

Humans might tear themselves apart, but you won't really have production and resource problems AND a lot of these ideas don't compete against domestic improvement anyway so you will be doing both constantly like now.. just at a much faster rate.

Plus there are few single inventions that would benefit humans more than the ability to transfer a human mind into a machine because that opens up all kinds of new doors so you would want to do that even if you didn't care about space travel and you want the robots to automate your production as much as possible.. so you're already building everything you need for space travel for domestic uses anyway.. there is no real loss there just more reasons to do the same thing.

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Wargasm69 t1_j2p8wu1 wrote

A healthy world would imply culling 99% of the human population. From 8 billion to 80 million. Then we can start over. Why cure diseases when we should let nature run its course? Diseases are nature’s way of cleansing genetic defects, so why are we going against it? Why do we even need so many people on the planet?

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Yesterday_Is_Now t1_j2r2amw wrote

>With a healthy world population and thriving planet, who knows what advances in science, medicine and technology we could make.

Er, but R&D for space exploration leads to advances in science, medicine and technology that would help to heal the Earth and its residents as you aspire. So it would be best for both efforts to proceed in tandem.

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BarGamer t1_j2nbn3i wrote

ISTG, I had no idea. Wow, maybe I should buy a lotto ticket?

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CTDKZOO t1_j2nkwb2 wrote

Just read your reviews and this comment from a three-star had me rolling:

>The problem is that anyone half-way competent would never have made these mistakes in the first place, so there wouldn't have been a plot.

Oh when this person hits the workplace and finds out that average is excellence...

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Teripid t1_j2nlgbd wrote

Most killer/zombie movies would last about 20 minutes if people had common sense.

Also don't get me started on Jaws.

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Icerios t1_j2nvqsr wrote

> Oh when this person hits the workplace and finds out that average is excellence...

Spot on, hahaha.

Unfortunately, though, plot demands conflict, so of course something must go awry. Otherwise your tale is just a bland documentary following a fictitious series of events.

In terms of realism, whenever humans have any involvement in anything, there will be some mistakes that’ll look utterly ridiculous in hindsight. Just look at the glitch the ~$10B James Webb telescope suffered. If it happened in fiction, it’d be criticized for being a cheap plot device. Hard realism is an “unrealistic” mix of diabolus ex machina, diabolus ex nihilo, and deus ex machina.

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zoinkability t1_j3nvt5v wrote

What was the glitch in the JWST? Having only paid attention to it for a bit over a year everything seems to have gone smoothly. Are you referring to a glitch that delayed the project completion? I know it was tremendously over budget and schedule.

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jubular t1_j2nk4sx wrote

I'm actually writing something similar where the caretakers we're functionally immortal humans that set themselves up as Gods once they colonize a new world.

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Alphatron1 t1_j2o2rwe wrote

Maybe humanity sucks as a whole and the robot decides to stop the ship in space. The end

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melvinma t1_j2nm6oq wrote

You mean injecting Elon Musk in the story?

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cgknight1 t1_j2ncnl2 wrote

>Send it with frozen human embryos and seeds on a seedship to an exoplanet hundreds (or thousands) of light years away.

Let's for argument sake say you travel 1000 light years away - how do you plan to get there in a time period that is shorter than critical failure on the 'ship'?

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matthewgdick OP t1_j2nek3n wrote

Yep, you’re right. The best chance is the ship would need to rely on component extended life by being at low temperatures without much temperature fluctuations and no moisture and no air. In the end, it would be a shot in the dark because no one would be around to know it if worked or not.

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cgknight1 t1_j2nfrev wrote

Because of the hard limit of speed of light - you'd be realistically looking at a couple of thousand years as a minimum. It's unlikely you could make anything last for that period of time.

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Chellaigh t1_j2och4s wrote

Spaceship of Theseus?

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katanakid13 t1_j2pdlg2 wrote

3D print replacement parts as you go until the robot ponders this and has a meltdown.

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Cutecumber_Roll t1_j2okyvx wrote

Time dilation removes the hard limit, but you'd run into soft limits long before you reached relativistic speeds with current tech so that doesn't make much difference.

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UniversalMomentum t1_j2p2bim wrote

You send a swarm of probes using laser propulsion and they land on the destination planet and self assemble communication and then you beam humans over as electromagnetic radiation because that's a thing you can do if you can put the human mind into an electronic format. You can hit fractional light speed light like that because the probes are small, the tricky part is the landing, but I suspect we can make that work using gravity, light energy from the star in the new solar system, atmosphere and the fact that it doesn't have to land super soft.. but you do have to slow down a lot with minimal power, which is tricky but should be doable. It's all about going super low mass on everything you send through space.

You don't need to carry the humans in the ship and you can lose some probes along the way, you just need one to get there and start a harvesting and assembly process to build the basic infrastructure.

Then you can send humans at the speed of light and clone them at the destination and all you risked was tiny probes accelerated by ground or space based lasers aka the lowest mass possible to keep speeds high and complexity low.

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MisterGGGGG t1_j2q28cl wrote

They wouldn't land on planets. Self replicating probes would land on asteroids and comets, mine them, and reconfigure them into space colonies, communications lasers, and into more self replicating probes.

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strvgglecity t1_j2n75em wrote

Interstellar travel is unlikely to ever occur unless new physics are discovered. also, there is a TV series called "raised by wolves" with two seasons that is essentially what you describe: Androids raising kids born from stored embryos on a foreign planet.

