An Interstellar Lifeboat for Humanity

cravey writes "From the people who brought you the Oceania project so many years ago comes the Lifeboat project. An attempt to create a spaceship for the purposes of saving the human race from the singularity predicted by Vernor Vinge. Lots of talk about nanotech accidents and biological accidents wiping out civilization, but it has a neat picture of the ship. :)"

Comments

an interesting calculation

[dollargonzo]

i saw once, was to show that it is indeed impossible to save the entire human population. basically, the amount of people we can take off the planet every day is nowhere near the level of population growth. so, even if you can get a few million off the planet, 99% of the people currently on earth will be still living on earth, and any large scale disaster will still wipe out almost the entire human race if we do not prevent it. sure, maybe the human race itself will survive, but it will most likely not be sufficient to maintain itself, and will just die out anyway.

Re:an interesting calculation

[Jerf]

i saw once, was to show that it is indeed impossible to save the entire human population.

Such a statement must inevitable rest on a set of assumptions. As such, that's not a bad thing, but it should be considered in order to understand the true nature of the statement.

At current technology, and all reasonably-likely foreseeable technology, yes, it is impossible to get even a vanishing fraction of the population off the Earth. It's impossible to even keep up with the birth rate.

On the other hand, the very definition of the Singularity is that it is the/a point past which all previous conceptual frameworks for understanding the actions of humanity fail us. ("A" because many people make IMHO well-reasoned arguments that say that Singularities are very POV-based; that for a Medieval alchemist, we're well on the other side of what for him would be a Singularity.)

Considered for instance in terms of raw energy, assuming cheap, easy fusion or better, there's plenty of power on the planet to take the whole of humanity off, and if you're willing to import power from other sources, we could take the whole biosphere with us. (Not that we want to, per se, but that it's possible.)

I'm not saying that this is likely or possible or desirable (or not), I'm just saying that such facts must be considered in context, or they can mislead you. Certainly there is no hidden natural law of the universe requiring that all of humanity stay on the planet; just the well-known one of gravity, which has several known workarounds, even at our current level of understanding.

Cult.

[bstadil]

"A cult is a religion with no political power." -- Tom Wolfe.

The difference between cult and respectable religions are just the size of membership. Example: Eating the body of Christ, handed to you by a priest! Imagine the reaction if someone came up with this POS today. Doesn't get more "Cult'ish" than that.

Just because your are not paranoid doesn't mean your are not being followed!

Danish by Nationality not by Name by the way.

generation starship fleets

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, we need as many of these as we find terrestrial planets with liquid water and abundant O2.

Within a 100 light-year radius, that will probably be five or ten.

I'd rather have one generation starship than a dozen LEO space stations.

Re:My suggestion...

[donscarletti]

There is an atmosphere on mars. Why the heck do you think they whacked parachutes onto viking? As a napkin? Come on!

Just because an atmosphere is not breathable doesn't mean it does not exist. Take a seedy nightclub or pub as an example. Just because the cigarette smoke, BO and other such cruft makes it absolutely unbarable to breath doesn't make it a vacume.

Mars' atmosphere is mainly CO2 with a little N2 floating around so it would just be like a paper bag that has been breathed into and from for a while but with a little more CO2.

I guess you are right that someone would die after landing on Mars because it has no breathable oxygen. However they would live longer than you thought because they would not pop like one would on a planet totally devoid of atmosphere (at least not as fast). The temperature would not be as extreme either. I guess if you packed George Bush, Osama Bin Laden, Areial Sharon, Yasser Arafat and anyone who supports these people into the rocket with a few scuba sets, some warm angora sweaters and some strong Burbon (for staying warm on the cold martian nights) they could form nice friendly community until they either run out of burbon/oxygen or renounce violence and we can fly them back home.

Come to think about it that is a pretty cool idea.

Re:Save humanity from the Singularity?

[Galvatron]

Huh, I'm not sure it's a GOOD thing. Isn't the idea that it's an unpredictable thing? As I understand it, the theory is that beyond the technological singularity, human society (if it even exists) will be radically transformed. So, as a person born before the singularity, I probably wouldn't like it. Just as many of our grandparents, raised in a time when homosexuality was considered morally equivalent to incest or bestiality, are sickened by the Gay Pride parades, many of us would probably be sickened, frightened, or at least strongly morally opposed to the social norms that arise on the far side of the singularity. Be it cybernetics, cloning, genetic engineering, AI, vat grown fetuses for stem cell harvesting, or God only knows what, there's almost certain to be a technology we will one day use that makes you uncomfortable.

