Re: What kinds of people would leave the solar system?

In article <77ddcc6f-b08d-4430-86b6-2951e41a8fc4
@l42g2000hsc.googlegroups.com>, mechdan@xxxxxxxxx says...
On Aug 14, 1:10 pm, jdnic...@xxxxxxxxx (James Nicoll) wrote:

IsaacKuo  <mech...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Depending on your definition of "colony group", I see the most
plausible sitatuion as one "colony group" to one star system.
With plausible interstellar travel technology, even an unmanned
flyby mission is amazingly expensive.  It's plausible that any
sort of manned interstellar colonization missions will be very
few and far between.  As such, each mission is plausibly going
to travel to a fresh star system instead of an already fully
colonized system.

        If it's that expensive, I think there's a good chance that
there will not be any missions at all.

My bet is that there will be maybe one of them, mostly symbolic
just to prove it can be done, while A.I.s and/or uploads do all of
the true expansion into the universe.

If a human is uploaded into a computer, he would consider himself human.


If we assume neither A.I.s nor uploads are ever developed, then
things are different. Eventually, humankind will have spread
throughout the inner solar system and will have the ability to
utilize significant fractions of the Sun's power output. Closed
ecosystem space colony technology will have long been
perfected. At some point, it will be possible to send the
occasional interstellar colonization mission.

I once guesstimated a baseline minimal manned mission
energy cost:

http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/sfconsim-l/message/67436

This very(!) minimal starship has a dry mass of 10,000tons,
and the energy cost is 1.25e24j...or an Earth's worth of total
solar output for two months.

A colonization starship would need to be much larger.
I guesstimated a conservative colonization ship mass of
1.5e12 tons (for just the biosphere component):

http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/sfconsim-l/message/69025

That's about 15 million times the mass of the minimal
starship, so the energy cost would be perhaps 1.9e31j,
or just two weeks worth of the Sun's output. If we
assume an interstellar space budget of 1/500,000
(comparable to NASA budget vs USA GDP), then that
would mean one mission per 8 centuries.

Now, this is for a conservative interstellar colonization
ship. I think it plausible for a much smaller interstellar
colonization ship to be possible.

Isaac Kuo


Put into the equation suspended animation and the ships get much
smaller.



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