Colonizing Space

[charles brough]

The Polynesian migratory thing is true, so much so that Madagascar, on the African East coast, speak a language which has a certain Polynesian language as its closest linguistic relative! Remember, the whole Indian ocean lies between Madagascar and the rest of the Polynesian world! Yet they did it.

 

However, I'm not so sure they did it to stem overpopulation. Any particular migration raft can, after all, accommodate only so many people.

 

And the same with the colonisation of space.

 

Madagascar too! I would love to go to Madagascar, a really strange place---like Timbuktoo, Tasmania, and Zamboanga.

 

Oh, migration never works because so many people go to colonize it! Colonizing is a teleological process. You see it everywhere in nature. The process is that you have to spread to survive. I want the human race to populate the universe even though none of it will occur in my life time. The people who do colonize space---as with the Pacific (And Indian Ocean) islands---was/is, perhaps with that very same "spirit."

[Boerseun]

I'm of the opinion that we should invest more in studying the workings of the human mind. So much so that we can mechanically recreate not only memory and artificial 'intelligence', but real human traits like curiousity and imagination, too.

 

Then we build a series of intelligent (real intelligence, not artificial intelligence) robots, and send them off to do the space colonization bit. These robots will be our real and actual descendents, and they will colonize the galaxy. Not to create homesteads for humans on some far-off planet, but to create environments for them in which to live and procreate/replicate.

 

Humans are a transitional species, like all other species on Earth. But we'll simply transition from the mortal flesh-and-blood setup to a totally different plane - our descendents will be perfectly able to live in the cold vacuum of space, eating only sunlight. They'll also be immortal, only needing to take up a new and improved body every few hundred years, depending on wear and tear.

 

I think we're attaching too much value to our current status as a biological species. We should attach more value to the essence of what we are. Only 'intelligence' seperates us from the animal world. 'Intelligence' makes us what and who we are, not our biological make-up. We share about 98% of our physical setup (genetically speaking) with the big apes. We should proceed to let "intelligence" colonize the galaxy, not the flesh-and-blood meat bags we currently occupy.

 

We have the urge to colonize to spread our genes into new territory. But genes are simply data. Having been limited by the amount of data storable in genes, and the inflexible nature of it (ROM vs. RAM), evolution invented brains. Brains came in handy, but in the colonization-urge, we're still being driven by our inflexible genes. After brains became too limited, we invented writing, a method to store data "off-site", vastly increasing our storage capacity. Lots of people can share ideas over the ages now. Some people have even achieved a kind of 'immortality' through storing their thoughts in the library. Archimedes, Plato, Cicero, Euclid, all of these come to mind. Yet we're still genetically driven in the colonization urge. Now we've even transcended the library through the internet, although the internet can be viewed as merely an interactive version of the age-old library concept.

 

What I'm saying is that in trying to colonize new lands (space), we're being driven by an animalistic instinct to invade and populate new niches. But we've long ago started to rise above our limited gene data when we developed the cerebral cortex. The development of the cerebral cortex is a genetic artifact, but what we've done with our grey matter includes the invention of everything you see around you; there's no genetic coding in any of my genes that relates to inventing anything. All of the technology you see around you is cultural artifacts created by the knowledge and interpretation of data stored in the library. Why are we so concerned about saving and spreading our genes? We should rather get rid of the gene concept altogether, and invest much more into mechanically replicating the human mind to the point of electronically reaching the points of curiosity, inventiveness and 'awareness'. But that'll take some time, still. Luckily, we've still got a few billion years on this rock before the sun explodes.

 

I really believe that this would be the only way for the human spirit to make any kind of impact in the galaxy at all. Heck, with a few million years to spend in a 'power-down' mode, our intelligence might even become trans-galactic. Then we've a whole universe to invade.

[blamski]

Boerseun, i kinda disagree with just about everything you say :hyper:

 

do you really suggest that the best future for the human race is to invest vast sums of money and scientific research into the development of artificial 'super humans' that we can then launch off into the universe with a fond farewell and a pat on the back? while us 'meat bags' stay here and wait for the inevitable end? how will these robots be our descenants rather than just another invention? do you think it is responsible to launch a powerful and intelligent artificial species into space without a thought for the consequences and how they might interact with other life forms they encounter?

 

while i agree that it is our superior intelligence that separates us in the main from the other animals on this planet i think there is more to us than that. i believe that our biological make up is a major part of who we are and how we empathise with our environment. we are a product of the planet earth and our biology, behaviours, culture and emotional attachment reflects that. while we share 95% of our genes (not 98%) with the chimpanzee we also share around 60% with the fruit fly - a small percentage difference makes a huge biological difference. 5% of the human genome is still a vast amount of dna.

 

i don't agree that writing as a means of storing data came about when our brains became too limited, i don't know where this idea came from as its the first time i have heard it. there are still many cultures that follow a purely oral tradition and store a huge amount of practical, cultural and scientific data in their minds - think of it as a distributed storage system if you like. its true that with writing and libraries and the internet we can store much more, but as no one person can know all of it, not even a fraction of it, it doesn't give us so much of an advantage over the oral approach.

