The case for space colonies

Writing in the Space Review, Stephen Ashworth complains that we're losing sight of the great potential for space colonies:

For example, the material published so far by the DARPA-NASA Ames 100-Year Starship Study ignores colonies in space, despite their obvious relevance, as does Lou Friedman’s report on their recent meeting (see “Fly me to the stars”, The Space Review, January 24, 2011). Joy Shaffer’s 2004 essay “Better Dreams” at Spacedaily.com, enthusiastically referenced by one Space Review commenter, explicitly excludes colonies in space: “there is no need to massively industrialize any place in the solar system beyond the elevator terminals and power stations at geosynchronous orbit”. Even the Tau Zero Foundation focuses on “the ultimate goal of reaching other habitable worlds”.

Ashworth makes the case that, while the Earth gave us a great start, it's time to move on:

The conclusion has to be drawn that, while a planet is a good place for life to get started using unconscious means that can evolve spontaneously from the chemical substrate, once life has reached the stage of industrial development, its further growth depends on the use of technology to construct artificial space colonies, which use the material resources of planetary systems at a much higher level of efficiency.

As is so often the case in these sorts of analyses, these speculations are predicated upon the assumption that we will colonize space as humans, and not as cyborgs or non-corporeal artificial intellects. Ashworth continues:

First, the project of sending humans to the stars is absolutely dependent upon prior large-scale space colonization. To begin with, the passengers on any interstellar mission will be devoting the rest of their lives to the voyage and the explorations at their destination: a return journey within a human lifetime is hardly conceivable (barring some magical new propulsion technology, and even that is hardly likely to come cheap).

This means that no crewed starship will be dispatched until the viability of a space habitat has been demonstrated for at least one complete human lifetime (including one or more reproductive cycles, unless the starship is conceived as a suicide mission). With space colonization in progress, spurred by general economic and population growth, such a demonstration will be a matter of course, and will be funded by the broader economy. Without it, the demonstration will be an expensive one-off project, and volunteers (together with their yet unborn offspring) will have to renounce all claim to a normal life.

Ugh.

Okay, here's what I say to this: This is a noble endaevor given (1) our current biological condition and (2) our critical need to get off planet before we're wiped out by an existential catastrophe. There's no harm done in figuring out how to create a biosphere in space for biological humans. In fact, a fully robust and operational space station might actually save our ass. I'm all for it.

But if the discussion is about longterm interstellar exploration and colonization, and that's what this is, let's get real and discuss our potential to venture out as a postbiological species. As NASA's Stephen J. Dick has stated, "Biologically based technological civilization...is a fleeting phenomenon limited to a few thousand years, and exists in the universe in the proportion of one thousand to one billion, so that only one in a million civilizations are biological."

In a post-biological future, machines are the dominant form of intelligence in the Universe. Talk of humans venturing out is just plain silly and short-sighted.

One-way mission to Mars idea nothing new

For all of you excited by the whole 'one-way mission to Mars' idea, you should probably know that this strategy has been around for quite some time now. NASA engineers Robert Zubrin and David Baker originally detailed the Mars Direct plan in 1990 and was later expanded upon in Zubrin's 1996 book, The Case for Mars. It now serves as a staple of Zubrin's speaking engagements and general advocacy as head of the Mars Society, an organization devoted to the colonization of Mars.

Dirk Schulze-Makuch and Paul Davies, in their recent Journal of Cosmology article, are merely riffing off and expanding upon this original idea.

Regardless, it is a very good idea.

We already have the requisite technologies required to pull off such a mission. All we need is the will.

And finding volunteers for a one-way mission shouldn't be a problem. I'm sure there are many hopefuls chomping at the bit over such an opportunity. And it doesn't necessarily have to be a permanently one-way mission; given enough time and infrastructure development, the original team could eventually make their way back home.

