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It would be great if one day we could visit planets such as these, even if just with robots. I mean, the ethics of commiting your descendants to life aboard a

It would be great if one day we could visit planets such as these, even if just with robots. I mean, the ethics of commiting your descendants to life aboard a generational ship is very sketchy.

a1pulley 4y ago
Ethics have a cultural and temporal context: if you believe strongly enough in the expansionary imperative of humanity, you would gift the generational ship's inhabitants with a suitable religion.
douglaswlance 4y ago
It's possible store billions of humans as embryos that are grown and raised by robotic parents upon arrival. And it should also be possible to genetically engineer those humans to be better suited to that new planet's environment. Though, by the time we figure out how to do that, "we" probably won't be purely biological, naturally evolved beings any longer.
dzonga 4y ago
I would gladly take a one way trip to one of these planets. provided I have a way of reaching there and spending at least 1 day alive there. 100 light years is no joke - but if the math on this is correct https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/612645/does-special-relativity-imply-that-i-can-reach-a-star-100-light-years-away-in-le https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/612645/does-spec... I can leave say when i'm 60 and hopefully reach star at age 70. Trade-off I'm willing to do
- holoduke 4y ago
  Yes with a 1g rocket you can travel millions of light years in less than 80 years, when you come back earth is millions year older. In the future people will only live a billion years from now.
marssaxman 4y ago
The ethics of creating descendants at all are sketchy. Once you've gotten past the fact that you are inflicting a possibly-unwanted life which will definitely include suffering, and certainly end in death, onto a soon-to-be-conscious being who is not yet capable of giving consent, the specifics of where that life takes place are not so significant.

It would be great if one day we could visit planets such as these, even if just with robots. I mean, the ethics of commiting your descendants to life aboard a generational ship is very sketchy.

a1pulley 4y ago

Ethics have a cultural and temporal context: if you believe strongly enough in the expansionary imperative of humanity, you would gift the generational ship's inhabitants with a suitable religion.

douglaswlance 4y ago

It's possible store billions of humans as embryos that are grown and raised by robotic parents upon arrival. And it should also be possible to genetically engineer those humans to be better suited to that new planet's environment. Though, by the time we figure out how to do that, "we" probably won't be purely biological, naturally evolved beings any longer.

dzonga 4y ago

I would gladly take a one way trip to one of these planets. provided I have a way of reaching there and spending at least 1 day alive there. 100 light years is no joke - but if the math on this is correct https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/612645/does-special-relativity-imply-that-i-can-reach-a-star-100-light-years-away-in-le https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/612645/does-spec... I can leave say when i'm 60 and hopefully reach star at age 70. Trade-off I'm willing to do

holoduke 4y ago
Yes with a 1g rocket you can travel millions of light years in less than 80 years, when you come back earth is millions year older. In the future people will only live a billion years from now.

marssaxman 4y ago

The ethics of creating descendants at all are sketchy. Once you've gotten past the fact that you are inflicting a possibly-unwanted life which will definitely include suffering, and certainly end in death, onto a soon-to-be-conscious being who is not yet capable of giving consent, the specifics of where that life takes place are not so significant.