I'm not sure running away is the right answer, but I would be cautious in calling the technological singularity a "good thing." Those who are a product of it will likely consider it one, but those of us who precipitate it likely will not, and will long for the "good old days" from before the singularity.

Anyway, the guy in the article isn't afraid of the singularity, as such, he's afraid of the dangers that might arise (accidentally or through terrorism): grey goo from nanotech, killer diseases from bioengineering, Terminators from AI, and so forth. The singularity will simply accelerate development of these technologies (and hopefully, ones to counter the dangers, too).

An underground/water boat first?

[iamacat]

It seams premature to try to survive in space for long time, when we had no success with settlements deep underwater and underground. They are much easier to sustain, provide a good chance to survive most of the disasters that might wipe out life on Earth and have pragmatic benefits. For example, an extensive underground level - with artificial sky, ventilation and so on - might relief overcrowded cities.

More to the point of the article, we can probably establish settlements like this now, with current level of technology. Then in future a space settlement will only need to get in space and deal with problems unique to being there. Other problems that a domed settlement on Mars might face - creating a self-sustained biosphere, making repairs using only material inside and so on - will already be solved on Earth.

Re:Spaceship not large enough

[_ph1ux_]

heres a question regarding space elevators. If you have a space elevator - regardless of what its made out of - and the ground point of the elevator becomes un-teathered (e.g. no longer attached to earth) what happens?

Does the whole huge ass thing fall to earth causing major scale damage (given there is a lot of civilization near by) - does it flap around like a hose with nobody at the end - or does it float off into space?

So - if there is a major catastrophic event which requires the evacuation of earth via our space elevators - do you really think that the elevators bases would be stable enough (or even flexible enough) to withstand some sort of event that would assumably be coupled with earth shaking upheaval (sp) to such a degree as to make the elevators skyscraping towers of death?

Does anyone seriously know? what considerations have been given towards this issue?

(Not to mention the possibilities for terrorist attacks. For god's sake wont somebody please think of the children!)

`Fiiiii-bre!' -or - `When elevators come down'

[leonbrooks]

If you have a space elevator [...] and the ground point of the elevator becomes un-teathered (e.g. no longer attached to earth) what happens?

Not much, unless the design deliberately called for it to be under tension. The things are in orbit, after all. Some designs call for the `tower' base to be mobile (a ship). It's not really a tower, it's really a bridge anchored on nothing (from the middle out).

Breaking it in the middle would be a bit more disastrous. The bottom half would whiplash around the planet (or maybe the bottom tenth, quite a lot would burn up and/or shatter as it re-entered), and what happened to the other half would be highly dependednt on stuff like where the Moon was at the time.

Terrorist attacks would not be easy to carry off; the elevator would be a very thin low-visibility target to hit, and air defense would be relatively simple. Some quite small computer-co-ordinated guns on the travellers would prove quite lethal to aircraft and missiles alike, and I imagine that provision would be made for directing and focussing the lift laser against larger and/or slower targets. The designs that I've seen would be immune to meteor strikes up to quite sizeable impacts (they're curved - like a tape measure - so even a side-on strike would get at most half of the fibres).

Terrorist attacks against space colonies would be much more of a problem. From orbit, a rocket the size of two soft-drink cans could loft a couple of kilos of small ball-bearings into a widely dispersed cloud on a collision course with a colony. This would be very difficult to even detect, let alone parry or dodge.

Terrorist attacks on ground targets from orbit would also be a worry. `We have many rocks, Man.'

Hmmph

[malachid69]

I was an active member of Oceania, and still believe in the principles... However, I am not so sure about joining any project run by Eric. Though he seemed like a nice guy, he flaked off without telling anyone what was happening or where their money was going.

I love this quote, in relation to the fact he hasn't replied to anything Oceania in YEARS:
"Eric Klien, founder of Colossus, Inc., a web hosting company since 1995 and founder of The Atlantis Project, an ambition made obsolete by current events."

He may be on the up-and-up, but from past experience with Oceania, I have to personally assume that it is a scam.

Malachi

This is not about 'Escaping the Singularity',

[Marr]

... but some of the comments here do seem to be working on that assumption. From the site: "Our main goal is to get enough of the human race off the planet, as soon as possible, to ensure the future of mankind in case of overwhelming disaster."

There doesn't need to be a Singularity Point in order for this to be a good idea, people. Does it slip our minds that we already farking have the power to Nuke Ourselves Back into the Stone Age(tm), and even if progress has stopped accellerating as of 3am last night, (Any bets?) things are still set to get a lot more dangerous before they stabilise.

