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'Curiosity' Lead Engineer Suggests Printing Humans On Other Planets
Jason Koebler (3528235) writes "Adam Steltzner, the lead engineer on the NASA JPL's Curiosity rover mission, believes that to send humans to distant planets, we may need to do one of two things: look for ways to game space-time—traveling through wormholes and whatnot—or rethink the fundamental idea of 'ourselves.' 'Our best bet for space exploration could be printing humans, organically, on another planet,' said Steltzner."
I'm certain we've mastered space-time enough to "fold around" before the "printing" of humans and incepting them with their old memory again is doable. Seriously.
But not until my $1,200 3d printer can print me a girlfriend.
I think there's a case to be made that genetically being human is far less important to being "human" than the shared culture we've developed. Organically laying out a clone of yourself is far less like yourself than raising an adopted child. This kind of program, while inspired, and theoretically plausible, doesn't actually achieve what we want to achieve.
Let's print up 20,000 Sarah Palin's on Orionis IV just for the hell of it.
Table-ized A.I.
Aside from the whole organic-3D-printing-of-entire-humans angle, this isn't a new idea. Arthur C. Clarke's The Songs of Distant Earth features an extraterrestrial colony of humans descended from machine-grown progenitors.
Conforming to einsteinian space-time, it will take more than a present-day human life span to get a printer and your scan to a nice(ish) planet.
Maybe we need to work on the lifespan.
I plant oak seedlings; most do not.
Verbum caro factum est
3D printers print you!
So, start with the magic, then?
I wonder how we go about printing humans on other planets or using wormholes.
Why, if only we had unlimited, non-existent technology, we could do practically anything.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
You don't have to print humans, just synthesize a memorized genome and throw it into an artificial womb. Done to death in SciFi literature and certainly within the means of 21th century technology. It's certainly interesting if a human raised entirely by a computer can really qualify as human.
And why do it ? Just to spread the human disease in the universe ? Why not simply send the artificial intelligence that is necessary anyway to make such a mission a success ?
Print me up a Scarlett Johansson
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Sorry, I'm only a 1336 h4x0r.
I wish that people that are very, very smart on one particular subject or discipline would be a little more careful before they speak on matters outside of their area of expertise, especially on stuff as outlandish as what this particular individual has suggested.
I had an interesting conversation with a man that develops re-entry systems and the test-beds used to develop and test them. He was very down-to-earth on the costs associated with launching materiel; basically in his mind it was not practical at this point to enact the scenario that Kim Stanley Robinson created in his Mars trilogy. We don't have the launch payload capacity. We don't have the landing zone accuracy. Even the concept of the kind of machinery needed to create habitable environments on Mars is too great to budget for and the machinery itself is too hard to maintain without a support structure for that maintenance. We won't be operating D9 bulldozers on other planets.
It also came up that our country spent 4% of GDP in getting to the Moon six times. 4% of GDP let twelve men walk on the surface of another body for a few days. Without a nemesis country like the Soviet Union provided for us, there's no interest in committing any real money to getting us even back to the Moon, let alone to other planets.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Isn't there an episode where Fry downloads Lucy Liu to essentially "print" onto his date-robot?
And speaking of which, why aren't more resources being put into developing sex-bots? It could solve so many problems in this world if we could have robot slave girls to have sex with all the time.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
I had the same exact idea, before the 3G/LTE and highspeed internet, I thought of sending humans via GPRS, but the poor connection might be a problem in actual production. But I was dissapointed to learn that somebody already thought of it but by sending copies of himself via Fax. Unfortunately, I could not find that link.
Now I'm picturing a Russel Crowe hologram waiting for the dot matrix shriek to finish before instructing the newly minted Last Son of Earth on our species' survival.
I can just see it. A billion years from now, on a planet a trillion miles away, the last remaining message from the human race will be displayed in black pixelated letters on a small rectangular display: PC LOAD LETTER.
Yup, you'd need some *serious* nanotechnology to be able to print functioning cells, and you'd have to know the wiring of a brain to the subcellular (probably molecular) level to make it work. Not within the next 30 years.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
I'd hate to be the one who has to change the ink on that printer.
I find that Dr. McCoy's views on the safety of transporters are reasonable and founded in reality.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I don't know if printing is the right word. I think making test tube babies that are then raised by some kind of AI to be more or less human might be the closest we get. There is still a lot of technology that we need for that (artificial womb, an AI that would simulate some kind of social interaction) .
