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Augmented Astronauts Needed for Deep Space Missions
A random reader writes "IEEE is carrying a story about how 'extended space missions' may require a little forced evolution, or BORGIFYING. Humans must have additional abilities via implanted technologies (repair bones, monitor radiation levels). Machines must become more organic (fixing themselves, etc)."
Just because you make a machine out of organic materials, which has yet to be seen... doesn't mean it will repair itself. True, living organisms do have a tendency to repair themselves, but this can't necessarily be recreated artificially. Any machine that could even simply make verbatim copies of itself would be a remarkable achievement. (programming a robotic arm to build another doesn't count...) We are still unable to understand many principles of life, let alone recreate it. Living organisms have extranordinary design for which no evidence is presented to where it might have come from. True, evolution is often stated as a reason, but that doesn't account for the design - only for a possible apparant process. We still don't know how the exact forces that produced life and the complex organisms came to be. Until we can understand this, we can't recreate life.
For those of you who are truly intrigued by space, time, and the effects it will have on humanity, I highly recommend this book . Hawking is an excellent writer and reknowned scientist, a rare combination, and goes into detail in his book, "The Universe in a Nutshell". I just finished the cd-rom version and enjoyed it very much.
If you would like to be a leader with a large following...drive slowly down a windy two-lane road
Pohl predicted this in Man Plus(1976), in which a man is modified to survive on the surface of mars. I don't have a copy at hand but there was an excellent passage about how humans can't really live in unmodified form outside of the savanna, the modifications (parkas, fire, etc.) necessary to live elsewere are just reversible so far.
Of course Cordwainer Smith was there in 1950 with "Scanners Live in Vain" with the Habermen and Scanners.
Well yes we have.
too some extent
I mean that is the basic interface it is all tweaking and compacting from there.
I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said: "I drank what?" - Chris Knight (Val Kilmer)- Real Genius
Send robots instead.
Until a form of suspended animation is found, deep space mission are impractical and a waste of resources.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
Antigravity is too important to ignore. If it can be found, it means that huge spaceships that are themselves biospheres can be constructed on the Earth's surface, then lifted into space by antigravity.
Artificial gravity, on the other hand, is necessary because it will allow cosmonauts to be like on Earth, and skip a whole generation of health problems.
That's the only solution for realistic deep space travel (and if we can crack gravity, maybe the secret of Faster-Than-Light travel is revealed).
Since modifying people has such a high level of ethical and PR baggage, I'd bet that it will be easier and cheaper to modify machines. Nobody has any qualms about trying out new hardware, software, and robotics concepts -- if it doesn't work, throw it out. In contrast, anything to do with people requires such high levels of oversight and ethical review as to make true experimentation impossible.
I'm not advocating unfettered human experimentation. I'm only pointing out that the stiff, but reasonable, restrictions on it mean that borgification should be approached from the machine side.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
In the meantime, here on Earth, something terrible happens and just about everybody on the planet croaks, except for some people here and there. Technology all goes down the drain as most devices and whatnot break down and nobody is around to fix them. People band together in little tribes, tattooing the image of their tribes on their bodies to distinguish one another, and mini-wars break out between these tribes, in which people beat the crap out of each other with clubs. People forget the religions that filled the Earth, and they start worshipping rocks, trees, small statues, old tires on the sides of the roads that haven't disintegrated yet, etc. After some 750 years, nobody even remembers the technology that used to be. Most buildings have crumbled from disrepair. Once again, people are living in huts made of straw, sticks, or bricks. (Like the three little pigs.)
Anyway, while all this is going on, the space crew's decendants had reached Pluto, done some fascinating experiments like gathering samples of Pluto dirt in small jars, and they started on their way back home to Earth, which isn't visible to the naked eye from Pluto. By the 750 years that I mentioned before, the decendants of those who gathered the Pluto dust arrive at Earth. They come in for a landing, and everyone sees this, freaks out, and thinks it's an alien invasion with UFOs or something. Entire religions are invented over this, and people have bloody battles for the next 2000 years over whose account is correct.