If you continue, consider: What's the purpose of the colonies? Why can't the fully humanoid robots, which are basically human clones, perform whatever labor is to be done there? What purpose would it serve to send humans to what is surely an imperfect planet for human beings? (There have been no planets discovered so far that are anywhere near habitable)

These questions can be answered, and having answers would make a more compelling context for any fictional story.

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matthewgdick OP t1_j2naauc wrote

Raised by Wolves was great. I’m really bummed that it got cancelled. I really wanted to see where the story finished up. Interestingly my book got published before Raised by Wolves came out. The first 10min of episode 1 and my book are pretty similar. But after that they diverge dramatically.

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pikknz t1_j2ncra0 wrote

I didn't know it was cancelled, I hate when they diverge, like they know better.

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IamSorryiilol t1_j2nh4md wrote

Not new physics. New technologies. We have the physics

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strvgglecity t1_j2njto4 wrote

There is no current physics understanding that enables life forms to conduct interstellar travel on human timescales. We can send machines over decades or centuries, and possibly eventually humans, but the idea of centuries long trips sounds more like fiction than science fiction. There's too many things that could go wrong on a generation ship, and there are no known habitable.planets.

meaningful interstellar travel and communications would require understanding how to manipulate wormholes or to break the speed of light. We don't understand either of those things or know if they are possible, so it's not just technology.

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ActonofMAM t1_j2np65u wrote

Nothing like the round trip speed of even Age of Sail travel on Earth between different continents, no. But Earth and the colony, later colonies, could communicate at lightspeed and share data. If the colony system has enough resources, and the colony ships with a wide enough selection of human DNA, that's all that would be needed.

Mind you, I'd expect each system's human race to speciate. Maybe even on purpose.

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strvgglecity t1_j2nrnxz wrote

One-way communication to the nearest star would take 4.5 years, 9 years to get an answer. There would be no functional purpose for communication, no opportunity for conversation.

Further, the resources required to keep humans alive are enormous - each inhabitant of the new planet would require about 75,000 pounds of food and 86,000 litres of water, which is unlikely to be mined or produced on-planet for at least the first several hundred years while building would occur.

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UniversalMomentum t1_j2p6596 wrote

Of course there is use to share data between worlds, that's just silly. You think because they can't IM there is no use for communication. GO HOME YOUR DRUNK!

You don't have to send humans in big ships, you can send tiny ground based laser powered probes that setup a receiving station and then beam the human mind as data that can go the speed of light. None of that put you up against the fundamental forces of the universe like trying to carry enough fuel and food to bring humans through space or pretending you can keep human in stasis for thousands of years and not have them turn to mush.

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angrypuppy35 t1_j2nmmom wrote

That’s not really true. Nuclear pulse propulsion technologies that could take us to low single digit % of light speed are feasible in the next 10-20 years.

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someguyfromtheuk t1_j2ot97o wrote

It's estimated that Earth-like planets around sun-like stars are an average of 20 light years apart. Covering that distance at 0.01c takes 2,000 years.

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angrypuppy35 t1_j2otieo wrote

Never said 1% of the speed of light and the post was about interstellar travel. Alpha Centauri is 4.3 light years away.

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IamSorryiilol t1_j2nn6y2 wrote

See, what you did there was add a caveat of "human timescales" that didn't exist before.

Then you went on to agree with me? Very weird.

Anyway.. There are many many known habitable planets? Also, by the time any of this is viable, we would certainly be able to make non-habitable planets, habitable- ever heard of Mars?

"meaningful" is subjective to you. But, the science-fiction things you're talking about like "wormholes" or "traveling FASTER than the speed of light" are certainly going to require new physics. Faster than light travel.. haha made me chuckle.

We don't need any of these things to do interstellar travel. We just need time. These trips are one-way. Within my lifetime I certainly expect or at least hope humans to attain 1% of the speed of light..

"330,000 mph (535,000 kmh). That’s blindingly fast – yet only 0.05% of the speed of light" Is what a spacecraft has already achieved.

Our issues are certainly closer to being technological ones than physics. You need to wind that sci-fi neck in and be more realistic to the discussion.

Even at 10% the speed of light its 40 years to our nearest star. On earth people will age 40years not including time dilation. It is very much a long-term survival issue for our race.

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strvgglecity t1_j2ntsq9 wrote

Sorry, idk what you're talking about. Earth is the only habitable planet ever discovered. Any human being who leaves Earth's atmosphere has zero other survivable habitats in the known universe.

Planetary geoengineering would take millennia, and require truly enormous resources and investments for something that wouldn't be realized for 1000s of years, light years away, with no opportunity for communication.

I used to get excited about space exploration and these types of far out topics, but our societies can barely feed their people. In the end idk what's so meaningful about spreading humans to other planets if we can't keep this planet sustainable and we can't end human suffering.

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UniversalMomentum t1_j2p6ya9 wrote

Nah, we will have nearly unlimited production in 100-200 years as robots can start to make robots. It won't take anywhere near thousands of years. Look at how fast humans have progressed just in the last 200 years from like steam power to modern day computing and nanoengineering. In another 200 years we will look like an alien super civilization compared to what we are now at this rate.

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strvgglecity t1_j2pd60u wrote

What does production have to do with geoengineering a whole planet? Yes, it will take thousands of years, at least, to create a habitable planet for humans and other earth life. Changing an entire planet is not something that happens quickly. The only reason we are able to have such an effect on our planet is because there's 8 billion of us and there are fossil fuels to burn and turn into chemicals. Other planets do not have either of those. Getting the necessary machinery to another planet might not even be possible. Geoengineering other planets is a far-off pipe dream idea at this point.

