4 ms·

> (remember technological progress is exponential not linear) No it is not. For example, airliners fly about as fast as they did a generation ago, and if you b

by jp555 13y ago

> (remember technological progress is exponential not linear) No it is not. For example, airliners fly about as fast as they did a generation ago, and if you buy a desktop computer today it won't be noticeably faster than the ~3 year-old one you're using now. Do you really think the next TV you'll buy will be exponentially bigger than the one you have today? Prepare to be disappointed. warp-engine would require FTL travel, which is not possible. How can you travel a distance less than zero? At C all distances are zero. DNA is already a pretty good way to travel the stars, a human ovum (the largest human cell) has a low enough mass to get out of Earth's gravity well using only electrostatic or solar-pressure forces, no fuel required. If it were somehow interstellar-vaccum-hardened and able to modulate the energy gradient it uses to change direction, it could travel to the stars. I suppose you have misunderstood quantum entanglement, as it does not offer any way to communicate instantaneously over vast distances. It's more like when the light-standard in front of you turns green, you know INSTANTANEOUSLY that the "entangled pair" light-standard perpendicular to your view is red.

parksy 13y ago
How would the ovum develop and be nurtured? Sympathetic alien surrogates? Why not seed more simple lifeforms, such as genetically modified bacteria, upon hundreds of "candidate" planets so that by the time our generation ships arrive there's a good chance some basic terraforming has already occurred.
- jp555 13y ago
  It was more the thought exercise itself than a practical approach. I just wanted to consider the benefits of very low mass offers to space travel. Sounds like you're talking about panspermia, which does seem very likely to me as well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia
- ForHackernews 13y ago
  > How would the ovum develop and be nurtured? Sympathetic alien surrogates? You could send along artificial wombs and some kind of computer/AI to raise + educate the first generation born.
  - kjs3 13y ago
    Never been a parent, eh?
    - ForHackernews 13y ago
      \shrug\ It's all sci-fi tech anyway. Artificial wombs probably aren't that far off: http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2005-08/artificial-wombs http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2005-08/artificial-wom... There's a clear demand for advanced reproductive technology, and it would offer the secondary advantage of neatly sidestepping the current abortion debate.
      - kjs3 13y ago
        You're missing my point (which I suppose I really didn't make, so my bad). A child raise by machines is likely to be one seriously emotionally messed up child.
        ForHackernews 13y ago
        Oh, yeah, probably. Still, there wouldn't be any frame of reference. Maybe the first generation of kids would all be weird and emotionally unstable by our standards, but they're be "normal" for Alpha Centaurians (or whatever)
        icambron 13y ago
        Well, all kids are raised by machines, just usually machines called Mom and Dad. The question is whether the machines we could make to replace us as parents are better or worse. It's hard for us now to imagine artificial machines being better at it than we are, but, you know, so is relativistic spaceflight.
DennisP 13y ago
It's not quite valid anymore to say warp drive is flat impossible, given all the theoretical work on the Alcubierre drive. Whether it will ever actually be practical is still a big unknown.
- jp555 13y ago
  you mean the drive that if it were used it would annihilate your destination in a immense-burst of gamma energy? Not to mention we have no idea how to effectively modify space-time. It is interesting, but the drive is basically "if we had MAGIC, we could do this". FTL is also exactly the same as time-travel. If you could travel 25,000 light-years in an instant, you could turn a BIG telescope back at earth from your ship and watch early humans hunting mammoths.
  - dec0dedab0de 13y ago
    Well, that is just the light. Does it count as time travel when we look at stars that are thousands of lightyears away?
    - jp555 13y ago
      yes. We see the stars today as they were thousands of years ago. It's thousands of light years away from our perspective, but from the perspective of the photons the trip took zero time as it was a zero distance. SR is weird like that.
  - DennisP 13y ago
    I'm not saying it will ever work, just that those sorts of objections are quite different than "relativity says it's impossible, full stop." Modifications have improved the practicality from the original design, eg. by reducing the energy requirement from Jupiter mass to the mass of a small car. The way to modify space-time would be to use negative energy, which exists in theory but maybe not in any practical way. We don't know.
    - jp555 13y ago
bglazer 13y ago
I must say that the idea of a single human cell traveling through space at relativistic speed, with the end goal of landing on a planet and growing into a fully formed human is one of the wildest and most unique ideas I've heard in a long time. Perfect sci-fi material. Totally awesome.
- jp555 13y ago
  Agreed, although not entirely original. Inspired by actual work in this area - http://www.spacecraftresearch.com/MII/MII_overview.html http://www.spacecraftresearch.com/MII/MII_overview.html I was getting my head around what "100µm" and a "few micrograms" meant, and I found that the human ovum is ~3.6 micrograms and around 100µm in size.