I'm also partial to the idea of sending a perpetual chain of supplies to an established Martian base. It makes so much sense; just going to Mars and back (a la Apollo missions) seems a bit ridiculous, wasteful and pointless. As Schulze-Makuch and Davies note in their article, To Boldly Go: A One-Way Human Mission to Mars, the red planet is concealing a a wealth of geological and astronomical data that is almost impossible to access from Earth using robotic probes. “A permanent human presence on Mars would open the way to comparative planetology on a scale unimagined by any former generation," they write, "A Mars base would offer a springboard for human/robotic exploration of the outer solar system and the asteroid belt. And establishing a permanent multicultural and multinational human presence on another world would have major beneficial political and social implications for Earth, and serve as a strong unifying and uplifting theme for all humanity.”

Bingo. Moreover, our survival as a species may depend on it. While I have our doubts about humanity ever becoming in interstellar species, we are clearly on track to becoming intrastellar. There's no reason to believe that we can't (or shouldn't) find ways to inhabit space and other planets in our solar system. The imperative to do so has never been more obvious; all our eggs are in one basket at the dawn of a potential apocalyptic age.

So yes, get your ass to Mars.

NASA Shuttle-derived Sidemount Heavy Launch Vehicle Concept

This video depicting NASA's Shuttle-derived Sidemount Heavy Launch Vehicle concept was shown at the 17 June 2009 meeting of the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee in Washington DC by NASA Space Shuttle Program.

Dreamers of a Better Future, Unite!

Athena Andreadis is guest-blogging this month. A slightly different version of this essay appeared in her blog on March 13, 2008.

"Mobilis in Mobile": Ellen Ripley/Alien Queen hybrid (Alien Resurrection)

Views of space travel have grown increasingly pessimistic in the last decade. This is not surprising: SETI still has received no unambiguous requests for more Chuck Berry from its listening posts, NASA is busy re-inventing flywheels and citizens even of first-world countries feel beleaguered in a world that seems increasingly hostile to any but the extraordinarily privileged. Always a weathervane of the present, speculative fiction has been gazing more and more inwardly -- either to a hazy gold-tinted past (fantasy, both literally and metaphorically) or to a smoggy rust-colored earthbound future (cyberpunk).

The philosophically inclined are slightly more optimistic. Transhumanists, the new utopians, extol the pleasures of a future when our bodies, particularly our brains/minds, will be optimized (or at least not mind that they're not optimized) by a combination of bioengineering, neurocognitive manipulation, nanotech and AI. Most transhumanists, especially those with a socially progressive agenda, are as decisively earthbound as cyberpunk authors. They consider space exploration a misguided waste of resources, a potentially dangerous distraction from here-and-now problems -- ecological collapse, inequality and poverty, incurable diseases among which transhumanists routinely count aging, not to mention variants of gray goo.

And yet, despite the uncoolness of space exploration, despite NASA's disastrous holding pattern, there are those of us who still stubbornly dream of going to the stars. We are not starry-eyed romantics. We recognize that the problems associated with spacefaring are formidable (as examined briefly in Making Aliens 1, 2 and 3). But I, at least, think that improving circumstances on earth and exploring space are not mutually exclusive, either philosophically or -- perhaps just as importantly -- financially. In fact, I consider this a false dilemma. I believe that both sides have a much greater likelihood to implement their plans if they coordinate their efforts, for a very simple reason: the attributes required for successful space exploration are also primary goals of transhumanism.

Consider the ingredients that would make an ideal crewmember of a space expedition: robust physical and mental health, biological and psychological adaptability, longevity, ability to interphase directly with components of the ship. In short, enhancements and augmentations eventually resulting in self-repairing quasi-immortals with extended senses and capabilities -- the loose working definition of transhuman.

Coordination of the two movements would give a real, concrete purpose to transhumanism beyond the uncompelling objective of giving everyone a semi-infinite life of leisure (without guarantees that either terrestrial resources or the human mental and social framework could accommodate such a shift). It would also turn the journey to the stars into a more hopeful proposition, since it might make it possible that those who started the journey could live to see planetfall.

Whereas spacefaring enthusiasts acknowledge the enormity of the undertaking they propose, most transhumanists take it as an article of faith that their ideas will be realized soon, though the goalposts keep receding into the future. As more soundbite than proof they invoke Moore's exponential law, equating stodgy silicon with complex, contrary carbon. However, despite such confident optimism, enhancements will be hellishly difficult to implement. This stems from a fundamental that cannot be short-circuited or evaded: no matter how many experiments are performed on mice or even primates, humans have enough unique characteristics that optimization will require people.