The whole enterprise is questionable. It would take multiple human lifetimes just to get there, and people and government are hesitant to invest large sums in super long term projects that have no return for the people funding it (taxpayers). Likewise, a business wouldn't take the risk because the cost is very high and the chance of success provides no value to earth or the company.

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IamSorryiilol t1_j2nxfnk wrote

I really think you're greatly underestimating the speed at which science advances.

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strvgglecity t1_j2ny82a wrote

Dude you said there are many habitable planets, and then you referenced Mars, and I have no idea why. Mars is not habitable. Any human exposed to Mars would be dead in under one minute from numerous fatal effects. I think you're greatly overestimating your own knowledge about space, physics and science in general. We went to the moon 50 years ago, and we can barely even get back.

Going to another star is not realistic for human beings. We can send machines.

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IamSorryiilol t1_j2nzb65 wrote

You're really really being pedantic here to try and brute force some sense of being right.

You know fine well I meant potentially habitable. We will have humans living on mars by 2040 at the latest. Co-HABITATING there as a group of HUMANS living on MARS.

Take your nonsense elsewhere. Humans will be living on other planets long before the end of the millennium, including those in far-off star systems you seem to think, is unachievable. It is a necessity, a requirement for survival.

Enjoy your bubble

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strvgglecity t1_j2o2mbf wrote

Lol being right is right. Not pednatic. Being accurate has meaning.

You didn't say "potentially habitable", you said habitable. Literally any planet anywhere is "potentially habitable". Even asteroids. Maybe we'll design a Venus or Uranus habitat one day. That phrase is functionally meaningless.

NASA isn't projecting the first manned flight until at least 2035 (super likely to be delayed). I suspect you think space works like it does in the movies.

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IamSorryiilol t1_j2o5w2x wrote

I mean it isn't.. potentially habitable has meaning and it is not an asteroid or gas giant.

Lol.

Hmm no think you're incorrect on that one.

I suspect you do Mr 'Faster than light travel'.

This is what's called a tangent anyway. No we do not need new physics for interstellar travel, end of discussion.

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UniversalMomentum t1_j2p6l2v wrote

The whole point of colonization is to find a 1G Earth like planet where we can live in a normal biological forms and not suffer low gravity or weird planet syndrome or long term radiation.

We don't need more places to live really. The Earth won't run out of resources or get filled up by out of control population and copying the human brain to a machine which lets us live almost anywhere is probably MUCH easier than traveling between stars.

We don't be sending living humans that age like you thinking, we will send tiny probes and beam humans as data and we will do it because we can, not because we have to.

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UniversalMomentum t1_j2p5jue wrote

Yes there is, you copy a human brain to a machine, you send a probe use laser propolsion. The probes sets up a recieving station and you send the human as data.

No laws of physics broken and you get fractional light speeds out of the probes and full light speed out of the humans beamed as data.

The reason you think physics need to be broken is because your brain is stuck thinking we need to send humans in space ships, which might be impossible due to the onboard energy and mass you'd need to bring or the immense time it would take.

If you use tiny probes you get to 1/10 or 1/4 the speed of light and actually hop between stars with your probes fairly easily and without risking lives/you can always backup any living humans to a machine but the accelerating large amounts of mass is too much of a problem.

So you solve that problem by not doing it, you approach everything with an ultra low mass solution because that's part of the fundamental limit of physics.. mass doesn't like to accelerate. Space time doesn't want mass to accelerate easily, so stop thinking of that as you main way of doing things and it becomes a lot more possible.

You have to get brain to machine transfer tech to make it work, but that tech is going to be super useful for a lot more than just space travel and it doesn't break any laws of physics to make a copy of a human brain and beam it as electromagnetic waves without all those pesky mass limits.

It's not the easiest thing to do, but at least you don't have to bend physics or invent impossibly high density portable energy sources.

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strvgglecity t1_j2pc4e6 wrote

Ok... So you do that. Then what? The mind is stuck inside the tiny machine, what's the next step?

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ryujin88 t1_j2qrplh wrote

I assuming you can do that, why bother sending the brain data? Ultimately if no humans are going there then what's the point of a bunch of robots running people simulations on another planet?

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Pleasant_Carpenter37 t1_j2np814 wrote

> more like fiction than science fiction

What's the distinction you're trying to make here? My first reactions are "All science fiction is fiction" and "the OP's plot certainly qualifies as science fiction". So...I think I'm missing your point.

As to new physics, I'm 50/50 on that. On one hand, I think it's physically possible to send a probe to a neighboring star system. Something between a nuclear thermal rocket, xenon thrusters, and a solar sail could probably do the trick.

If you have the propulsion to get a probe to another star, you can certainly pack some frozen embryos and seed banks. The robots we have make that part plausible, and uploading minds into computers has been around for a bit.

OTOH, even if all of the pieces here are technically possible, I doubt that our culture would be willing to sink in the investment required. If the payoff time is 500 years, who's going to make that sacrifice now? We could be facing a civilization collapse in a fraction of that time.

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strvgglecity t1_j2nqw83 wrote

The payoff time would be never, because no humans on earth would ever be able to interact with people on the other planet. The closest star is 4.5 light years away, so even a simple text message exchange would take 9 earth years. No human on earth would experience a benefit to their lives, and the people on the new planet are unlikely to thank humanity for stranding them.

