Wednesday, July 5, 2017

Sending Humans to the Stars on Beams of Light Part III #Science #Physics #Fantasy

In Parts I and II, it was reviewed how lasers may be use to transmit human simulacra to other stars.  Part I went into the physics of how to send the signal to the star and Part II went into how to encode humans as a digital representation of ourselves.  We're definitely going into sci fi with this run but it's got to be credible if not with technology which exists now but that which we can reasonably expect in, say, fifty years.

There hasn't as yet been any hooting at the premises in Parts I and II so I'll continue with those as the foundation since we're not finished with extending this.

Ithaka:  Sending Humans to the Stars on Beams of Light Part I #Science #Physics #Fantasy
Ithaka:  Sending Humans to the Stars on Beams of Light Part II #Science #Physics #Fantasy


Ship's Time is Subjective Time and, by that measure, perhaps our starship takes twenty years to get to a star one light year away and it travels at some percentage of the speed of light.  By Objective Time on Earth, the period may be one hundred years but time didn't change, only the perception of it.  Therefore, it should be possible to calculate in Objective Time how long it will take the ship in its Subjective Time to arrive at the exoplanet around a target star.

At that time, Earth fires off a HAL-9000 (Highly-Amplified Laser) to transmit the encoded human simulacra.  The payload being sent is digital so Earth keeps repeating until it gets a positive acknowledgement back from the new robo colony.

The timing is based on the laser traveling at the speed of light so it will arrive at the target in one year.  After the anticipated Twenty Years of ship's time have almost passed, we should be able to start firing off the HAL-9000 such that it arrives at or near the same time as the ship.

After some period of time, Harriman Enterprises can write off the ship because there's a huge advantage beyond the financial loss.  No human lives were lost since it was just a bunch of robos so there won't be any marches by the PTA Club to protest your disregard for life.

Write it off the balance sheet in whatever devious ways businesses do such things and build another one.

In fact, build a whole lot of them and shoot them all over the place because there's a significantly different motivation for doing it when that positive acknowledgement from the exoplanet could be received, ideally, in about twenty-one years since the return bounce for the acknowledgement from the exoplanet will also return at the speed of light.

The business tycoon will see the result of the investment or at least the immediate success / failure within his or her lifetime.  Maybe the tycoon has become a virtual being in the way of others and that's something to twist in maybe a Part IV which wonders if most would go virtual in that way while others remain their corporeal selves.


Going back to the payload on the starship, it needs to have platoons of robos along with any ancillary hardware they need to build or complete functioning processing units on the exoplanet.  It doesn't need much for a life support system beyond prevention of anything from freezing.

As in many, many sci fi stories, the ship will be cannibalized as part of the installation since the robos won't go back; we won't even want them back.  We need to get the quartermaster cracking on the exact provisioning of the ship but that's the general nature of it.

We don't need to actually terraform anywhere since it doesn't have to be life-supporting; it only has to be within limits the robos can tolerate.  It would be vastly cheaper than any other way you could do it so the business tycoon will find that irresistible.

It may get too twisted with a Part V and the economics of that world of digital people since capitalism won't mean a whole lot in a population for which value and compensation wouldn't have much relationship to that which we know now.


As in Part II, once these robos have completed their construction tasks, they can, hopefully, capture the laser signal from Earth and bounce back a positive acknowledgement.  It's pointless to acknowledge before that point since they won't be able to receive any human simulacra.  However, once your digital self arrives, it needs to land in some type of medium and from there connect to one of the robos which then becomes your sensory system on that world.

At that point, you are on that world as an animate being and you will feel everything it feels.  This is all without a bulky spacesuit for a life support system.  You are out there in it.

The general premise behind all of that is we may not actually go to any actual exoplanets but there's a distinct possibility we can visit them anyway and in the full sense of it since we will actually be there in terms of the immediate locus of that robo.  You are sensing whatever the robo senses and the advances in sophistication in such sensing is already astonishing.  Give them another fifty years and don't even try to predict ... it will only make them laugh.

However, we can reasonably predict within the context of that which we do know or can reasonably expect so maybe this plays out to a Part IV or not but I'm diggin' this one.

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