Seems to me that making a few colony vessels as an insurance policy against the Earth's possible suicide (You're asleep at the wheel if you think it can't happen) as soon as feasable is a sensible and prudent step to take. Provided, of course, that we also continue our efforts here on Earth to keep intelligence and information tech up to speed with our power and weapons capabilities.

Incidentally, do this societies goals remind anyone else of Iain Banks' SF background essay, "A Few Notes on the Culture"?

Lifeboat

[hackus]

I believe in many ways we already have "missed" the boat.

I think Arthur C Clark put it best when asked about the most amazing development of the 20th century was that "We went to the moon, and then, stopped."

No real progress has been made since then, except we have had better hardware to reach earth orbit.
(More powerful rockets and robtics...whoop to do to day, yippy skippy.)

Rocket technology sucks. The whole concept stinks, in my humble opinion. So does Solar sails, that stinks as well. These stupid and dumb propositions to push physical objects around in space are just as quaint as the 300-400 year old laws that describe how to do it. (Newtons laws.)

Not GOOD ENOUGH though for an ark.

Those crucial 30-40 years that we sat on our laurels I believe represented a critical time window when, the world had enough resources, and was stable enough to continue invest HEAVILY in space research, without polticians and short cited people to notice.

Now, it is far too expensive, our governments are basically corrupt, and way too many people are overly concerned about how much consumerism they can accomplish in one lifetime, to worry about the future beyond 1 hour of thier lives.

We basically lost 30 years since the time of Apollo, and we will pay dearly for it as small bands of humans, seek to destroy civilization, even at the cost of thier own lives for thier impident God they worship.

The kinds and sorts of technology required for long term duration in space, is something we don't posses, nor will we I do believe for another 100-300 years. Space is just too hazardous, radiation wise, relativistically wise, that an Ark launched with todays technology could become easily sterile before it even leaves the solar system.

I think I also believe that we are on a cycle. We have just too many "fairy tales" of past civilizations describing "Gods in the Sky" that would travel around the world, to discount that perhaps, we have already been here, or near to here, in our development.

Then inexplicably, EVERYTHING gets wiped out, and those that survive, tell thier children about the time when we could fly, when people could be "raised from the dead" and that wars were fought using "Great Rays from the Sun".

No, no ark will save us, because the window of opportunity has passed us by. We have proven our selves as a species that we lack the will to continue and all our eggs will be in this one basket till someone drops the basket.

The only way to stop the cycle, is for our species to completely die off, not such a TERRIBLY bad thing considering our most recent accomplishments at building ever greater ways of destroying the planet at the push of a button. Or, perhaps next time around, we will get a little further, perhaps going to the moon, a half a million years from now and actually building a base below its surface.

OR perhaps we HAVE come this far before, and even further, but failed last time as well...

-Hack

Re:My suggestion...

[JamesSharman]

That depends, if there were less scuba sets than people it could get very interesting very fast.

Besides, the atmosphere on mars is very very thin, much lower than at the top of everest if I remmeber correctly. The problem with really low air presure (ignoring the lack of any o2) is that your lungs start to leak water ending in what is effectively drowning. Even with an o2 supply climbers effectively start dying once the air gets two thin. Exactly how long you could last in the open on mars with an o2 supply I couldn't tell you but I'm not sure I'd like to find out.

Re:After the gold rush

[Chelloveck]

Since then... None of the 20th century SF seems to have gotten the world around the year 2000 right.

Read some of John Brunner's work, notably Stand on Zanzibar and The Shockwave Rider. Written in the 60s and 70s, it's scary how well they seem to be predicting the early 21st century.

Re:After the gold rush

[mobilityguy]

Do you consider 1984 to be 20th century science fiction? Look what it predicted:

• A world divided into regional coalitions that combine in shifting alliances. The portrayal of other cultures in simplistic black-and-white terms. Government efforts to downplay our previous relations with our current "friends" and "enemies".
• Perpetual war, mostly in far-away places, to divert attention from domestic problems. Lotteries and content-free televised entertainment to do the same.
• An anti-knowledge, anti-scientific mindset in popular culture and government, where knowledge and understanding are replaced by doctrinal belief systems.
• Increasing economic stratification in society, with institutions of power cooperating to place their inter-related self-interest over the common good.
• Popular music based entirely on rhythmic patterns, with no melody. Yes, in 1948 Orwell predicted rap.

Given current trends, maybe the only thing Ol' George got wrong was the title.