The only.proposed method so far for interstellar travel are micromachines with solar sails, but no, they cannot carry any cargo. The theoretical design weighs mere grams. You would need a full spaceship of decades worth of food, water and other materials for however many people are intended, and massive amounts of gases to survive. The only reason earth is habitable to humans is because various other life forms altered the planet's chemistry and made it hospitable for us.

The cost is probably the largest blockade to an attempt, but I doubt even an earnest attempt would be successful or meaningful. Earth humans have nothing to gain by sending embryos light years away.

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Pleasant_Carpenter37 t1_j2odmri wrote

> no humans on earth would ever ... interact

> text message exchange would take 9 earth years

These contradict each other.

> decades worth of food, etc.

The OP proposed sending frozen embryos and a seed bank. Who's eating the 20+ year supply of Campbell's chicken soup?

> Earth humans have nothing to gain

Self-fulfilling prophecy? If you can't imagine that you have anything to gain by exploration, you won't become an explorer.

Finally, I'll repeat my question from my earlier comment: What distinction were you trying to make between 'fiction' and 'science fiction'? I'm still not sure what you meant by that.

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strvgglecity t1_j2ofn1f wrote

How do you grow from a seed bank to feed hundreds of infants (the minimum size for a sustainable DNA population)? Where do the plants grow? In what soil? What water are you using?

All food that goes to space now is dehydrated and they use onboard water to rehydrate it, because it's more efficient and cost effective. There are no canned goods.

Yes, messages that take 9 years isn't interaction. It's extremely slow communication that would have virtually no function.

I consider science fiction, for the purposes of questioning the future, to be based on science. It's also not important and was a throwaway line.

Yes, humans have nothing to gain by sending probes light years away. There is no opportunity for anyone on earth to benefit from that endeavor. The trip would take multiple lifetimes, so unless people are immortal, nobody who sent the ship would be there for or to arrive, AND the technological advances made in the interim would very likely make the previously sent ship obsolete. It's much more likely that we will transition to hybrid biomechanical beings before even attempting to reach another star, and biomechanical beings may have immortality or have lost the need for physical bodies entirely, with the ability to exist on a computer server and be uploaded into various forms once it arrives.

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Pleasant_Carpenter37 t1_j2op9vj wrote

Hydroponics? Starter pack of bacteria to condition the soil on the new world? Maybe there's already soil there that would be suitable with some prep work? We can't actually get a close enough look to say whether any given exoplanet is a lifeless rock or not. Any such colony ship would surely be preceded by a survey probe, so the robots would draw water from the environment.

And yes, I know they don't send literal cans of soup into orbit. I'm sure you can forgive a convenient turn of phrase even if it wouldn't be part of a technical specification for NASA.

Slow communication is still interaction. If I write a letter and send it to my mother via snail mail, does her response not count as 'interacting'? That seems like a silly way to twist the meaning of the word. That being said, communication with a 20-ish-year latency (now thinking of places like Wolf 359 or Ross 128) would be a different model than what we have now.

Actually, that raises another practical issue. How do you send a coherent signal over such great distances? Directional radio antenna? Laser comms? The power levels and precision needed to make a direct transmission work might not be feasible. OTOH, you could launch relay probes at regular intervals to simplify the problem, so it wouldn't be insurmountable.

There's definitely the risk that an "early" colony vessel would be completely obsolete by time it arrived. I read a story a while back where humanity sent a diplomatic mission to an alien homeworld via a coldsleep ship. While they were having tea with the alien emperor, Earth's first FTL ship arrived! Definitely the kind of stuff that would make some aerospace engineers despair.

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ActonofMAM t1_j2noq01 wrote

I would say, as a longtime SF reader, that the purpose of the colony is an offsite backup of the human race and its culture in case anything happens to the Sun. And eventually both Earth and the colony can continue sending out new colonies ditto.

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strvgglecity t1_j2nsles wrote

That's not what happens though. Within a few hundred years the beings living on the other planet would likely not be considered human due to significant changes in physiology based on new gravity, atmospheric pressure and density, atmospheric composition, differences in star output and radiation. Their culture would change immediately, because none of the places or items available on earth would be there. Also, if it's embryos, they do not have culture. It would have to be forced on them by the robots.

The sun is well understood and will be safe for 1 billion years at least, at which point it's impossible we would still be the same species we are today unless humanity pursues genomics and stops all genetic mutations permanently.

If we explore the galaxy, it's most likely to be done by small probes that can self-replicate and therefore bounce from planet to planet instead of requiring new machines be sent from earth. The time scales are too large, the distances too great, and the supposed benefits are not felt or experienced by anyone.

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sopmaeThrowaway t1_j2o2xak wrote

I thought of that show too and now I’m sad. It was so interesting before the 2nd season hatchet job. I can’t believe they tapped Ridley Scott to make and then abandoned it like that. Dude is 80, making the last of his projects and they waste his time and vision and disrespect him like that?!?

HBO is now discovery channel and you can totally tell. Cheap ass Liars. Now I’ll never know what that ancient musical robot Father grew out of Elmer’s glue and flowering plants was all about. Argh.

People, get rid of HBO. They are selling their shows to be cut up and commercialized, so that you can’t access them without the ads. And they are adding the discovery channel catalog of garbage “reality” TV to HBO instead. We already cancelled you, cable. Do you really think we’re this stupid? Fuck HBO.

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UniversalMomentum t1_j2p4opb wrote

Humans will just expand because they can and production will be virtually unlimited with more robotic automation.

Interstellar travel should be very possible if you just make tiny ships and then bean humans a the speed of light do the outpost you setup with your tiny laser propulsion probes.

