2 ms·
We need to let go of the "Ship full of brave men" meme of space exploration. It'll have to be robots, probably very small robots, some kind of solar sail / exo
by jvanderbot 3y ago
We need to let go of the "Ship full of brave men" meme of space exploration.
It'll have to be robots, probably very small robots, some kind of solar sail / exogenous energy source (or maaaaaybe fusion?), and probably either a copy of some human's consciousness in a machine, or a bunch of fertilized frozen embryos, or both.
And even then only after a lot of gene / tree bombing of the target planet to have any hope of making it liveable.
- Maken 3y agoYou are essentially describing Clarke's Rama spaceship.
- jvanderbot 3y agoYeah - I don't think it's so clever that nobody has thought of it. It just seems obvious when you look enough into how hard inter-stellar travel will be. But making machines that operate for 100 years seems doable if we try.
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoA very believable theory is that this is how life on earth started - another ancient civilization shooting the building blocks of life everywhere and hoping something sticks. (panspermia?) But while this is cute, given the inexorable passage of time and entropy, any evidence that life was planted by ancient aliens has long gone. If it was e.g. a spaceship or meteor, it's been swallowed up by the earth and into the mantle by now. Unless there's a new source - like aliens making contact - it will remain unknowable.