Most people would not go on a journey if they knew they had to spend the rest of their lives and next 500 generations' lives on that same journey.
I have posted this before: http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
When the universe reaches maximal entropy everything will be dead. Humans, aliens, stars, everything. Admittedly this will not happen for a very long time but it does seem to be inevitable.
How many bits would it take to describe a human at a molecular level?
love is just extroverted narcissism
Yes, I have read The Songs of Distant Earth too.
I can think of some people I'd like to download, and after printing, upload.
This is the best idea the lead engineer on the NASA JPL's Curiosity rover mission could come up with? Find worm holes or send 3D printers to other planets. Ugh.
Old story from way back; a building has been found on the moon that contains a machine that kills people in many different ways throughout the strange building but always consistently. Almost like a mouse in a maze, the scientists figure out that if they can get through this death trap and map each method of death along the way they should be able to get further each time and eventually manage to travel out the other side. Of course it could take many lives to accomplish this so they devise a method of teleporting a copy of someone from the earth to the moon and taking a "backup" copy that shares memories with their counterpart so that when that doppelganger dies there is still a version left alive earth-side.
The only problem is that the sheer horror of each death causes the surviving copy to be driven insane, the human mind just not able to cope, that is until they find the reckless Al Barker who's courted death all his life. It's only then that the research makes any headway.
Replicators or Borg are a bad idea IMO...if Sci-Fi has proved one thing, it is this.
Computer - Portman, Natalie, naked and petrified, covered in hot grits
Just steer clear of those Sirus Cybernetics 3D printers. OMG.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_Like_a_Dinosaur_(The_Outer_Limits)
Just QFT since many folks severely downscore AC. The moral issue there is the one that Trek skirts with its analog process - whether digital copy-and-delete is equivalent to move, when considering lifeforms.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
n/c
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
the cartridge would run out when it prints my wienus.
Mostly random stuff.
These are the people we have heading up space exploration? Sounds like he's more suited for making low budget sci-fi movies. Seriously, this kind of tech is so far beyond our capabilities it doesn't even pay to bring it up in a serious conversation.
Sure it does. Let's say that cryo-stasis ships (which might become feasible soon due to shashimi technology) or Generation Ships are fundamentally flawed (for whatever reason) but that 3d printing people or using wormholes could be feasible some day.
Then there's no point in doing research on the dead ends so we should stop all spending on them. I don't think this guy has proven that point, but if it could be proven then it would be worth listening. It's better to not do anything than to waste scarce resources.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Why not rethink the organic part too?
I guess Mr. Steltzner just saw The Fifth Element recently.
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After reading all comments so far and thinking of the concerns mentioned, printing humans onto another world for colonising purposes is really not a fearful thing to do. I will illustrate the simplicity of it by starting with artificial insemination and sperm donation. There is a sperm pool out of which we draw readymade zoids to fecund with an egg in an ovary, when we determine there is a need to do so. In the end, it all boils down to this bare fact.
Now, many if-s follow.. and we reach a point where if we have a world and if we want to colonise it and it is very close - less than 10ly away - then if we today happen to chose the moment when to 'start' the building of an embryo using readymade zoids and ovaries, can't this moment well enough be when the colony-ship lands on that world? .. the TimeSpan will kill the zoids and ovaries.... but then they are carriers of DNA. So basically, we don't need the ovaries and and the zoids, just a machine/biomachine to know how to imitate an ovary and another machine/biomachine to imitate the zoid. The embryo will contain the supplied DNA fed into the biomachines. Now, the database of the persons of these DNA samples would be no different than the databases of the existing sperm banks mentioned earlier.
If we would ever be capable of doing all this sci-fi, we would also be capable to build in advance a home, why, a village, waiting for the coming ocupants.
Otherwise, it is all well and good too. We just stay home.
We're probably a lot closer to replacing our bodies with mechanical equivalents than we are to printing a complete person. The biggest challenge is the brain. If you replace everything surrounding the brain with prosthetics, then it may be much more practical to suspend the function of the brain for a long voyage than it would be for a whole body.
Or combine the ideas. Freeze a brain in a cyborg body. When you get a colony set up, print a uterus, implant frozen embryos, and then let the cyborg parent the first off-world generation.