 

to a degree it may be appropriate that the seemingly cold empty and lonely universe may be an appropriate place to send an artificial colonizing race who will not miss the earth one bit - however much we prepare it is going to be a traumatic experience for those who say goodbye to the earth for the last time. but humans will go out there i'm sure, and they'll go out there primarily to make a profit. that's not going to be of much use to robots. if we want to spread our intelligence into the universe we should take it ourselves and be ready to share it with the other we (may) find out there.

[charles brough]

Boerseun, i kinda disagree with just about everything you say :)

 

do you really suggest that the best future for the human race is to invest vast sums of money and scientific research into the development of artificial 'super humans' that we can then launch off into the universe with a fond farewell and a pat on the back? while us 'meat bags' stay here and wait for the inevitable end? how will these robots be our descenants rather than just another invention? do you think it is responsible to launch a powerful and intelligent artificial species into space without a thought for the consequences and how they might interact with other life forms they encounter?

 

while i agree that it is our superior intelligence that separates us in the main from the other animals on this planet i think there is more to us than that. i believe that our biological make up is a major part of who we are and how we empathise with our environment. we are a product of the planet earth and our biology, behaviours, culture and emotional attachment reflects that. while we share 95% of our genes (not 98%) with the chimpanzee we also share around 60% with the fruit fly - a small percentage difference makes a huge biological difference. 5% of the human genome is still a vast amount of dna.

 

i don't agree that writing as a means of storing data came about when our brains became too limited, i don't know where this idea came from as its the first time i have heard it. there are still many cultures that follow a purely oral tradition and store a huge amount of practical, cultural and scientific data in their minds - think of it as a distributed storage system if you like. its true that with writing and libraries and the internet we can store much more, but as no one person can know all of it, not even a fraction of it, it doesn't give us so much of an advantage over the oral approach.

 

to a degree it may be appropriate that the seemingly cold empty and lonely universe may be an appropriate place to send an artificial colonizing race who will not miss the earth one bit - however much we prepare it is going to be a traumatic experience for those who say goodbye to the earth for the last time. but humans will go out there i'm sure, and they'll go out there primarily to make a profit. that's not going to be of much use to robots. if we want to spread our intelligence into the universe we should take it ourselves and be ready to share it with the other we (may) find out there.

 

 

. . .my thoughts as well. Specifically, the way things are moving is in the ability to control our genetics so we can create specialized humans with the ability to adjust better to weightlessness and to hybrinate. Anyway, this is not going to all happen in the world as we know it because it is being run now very badly. The real progress along all these lines will come when science in the form of a new world-view and way of thinking system will replace the "secular" one we have now and shape a really scientific and progressive world society. The way it is now, everyone disagrees about everything. In such an environment, it is not even safe to have good technology!

[CraigD]

I'm of the opinion that we should invest more in studying the workings of the human mind. So much so that we can mechanically recreate not only memory and artificial 'intelligence', but real human traits like curiousity and imagination, too.

 

Then we build a series of intelligent (real intelligence, not artificial intelligence) robots, and send them off to do the space colonization bit. These robots will be our real and actual descendents, and they will colonize the galaxy. Not to create homesteads for humans on some far-off planet, but to create environments for them in which to live and procreate/replicate.

I’m pleased to see a righteous extropian/transhumanist epistle in this thread! :thumbs_up I’m very enthusiastic about this stuff – it’s hard not to like the prospect of living forever with super-mental abilities, even if some of the implications are a tad creepy. However, I’m skeptical that the uploading of our minds into immortal/impervious computer-robotic shells is preferable, from an practical spaceflight engineering perspective, to continuing to build systems to protect and support the mortal/pervious biological shells that currently have our minds already in them.

 

:) In the brief half-millennium that we’ve even known the cold vacuum of space existed, we’ve managed to solve the problem of keeping a human being alive in it pretty well. – Compared to spaceflight problems of power and propulsion, life-support seems less challenging.

 

:( On the other hand, our practical success at the problem of creating “really intelligent” robot descendents is zero. Theoretical successes are limited to such works as those of Hans Moravec, who’s excellent cross-disciplinary work on computer vision and its relationship with biological vision has provided perhaps the first convincing estimate of the computing hardware-only requirements for an artificial, human-like intelligence using digital computers - about a hundred million MIPS (10[math]^{10}[/math] instruction cycles per second), a performance about 50 times greater than the best current computers, and, Moravec estimates, likely to be available in inexpensive machines sometime in the 2020s (see Moravec’s 1997 paper, “When will computer hardware match the human brain?”) - inconclusive works of computer science on the software requirements, and cautionary physics speculation such as that in Roger Penrose’s “The Emperor's New Mind”, which suggest that no digitial computer – or, more precisely, no computer that can be represented by a Turing machine or other deterministic mechanism – can ever exhibit “real intelligence”, in the sense I think Boerseun means.

 

With the sensible, scientifically-informed speculation of some of the best minds in the relevant disciplines prediction human-like AI in from 20 years to never, one might think the question stuck in a hopeless quagmire. I don’t believe this, however, to truly be the case. Moravec’s hardware predictions are, I think, accurate, implying that objections such as Penrose’s will be conclusively testable at some time, likely ten to fifty years hence. Though the likely wait is a bit discouraging to a forty-something code monkey like me who suspects he may be a bit off his game by the time such testing is feasible, I can at least look forward to being a spectator to this world-changing research.

