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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..."
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.
I stole this Sig
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.
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.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
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.
Besides, they could carry ova and sperm from hundreds of thousands of people with them. Not a problem.