Humans Will Sail To The Stars

oddsheep points to an "article on BBC news from the AAAS Expo in Boston about how researchers are discussing spreading the human race across the galaxy in solar sailing ships. Not a new idea of course but the social implications discussed are great: what the hell do the volunteer colonists (and their descendants) do for the hundreds of years it would take to get anywhere? Cue "Are we nearly there yet?" from the back seats ad infinitum and the longest game of 'I Spy' in history..."

Comments

I Spy a star

[autopr0n]

the longest game of 'I Spy' in history..

"I Spy.... A star."

"Hey, thats what I was going to say!"

I think it would be a pretty short game, personaly.

Re:I Spy a star

[Kwikymart]

For the first couple of months of the trip, I would imagine this would be a reoccuring version:

"I spy with my little eye, something that is gaseous!"

Uranus?

Re:I Spy a star

[gilroy]

Or, adapted from Babylon 5:

I spy, with my little eye, something starting with the letter S... Stars

I spy, with my little eye, something starting with the letter M... More Stars

I spy, with my little eye, something starting with the letter E... Even More Stars

... and that's when I shot him, Your Honor. :) :)

great....

[x1l]

We are gunna get our asses kicked by the aleins if we are trying to sail around in space. We might want to think about something with a little more acceleration

In future news...

[Anonymous Coward]

...the question "Are we there yet?" becomes a felony, punishable by up to 20 years in solitary confinement.

Just don't take Eric Cartmen

[SamBeckett]

I'm sailllllingggg awaaaayyyy

But it was only supposed to be...

[Adolatra]

...a three hour tour!

Hilarious Quotation

[SmileyBen]

The Guardian also has an article. It includes the hilarious quotation 'Some very
clever people have been chipping away at the problem, and now we think it could be possible without breaking the laws of physics' - I presume as opposed to how people used to think it was possible only *with* breaking the laws of physics...

communicate

[smashin234]

I like how they talk about earth english and space english. We already have ebonics english, British English, and the English that my foreign professors have that is completly different then the english I speak. We could always use another English...

I say if you want to go to another solar system, go for it. I would rather stay here and respond to slashdot articles.

Re:what they do

[mar1no]

Here's an brilliant idea! They should load the ship with robots and upon the arrival of their destination the robots can begin the mixing of eggs and sperm (i dont know this process as i am not familiar with the artificial breeding methods of humans) and then the robots can parent the babies and the babies will be robots when they grow up and then we can have an INTERGALACTIC ARMY OF HUMAN ROBOTS! HEAHEHEAHEHA

I can see it now...

[UTPinky]

"Mommy, Tommy threw my shoe out the window."

"If you two don't stop it right now, I'm just going to have to turn this spaceship around right now! Do you want me to have to do that?!?"

Re:What to do?!

[agentZ]

Yes, but this group might not want to sit around playing Civilization together, lest they reveal their strategy for taking over the new world too soon...

Overpopulation?

[ocie]

In the words of Dr. Strangelove:

"Naturally, they would breed prodigiously, eh? There would be much time, and little to do."

So we build...

[Amarok.Org]

three ships. We put all the laborers on one, all the intellectuals on another, and...

(If you don't get it, don't moderate it)

Re:So we build...

[Anonymous Coward]

Arthur seemed to come out of a trance.

"You mean you've got a hold full of frozen hairdressers?" he said.

"Oh yes," said the Captain, "Millions of them. Hairdressers, tired TV
producers, insurance salesmen, personnel officers, security guards, public
relations executives, management consultants, you name them. We're
going to colonize another planet."

Ford wobbled very slightly.

"Exciting isn't it?" said the Captain.

"What, with that lot?" said Arthur.

"Ah, now don't misunderstand me," said the Captain, "we're just one
of the ships in the Ark Fleet. We're the `B' Ark you see. Sorry, could I
just ask you to run a bit more hot water for me?"

Arthur obliged, and a cascade of pink frothy water swirled around the
bath. The Captain let out a sigh of pleasure.

"Thank you so much my dear fellow. Do help yourselves to more drinks
of course."

Ford tossed down his drink, took the bottle from the first officer's tray
and refilled his glass to the top.

"What," he said, "is a `B' Ark?" "This is," said the Captain, and swished
the foamy water around joyfully with the duck.

