From: Dani Eder (danielravennest@yahoo.com)
Date: Sat Apr 27 2002 - 09:36:29 MDT
>
> The question flares up every few months on diverse
> lists. The online
> archives are lousy with such discussions.
>
And a lot of it includes bad assumptions. For
example the idea of a generation ship that takes
500 years to reach the next star. This fails to
consider the progress of technology. There is
no point in starting an interstellar mission
whose trip time is longer than the doubling
time of your technology, since a higer tech
vehicle launched later will arrive sooner. Also,
so long as a large ship can remain in contact
with it's origin and has sufficient resources
on hand, it can upgrade itself en-route with
better technology from home.
The whole idea of travelling in a ship makes no
sense to for an AI, or even for a biological
intelligence if your technology is high enough.
Sending an atom by atom description of an object
takes roughly a million times less energy than
sending the object itself at relativistic speeds.
Daniel
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Health - your guide to health and wellness
http://health.yahoo.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jul 17 2013 - 04:00:38 MDT