Contrary to the usual supposition that the rich will be the first to cross the transhuman threshold, it is virtually certain that the frontline will consist of the desperate and the disenfranchised: the terminally ill, the poor, prisoners and soldiers -- the same people who now try new chemotherapy or immunosuppression drugs, donate ova, become surrogate mothers, "agree" to undergo chemical castration or sleep deprivation. Yet another pool of early starfarers will be those whose beliefs require isolation to practice, whether they be Raëlians or fundamentalist monotheists -- just as the Puritans had to brave the wilderness and brutal winters of Massachusetts to set up their Shining (though inevitably tarnished) City on the Hill.

So the first generation of humans adjusted to starship living are far likelier to resemble Peter Watts' marginalized Rifters or Jay Lake's rabid Armoricans, rather than the universe-striding, empowered citizens of Iain Banks' Culture. Such methods and outcomes will not reassure anyone, regardless of her/his position on the political spectrum, who considers augmentation hubristic, dehumanizing, or a threat to human identity, equality or morality. The slightly less fraught idea of uploading individuals into (ostensibly) more durable non-carbon frames is not achievable, because minds are inseparable from the neurons that create them. Even if technological advances eventually enable synapse-by synapse reconstructions, the results will be not transfers but copies.

Yet no matter how palatable the methods and outcomes are, it seems to me that changes to humans will be inevitable if we ever want to go beyond the orbit of Pluto within one lifetime. Successful implementation of transhumanist techniques will help overcome the immense distances and inhospitable conditions of the journey. The undertaking will also bring about something that naysayers tend to dread as a danger: speciation. Any significant changes to human physiology (whether genetic or epigenetic) will change the thought/emotion processes of those altered, which will in turn modify their cultural responses, including mating preferences and kinship patterns. Furthermore, long space journeys will recreate isolated breeding pools with divergent technology and social mores (as discussed in Making Aliens 4, 5 and 6).

On earth, all "separate but equal" doctrines have wrought untold misery and injustice, whether those segregated are genders in countries practicing sharia, races in the American or African South, or the underprivileged in any nation that lacks decent health policies, adequate wages and humane laws. Speciation of humanity on earth bids fair to replicate this pattern, with the ancestral species (us) becoming slaves, food, zoo specimens or practice targets to our evolved progeny, Neanderthals to their Cro-Magnons, Eloi to their Morlocks. On the other hand, speciation in space may well be a requirement for success. Generation of variants makes it likelier that at least one of our many future permutations will pass the stringent tests of space travel and alight on another habitable planet.

Despite their honorable intentions and progressive outlook, if the transhumanists insist on first establishing a utopia on earth before approving spacefaring, they will achieve either nothing or a dystopia as bleak as that depicted in Paolo Bacigalupi's unsparing stories. If they join forces with the space enthusiasts, they stand a chance to bring humanity through the Singularity some of them so fervently predict and expect -- except it may be a Plurality of sapiens species and inhabited worlds instead.

Athena

Starship Reckless

We Now Interrupt Our Regular Programming…

... so that you can set your transporter coordinates to Centauri Dreams, where my friend Paul Gilster is graciously hosting my more extended take on the new Star Trek film. I think that the mixed reactions are universal among those who loved the original Star Trek’s optimism and civility. Here is the closing paragraph of my essay, to whet your appetites:

ST|| is an odd-numbered film in the series, so I’ll give it a long space tether. However, if Uhura degenerates into the Angel in the House or if the certain-to-come sequels become more generic, I will put ST|| permanently in the same category as Star Wars. Those who have read my essay on Star Wars know how dire a fate this is. And though my wrath may not equal that of Khan, if enough of my ilk get disaffected we may abandon all the old lumbering dinosaurs and manage to relaunch the real McCoy — the Firefly-class starship Serenity, with its true love of endless skies and its persistent aim to misbehave.