 

Even if the extropian dream of humans “evolving” from biological to machine intelligences doesn’t happen, neither space colonization, nor very smart (if not human-like) machines playing a critical roll in it, are ruled out. Human mental and biological abilities and the abilities of robots will, I expect, continue to complement one another.

 

The major advantage I see of robots over human beings in spaceflight is not so much robots greater potential robustness against the rigors of space, but their potential to be dramatically less massive than a human being and all the trapping necessary to support one in space. For example, a robot promises to make space exploration systems such as the Starwisppractical within the next few decades, expanding the human sphere of space exploration at a velocity at about 10% the speed of light.

 

The future of space exploration, and, eventually colonization, is, I believe, bright – but likely to require great patience.

[Boerseun]

Boerseun, i kinda disagree with just about everything you say :(

Sweet! I like a good discussion!

do you really suggest that the best future for the human race is to invest vast sums of money and scientific research into the development of artificial 'super humans' that we can then launch off into the universe with a fond farewell and a pat on the back?

Basically, yes. These spacefarers will be able to cruise to the nearest star systems in much simpler spaceships, not needing life support or intensive hibernation systems for the long flight. They'll simply 'switch off' for the duration of the flight, which might take a few thousand years with current technology. Once there, they might want to set up replication facilities using the material at hand, in either an asteroid belt, or a local moon or planet or whatever springs to mind. They will in turn launch their offspring to other star systems. And then a few million years in the future, the entire galaxy might be humming with the descendents of human intelligence. But definitely not in our current form. {/my opinion}

...while us 'meat bags' stay here and wait for the inevitable end?

Basically, yes. However it pans out, whether it'll be humans colonizing space or my proposed intelligent robots, it won't include you or me. So, in the final analysis, what is it to you if humans go or not? The only motivation could be that you want the species to prosper. But I'm personally of the opinion that seeing as species comes and goes, we shouldn't try to freeze the concept of change in its tracks. And if we're the biological agent that serves as the initiator of intelligent steel/aluminium/silicon life that lives on pure energy, why not? It has been speculated that life started with the intervention of clays on organic chemicals. The clays acted as a kind of catalyst for incredibly complicated carbon-based reactions. The clay was not part of the final end-product, Life, however. Maybe us humans are clay to silicon.

...how will these robots be our descenants rather than just another invention?

Like I said, there is no way that we can even attempt this with the state of our knowledge of the workings of the human mind. But I'm of the opinion that if we can map the brain and see how it really works, and get a robot/machine to show creativeness, curiosity, compassion and basically all the human virtues we hold dear, it won't simply be an invention. They will be our 'intellectual descendants', not biological, obviously.

...do you think it is responsible to launch a powerful and intelligent artificial species into space without a thought for the consequences and how they might interact with other life forms they encounter?

I think it'll be much more responsible doing that than sending humans. We'll infuse these 'creatures' with the best of human virtues, and deny them the vices. For instance, we won't include the reptilian 'r-complex' that forms the base of human brains and filters all sense input before it gets to the cerebral cortex. The 'r-complex' is said to be responsible for such human misery as rape and murder. Would you reckon it's more responsible to any conceivable alien population to send humans who are still filtering all they see and perceive of this world through their reptilian brain-bases?

while i agree that it is our superior intelligence that separates us in the main from the other animals on this planet i think there is more to us than that. i believe that our biological make up is a major part of who we are and how we empathise with our environment. we are a product of the planet earth and our biology, behaviours, culture and emotional attachment reflects that. (Empasis added)

Exactly! But we are talking about the colonisation of the rest of the galaxy. We are supremely well adapted to living on Earth, and to handle the chemistry and temperatures here. There is probably no other planet in the entire galaxy on which we can survive unaided. We might find a spot with the perfect temperature, right distance from its sun, same size, comfortable 1g like back on Earth, and then melt like wax when we walk into its sulphuric acid atmosphere. The creations I propose are perfectly well suited to living basically anywhere in the universe where they have access to energy. They will be the inheritors of the universe, not us.

...while we share 95% of our genes (not 98%) with the chimpanzee we also share around 60% with the fruit fly - a small percentage difference makes a huge biological difference. 5% of the human genome is still a vast amount of dna.

From an alien perspective, life on Earth could probably be classified as simply "Earthlife" (I think Sagan said it - it kinda stuck; I like it :) ). The coding is identical between species, making the distinctions between us and any other species you care to mention more a kind of a 'species-chauvinism' than anything else. So, if we want to colonise the galaxy, why put the emphasis on humans only? We should take all our bugs with us, they are family, indeed.

i don't agree that writing as a means of storing data came about when our brains became too limited, i don't know where this idea came from as its the first time i have heard it. there are still many cultures that follow a purely oral tradition and store a huge amount of practical, cultural and scientific data in their minds - think of it as a distributed storage system if you like. its true that with writing and libraries and the internet we can store much more, but as no one person can know all of it, not even a fraction of it, it doesn't give us so much of an advantage over the oral approach.

