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

what they do

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell do the volunteer colonists (and their descendants) do for the hundreds of years it would take to get anywhere?

Same thing they do here. Go to work every day, come home & watch tv, sleep, repeat, breed on weekends and have a war to reduce the population every so often.

wear and tear

[sudasana]

Wouldn't asteroids and space dust pose a threat to the solar sails? On a long enough journey, the combined damage of thousands of tiny impacts could tear the sails to pieces.

Another approach

[quantaman]

I still think the easiest way to spread the human race to other stars in a Van Neuman machine. It's a self-replicating machine that when it finds a good planet will first terraform it that clone humans to live on it (I may be confusing it with something else but I think I got the basics right). This would not only be drastically cheaper and more practical it holds much more potential for the spread of the human race. It also avoids finding a way to keep a bunch of people occupied for several decades.

Sorry to burst your bubble here ...

[Rolo Tomasi]

... but first of all, this will only work really close to the sun, maybe within the five inner planets, as the wind pressure decreases with the inverse square of the distance to the sun. Second, it won't work with humans on board, because to protect people from the solar wind itself (electrons, protons and neutrons, so highly ionizing and not good for your health) and cosmic radiation, you need thick layers of absorbant material (water or rock), which would make the craft too heavy to be adequately accelerated by the solar wind.

So, it's maybe a good idea for low-cost space probes, but it won't work for manned spacecraft.

And I think before worrying about linguistic problems (space English and Earth English, WTF?), we should first find a way for humans to even survive for an extended period of time on our front porch, i.e. interplanetary space.

Hibernation

[Daemonik]

Hopefully we would have developed some form of hibernation before we tried to set out on such an endevor. Trying to keep a boat load of colonists occupied and safe on a multi-generational voyage would be trying at best.

Not to mention the problem of what to do if your intendid destination proves unsuitable for habitation. Like they're going to go back to a planet they've never been on and a culture they've never been exposed to?

The best system would involve cryogenically frozen embryos and artifical wombs with a small crew in hibernation. Due to the absolute zero temperatures of deep space, little energy would have to be expended on keeping the embryos frozen for the trip as well.

Robotic probes would detect if an approaching system could sustain life or decide to move on to it's next potential target. If it was on the iffy side, the crew could be woken to make the judgement call.

In the end however, until we can develope some form of FTL propulsion, most people are not going to be satisfied with the 'casting seeds' approach to extra-solar colonization because of the dubious chances of return on investment and the enormously long travel times. Everyone on Earth involved with such a project would be long dead before any kind of information could come back from these expeditions.

In the days of instant messaging, cell phone calls to anyone on the planet and relatively fast air travel to any destination, we are fundamentally incapable of grasping and backing the idea of a multigenerational investment of this scope with our current cultural outlook.

Re:Just say NO to Irresponsible Inc. propaganda.

[LordKazan]

You're rather alarmist - while caring for the environement is a very important thing when it's taken to your point it becomes EcoNazism. Your level of virulent hatred tword realistic society shows naivity, ignorance and embitterment.
Get a Clue

Just some random scientist

Re:Dreamers and reality

[hobart_the_mime]

Gimme a break! Sheesh. I'm sure there were plenty of "realist" idiots like you trying to discourage true geniuses like Von Braun or Willy Ley to give up on researching manned spaceflight back in the early 20th. Thank goodness they were smart enough not to listen. The stars are our destiny, it just remains to be seen how and when we get there.

Unrealistic

[GCP]

Technology is advancing so quickly that people would realize that any group that launched such a voyage would be passed by a faster group within a few years.

That thought is likely to limit our voyages at any given time to a radius that can be reached in probably about a decade or less with current technology.

In the meantime, they'll be pushing the limits harder with unmanned probes that can endure tremendous accelerations.

And until such probes provide proof that there is an inhabitable world at the end of the journey, I find it extremely unlikely that anyone will put together a space city and launch themselves into the unknown for an unknown number of centuries toward an end that's more likely to be a massive destructive event (either external or internal) than an accidental discovery of Earth II.

For once, let's not.

[supernova87a]

As an astronomer, I think it's vitally important that we continue to research extrasolar planets and the nearby galaxy. But at the same time, I would suggest that we have no business in sending people to these distant worlds, as some sort of "colonization" effort.

Why? The human desire to expand its territory is insatiable, but I believe that until we resolve our problems here, we shouldn't go polluting new worlds with our inevitable conflicts, waste, and all the other byproducts of humanity. Perhaps someday, when humans get over selfishness, the tendency to war, violence, and competition, traveling to these distant places will be a good thing. But I can't imagine for now, that if we were to go, these planets would turn out to be anything but Earth all over again, with poverty, suffering, and human strife.

It's romantic to believe that some great future will be opened to us when we become capable of traveling to the nearest star, but the cynical side of me says that people forget fairly quickly, and degenerate into their innate ways. As I say, perhaps we'll be ready someday, but I don't think that'll be any time soon...

