Why not just send AIs/robots in the first place? At which time there is econonomical enough complete life support, we can send regular humans of all shapes and sizes. I guess that is the tradeoff between economical life support for very functional humans versus economical skillsets for very survivable machines.
Spike Jones wrote:
> Michael S. Lorrey wrote:
>
> > Spike Jones wrote:
> > >
> > > I agree with Marvin Minsky: astronauts should all be women, for women
> > > have a more favorable brains to weight ratio. {8^D
> >
> > No only that but their higher body fat gives them greater resistance to motion
> > sickness.
>
> Yes, but Mike, for the mission I have in mind, we need a woman who really
> is nothing but skin and bones. And brains. Maybe one with an even lower
> body fat ratio than mine. After my almost 20 yrs of caloric restriction, such
> a woman may not exist. {8^D spike
Egad. Hmm... if the astronaut doesn't have to do anything in transit, then I am thinking some kind of stasis or something, or a "zombie state", would serve well, essentially relegating the astronauts to be cargo, albeit a precious one. We were talking about this months ago, it was interesting.
Artificial Intelligences are getting closer to reality every day, one would think. I wonder if they will have a pre-nascent "memory" or consider all the possibly available data the AI hive or communal memory. If intelligence denotes self-will towards survival, maybe the AI would make a bunch of statistically beneficial investments. I hope the AI is friendly, I think it would be, especially if it is programmed to be so. On something else, DNA is a very complicated code.
Have a nice day!
Ross A. Finlayson