Re: Final destinations in space

On Mon, 23 Jan 2006 16:35:22 -0700, "Jim McCauley" <jematfriidotnet>
wrote:

>I just finished Robert Sawyer's _Mindscan_: cool book, which reinforces my
>notions about uploaded humans as the most logical interstellar explorers.

Assuming it is ever possible to upload humans.

>Which occasioned me to think again: For all the back&forth about manned
>exploration, I'm not hearing much (here or anywhere else) about permanent
>human habitation off this planet.

I agree. Maybe it's because the prospect of the Singularity makes
such speculations moot. OTOH, if it turns out that uploaded humans,
an artificial successor intelligence to humans, bionanotech or
whatever all turn out to be impractical, then permanent human
habitation is going to be the means of getting almost anything
meaningful done off-earth.

>The key, I suppose, is the linkage between motivation and finance.

Motivation and finance are there already. The key is technology that
will make the finance adequate to satisfy the motivation.

>There
>was a gap of more than seventy years between the European discovery of the
>New World and the first permanent Settlement on the North American continent
>proper.

Over 500 years.

>Is any such motivation in sight for off-world habitation by humans and other
>species?

A number are possible, military advantage being perhaps the most
persuasive. It is simply a fact that a significant space-faring
civilization would be able to do whatever it wanted with the obsolete
nations of the earth.

>We've burned up nearly four decades since Apollo 11, and still
>there is no St. Augustine or Massachusetts Bay Colony anywhere off-planet.

The precedent set by China after the Cheng Ho expeditions in the 15th
C certainly gives one pause. IMO posterity will likely look at our
society's priorities today (whether it's taking the $T that could have
begun the human expansion into the galaxy and using it instead to make
enemies in Iraq, to stop people from using fairly harmless drugs, to
reward rent seeking behavior, or to prolong the terminal sufferings of
the elderly and the vegetative states of the brain-dead) and shake its
head in disbelief.

>Granted, it costs a bundle to reach escape velocity by whatever means you
>choose, and destination development is a long way from cheap. What sort of
>motivation is finally going to make the capital start to flow?

My guess: Chinese nationalism. Another possibility: the need to
quarantine dangerous bionanotech experiments.

-- Roy L
.

Relevant Pages

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    ... notions about uploaded humans as the most logical interstellar explorers. ... But another feature of the book is a very upscale lunar colony for the ...
    (sci.space.policy)
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