'Course it does! You don't know anything about neurology, for instance, but you do know where to find the info - At the Library. And that makes a world of difference. The Library can indeed be viewed as a 'communal brain'. The difference between societies investing in reading and writing and storing data in this communal brain versus those societies that don't, relying solely on oral transmission of communal data, can be easily illustrated by comparing the global presence of, say, the United States against the Kalahari bushmen. I don't think the Kalahari bushmen will land a man on the moon anytime soon.

...to a degree it may be appropriate that the seemingly cold empty and lonely universe may be an appropriate place to send an artificial colonizing race who will not miss the earth one bit - however much we prepare it is going to be a traumatic experience for those who say goodbye to the earth for the last time.

We did say goodbye to the oceans long ago and invaded land. Only a few million years ago we said our farewell to the trees. In our current form, life in the trees will be pretty hard (not completely undoable), and life in the oceans will be impossible without a lot of space colony-like life support. Obviously, there's a clear evolutionary and genetical lineage linking us to sea-dwelling creatures. We even have gills in the first few weeks of foetal existence. But evolving to the point of spreading our presence beyond Earth is simply not going to happen. We will forever be reliant on life support systems to be able to make it on even close-by places like Mars. Maybe our minds evolved to the point of being the catalyst that metals and silicon need to spring to life and self-awareness. In the Great Scheme of things, viewed from millions of years from now, maybe that was, indeed, the Whole Point.

Biological Life was impossible, was it not for the intervention of clays acting as a catylist, clays having nothing to do with the final biological composition, however - if the clay hypothesis holds true. Maybe we're just clay to silicon.

...but humans will go out there i'm sure, and they'll go out there primarily to make a profit.

...a proper result of a definite human trait. Making a quick buck through colonization can also be viewed not necessarily as a virtue, but rather a vice, as Africa of today might show you.

...that's not going to be of much use to robots.

Sweet! One less human vice to contend with! Imagine if the currency amongst those robot offspring of ours is based on pure curiosity, and paid with by data? Human greed transcended! It can only be awesome, I think.

...if we want to spread our intelligence into the universe we should take it ourselves and be ready to share it with the other we (may) find out there.

Unless those we meet up with, however, are the robot offspring of their intellectual ancestors who lived in a remote corned of the galaxy, millions of years ago...:)

[Boerseun]

I’m pleased to see a righteous extropian/transhumanist epistle in this thread! :(

Cool!

I’m very enthusiastic about this stuff – it’s hard not to like the prospect of living forever with super-mental abilities, even if some of the implications are a tad creepy. However, I’m skeptical that the uploading of our minds into immortal/impervious computer-robotic shells is preferable, from an practical spaceflight engineering perspective, to continuing to build systems to protect and support the mortal/pervious biological shells that currently have our minds already in them.

I don't think we're talking about the same thing here. I'm not proposing 'uploading' minds into machines, I'm actually proposing the creation of machines that might pass the Turing test, and we include a bit of curiosity, compassion, etc. in the mix. Then we send them off to colonize space. If they land on some planet on some star system, and build a replication facility, with their built-in analytical skills and even inventivess, they can better the shape of their offspring to better suit the local conditions, in other words, they'll still evolve. A species unto and of itself, non-carbon based life that only eats electricity. Way smarter than humans, they'll have immediate access to terrabytes of data built up over the entire lifetime of their human ancestors, and in their investigating the universe, they'll simply be adding to it. One might even include a base code in their make-up, making them always build a heck of a transmitter next to their replication facility, which they always point to a specific star in the remote outskirts of a particular spiral arm of the galaxy, where the human 'meatbags' eagerly await broadcasts about newly discovered planets, alien life, etc. They might build these transmitters as a kind of a 'religious' activity, praying to that wise and ancient biological race that created them so long ago.

:) In the brief half-millennium that we’ve even known the cold vacuum of space existed, we’ve managed to solve the problem of keeping a human being alive in it pretty well. – Compared to spaceflight problems of power and propulsion, life-support seems less challenging.

Keep in mind, travel to even our next-door closest stars will take thousands of years through radiation-infested interstellar space, with current propulsion technology. There are two options: hibernation, or multi-generational ships. If a multi-generational ship is built, and the kids a hundred or so generations after leaving Earth actually make planetfall, as a society, what allegiance will they have to Earth, anyways? Okay - I digressed a bit; but how will a multi-generational mission pan out in interstellar space? With the increased radiation will they have evolved and mutated into something else, or simply die from cancer? This, of course, implies massive radiation screening for such long-term missions, increasing weight, complicating the propulsion system even more, etc. Hibernating humans might be pummelled by radiation to the point where they'll arrive on the other side, make planetfall, transmit to Earth and then quickly die one by one of cancer. Transporting one body through space for a thousand years will demand some serious radiation shielding. But we're speculating - I don't think we've got enough data to say how it'll pan out in interstellar space; all I'm saying is that the life support systems for such long-term missions will be complicated to the extreme. Compared to the relatively simply propulsion systems, of course! :)

:( On the other hand, our practical success at the problem of creating “really intelligent” robot descendents is zero.

Don't let that put you down, Craig! A few hundred years ago Da Vinci invented helicopters and airplanes, but none of it was possible. The technology of the day limited his brilliant inventions to mere flights of fancy.

Also, a hundred years ago, the concept of a car that can tell you via GPS where to turn and which lane to follow would not even have made for believable science fiction. The fact that our success at creating machine intelligence till now is zero, only brings us a day closer to when it will actually happen, and does by no means not exclude the creation thereof from the realm of possibility.

