World Ships

ok,

SHIP it is...!

SO, we have a hollowed out asteroid. With an energy source. And methods to propagate plants and animals..And a good stash of DNA, to keep the Gene pool.......uh.....DEEP..LOL.

Did we talk about, or decide on.. the energy source?

And should we choose a long term 1st destination, or just float?

Black hole drive, maybe? Anti-matter reactor? Should we make it FTL or is that asking too much?

Objectives? Hmmm..... How 'bout a survey of all of the sun-like stars (with planets) within 100 or so lightyears of Earth?

[edit on 9-11-2004 by Der Kapitan]

I imagine that floating aimlesly through the depths of space would make life lose it's meaning, so I imagine that for exploration and discovery purposes you'd want a destination of sorts. That destination however wouldn't be your new home... just a new place to witness the beauty of the universe... maybe make a few new friends.

I would say pick a place to go first or at least have a general area to head in like another Galaxy.

Power source hmmm... If we had it I would say anti-matter but other then that I can only think of nuclear. Perhaps a ion drive your not going to start out fast but on a long trip it would be much faster.

Isn't antimatter incredibly difficult to create, and the process more energy consuming than the product of matter/antimatter reaction? I've been digging around the CERN site and they claim that antimatter will probably never be an efficient energy source. The entire universe and everything in it is little more than energy right? There has to be a simpler way to "harvest" the energy around us... we just haven't figured it out. An antimatter drive just sounds too much like a more complicated combustion engine or fusion/fission core (all of which are basically controlled explosions?)... I'm as far from an expert as one can be, but we may be limited in our way of thinking here. Forgive me for the cliche but it sounds like we're still "in the box" on this topic.

The thing about anti-matter is that we might not have to make it at all just find it and collect it. Some scientists think that there might be large sections of universe made from antimatter.

I think black holes even generate small amounts of antimatter as they suck regular matter into themselves. Anti-matter would be the most powerful source of energy by far. The energy from colliding positrons and antielectrons "is 10 billion times ... that of high explosive

1 gram of antimatter, about 1/25th of an ounce, would equal "23 space shuttle fuel tanks of energy.

Even a speck that is too small to see. For example: One millionth of a gram of positrons contain as much energy as 37.8 kilograms (83 pounds) of TNT

Right now we dont have any good ways to make it,With present techniques, the price tag for 100-billionths of a gram of antimatter would be $6 billion


Well we can always hope for zero-point energy that would be something

sfgate.com.../c/a/2004/10/04/MNGM393GPK1 .DTL

Well, if antimatter can be found occuring naturally elsewhere in the universe then we still have a problem. Wherever these pockets of antimatter are located, to collect the stuff... we'd first have to get there

Zero point energy is exactly what I was thinking. I know that Tesla amongst others discussed this theory, and there have been other threads discussing why such tech would be covered up. Not only could it be disasterous to humanity, but the oil cartels would never have gotten as powerful as they are today. I'm sure that we have some growing to do as a species before we can be trusted with technology like that. Not that its military use would matter much to those who were jumping ship anyway.

We would probibly start off with fusion and wind up with some sort of anti-matter drives. But on the other hand after a million years or so who knows what kind of power source they might have disscovered or invented.

This is the beauty of the world-ship it will be sailing through the gallaxy after the Earth is a cold dead forgotton rock. Some one mentioned going to another gallaxy, I think the distances between resources would be to far in that case, but again after a million or two years who knows?

I think they should start by just weaving between stars, you could go inward toward the center where the stars are younger and closer togather so resources would be easier to get

OR

You could go toward the outside where the stars are older and futher apart and other life forms would be more likely

Interesting about the ship starting out with Fussion then moving into anti-matter AMUK. I think thats a great idea that the ship would have to evolve as it goes. A ship with that many people would no doubt lead to new inventions on the way that could lead to advancements that could be applied to the world ship.

So the longer its out there the better it would get. Perhaps if it had a communcation link with people still on earth they could even share information with each other.

finally, some one that said something that at least makes sense. Excellent idea shadow.