As long as I get to bunk with 7 of 9 that is...
The article mentioned that double leg amputees may be very well suited to long term work in space because it reduces the work load on the heart.
There maybe other advantages as well. Less mass for the heart to supply implies less mass to feed and keep hydrated, thus trips to orbit would be easier.
Internal spaces could be designed differently if you didn't have to account for legs.
Space suits could be smaller and cheaper, or even completely different. I imagine zipping around space stations in a little inflatable Tie fighter with arms to do work.
None of this will matter much until a signifigant amount of the human population does at least some of their work in orbit, or orbit becomes irrelevant.If that happens we will have to start modifying ourselves to be more efficient.
Let's take a leap and say that having no legs, or only stubbs,is demonstrably better for a long term space worker. Will people get them chopped off?
I don't think they will. The reasons might be more social than technical.
Even if large numbers of people eventually start doing this, there will necessarily be a time when the amputees-by-choice will be unusual. This will not be to their advantage in social interaction with people that don't work in orbit, or that work in full gravity space stations.
I'll admit that this may not be reasonable, but I think that amputees are not as good for the ordinary work-a-day world as other people. They are at a disadvantage when competing for jobs, money, women or men, fun and safety, all of which may be mostly the same thing.
Since humans are, by nature, driven by habit and prejudice, people will assume that the voluntary amputee space worker types are at a disadvantage and won't give them the same play as others.
Now, since me or my descendants will be working on the bridge of the ship and 7 of 9, some of us don't have to worry. But what of the average person? Would an average space-joe sign up for this? I really doubt it.
Let's say that we get past this non-sense and amputation is the norm, will it stay the norm or will it ever become acceptable for the upper class, whatever that becomes? Again, I doubt it.
If being an amputee is seen as an efficient work move, then those people that are not force to will not get their legs chopped off. Legs will be seen as a vanity item.
Think of it this way, do people select their transportation option for utility or prestige? What do you think you can tell about people from looking at their car? Why do I think life would be a LOT more fun if I owned a BMW Z3? The inflatable Tie figher could get a space worker from point A to point B just as well as shuffling around on a deck in a space suit. People won't see it that way though.
Serious body modification for utility rather than looks has serious social and technical problems associated with it. In the last millenium human technology has taken huge leaps on every front, but we are still ignorant, savage beasts.
I say that the trend will continue. Practicality will not interfere.
Why do I have this? I don't smoke.
Anybody else attend a particular lecture at Minicon (Minneapolis) c. '93? There was a guy who did a heck of a theatre piece -- or was crazy -- or a visionary. Still haven't picked just one. Story was that he was like a cousin in the Japanese solid booster rocket company's family. The problem with 100% solid rockets is apparently the relatively instantanious thrust -- they take off like, well, bottle rockets. So he was centrifuging salemanders regularly to try to figure how much they could take and what makes them resistant to g forces. If you can't change the rockets, change people! Quite a bit of detail on salemander centrifuging in fact. He did a good part of the presentation with a B&W projection in the background of a Russian experiment with a severed dog head pumped blood. "It responded for several minutes!" And suggested that people should be bred as dwarfs to fit into spacecraft better.
You would not BELIEVE how quickly a con can plaster a 20-story hotel with disclaimers that they had not screened his talk. But was he crazy -- or just "bold"?
I'm betting the salemander-people astronauts are a no-starter for a LONG time. But, hey. China admitted selecting for short people to fit into the capsule. It wouldn't be _unreasonable_ to imagine a race of dwarfs inhabiting tunnels on Demos. And what is a severed head but a crude metaphor for organic AI?
Bruce Sterling's novel Schizmatrix from ages ago: Not unreasonable to think human-directed evolution will branch the genome around the inhabited solar system.