"Yes," said Ford, "but ..."

"Well what happened you see was," said the Captain, "our planet, the
world from which we have come, was, so to speak, doomed."

"Doomed?"

"Oh yes. So what everyone thought was, let's pack the whole population
into some giant spaceships and go and settle on another planet."

Having told this much of his story, he settled back with a satisfied grunt.

"You mean a less doomed one?" promoted Arthur.

"What did you say dear fellow?"

"A less doomed planet. You were going to settle on."

"Are going to settle on, yes. So it was decided to build three ships, you
see, three Arks in Space, and ... I'm not boring you am I?"

"No, no," said Ford firmly, "it's fascinating."

"You know it's delightful," reflected the Captain, "to have someone else
to talk to for a change."

Number Two's eyes darted feverishly about the room again and then
settled back on the mirror, like a pair of flies briefly distracted from
their favourite prey of months old meat.

"Trouble with a long journey like this," continued the Captain, "is that
you end up just talking to yourself a lot, which gets terribly boring
because half the time you know what you're going to say next."

"Only half the time?" asked Arthur in surprise.

The Captain thought for a moment.

"Yes, about half I'd say. Anyway - where's the soap?" He fished around
and found it.

"Yes, so anyway," he resumed, "the idea was that into the first ship,
the `A' ship, would go all the brilliant leaders, the scientists, the great
artists, you know, all the achievers; and into the third, or `C' ship, would
go all the people who did the actual work, who made things and did
things, and then into the `B' ship - that's us - would go everyone else,
the middlemen you see."

He smiled happily at them. "And we were sent off first," he concluded,
and hummed a little bathing tune.

The little bathing tune, which had been composed for him by one of
his world's most exciting and prolific jingle writer (who was currently
asleep in hold thirty-six some nine hundred yards behind them) covered
what would otherwise have been an awkward moment of silence. Ford
and Arthur shuffled their feet and furiously avoided each other's eyes.

Re:Centuries-long voyages?

[October_30th]

A laser-link or something similar to give them fresh news

Which would obviously require censorship.

Nothing like broadcasts of a global killer pandemic of a killer virus or a nuclear war to boost the morale of the ship...

Re:What to do?!

[Bodrius]

How about hacking the spaceship's computer?

Sure, it might be risky. But there would be few things more satisfactory than pulling a hack to, say, get the computer to announce "Arrival" 200 years early.

I know what I would do

[Waffle Iron]

If I was born on one of these ships, I'd dedicate my whole life to inventing a warp drive so I could get the hell out of that tin can.

Most likely though, after sixty years of fruitless effort I would throw in the towel. I would spend the remainder of my time drunk in my cabin: a bitter, broken lonely man, shunned by my shipmates.

Upon my death, friendless, my body would be unceremoniously dumped into the biomass recycler.

Geeks as the perfect volunteers

[Bodrius]

The solution, of course, is to use Slashdot Geeks.

Used, and perhaps even comforted by the lack of sunlight and fresh-air, the Slashdot Geek presents advantages over other subespecies of the human animal for such an endeavor.

Its lack of social skills might be problematic, of course, but taking into account that most of them barely leave their rooms if given a network connection, human contact and its unfortunate consequences can be minimized.

Co-existence will be limited to posts and flamewars, and provided sufficient sources of electronic boards, sophomoric pseudojournalism and porn all violence would be confined to the network.

Ensuring reproduction of each generation, however, could present a bit of a challenge...

What would we...

[CYberPhreak]

and our decendants do for the length of time needed to travel from one planet to another star system? Personally, I would spend the time making decendants.

Re:Strange idea ...

[Ivan Raikov]

It will take a little time before you like/love it and before you can work with the same efficiency (as before the change)...

So what you're saying is that we should load a bunch of Windows users on a space sailship, give them Linux only computers, and by the time they have figured out how to surf for intergalactic porn, they'd have reached their final destination?

Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Think about this:

After 200 or 300 years, us Earthlings develop much faster and better methods of space travel. We could then build a new ship significantly faster than the old ship, enabling us to beat it to its destination.

The obvious conclusion that can be drawn is that we should never make any sort of spaceships, to avoid wasting resources!

Besides, you can imagine how hurt their feelings would be when the original travelers arrive at their destination, only to realize that it is already populated, and that their entire existence is in vain.