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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 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.
We can just imagine them into existence. And then some unicorns.
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.
The problem is if they are too realistically human, they keep leaving you.
Table-ized A.I.
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 ?
Oooooh. And 5 Justin Biebers. And then televise what happens next.
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.
I love science fiction and fantasy. Can I also imagine a bunch of hot, sexy vampire women who want to take me away from my bitch wife and fuck my brains out?
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
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.
How many bits would it take to describe a human at a molecular level?
love is just extroverted narcissism
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.
Don't forget to print the soul. Lolololol.
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
the cartridge would run out when it prints my wienus.
Mostly random stuff.
Why not rethink the organic part too?
humans do have a strong tendency towards anthropomorphism
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
Are we signing posts in the subject line now?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
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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certain fission reactor designs (fission fragment) can get a craft to 0.1 C. They are better than fusion designs for now because they can actually be built.