Athena, guest blogger of this month

Hi-tech space diaper almost ready for prime time

Proof that humans have no business being in space in their current form:

Clean and easy to use, the envisioned space toilet is designed to be worn like a diaper around the astronaut’s waist at all times. Sensors detect when the user relieves him or herself, automatically activating a rear-mounted suction unit that draws the waste away from the body through tubes into a separate container. In addition to washing and drying the wearer after each use, the next-generation space toilet will incorporate features that eliminate unwanted sound and odor.

Sure, you could do this. Or you could re-engineer humans for space such that they wouldn't need to wear these ridiculous hi-tech space toilets. That's why the concept of cybernetic organisms was developed in the first place; cyborgs don't wear diapers.

Via Pink Tentacle.

Seven ways to control the Galaxy with self-replicating probes

So, you want to take over the Galaxy. A good career move. Ultimately, you're hoping to communicate with extraterrestrials, colonize entire sets of star clusters, and eventually lord it over the entire Milky Way.

You've got the motive, but what about the means?

Well, forget about generation ships, suspended animation or ringworlds – the best way for you to explore, colonize and ultimately rule the Milky Way will be through the use of self-replicating robotic spacecraft – what are sometimes referred to as von Neumann probes.

Von Neumann's idea

Back in late 1940’s the brilliant mathematician John Von Neumann wondered if it might be possible to design a non-biological system that could replicate itself. Von Neumann wasn’t thinking about space exploration at the time, but other thinkers like Freeman Dyson, Eric Drexler, Ralph Merkle and Robert Freitas later took his idea and applied it to exactly that.

The strength of Von Neumann's idea lies in the brute efficiency of exponential growth. Given enough time and patience, a single self-replicating probe could produce millions upon millions of offspring; it would be like a massive bubble expanding outward into the Galaxy. It’s possible that these probes could come to occupy all four corners of the Milky Way in as little as half a million years – even if each probe travels at an average cruising speed of one tenth the speed of light.

In order to work, however, a von Neumann spacecraft would have to be put together using advanced nanotechnology and artificial intelligence -- technologies that we have yet to develop. In fact, the device itself would be a molecular assembler, capable of reconstituting matter into copies of itself.

A number of scientists and sci-fi writers have speculated over the years about the different kinds of probes we might want to construct once we're ready to explore space in this fashion. Other thinkers, namely astrosociobiologists, have wondered if extraterrestrials have constructed probes of their own.

I recently took a look at these visions and came up with a Von Neumann probe taxonomy. I came up with 7 basic spacecraft functions:

1. Exploration
2. Communication
3. Working
4. Colonization
5. Uplifting
6. Berserking
7. Policing

These tasks don’t have to be exclusive to a single probe. It’s possible that probes will be fairly versatile, able to change their functions as circumstances dictate. That said, you're likely going to need all these probes in your effort to take over and control the Milky Way.

Here’s how the different probes will work:

1. Exploration probes

These probes would be designed strictly for space exploration and surveillance; they would not contact or interact with other intelligent civilizations. We have already created such probes, namely Voyager 1 and 2 – although strictly speaking they are not von Neumann replicators.

Exploration probes could remain local and explore our Solar System (what has been dubbed Astrochicken probes), or they could be sent on interstellar missions to explore and transmit their findings back to Earth.

Admittedly, the timescales in question are significant – at least to modern human lifespans and our reasonable expectations for return on investment. But the information these probes could provide would be invaluable. They could study foreign solar systems in exquisite detail – and even alert us to the presence of extraterrestrial life.

These probes could also act as stationary reconnaissance stations. They could take residence in a data rich area and continuously beam that information back to Earth--all without ever being detected.

2. Communication probes (a.k.a. Bracewell probes)

The current SETI strategy of targeting stars and listening for radio signals has an extremely slim chance of success. It’s a needle-in-the-haystack approach. That said, given the assumption that civilizations want to communicate with us, a more efficient way for them to make contact would be to disseminate self-replicating communication probes across the Galaxy.

Dubbed Bracewell probes (named after Ronald N. Bracewell who thought of the idea back in 1960), these devices would work as an alternative to interstellar radio communication between widely separated civilizations. This strategy only makes sense given the inefficiency and weakness of radio signals emitted from the source planet.