Unfortunately, if it does become possible, it will be done, that's one thing I'm sure of. Don't count on people to have restraint, you can be fairly certain. Asking scientists to be responsible and not contribute to such a project doesn't work -- someone *will* do it, or work for those who want to have it done. It's just a matter of time.

I'd go

[Deanasc]

Subject say's it all but to expound further...

I would be willing to give up quite a lot to go even 1/4 of the way to another world.

They'll probably solve the suspended animation problem by then. In that case I'd get to go on the whole trip.

In fact I hope they solve the suspended animation problem soon as I'm sick of listening to the kids go at it in the back seat.

Re:Dreamers and reality

[hobart_the_mime]

So, in essence, you're saying that if a theory cannot be tested by current technology, it deserves to be completely rejected. Wow thats stupid. Sorry, but you're dead wrong. Glad you have no say in the scientific community. Technology has a sneaky way of catching up with theory (can you say...oh, ATOM BOMB!). Another case in point (and my favorite underdog/wacky research tech, one that i'm researching at Yale's NMR lab and writing a paper on): quantum computation. When Feynmann proposed using molecules and intramolecualr quantum forces as the basis for a scalable computer, people laughed. Now IBM has created a seven-qubit bulk ensemble device that can scale up to factor ridiculously large numbers using Shor's Algorithm, and quantum crytography will very soon be a reality. People like you fail to see how these wacky theories can ever be profitable. You think like a businessman, not a scientist. Solar sails and space elavators are wonderful ideas (championed by the great A.C. Clarke!!!) whose time will come. The technological basis for both is already in place, its really a matter of funding and of large-scale replication. Ever heard of bucky tubes, or of the fairly successful NASA experiments with solar sails???? Sheesh indeed.

What you're asking

[Catbeller]

What you are asking for is impossible.

You want people to stop being selfish, solve all the world's problems, and in general, become angels.

Since this will never happen, your goal will insure that we will never pollute the universe with our evil selves.

Here's a point: the very things that make us "evil", such as greed, lust, territoriality, warlike tendency, aggresssion -- all of that -- are precisely the qualities that make a species dominant over others in the evolutionary sense. And given that, if we do go to the stars, and meet others, I'd guarantee that those others will be selfish, paranoid, violent and warlike. A species without those traits would not have survived the test of time. If we go to the stars as Zen Buddhist monks, those colonists will be annihilated by the locals - even if the locals are bloody non-sapient crytals. Life is hungry and pitiless.

As for a great future for humanity among the stars: by your logic, Europeans should never have left their continent. Instead, they should have stayed home and perfected their societies.

Well, think of this. If there had been no Canada or United States, what do you think would have happened to world civilization after World War I or II? The Western Hemisphere was critical - CRITICAL - in defeating a thousand years of twisted nationalism, and in rebuilding the shattered nations in the aftermath. If Europeans had not left their homes and travelled to the New World, the Old World would have shattered into a new iron age, and would not have recovered for centuries -- if ever. New worlds create opportunity for those who would want to leave, and create resources that can be used to shore up those left behind, even heal them and advance them.

The fallacy is the basic Zero-Sum game. The idea that there is a finite ulimate prize to human endeavor will concentrate human social toxins, and ultimately kill us all. We need the IDEA of new horizons, even if we don't have them yet.

Re:What you're asking

[wurp]

I disagree with your notion that the species that succeeds most is the one with the most selfish members. It's not a zero sum game, and groups that cooperate amongst themselves, and groups most capable of working out arrangements that balance trust versus mutual gain, succeed best. Groups of individually selfish, greedy bastards find themselves unable to form larger, more powerful entities, and they are wiped out by coordinated groups.

Re:It would take 160 colonists for a viable colony

[Catbeller]

Besides, they could carry ova and sperm from hundreds of thousands of people with them. Not a problem.

Polynesian Models

[Alien54]

I recall that a year or so ago objects were discovered way out well past pluto, maybe even out to half a light year or more. (30,000 AU?)(ah, here's the link) With a number of these conveniently placed, travel to the stars could be done via these distant places, in a manner very much like Island hopping used by the Polynesians. The Kuiper Belt becomes a launching pad, training ground, etc. But this may not be the case.

If convenient objects are just a quarter light year or so apart, then the journeys do not have to be so long.

Just make sure to bring along a whole lot of cheese doodles. we'll be sending GW with you. (smile)

Which brings up the question of who should we send as the the first people to travel?

Cryo might be a pipe dream

[Prune]

ALCOR (http://www.alcor.org/) has yet to defrost any of their frozen fools. They think that in the future nanotechnology will allow repairing the cellular damage due to the freezing. But many scientists think this is unrealistic.
As far as carrying human germ cells instead, there has been progress in artificial wombs recently, but in that case you have to have robots smart enough to establish a breeding base on the planet. And if you can do that, why send humans into space at all, when the robots can perform better? The only reason for not sending robots, other than the sci-fi dreams about adventure and reaching for the stars, is to find an outlet for expanding the population. But there are much more reasonable ways to control population here on earth.