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Interstellar Ark
xantox writes "There are three strategies to travel 10.5 light-years from Earth to Epsilon Eridani and bring humanity into a new stellar system : 1) Wait for future discovery of Star Trek physics and go there almost instantaneously, 2) Build a relativistic rocket powered by antimatter and go there in 22 years by accelerating constantly at 1g, provided that you master stellar amounts of energy (so, nothing realistic until now), but what about 3): go there by classical means, by building a gigantic Ark of several miles in radius, propulsed by nuclear fusion and featuring artificial gravity, oceans and cities, for a travel of seven centuries — where many generations of men and women would live ? This new speculation uses some actual physics and math to figure out how far are our fantasies of space travel from their actual implementation."
we could do that, but the odds of us being screwed over by either a gamma ray burst or some other dangerous interstellar space event would be pretty high.
but then again, the resulting mutations might come in handy.
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So, let's take a passenger manifest...
[
* Decode and activate appropriate chevrons on that Stargate-thingy.
VOTE!
They will all be really bummed out when during their journey of centuries, somebody invents #1 and gets there ahead of them.
Hmmm, after 1400 years - impact at 0.99999 C, due to a minor imperial to metric conversion error...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
> How many human societies have survived 7 centuries unchanged?
Chinese culture has. But why are you adding a requirement that the society on ark is impervious to change? As long as they don't get a culture of punching holes in their shielding they should be OK.
Maybe for higher life forms, but what about the rest of us?
Meanwhile, first contact with alien life has taken place on a farm in England, but tragically the message: Gobblegobble wark! gobblegobble, gobblegobble, cro..aaaa...kkkk..."* was not translated in time to prevent the entire landing party from being turned into turkey twizzlers.
* Trans: "Greetings Earthicans. I/we come in geese. I/we am H5N1 from the planet Phlegm. Hurry, this host is weak. I/we must meet with your great leader Jamie Oliver before I/we arrgh..."
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
We could just fill the spacecraft with coca cola and mentos tablets, and keep popping them into a bottle every minute. I mean, that's free energy.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
If we do send an ark, and it arrives an odd 70 years later, the crew will be thoroughly pissed off. Because in the meantime, here on earth we would have invented Star Trek Physics (tm) and can get there in half an hour. So they would arrive at a fully colonised Holiday Inn Resort Planet.
People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
Plan 9, surely?
I took some pills & shot some stuff off a few times in the last few years, I'm still praying none of them evolve & contact me.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
It seems to me that the optimum method would be to start an automated system that just keeps making the telescope bigger using materials culled from asteroids, comets and so forth. The longer it runs, the more detail we cold resolve. Why ever turn such a system off?
do you really want that big of a magnifying lens to exist? let alone have it's focal point you planet?
Are we trying to figure out what the ants feel just before they get fried?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Why ever turn such a system off?
That will be answered by our returning descendents when all they find is one big telescope floating in the space that used to be our solar system.
man, I feel like mold.
That's got to be the crappiest return on investment for a Berserker scenario ever. If you get wiped out by hyper-intelligent super-efficient warlike AIs you can console yourself that at least you just lost out to something more advanced on the galactic level food chain. But being annihilated by a badly programmed telescope construction project has got to rank up there in patheticness with having your planet demolished to make room for a hyperspace bypass.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Come on, Mars has more than enough moons; nobody would miss Phobos if we were to carve it out and turn it into a giant colony ship...
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Any robut smart enough to rear children is simply going to refuse to do so.
"He's using a quantum encryption scheme! That'll take hours to break!"
by building a gigantic Ark of several miles in radius
You're supposed to measure in cubits, you damned heathen!
Table-ized A.I.
Evidently, this "dictionary" concept needs further refinement.
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
You guys are missing the important point. The only thing worse than spending billions of dollars on building a giant spaceship which won't produce any results until another 10% of recorded history plays out, would be for it to arrive with too few humans to establish a viable gene pool.
What does that mean to the average geek reading this on slashdot? EVERYONE who sets sail on this 700 year voyage will have to get laid!
Then we go at night - duh!
"Why did they cancel my favorite Sci-Fi show? I downloaded ALL the episodes!"