...requirements, and cautionary physics speculation such as that in Roger Penrose’s “The Emperor's New Mind”, which suggest that no digitial computer – or, more precisely, no computer that can be represented by a Turing machine or other deterministic mechanism – can ever exhibit “real intelligence”, in the sense I think Boerseun means.

We have a cranium filled with about 1,000 to 1,500 cc's of really clever snot. It's a 3-dimensional lattice of connections, and the computer brain-emulators are trying to replicate it using 2 dimensional circuitry. There is no ways they can do this using off-the-shelf computer technology. For instance, let's say a neuron takes up one cubic nanometer. Forget about the number of synapses for a second, or the actual size - I'm just illustrating a point here. A digital switching element of current technology might take up one square nanometer. And that makes all the difference. Whereas the neuron can connect to others in three dimensions, x, y and z, and digital version can only connect two-dimensionally, x and y. In other words, a hundred neurons will have 100^3 possible connections, whilst a hundred switching elements will have 100^2 connections betweem them. This is assuming that neurons only have those three connections, whilst they actually have many more. But the 3D casing makes it possible.

With the sensible, scientifically-informed speculation of some of the best minds in the relevant disciplines prediction human-like AI in from 20 years to never, one might think the question stuck in a hopeless quagmire. I don’t believe this, however, to truly be the case. Moravec’s hardware predictions are, I think, accurate, implying that objections such as Penrose’s will be conclusively testable at some time, likely ten to fifty years hence. Though the likely wait is a bit discouraging to a forty-something code monkey like me who suspects he may be a bit off his game by the time such testing is feasible, I can at least look forward to being a spectator to this world-changing research.

That's about the best we can hope for, in our lifetimes, at least. But I don't think it's impossible - although a major shift in the approach to the actual design of these computers will be required.

Even if the extropian dream of humans “evolving” from biological to machine intelligences doesn’t happen, neither space colonization, nor very smart (if not human-like) machines playing a critical roll in it, are ruled out. Human mental and biological abilities and the abilities of robots will, I expect, continue to complement one another.

True - and that complementing will require ever smarter machines, even if the initial purpose for it will be, for instance, the recreation of 'slaves', ala "I. Robot". A slave is a major benefit to a rich and lazy homeowner. But human slaves are illegal. So, let's invent a machine that can do all those manual tasks! Without receiving or demanding a wage! I think the entertainment value alone of such a machine will create a big enough incentive for development, regardless of spaceflight or colonisation. So, the technology will surely go in that direction, whether we see space colonisation as the ultimate goal or not.

The future of space exploration, and, eventually colonization, is, I believe, bright – but likely to require great patience.

Absolutely no doubt about that.

[snoopy]

To Everyone,

 

Goodness Extropian ? Trans-Humanist ?

 

Eugh.... Yuck........Yuck........

 

Humans won't download themselves into robots or only the really strange ones will.

 

Reason 1. You cant get a nice looking girlfriend while looking like C3PO.

 

Reason 2. Humans like sex.

 

Reason 3. Machines breakdown more than Biological species do.

 

Reason 4. Currently our space exploration technology is 50 years old give it a few thousand years before becoming a robot seems the only way to travel between the stars.

 

Reason 5. Even if relativity still holds, Time dilation kicks in at 50% the speed of light and neighbouring stars come within reach of your lifetime which hopefully will be at least double that of today as bio-tech developments extend human lifetimes. So no real need for generation-ships.

 

Reason 6. Humans like SEX.

 

So please remember all of this before you embark on your extropian dream/nightmare scenario (delete as applicable)

 

Cheers

;)

 

(I am off to bed to have nightmares of The Moderators of this thread)

[InfiniteNow]

Reason 5. Even if relativity still holds, Time dilation kicks in at 50% the speed of light and neighbouring stars come within reach of your lifetime which hopefully will be at least double that of today as bio-tech developments extend human lifetimes. So no real need for generation-ships.

Can you expand this thought? Does not relativity still hold at any velocity, hence dilating time relative to a stationary observer regardless of speed?

[CraigD]

Reason 5. Even if relativity still holds, Time dilation kicks in at 50% the speed of light and neighbouring stars come within reach of your lifetime which hopefully will be at least double that of today as bio-tech developments extend human lifetimes. So no real need for generation-ships.

Can you expand this thought? Does not relativity still hold at any velocity, hence dilating time relative to a stationary observer regardless of speed?

Time dilation occurs at any non-zero relative speed. It follows the ubiquitous Lorentz factor, [math]\tau = \sqrt{1-(\frac{v}{c})^2}[/math]. Tau is a smooth, continuous function, so it doesn’t “kick in” at any particular speed. (conventionally, the Lorentz factor is [math]\gamma = \frac1{\tau}[/math], gamma, but I’ve always preferred using [math]\tau[/math])

 

At [math]v= .4 c, \tau \dot= .92[/math], at [math]v= .6 c, \tau = .8[/math], etc. So traveling at .5 c gets you somewhere in .87 times the time, relative to your biological and other clocks, not a very dramatic factor.