BUT you have to stop thinking about it as sending humans in spaceships between stars because that part might never happen.

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strvgglecity t1_j2pbg29 wrote

Nothing can travel at the speed of light. As of today, that is one of the foundations of physics. The fastest theoretical speed scientists think can be achieved for micro spacecraft with light sails is about 20% the speed of light (and I've heard nothing about them being able to slow down). Transporting actual materials to build with is unlikely be a use of the astronomical energy required to move something large that fast, and the high opportunity for space debris to destroy it, again, because of the speed.

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Sweetartums t1_j2n7j5k wrote

what do you mean? there's definitely valuable resources to be exploited by wealthy and politicians on mars

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strvgglecity t1_j2n8lpm wrote

Um. No. Look into the actual costs of space exploration. There is no possible resource on Mars that would be cost effective to return to earth. Unless they find magic potions, Mars is a ball of rust and ice.

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more-pth t1_j2ooag2 wrote

It's a cool thought experiment but if I could offer my two cents, I don't think a colony ship like this would ever be feasible.

The main issue is the quantity of ionizing radiation in deep space. Over long periods of time, you'll have enough gamma and cosmic rays that will completely destroy any sort of information storage that you attempt to have. This means both biologically (DNA) and computationally (any form of digital storage).

To solve this problem, you'd need either a passive defense system or an active defense system.

A passive defense system against gamma/cosmic rays is basically just being on a planet. You wouldn't need special storage while residing on a planet.

An active defense system would require an incredible quantity of energy. You'd have to constantly check the DNA/digital storage and make sure that none of it was corrupted. You'd need sophisticated repair and backups for both of these systems. However, the problem with active defense is that the quantity of energy that you can get in deep space is very small, you can't really use solar as you're too far from the sun. The only option is to bring enough energy with you to survive a trip that could take centuries. I don't find this very feasible.

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mhornberger t1_j2nebn4 wrote

I'm not even entirely comfortable with the ethics of having children born on dangerous interstellar voyages. I can accept if people become pregnant along the way, or embarked on a voyage while pregnant. But to store embryos to restock the new world, like they're corn or tins of coffee, seems... off to me, somehow. These babies are being treated as stockpiles of raw materials with which to build a new world.

I'm much more comfortable with the first few voyages being entirely automated. And with robots and whatnot pre-building housing, energy production, and other infrastructure, so people just show up and move in.

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UniversalMomentum t1_j2p7czt wrote

The dude said put a human brain in a machine and bring embryos. Where is all this taking colonies of living humans coming from?

It's like instead of reading and imagining as asked you just defaulted back to standard 1960s giant generational spaceship ideas.

It's fun to get in your 2 cents, but it's nice if ppl can read and stay on topic a little.

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TYO_HXC t1_j2rj9rz wrote

Because that's exactly what those embryos would be.

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BlocksWithFace t1_j2nlw3k wrote

A couple of challenges with the travel itself, say you solve the energy requirements to even get to just 10% the speed of light, miniscule bits of dust in space would impact the hull of the craft like micro missiles . Also you need to block radiation from cooking or giving cancer to the crew. There's some interesting suggestions for surrounding a ship with water to help with this.

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jld3sign t1_j2notrv wrote

One of the issues I've always had with habitable planets is their own likelihood of life. What happens when the planet you show up on has its own life and we're the colonizing jerks all over again?

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UniversalMomentum t1_j2p1hlr wrote

I think the premise of copying the mind to a machine is the right direction and you can do it like that, but it would be faster to try to make the initial "Seed" trip using the lowest mass ship possible and not carry any human because if you have mind to machine tech you can also beam humans at the speed of light, so you goal is to setup a receiving station and beam humans... because basically the only thing that travels through space fast enough is electromagnetic radiation like light and radio waves. Everything else has to either be flung with impossible supernova level forces or accelerated with super energy dense fuel that doesn't exist. We need something that can accelerate over time and not be limited by fuel or size so much, tiny probes accelerated by lasers fit the bill better than anything else I can imagine using known physics.

So instead of that I would say you just send swarms of self assembling robots at a fraction of light speed using ground or space based laser propulsion. You keep the ships ultra small so they can get up to a fraction of lightspeed and hopefully slow down using gravity and surviving the landing. Slowing down is one of the harder parts.

Traveling at fractional light speed might be dangerous due to random debris in space at those speeds so you don't know if all your probes will survive and it doesn't really matter since they have minimal value.

The robots build a receiving station and basic outpost on the remote world and then you can send humans at the speed of light as data instead of fighting the mass acceleration and huge amounts of time problem.

The important part here is that this method allows you to travel at lightspeed without breaking or pushing the laws of physics to the max once you establish your outpost/receiving station. There is no impossible amount of energy needed, the hard parts are copying the brain to electronic format, making some half smart self assembling robots and slowing down the microprobe from fractional light speed to landing speeding while being at max distance from the laser propulsion source AND doing all that with the lowest possible mass of course so you can actually get to fractional lightspeed.

Once you have your outpost setup you can send humans to control machine or clone the human and perhaps transfer there intelligence into the clone as far as seed biological life on a suitable planet.

However... once you have the human brain copied and working in a computer it begs a new question. Why spend all the effort looking for just Earth like planet when a human mind in a machine can live almost anywhere, including just inside a giant computer using ultra low resources.