On the one hand, the rational thinker in me says that sending ships to other places, where machinery will make humans, might be the only way that humans ever get out of here. OTOH, I want to see another planet with my own eyes. So, I think this is a good idea, but it makes me sad.
Go on then. What are you waiting for? The fundamental laws of physics won't break themselves!
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
the idea of consciousness is the main problem with simply printing humans with a specific memory. if you copy someone with their current memory... the copy is now a new person, with his own actions. the main body and the new body have completely separate life after creation. if the original dies, the new one carries on. the idea of copying someone to teleport them is unsolvable before we figure out how to deal with consciousness, because that isnt 'me' on the other side, that is someone else who looks like me and has my memory.
Send a printer to some uninhabitable planet and print people on there to die.
-AlPhAbEt
Why not send frozen eggs and sperm to the distant planet. Then when you get closer have the eggs and sperm thaw and create the growing embryo. Have a machine teach the children when they are growing up and hope they survive when they get there. Capatcha mutant.
Using the current state of Ink Jet printing costs as a benchmark, I'm sure the cost of the cartridges will *far* surpass the cost of the printer any mission to send them to another planet. It will probably be cheaper to simply buy enough humans to make the trip and keep them in storage to use as-needed.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
The Human Printers will actually be fairly inexpensive to create. It's the Human Ink that will cost you an arm and a leg.
The trick is differentiating between the not currently possible but we could see the pathways to get there and the not currently possible and we haven't the first clue how to practically pull it off.
We can see the paths that may make seeding planets, duplicating and assembling humans from raw materials, and so on possible.
FTL starships? Time travel? Teleportation? Let us get back to you.
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Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom hasn't come up yet?
Coming to terms with what it might be to actually be human... printing ourselves and transferring a back-up to that body...
what does that mean? will consciousness go with it?
To me, consciousness is probably just an electronic current that holds us to our memory. The terrifying moment, even if I could replicate myself elsewhere, is,"What happens when I sever that connection and transfer over/" will I just die and a perfect copy keeps living on just as I was a moment ago, or do I go with it? *could anyone tell*? It is the stuff not just of the fear of death, but no one ever knowing that makes it a nightmare.
Sorry to post so dark... nice weather, huh?
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there were a protein and amino acid (and enough time) for this to work!
---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
This isn't We as in any individual with memories, personality, goals, culture, and values. This is We as in our abandoned children, perhaps brought up by an artificial intelligence. This is We as in the rest of our ecological support of plants and animals, fungus, and bacteria.
HP will make you install a plant cartridge just to use the human cartridge even if you never print plants.
Table-ized A.I.
Right now Charles Stross is steepling his fingers like and saying "Excellent...."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I've always said that, if Star Trek transporters were invented tomorrow, I wouldn't take one. The idea of having all of my atoms destroyed so other atoms could be reconstructed on the other side that would hopefully resemble me 100% seems creepy to me. Would the transported-me be the same as me? Would my consciousness move to the new me? Or would I cease to be with new-me taking over? This isn't even getting into the various transporter malfunctions that seemed to happen.
So what's worse than that? "We're going to destroy your atoms and then slowly 3D print you on the other side. We just hope that no 'paper jam' type situation occurs or else you might arrive in pieces. Don't worry, though. After the blinding pain and death, we can try again. And again. And again."
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
If we're going to have to send a machine to do it anyway, why not start with a simpler organism? We can design a single-celled extremophile that would be viable on the target planet, then send a probe there to make them. Then all we have to do is wait a billion years or so for evolution to produce an organism that we could communicate with. Wouldn't the result be essentially the same?
It it... LETTER?
That would be so hot!
HAND.
First, we need fusion power, though. There's no getting to even Alpha Centauri without it.
how do you know it's a dead end if you dn't research it?
You're not one of those idiots that say 'basic research should only be done on thing they can prove will have practical results," are you?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Sperm + Egg + Developmental Biology Awesomeness = PERSON What more printing do you need? Just send the gametes.
soylentnews.org
I'm not sure why printing would be necessary. If we have the ability to send an organic printer to a nearby star, wouldn't we also be able to send frozen embryos or sperm and eggs?
We can genetically engineer humanoids to survive on mars. They can be big, strong, blue, and have stomachs able to digest roughage, and as long as we don't treat them like slaves they'll never come back and start a war with us....
too obscure? :D
Are you sure? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...