 

Accelerating a ship to .5 c takes an awful lot of energy – the good ‘ole Lorentz factor can be used to calculate it, along with another famous equation, [math]E=m c^2[/math]. Put together, we get [math]E = (\frac{1}{\tau} –1)m c^2[/math], so, for [math]v =.5 c, E = (\frac{1}{\sqrt{1-.5^2}} –1) m c^2 \cdot= .15 m c^2[/math]. A relatively dinky spacecraft such as an Apollo CSM masses nearly 6000 kg, so accelerating it to .5 c would take a minimum of [math]1000 \, \mbox{kg} \cdot 9 \times 10^{16} \mbox{m^2/s^2} \dot= 10^{20} \, \mbox{J}[/math] – 100 atoJoules, about the total energy consumed in the US in a year. Accelerating at a confortable 1 g (9.8 m/s[math]^2[/math]), it takes about 177 days to reach .5 c, so, with a 100% efficient propulsion system an Apollo-size ship takes about twice the current power of the US.

 

This is a minimum energy – a propulsion system capable of these sorts of velocities may require several times, or even several powers of 10 times the energy given to the vehicle. Calculating the precise energy efficiency of a specific propulsion system can be challenging.

 

No matter the engineering details, this sort of stuff involves unprecedented amounts of energy.

[blamski]

although forward thinkingness (?) is inevitable i think there is a certain amount of jumping the gun going on. while the bulk of space is admittedly out of reach of the meat bags with their current physical and technological limits there is a lot of space much nearer to home and much more accessible - our own solar system. before we talk about what we can't do we need to talk about what we can, and seeing what is in the neighbourhood is pretty much viable given the appropriate amount of input.

 

the colonization of the galaxy can only be contemplated as a serious possibility once we know and understand what is closer to home. seeing as we are fairly positive that there is no life in the majority of the solar system to destroy there is no real issue with seeing the rest of the planets and their moons as resources - much as we do with our own planet. who is to say that there are not minerals out there which will provide the kind of energy that makes light speed travel currently impossible? (if you'll excuse my wild speculating). a couple of hundred years developing colonies on europa (for example) is going to tell us a hell of a lot about what humans need to do physically AND technologically to be able to dream about heading off towards other solar systems.

 

i don't disagree with boerseun's ideas that vast technological advances are necessary to the exploration of the galaxy and beyond and that that will include robots. we already send clever (though not intelligent) devices out there to sniff around for us. i'm amazed that the first sojourner type vehicle with genuine AI hasn't gone out already but i'm sure that one day soon it will. its only a matter of time then that these probes become more autonomous and more intelligent. there are already shape changing robots out in development such as these Quantum - Shape-Shifting Robots and others that will have the capacity to fix themselves or compile other machines from their components, not to mention the possibilities of nano machines.

 

the future of space travel and colonization is without a doubt tied up with robotics with increasing degrees of sophistication. i prefer to see them as our pioneers rather than as our replacements.

[snoopy]

Can you expand this thought? Does not relativity still hold at any velocity, hence dilating time relative to a stationary observer regardless of speed?

 

Arrgggghhhhh (screams)

 

 

Yes time dilation effects become useful at round 0.5c for space travelling escapades.

 

 

Time dilation occurs at any non-zero relative speed. [/QOUTE]

 

Arrgggghhhh (screams)

 

Yes but if your moving at 60 miles per hour the effects arent that useful for space travelling escapades.

 

So traveling at .5 c gets you somewhere in .87 times the time, relative to your biological and other clocks, not a very dramatic factor.

[/QOUTE]

 

Arrggggghhh (screams)

 

Yes at this speed its 0.87 of the time but I disagree with you that this isnt very useful it might be the difference in you starving to death on a 8 light year journey.

 

Also if your not that impressed with a spacecraft travelling at 0.5c then your very hard to impress !!! ;)

 

Accelerating a ship to .5 c takes an awful lot of energy etc[/QOUTE]

 

Arrgggghhhh (screams)

 

As you say It would require a lot of energy and as you also say you could accelarate to this speed in approx half a year, or you could also take a year, with hybrid techs like solar sails, fusion reactors, and interstellar ramrocket engines its a possible amount of energy, its within reasonable limits.

 

You could accelerate to 80% the speed of light and the effects become more useful but the amount of energy to do that becomes prohibitively challenging at 0.5c its just about do-able given the budget of a small green blue planet.

 

Also I know what the Lorentz factor is, I mean gee whizz, sigh, shucks.

 

I'm really down in the mouth now you don't think I know who Lorentz is.... sigh, sniff...sniff...

 

Cheers

:hihi:

[CraigD]

while the bulk of space is admittedly out of reach of the meat bags with their current physical and technological limits there is a lot of space much nearer to home and much more accessible - our own solar system.

I agree – especially when one considers the scaling up of available power likely to be required for further-future exploration and colonization – unmanned or manned – beyond the solar system. The most plausible scenarios I’m able to imagine that lead to such E&C involve engineering and construction within the solar system on a scale orders of magnitude larger than any done on Earth. A couple of examples of such scenarios are described in the "Sheer human fecundity" and "Relevance of space elevators in a 1,000,000 times more energy rich civilization" posts of the 5550 thread.

who is to say that there are not minerals out there which will provide the kind of energy that makes light speed travel currently impossible? (if you'll excuse my wild speculating).