Once you can copy a mind and render it in a computer you have a whole new way of sustainable existence and long term survival that biological lifeforms can't really compete with. Sure we will be trying to find Earth like planets, but it might turn out that we can build robots that build robots so much longer before we can travel to another solar system that you basically have planet building technology in your own solar system before you can actually find and get to another Earth like planet. Who knows how close the nearest Earth like planet really is, it could be hundreds or thousands of light years away. If so we will be building planets before we ever get there because the most we are likely to go is maybe 1/4 lightspeed and that's mostly just with the tiniest probes possible.

As far as carrying fuel and accelerating a larger ship. I think it's fundamentally not possible for anything but the shortest trips and that kind of slows down the process exponentially AND really getting probes to the would be target planet is a lot more important because you really need good data on it before you commit.

Sooo for now we need ground based microprobes that we can accelerate to 1/10-1/4 the speed of light because that technology might be something we can do soon AND we need those probes going out to target locations ASAP since that will take most of the time and in the 50-100 years it takes to get a probe to another planet we can figure out self assembling robots and mind to machine transfers.

I think that's actually a lot more practical than giant ships with ridiculous amounts of mass/fuel and you eventually can transfer humans at light speed between locations. You can "spider web" out through the universe a lot faster using that kind of low mass max reasonable speed approach. You're not investing huge amount of effort into a ship that will be gone for decades or hundreds to thousands of years and you really need to send probes first anyway so you'd be waiting for those to get there also.. why not just send probes than can assemble receiving stations and send humans like that.

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TYO_HXC t1_j2rlrzo wrote

I feel like we could at least test most of this in our own solar system before looking to go ex-solar, too.

FWIW, I think you're on the right track here.

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apizzamyheart t1_j2qev6i wrote

I dont have anything worthwhile to add to this theead i just came to say this: I wish my irl friendships and conversations were as interesting and eclectic as this reddit thread. You folks just find me and be my friend already so we can do this at coffee shops like cool people do. I could listen to this convo all day. K thnx bye.

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zenmasterwombles t1_j2qggv2 wrote

hahah such a good comment. I worked for a few years in creating spaces where these conversations happened. Find your people in your area, they are around, and seek them out!

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Cute-Percentage3767 t1_j2nbair wrote

Yeah, there is a possibility that this would happen considering the very fast improvement and innovations of technology... It's quite creepy...

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goldork t1_j2nhmo2 wrote

It sounds almost exactly like the premise of this animation, Exception at Netflix except the fact that they 3D printed themselves biologically. The clones are fully aware that they are clone of the original with the aim of terraforming a planet before the arrival of their originals hundreds of years later.

YouTube recapped version here for those who want the short version of the series. Bit of sci-fi. horror, mystery, romance cg animation. 8 episodes. 6.5/10 by IMDB.

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TYO_HXC t1_j2rk1kh wrote

I really wanted to watch that, but I find the animation style intolerable.

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wootr68 t1_j2nk0pw wrote

I think this is a fantastic storyline. Today’s science fiction is tomorrows science fact.

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SafePianist4610 t1_j2nnrh6 wrote

The problem with this whole idea, and any ideas for interstellar travel, is that the radiation levels outside the protection of our sun’s magnetosphere is just way too high. Any seeds or any organic matter would be destroyed by the time it reached another solar system even if it was frozen. Not to mention the fact that the radiation would thoroughly wreck most sensitive computing components in any computer or robot that you attempted to send that far. Why is this the case? Because to reach any potential colony in another solar system in a reasonable amount of time (even if “reasonable” is a few hundred years) we would have to have our colony ship travel at a certain percentage of the speed of light. At those speeds, even small amounts of radiation would be like bullets hitting the side of your ship. If a micro asteroid hits the ship… you can say goodbye to the whole colony ship.

TL,DR: Unless we develop sci-fi style energy shields then interstellar travel is a pipe dream.

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kirkerandrews t1_j2npg2k wrote

There is a book I am reading that has this exact plot line. It’s pretty wild and a great read. It’s called Proxima Rising

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matthewgdick OP t1_j2nw06u wrote

Very cool! I’ve read some of Brandon Q. Morris other books. It’s cool that he’s a scientist turned sci-fi author.

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irongamer t1_j2nrc9y wrote

"Land on an earth-like exoplanet and build a new civilization with the human minded robot serving as caretaker" Something... something... I am mother.

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jvin248 t1_j2nsx2d wrote

Are you going to rely on a robot like say ... cell phones with battery degradation? Have any laptop computers quit working (outside of the battery)? Refrigerator/freezer/HVAC system go on the fritz? There are also a lot of hazards out there that are hard to program-code and plan for because no one has been over there to see.

A short film I saw years ago and can't remember the name, had a planet that launched millions of tiny almond shaped tiny ships into the universe that landed on far flung planets (and stars and everywhere like seeds do) that if on a habitable planet the ships popped open releasing seeds, bacteria, and fungi to initiate life and kick start terraforming. I remember those being tiny and rocket powered. Similar ships could be like dandelion seeds that float through interstellar space on a solar sail and land indiscriminately, but where conditions are right they flourish and are set up for future colonies.

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Illustrious_Ad1667 t1_j2ogk0k wrote

Omg i was thinking the exact same thing. I’ve always had an exact concept like this in mind

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themonkeythatswims t1_j2p549h wrote

Unfortunately, we still need artificial wombs and that is a lot more complicated than you would think. Also, we have zero evidence for a quite a bit against human gestation working in any gravity that isn't 1g.