Just because humans can't reach the next planet as fast as they can drive cross-country, doesn't mean it's impractical to do so. People are just spoiled on cheesy sci-fi, where jumping from system to system only takes a few hours.
How long would YOU be willing to live in a space craft, in order to set foot on another planet? Or a planet in another solar system?
Wagon trains filled with settlers typically took 6 months just to travel from the eastern US to the west, at great expense, and they never planned to return. We can get to Mars in less time than that with current technology.
And as speeds improve to significant fractions of the speed of light, with solar sails, fusion, ramjets, and whatnot, it won't be long before interstellar hops only take a few years.
"If a spaceship could average 10 percent of light speed (and decelerate at the destination, for manned missions), this would be enough to reach Proxima Centauri in forty years."
There's lots of young people who are adventurous or have low enough standards to have such a life be an improvement, who would sign-up for such a 40-year trip. From there, a few generations later, another trip can be launched to the next-closest solar system. The cycle repeating ad-nauseum.
"even the 'slow' kind [of interstellar travel] nearly within the reach of Earth technology, would only take from 5 million to 50 million years to colonize the galaxy. This is a relatively small amount of time on a geological scale, let alone a cosmological one."
And when we reach 50% of light-speed, a trip to Proxima Centauri is only a 4 year jaunt. It might be a nice place to live, with the previous settlers having developed the infrastructure needed for comfortable human habitation.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I assume some hardware will be at the destination point. I am fairly sure once we figure out how to transport things over interstellar distances, moving these bags of meat and water won't really be a problem.
I also suspect once we can travel that far, the cosmos will bore us. Rocks tend to look the same everywhere. And perhaps other forms of life don't vary enough to keep our attention for very long. We will probably find more fun in trying to understand reality itself.
We will even don togas as we debate the unknowable.
Printing a human from DNA makes no sense, as sociability is what makes us human. Clones raises isolated from human kind will probably be a big awkward failure.
While you do have a point so does he - after all minature human kidneys are being printed now. It's not an infinite leap from there to printing babies in boxes and raising them with the help of some sort of mostly autonomus robot technology.
Besides, it's a "flying car" way out there sort of thing that is being discussed and not a near future trip to collect stuff from a near earth asteroid. Leeway has to be given for way out suggestions that will look insane in hindsight.
There's now a distinct possibility that the eventual extinction of the human race will be caused by cheap third-party ink refills...
Worst. Signature. Ever.
Spell it out: Teleportation. It is not impossible. Must first find an appropriate ecosystem. Need wormholes for both missions.
Would it not be pointless? How could the people on planet Earth gain any benefits from putting printable people on other worlds?
I know very few will probably read this but...
There is a curious problem in the physics of star gates. A universe where FTL travel is possible is pretty much incompatible with one where stable long distance worm holes are possible. (Stargate has both)
The basic problem is that while general relativity looks very good at sub-light speeds it becomes complete rubbish at faster speeds. In any sane FTL model space is impossible to fold- except on tiny or quantum scales. An FTL space also requires something called an FTL Simultaneity - but this is incompatible with relativities space time. The solution is to restrict space time to quantum scales (that is my solution). This also means that 'traditional' time travel is impossible because effectively time only exists as a point.
As for FTL travel itself - it may be possible but looks astronomically difficult. The real problem is that with an FTL model we go from knowing 99% of all physics to probably less than half. The current guess work about the nature of mass (real, imaginary, zero, etc) and so on seems to be wrong. For instance it looks like photons have imaginary mass, it also looks like we have to rewrite some rules for antimatter to have a new type with negative mass - which may just also be dark matter. We also get problems with the 'convolution filter' and context which makes simple looking questions like 'the speed of light' a nightmarishly complex issue. If you want to open Pandora's box the first rule is that a speed is a component of a vector.
The real truth though is that the FTL barrier stops looking like a simple impermeable wall and becomes something immensely complex that extends throughout physics. (the wave behaviour of light is an FTL interaction, magnetic fields are (look like) an FTL extension of electric fields, gravity becomes an FTL extension of ?? inertia, etc)
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
The question is will it be the good China or the bad China? (Ever heard of Iron Hammer brand?) I can imagine them landing on Mars and trying to open the door and the handle comes off because its made of cheap metal - or maybe that will only in the space craft the Chinese will sell us...
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..