Nearly any chemist and propulsion engineer is to say there are not.

 

The elements and the rough limits of their energy-storing potential are known well enough, I think that, barring the exceeding unlikely possibility of there being caches of antimatter or technological relics of an advanced civilization scattered around the solar system, we can rule out any breakthroughs in that area. Although there are almost certainly large amounts of very valuable materials to be had in the solar system (eg: platinum and gold), fictional substance like the “dilithium” in Star Trek, must, I think, be considered in their context as plot devices used to enhance the dramatic impact of TV shows and movies, not as literal predictions.

 

Likewise, “light speed travel” has a strong dramatic ring (eg: (commanding voice) “Take the ship to lightspeed.” / “It’s been a long time since we took Galactica to lightspeed – are you sure?” / “Lightspeed!”), but real-world physics suggest that traveling even high factions of c is very, very unlikely.

i'm amazed that the first sojourner type vehicle with genuine AI hasn't gone out already but i'm sure that one day soon it will. its only a matter of time then that these probes become more autonomous and more intelligent.

A lot of people who grew up in our can-do, space-age culture, with the plausible-seeming predictions of movies like 2001:A Space Odyssey, are surprised that “genuine AI” doesn’t yet exist. It’s proved a harsh surprise to many specialists in the field of AI, as well. The programming challenge is more difficult than many or most expected.

 

Though 8 years old, observations about progress in AI such as Penrose’s in “The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds and The Laws of Physics” are, I think, still relevant today. The challenges of artificial intelligence are very difficult, successes very limited, and both very much at odds with popular expectations and assumptions.

there are already shape changing robots out in development such as these Quantum - Shape-Shifting Robots and others that will have the capacity to fix themselves or compile other machines from their components, not to mention the possibilities of nano machines.

Indeed. Self-replicating machine (AKA von Neumann machines) – nanotechnological, or, more likely I think, of a courser feature scale – have tremendous potential in areas from terrestrial manufacturing to space colonization. They – the non-nanotechnological kind, at least – appear to violate no laws of physics, and could, as blamski suggests, be just around the technological corner. A measure of how feasible they are can be found, I think, in the amount of speculation many down-to-earth, well-qualified technologists have made concerning possible hazards of self-reproducing machines – in summary, that a very efficient but poorly programmed SRM might indiscriminately convert a whole planet, solar system, or worse, into purposeless copies of itself, to the catastrophic downfall of anyone living there. We’ll need to be very careful with SRM.

[charles brough]

Reason 5. Even if relativity still holds, Time dilation kicks in at 50% the speed of light and neighbouring stars come within reach of your lifetime which hopefully will be at least double that of today as bio-tech developments extend human lifetimes. So no real need for generation-ships.

 

"Time Dilation?" Is this some dream-wish thinking?

 

I agree about the robots. We would always want them to do only the worst types of work no one alse would want to do. In the forseeable future, we would have no motive to program them with the human complex of instincts and the strange manner which they have to be subjected to environment ("conditioned") before they can be felt and or expressed. Duplicating that makes no sense. We would always want them just to take orders no matter how difficult the task. They would just be an extension of our mechanical age of the last century---a combination of the mechanical and electronic. The age before that was of serfs and slaves. Things are gradually getting better in civilization (exept during their downcycles . . . )

 

charles, HOME PAGE

[blamski]

A lot of people who grew up in our can-do, space-age culture, with the plausible-seeming predictions of movies like 2001:A Space Odyssey, are surprised that “genuine AI” doesn’t yet exist. It’s proved a harsh surprise to many specialists in the field of AI, as well. The programming challenge is more difficult than many or most expected.

 

Though 8 years old, observations about progress in AI such as Penrose’s in “The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds and The Laws of Physics” are, I think, still relevant today. The challenges of artificial intelligence are very difficult, successes very limited, and both very much at odds with popular expectations and assumptions.

 

excuse the rude snipping...

 

i must remember to be more careful with my words on this forum - the football forums are so much more vague and forgiving ;)

 

when i say genuine AI i mean... well... any AI really. i'm aware of the progress, or lack of it, in creating truly intelligent machines but the current level of application seems low. sojourner had a very basic system for avoiding rocks which wasn't much more complex than a 13 year old with a mindstorms kit could knock up while the spirit and opportunity rovers are a little more complex using visual terrain maps to aid navigation Mars Exploration Rover Mission: Technology . but they cutting edge of AI is way beyond that already - the possibilities of sending up rovers that can make a wider range of practical decisions are very real. basically i'm suprised that the kind of work this guy Autonomous Space Robotics is doing is still in the developmental stage.

[CraigD]

… the current level of application seems low. sojourner had a very basic system for avoiding rocks which wasn't much more complex than a 13 year old with a mindstorms kit could knock up while the spirit and opportunity rovers are a little more complex using visual terrain maps to aid navigation Mars Exploration Rover Mission: Technology . but they cutting edge of AI is way beyond that already - the possibilities of sending up rovers that can make a wider range of practical decisions are very real. basically i'm suprised that the kind of work this guy Autonomous Space Robotics is doing is still in the developmental stage.

