How to Plant an Interstellar Colony

Thurs Dec 22, 2005

Here's an idea (certainly not unique to me; I don't claim originality; a good chunk (at least) of this idea is in Voyage From Yesteryear by James P. Hogan): if interstellar colonization is infeasible in the conventional sense of providing fuel to send living human beings and everything they need to another solar system, why not send a nanotechnological "seed"? The seed would consist of a nanotechnological assembler and might also include nanomolecular- or submolar- encoded information needed to build a colony on a planetary body. This should drastically reduce the shielding requirements and fuel costs, since the payload would be microscopic. Additionally, if fuel transportation is still a concern, perhaps the outward acceleration portion of the trip could be fueled by a laser or lasers that stay at home in the Solar System and accelerate the colony ship via a carried reflector. This would give designers considerable room to add shielding weight and fuel to the colony ship, since only the fuel (nuclear of course) for deceleration would need to be carried (Perhaps also chemical fuel might be needed for landing). In flight, the ship could turn around after it is up to speed and use the reflector as additional shielding. The ship could jettison the reflector once it nears its destination, thus reducing fuel needed to decelerate. Perhaps the ship could be accelerated to relativistically significant speeds in order to make the trip in years or decades rather than centuries. Balancing the trip speed versus the shielding and fuel requirements would be an engineering research challenge, but should be do-able. Initial booster stages that are jettisoned and slingshot effects (around Jupiter and possibly other planets) could also be used before the lasers are turned on. Booster lasers out to the edge of the Solar System could be set up. This should work!
Resisting damage to the payload in transit would be a challenge. Perhaps a few copies of the basic instructions could be sent, with redundancy and self-repair capabilities. Also, perhaps the bulk of the construction instructions could be radioed after the probe and used by it only if its basic instructions still verify (via checksums, CRCs, hashes and MACs). The radioed instructions would of course also use these error-detection and correction codes.
When the ship arrives and a suitable planetary body is found (a large dense one, but possibly airless), the ship would land and the assembler would go to work, using solar power (and remaining ship's power, if any). The first item on the agenda would be prospecting for fissionable material so that a nuclear power plant could be built, which would drastically speed up work (also any local power sources such as chemical fuels or hydro power found should be planned for in contigency). A base would be constructed (the "Macrolife" concept, originated by Dandridge Cole), complete with a microbiological lab, artificial wombs and a nursery. Fertilized human ova would be synthesized and embryos started. An initial large population of a hundred people could be started, gifted with the best hereditary potential in the sciences and arts. Youngsters would grow up tended by robots which would make educational materials available and stimulate the youngsters to ask questions and find answers (providing examples of successful people in history). Some criteria could be used to give command control of the colony and its equipment to the human beings at some point. They could then direct that the colony be expanded.
In this way, the human race could colonize other solar systems without the infeasibility of "generation starships". The people founding the colony at the other end would be descendants of humanity in either sense. Frequent progress reports could be radioed back and at some point the human beings would begin communicating back to the home Solar System. If this worked, the whole colony could be established in years of travelling time, plus construction time plus time for one human generation, possibly 41 years! (not counting time to launch the whole project). A lot of research would need to be done. Some in-Solar System tests could be done, perhaps by sending a test ship from Mars to Earth and having the colony development done in a remote area of Earth, or maybe even Mars. Once the youngsters begin growing up, they could be informed of the situation so that they could join humanity without trauma. They could later choose fairly isolating jobs, although the experience of growing up amid about one hundred others should socialize them quite well.


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Posted Dec 22, 2005