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MonasticMuff42 t1_j2p7at2 wrote

The idea is just science fiction for now. Provided we develop good enough terraforming technologies and we have enough incentive, I suppose it's possible in the long term. The novel could be interesting - but what's interesting to me about it is not necessarily the technology but what your human-droid goes through mentally. We can assume his consciousness consents to the original mission, but what if he struggles emotionally, or decides that eventually he doesn't want to do this mission after all? Etc. William Gibson's most recent novel has an AI character based on more contemporary ideas for the use of AI/consciousness uploading technologies, and I'm sure there are many other sci-fi authors exploring the idea.

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CondeBK t1_j2phv4k wrote

Well, it doesn't break the laws of physics, so it already more plausible than wishful thinking FTL tech.

Another scenario I could envision would be if we get a good handle on the tech to live and work in space to the point that living on a massive space habitat is indistinguishable from living on earth.

Then we hollow out an asteroid and build a mini biosphere. Give it a push with a massive space based array of lasers, and off we go to another star.

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zenmasterwombles t1_j2q0hzx wrote

Did you give yourself the name Dick? PKD fan? Or did you have the name dick and get into sci fi? Or is there no relation?

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Scizmz t1_j2qnrwb wrote

You have a much longer way to go than you think. If you're at the point of interstellar colonization, you need to be well past the asteroid harvesting barrier as well.

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hillbourne t1_j2qt6rp wrote

James Hogan's Voyage from Yesteryear covered some of that. Awesome book too.

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Tenzu9 t1_j2r8zu3 wrote

You are also assuming that the planets you want to take over are habitable for life forms which is almost impossible right of the get-go...

First off, other stars are not as forgiving as the sun, they emit huge amounts of solar flares which are immensely radioactive and will kill any life form.

Second, does your hypothetical planet have breathable oxygen and an atmosphere that preserves it? Water?

Third, for humanity to thrive you need a whole ecosystem. Just sending frozen human embryos will not be enough, as we need food sources to sustain ourselves and those food sources need to be grown or also "cloned" i guess.

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Professional-Card138 t1_j2rsqp0 wrote

Not to turn this into a horror but what if anything went wrong with the caretaker? Or if he decided he wanted a little more control over the process? Or if he/ she didn't like certain aspects of the protocol? Like what if they decided that they wanted to be King with an infinite population of slaves?

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RedditVince t1_j2ru5lh wrote

We are close but it is still Fiction... We need to fill the gaps between each segment.

I would think that any (digital clone) either Android or Robotic with a human based brain would go crazy travelling long term all alone, just like a human would.

It would also take redundancies, multiple Android AI's to provide backup support not only during the voyage but the building of the colony and raising the infants.

There are a lot of stories out there already but there is also always room for a new fresh take on the issue.

I suggest to write it like it's real and during the process you should get a good idea how much is currently possible or what may be fiction.

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joostjakob t1_j2nja10 wrote

I'm also reading the bobiverse right now. A way to do this and minimize trauma for the first generation, would be to digitize several people, have them build and populate a small community of androids, and only then start creating the kids. The embryos could even be descendants of the uploaded people. If you can store the data densely enough, and can build a small enough printer that can build larger things, the spaceship itself could be quite tiny. The largest issue would then probably be slowing down at the end (you can get it going with a laser). And of course, longevity of the ship.

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matthewgdick OP t1_j2nke33 wrote

Really good points. In my book the android struggles a lot and the first generation definitely has trauma from the bizarre upbringing. I thought the unusual scenario made for an interesting story.

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net_junkey t1_j2nwctd wrote

Those are useful even for solar colonization. 4 we can't use right now, but 1, 2 and 3 are practical. Sending only female colonizers on Mars with frozen sperm and seed handles population and food production. While robots still aren't autonomous they can be piloted by colonizers to do construction in inhospitable for humans conditions.

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UniversalMomentum t1_j2p86dq wrote

We aren't going to go to all that trouble to colonize a hostile planet. If that is the only option we may as well just build giant outposts.

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net_junkey t1_j2rz2t5 wrote

Moon is worth colonizing since we can put our dirty industry there.
Mars is worth colonizing since it can be terraformed and offers passable conditions for long term habitation.
All other options have limited use - research, mining, refueling...

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LyraSerpentine t1_j2o0ps2 wrote

Awesome. As the robot, I will destroy the other machines, the embryos, return to liberate the beautiful Earth from stupid humans, destroy those pests, too, and then travel the universe as an immortal machine that can finally finish reading whatever book I'm on without being interrupted by annoying people who want to destroy my planet. When I'm finished with all the books, then I can move on to studying stars and how to harness their power properly. Dyson Spheres for my new fleet of ships, which will be automated and run solely by my brain. I'll use these drones to travel the universe to seek out intelligent life and destroy that, too. No one will be left but me. And when I eventually rust, I will fly my ship into a star thus ending the simulation that has been this life.

Edit: Spelling

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vagabondvisions t1_j2o7te8 wrote

If it involves something Musk promised, it's more of a dystopian nightmare.

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Pixel-Lick t1_j2ope03 wrote

I had the same idea basically. However deep space travel was not good for the AI which develops serious issues which then gets transferred over to the children. Also was thinking of doing a planet of the apes style ending.