Blanski’s right, I think, but look at Mars rovers specifically from a risk assessment perspective: Having one behave more autonomously (eg: “seeing” something interesting and immediately moving to better image or sample it) gains mostly an increase in the rate of good data gathered. Since the rovers don’t need to quickly react to threats – Mars is a pretty static environment – and their mission range and life are largely a function of how much they move, not how long they’re idle on the surface, given the catastrophic nature of miss-navigating one and getting it stuck or overturned, and the modest improvement faster data collection speed would offer, the slow, dumb, safe get images/give movement orders/get images … cycle gives, I suspect, the best expected value. This is especially true because image bandwidth is limited, and I don’t think even the best software is trustworth enough to be allowed to decide what images and other data to send, and what not to.

 

As I understand it, my statement that mission life is mostly not a function of idle time is somewhat exaggerated – degradation of the landers’ and rovers’ solar panels, mostly from dust pitting, is also a major factor. I’m surprised that a system to prevent this – something similar to the peel-off visor covers used by off-road race drivers and riders, perhaps – hasn’t been used.

 

A really fast rover – one able to “sprint” on the surface, or fly – or a more agile one capable of negotiating terrain that might strand or wreck it, would, I think, benefit from the more advanced autonomous systems blamski describes. However, in the absence of one “as good as” a human being, I suspect that even the best of robots aren’t nearly the equal of a human explorer – though, given the long and uncertain timeline for human Mars visits, and the ongoing, certain one of robots, they’ll be our best explorers for the time being, and may even become “as good as” or better than a human before manned missions occur.

 

In the nearer term, an unmanned Mars sample return mission would be wonderful.

[CraigD]

Arrggggghhh (screams)

 

Yes at this speed its 0.87 of the time but I disagree with you that this isnt very useful it might be the difference in you starving to death on a 8 light year journey.

 

Also if your not that impressed with a spacecraft travelling at 0.5c then your very hard to impress !!! :evil:

I wouldn’t find a spacecraft accelerated to .5 c at all unimpressive, nor even one accelerated to .1 c, which, in the case of proposed unmanned spacecraft such as Starwisps, appear feasible within the next few decades.

 

Among the intended points of my previous post is that a time dilation factor of .87 at a speed of .5 c isn’t of much significance to the design of such a spacecraft and mission. In my examples, I used a familiar crew of 3 people, and a friendly acceleration of 1 g (9.8 m/s[math]^2[/math]). A human being requires about 100 W of food, at about .00001 kg/s Accelerating a human being at 1 g using a typical rocket motor requires about 1,500,000 W (2,000 HP) and about .333 kg/s. By tweaking the motors exhaust speed, you can increase or decrease the power as the square of the increase or decrease in mass rate – for example, increasing the previous examples exhaust speed from 3000 to 30000 m/s (about what you’d get going from a liquid fuel motor and an ion one), you now need 150,000,000 W and .033 kg/s. No matter how you tweak things, having enough food is among the least of your engineering worries, and it becomes quickly apparent that rocket motors aren’t much good for .5 c spaceships

 

I can’t quite pick up on the subtle nuances of your screams of frustration, snoopy, but I get the impression they translate roughly as “getting a spacecraft to go .5 c isn’t that hard, Craig, so stop with all the calculations and sweating the small stuff.” If so, I gotta disagree: getting a spacecraft to go .5 c is very hard, and the stuff I’m sweating isn’t small at all.

 

Unless you actually do the calculations, IMHO, you can’t get a decent grasp of how hard it is, and what to sweat, about interstellar spaceflight, leading you to suggest that throwing in a bit of "hydrid techs like solar sails, fusion reactors" (not exactly an easy bit of hardware to find), and a Bussard ramscoop or two can make everything work out. As the saying goes, “the devil’s in the details”, and, with rocket science, the details are numeric

 

Back to where this started…

…Reason 1. You cant get a nice looking girlfriend while looking like C3PO.

Reason 2. Humans like sex.

Reason 3. Machines breakdown more than Biological species do.

Reason 4. Currently our space exploration technology is 50 years old give it a few thousand years before becoming a robot seems the only way to travel between the stars.

Reason 5. Even if relativity still holds, Time dilation kicks in at 50% the speed of light …

Reason 6. Humans like SEX.

While I’m with you on #2 and 6, and will grant that C3PO fettish girls are hard to find, I must sorrowfully note that while machines may break down more than animals, the latter break down much worse, and more inevitably. #5 we’ve flogged enough in the last few posts, I think.

So please remember all of this before you embark on your extropian dream/nightmare scenario

And I was all set to have my tender gray thinking parts frozen, sliced thin, Laser-force micrographed and loaded into the hundred million MIPS computer in the belly of the CPO-homage robot body I’ve cobbled together in my garage, during breaks from all-nighters writing and debugging a human brain simulator! Thanks, snoopy, for bringing me to my senses in the nick of time!

 

In all seriousness, If and when such extropian dreams become available, I expect people will give deep consideration to these and many other reasons before plunging into anything, and chose nothing that violates their deepest, fundamental human nature. The will to survive and expand being, IMHO, big parts of that nature, I expect a lot of people will be willing to take any plunges required.

(I am off to bed to have nightmares of The Moderators of this thread)

Ah, we’re not all that bad! I even have a wife, kittens, and everything ;)