If they had a comm link between then like video, then they could share their knowledge about everything as their endless journey goes on.

I get what you're saying, Amuk. Lots of Sci Fi fiction out there along the same lines, like the Yuuzahn Vong from the New Jedi Order series. A race of war driven people that live in these huge world ships made of living Yorik Corral, and are propelled by these things called Dovin Basals that can manipulate gravity.

A living worldship would be about the only viable way something like that could exist I think...

Well, I haven't seen you make a sensible contribution to this thread yet. All you've done is offer cynicism and negativity thus far, but I'm glad that someone finally got your approval

Millions of years...

Amuk, do you realize that humankind will change its hardware platform long before that?

In the next few centuries, complete human consciosness will be downloaded to powerful computers, and we'll leave that frail body behind.

Gravity will be no issue just for that reason.

If you doubt the platform change, there is an excellent read, "The Age of Spiritual Machines" by Ray Kurzweil.

Maybe we'll need less resources by then and the travel itself will become unnecessary.

I'm not sure I see the benefit in such a transference. Why would we download our consciousness into a piece of man-made hardware when biological life is BY FAR the most sophisticated form of machinery known to man? I've heard the arguement that future computers would give us the ability to make calculations on a quantum level and whatnot, but there are scientists who speculate that we already have this potential built within us. John Joe McFadden (a physist turned biologist) claims that consciousness itself may in fact function at faster than light speeds... most of us simply don't know how to consciously tap into such abilities. Now, improving upon what we already have (through genetic engineering) makes more sense to me.



I don't think that resources would really be the only point to travelling. What about exploration and discovery? The universe is massive (possibly infinite), and our quest for knowledge and understanding could easily stretch across millions of years.

Well the Kurzweil's book explains that. Among potential immortality, and instant access to all kinds of knowledge, I quote "we'll have better sex" end quote.



What is known to man changes by the hour. In 200 years from now, the brain next to a desktop would look like an Intel 8080 compared to Pentium V




And that's how you and I will think, with time





[edit on 9-11-2004 by Aelita]

[edit on 9-11-2004 by Aelita]

I guess my point is that all of these things can probably be achieved with the given biological systems in due time. If consciousness already functions to some degree at faster than light speeds, then we already have the potential to "download" huge amounts of info almost instantaneously. All we need are a few more tweeks here and there.

As for sex... if that hasn't become obsolete in millions of years then we've probably made no progress at all Of course I still enjoy it, but then again... I'm not exactly what you'd call an advanced lifeform.

Tell ya what. I'll read "The Age of Spiritual Machines" by Ray Kurzweil, if you read "Quantum Evolution" by John Joe McFadden... and we'll continue this conversation at a later date

I myself will stay in my meat shell, I dont have many religious beliefs but I dont think you can download your "soul", "spirit" , whatever you want to call it, it wont be "you"

But that is a topic for another thread

Why would sending a message, that could take hundreds or thousands or millions of years to reach a planet that might or might not exist any more be the ONLY point to this?

You are not getting it at all think non-planetary, if that is a word

These people would not give a damn about earth, it would just be a notation in the history books of our new society al;ong with the hundreds and thousands of other worlds they have seen and seeded with life.

You have to shake the idea of planets pretty much alltogather, they would be, at best, a by-product of our "world ship"

I am a scientist and I guess not sufficeintly open minded to believe that.
Getting into a matter of timing here... And now, that's pure speculation.

That's "been done" -- Arthur Clarke, "The Songs of Distant Earth".

Brilliant idea, by the way. In the book, the synthesized humans colonize a planet, and centures later meet their "organic" predecessors who arrvie... guess what... on the "World Ship"...

Hey, someones gotta throw some water on the fire.

I've dissed this idea more then anyone else because I dont see its purpose.

It would be good for exploring but satellites would be far cheaper and better.

It seems you guys are trying to make it sound like a care free world or the ultimate dream vacation, But I see it as the opposite, A never-ending maintainence challenge, constantly scanning the area to make sure your not treading on dangerous grounds, and scavaging through-out the universe for food, water, and a propellant.