From: Spike Jones (spike66@attglobal.net)
Date: Sun Feb 17 2002 - 19:02:29 MST
Spudboy100@aol.com wrote:
> It is not inconceivable that 'real' instersteller travel may be performed by
> 100,000 uploaded brains, living in a Minsky-Yudkowskian, VR realm.
It gives me great satisfaction to see those two names separated
by a hyphen.
Or was that a negative sign? {8-]
> All this while traveling at relativistic speeds, on a craft the size of a
> postage
> stamp.
I currently view this approach as more likely than a multigeneration
ship.
The multigen ship is only if there is some unforeseen reason why the
singularity and general AI is impossible. I cannot currently imagine
a reason why these concepts would be impossible, but I will allow
that there could be some fundamental reason why the singularity is
impossible.
> If this seems to be technical unfeasible in the centuries to come, is
> a Dyson Orion type spacecraft so totally out of the quesion?
No, not out of the question. But you may know that my minimalist
approach to space travel comes from a background in weights
engineering, which asks the question, "What is the very least we
can possibly take and still get this mission accomplished?"
I will not kookify myself with further elaboration, but
it is in the archives, under Mars missions, about 3 yrs ago.
We can do with waaaay less than 160 people, and must. The
reasoning behind needing 160 is invalid in my opinion. A
practical multigeneration mission would likely carry 6 to 10
meat-based intelligences alive at any one time, and even then
the engineering challenges are daunting indeed. spike
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