From: Spudboy100@aol.com
Date: Sun Feb 17 2002 - 15:02:17 MST
In a message dated 2/17/2002 4:40:16 PM Eastern Standard Time,
spike66@attglobal.net writes:
<< I too dismissed the article as having too little creative thought.
Why sperm banks? Better to maintain genetic diversity would
be embryo banks. They could be maaany generations into
the mission before the colony produced any two persons who
were genetically related.
Before I take seriously any multigeneration scheme, I want to
see what they propose for an energy storage mechanism. Chemical
sources would likely be way insufficient to store adequate
energy. Fission sources, altho problematic in many ways,
are likely the most practical for the long haul.
In comparison to the energy problem, maintaining genetic
diversity over millenia is trivial.
spike >>
Harvey and yourself have an excellent point. But I look at the article as not
a "this is the way to go!" declarative statement, but merely an essay
connoting that "all things being equal" if we have to rely on our current
understanding of technology, here is what it takes to make a 'sustainable
community.' To take it any other way is to give too much emphasis to one essay
It is not inconceivable that 'real' instersteller travel may be performed by
100,000 uploaded brains, living in a Minsky-Yudkowskian, VR realm. All this
while traveling at relativistic speeds, on a craft the size of a postage
stamp. If this seems to be technical unfeasible in the centuries to come, is
a Dyson Orion type spacecraft so totally out of the quesion?
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