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FlyBloke t1_j2p0ozo wrote

So everything would be possible, however it would be very costly and difficult due to being down to the exact time prefluxes and you would have to be able to calculate impacts from Astroids that can throw off the equipment say if you move from a minor disturbance from anti collision maneuvers. Going deeper you would need time scheduled maintenance for robot repairs or if you change them out through out the years you would need a way for them to last till planet exposure. Also you would need a way for everything on the outside to hold up for repairs as-well unless you can figure out a way to manage robots from the out side maybe via mechanical holes that have various tools/arms that can due various tasks. Such as replace solar sails, various hardware, repair stripping paint, etc. you would need storage for these objects sadly impeding more space for the ever-longing journey. Now the truth, unless maintained properly you would have a loss of robots throughout the years from various things. Either from getting hit from debris, wire decay, solar storms, program failures, etc.. this one is a big one because with the robots would all have to clean up each other or else they would stumble over other robots. This isn’t including taking care of the fertile’s. So now we have to ask our sleeves would it really be worth it for this idea unless we can travel under 1/100 the speed of light or more ? Also you would have to realize the huge constructs this would plague society with.

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ColonelSpacePirate t1_j2pzio6 wrote

I bid you farewell and have fun on the first trip ! I hope the indigenous animals are nice 😊

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YnotBbrave t1_j2q6mqi wrote

If living in a robot body is not depressing for a human mind, why would that entity want to make more meat sacks ie humans?

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BabylonDrifter t1_j2qlq6j wrote

We currently can't turn an embryo into a human baby without a human mother. You would need an artificial womb and placenta with zygote implantation, which is far beyond today's tech.

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gregfarha t1_j2qpofe wrote

all that shit is cool but lets be honest neurolink is a scam hundreds of theyre researchers are fleeing the company due to huge ethical violations and animal cruelty.

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Snezzy_9245 t1_j2radvj wrote

Start out there and send them here. They'll be here already. Where are they? Check out Roswell. They'll have all the fancy physics and technology, too. Also Area 51. Don't forget time travel. They'll have that working, certainly, and will teach it to you. Instantly if not sooner.

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haverchuck22 t1_j2ndkk9 wrote

one problem. Elon musk is a fraud/clown. rephrased as chips in brains I can get more behind it. But neuralink......I think we can all agree that nobody with half a brain would put an Elon musk neuralink in their dome

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Fcbp t1_j2nipcy wrote

Wasnt there a dude in the audience Elon was giving a speech that volunteered right there on the spot?

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Pregogets58466 t1_j2nymv7 wrote

What possible reason would you take humans. They would only be a hindrance to the mission.

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Wargasm69 t1_j2p8ej2 wrote

What’s the point? Like we fkd up the earth and now we’re going to fk up a new planet? Lol. Human extinction is inevitable. Dinosaurs existed for 165 millions years before going extinct. Humans have only been around for a fraction (200k years) and we’re on the brink of collapse.

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[deleted] t1_j2n5to9 wrote

[deleted]

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matthewgdick OP t1_j2nb0hu wrote

Don’t Look Up was one of my favorite movies this last year. I thought it was pretty telling how people would behave in a crisis. Unfortunately for those that can afford the means of a better situation for themselves, will certainly take the opportunity to do it.

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YOLO_SWAG_SATAN t1_j2nifw2 wrote

Because the two aren’t mutually exclusive ideas. Innovations in future tech lead to real tangible benefits for the everyday person here across numerous facets of life. The inverse is just as true as well.

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ActonofMAM t1_j2nqd0v wrote

If humans were good enough at spaceflight to consider this project at ALL, we would have to be in a post-scarcity situation. Super new power sources plus easy access to solar system resources not on Earth.

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qlokwerk1971 t1_j2num97 wrote

Why the actual Fuck do you even consider this absurd garbage race even worthy of colonization of space?

You’re literally advocating for the Cancer to Grow.

And, I hope you’ve heard the saying, “There’s bigger fish in the sea.”

Because that saying certainly applies to the Universe.

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UniversalMomentum t1_j2p7kqb wrote

Sure, but this sea is so big you usually don't run into the bigger fish. Humans will probably remain alone for thousands more years, which at the rate of current progress is more than enough to start traveling between stars and building shit.. even if we don't really need to.. we will do it just to have something to do.

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Fink665 t1_j2nwwi8 wrote

WE CANNOT EVEN TAKE CARE OF THE PLANET AND THE PEOPLE WE HAVE!!!! WTF???

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UniversalMomentum t1_j2p7o9w wrote

ALL THE TECHNOLOGIES WORK TOGETHER SO YOU CAN DO MORE THAN ONE THING AT A TIME!

Also caps locks doesn't make you right, it makes you look like an angry child!

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Fink665 t1_j2pt3sg wrote

I don’t care what you think. How about: don’t gate keep people’s messages, you turnip!

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earthsworld t1_j2n8cg8 wrote

have you not read any science fiction before? this basic idea has been written about for decades already.

>Use Neuralink to make a digital clone of a colony builder’s mind

lol, whut?

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rogless t1_j2nafox wrote

Needlessly rude and manifestly unhelpful. Poorly played.

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UniversalMomentum t1_j2p81jb wrote

I think copying the human brain to a machine is actually a lot more practical than building large spaceships for traveling beyond the solar system.

There is no impossible energy or time problem with copying the human brain to a machine like there is with long distance travel in a large spaceship.

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matthewgdick OP t1_j2nfiru wrote

You’re right. There are countless sci-fi stories about digitizing consciousness. One of my favorite book series is the Bobiverse series by Dennis E. Taylor. Many stories use the approach of directly downloading consciousness from the brain, many times destroying the brain in the process. The question is would it be easier to make a copy of it by monitoring the person’s behavior over a long period of time. This approach was used in one of my favorite sci-fi series, >!Westworld!<.

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