by jp555 13y ago

parksy 13y ago

How would the ovum develop and be nurtured? Sympathetic alien surrogates? Why not seed more simple lifeforms, such as genetically modified bacteria, upon hundreds of "candidate" planets so that by the time our generation ships arrive there's a good chance some basic terraforming has already occurred.

jp555 13y ago
It was more the thought exercise itself than a practical approach. I just wanted to consider the benefits of very low mass offers to space travel. Sounds like you're talking about panspermia, which does seem very likely to me as well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia
ForHackernews 13y ago
> How would the ovum develop and be nurtured? Sympathetic alien surrogates? You could send along artificial wombs and some kind of computer/AI to raise + educate the first generation born.
- kjs3 13y ago
  Never been a parent, eh?
  - ForHackernews 13y ago
    \shrug\ It's all sci-fi tech anyway. Artificial wombs probably aren't that far off: http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2005-08/artificial-wombs http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2005-08/artificial-wom... There's a clear demand for advanced reproductive technology, and it would offer the secondary advantage of neatly sidestepping the current abortion debate.
    - kjs3 13y ago
      You're missing my point (which I suppose I really didn't make, so my bad). A child raise by machines is likely to be one seriously emotionally messed up child.
      - ForHackernews 13y ago
        Oh, yeah, probably. Still, there wouldn't be any frame of reference. Maybe the first generation of kids would all be weird and emotionally unstable by our standards, but they're be "normal" for Alpha Centaurians (or whatever)
      - icambron 13y ago
        Well, all kids are raised by machines, just usually machines called Mom and Dad. The question is whether the machines we could make to replace us as parents are better or worse. It's hard for us now to imagine artificial machines being better at it than we are, but, you know, so is relativistic spaceflight.

DennisP 13y ago

It's not quite valid anymore to say warp drive is flat impossible, given all the theoretical work on the Alcubierre drive. Whether it will ever actually be practical is still a big unknown.

jp555 13y ago
you mean the drive that if it were used it would annihilate your destination in a immense-burst of gamma energy? Not to mention we have no idea how to effectively modify space-time. It is interesting, but the drive is basically "if we had MAGIC, we could do this". FTL is also exactly the same as time-travel. If you could travel 25,000 light-years in an instant, you could turn a BIG telescope back at earth from your ship and watch early humans hunting mammoths.
- dec0dedab0de 13y ago
  Well, that is just the light. Does it count as time travel when we look at stars that are thousands of lightyears away?
  - jp555 13y ago
    yes. We see the stars today as they were thousands of years ago. It's thousands of light years away from our perspective, but from the perspective of the photons the trip took zero time as it was a zero distance. SR is weird like that.
- DennisP 13y ago
  I'm not saying it will ever work, just that those sorts of objections are quite different than "relativity says it's impossible, full stop." Modifications have improved the practicality from the original design, eg. by reducing the energy requirement from Jupiter mass to the mass of a small car. The way to modify space-time would be to use negative energy, which exists in theory but maybe not in any practical way. We don't know.
  - jp555 13y ago

bglazer 13y ago

I must say that the idea of a single human cell traveling through space at relativistic speed, with the end goal of landing on a planet and growing into a fully formed human is one of the wildest and most unique ideas I've heard in a long time. Perfect sci-fi material. Totally awesome.

jp555 13y ago
Agreed, although not entirely original. Inspired by actual work in this area - http://www.spacecraftresearch.com/MII/MII_overview.html http://www.spacecraftresearch.com/MII/MII_overview.html I was getting my head around what "100µm" and a "few micrograms" meant, and I found that the human ovum is ~3.6 micrograms and around 100µm in size.