Christopher Rose, an electrical engineer at Rutger’s University, has suggested that we should actually look for these probes in our own Solar System. He argues we should be checking the mail instead of waiting for a phone call.

Multiple Bracewell probes could also be set up as a distributed array of communication relay stations. Such a set-up was portrayed in Carl Sagan’s Contact. In this story, a dormant Bracewell probe was lying in wait in the Vega system. It began to transmit a strong signal after it received a radio signal from Earth. The device itself was part of a larger network of probes, as witnessed later by Ellie’s journey from probe to probe.

3. Worker probes

If we are going to embark on megascale engineering projects, we’re going to need robots. Lots of 'em. Projects like Dyson Spheres, Ringworlds and Alderson Disks would require fleets of specialized and artificially intelligent probes working in concert to construct these truly massive structures.

Given the sheer scale of these projects and the amount of matter that would have to be subverted, it’s not unreasonable to assume that millions of individual probes would be required. The most sensible way to construct and disseminate these probes would be through self-replication schemes.

These probes could also be put to work as mining machines that dig-out and transport matter across vast distances. Ideally, these probes would be programmed to work together and take advantage of swarming intelligence and emergent properties.

4. Colonization probes

The advent of molecular assembling nanotechnology will make it possible for probes to go about interstellar colonization. It’s conceivable that a von Neumann probe could find a suitable planet and use the matter around it to not just reproduce itself, but to establish a colony and seed actual settlers.

Such settlers would likely be uploaded consciousness patterns. This would obviously require an advanced mind emulation scheme, powerful artificial intelligence, and advanced supercomputing. Ideally, these consciousness patterns would be able to migrate to a robotic body for corporeal investigation of the environment. The number of settlers in any given location could be significant, limited only by computational resources.

Colonization probes could also construct data receivers and transmission stations so that uploaded persons could travel as digital data streams from one point to another. Consequently, the dream of traveling at the speed of light will some day be possible.

Colonization probes, sometimes referred to as seeder probes, could also perform double-duty as terraformers. Project Genesis, as portrayed in the Star Trek film series, utilized such a probe, which was able to transform a dead planet into one that suited the needs of its future inhabitants.

5. Uplift probes

Probes could also work to transform and 'uplift' other civilizations and their citizens. This scenario was explored in 2001: A Space Odyssey in which an advanced extraterrestrial civilization used probes (called monoliths) to steer the direction of evolution on Earth. In the story, these probes endowed primates with the capacity to use tools, and later, the human David Bowman was transformed into the next stage of evolution, the so-called Star Child.

This scenario was also explored in David Brin’s Uplift series in which advanced civilizations brought sapience to primitive life forms--what’s more accurately termed biological uplift. Also conceivable is technological or civilizational uplift in which an extraterrestrial intelligence brings an entire civilization up to its own advanced level.

Motivations for doing so could involve meta-ethical imperatives meant to reduce suffering, to prevent civilizations from destroying themselves, or to ensure the safe onset of non-threatening post-Singularity intelligences. Or, it could be part of your plan to take over the Galaxy.

Uplift probes could quickly bring a civilization to a post-Singularity, postbiological condition. Such a force might appear as a colonization wave that sweeps across the Galaxy, transforming all that it touches into computronium. Such a scenario has been projected by such thinkers as Hans Moravec and Ray Kurzweil.

6. Berserker probes

Unfortunately, you're going to have to look out for malevolent probes, what Fred Saberhagen dubbed Berserkers. Just as an intelligent civilization could use self-replicating probes to spread life across the Galaxy, another misguided or evil civilization could do quite the opposite and destroy everything.

Berserkers could be disseminated with the sole purpose of sterilizing every planetary system it encounters, forever eliminating the possibility for life to emerge and evolve. Should it encounter an inhabited planet, it could use any number of schemes, including nanotech instigated ecophagy, to quickly destroy all life in a matter of hours. By using a scorched galaxy policy, a civilization could sterilize the Milky Way in about 500,000 years.

Alternately, berserker probes could be disbursed across the entire Galaxy and lie dormant, patiently waiting for signs of intelligence.

Berserkers could also work to stamp out intelligent life that it deems dangerous. Anders Sandberg, Eliezer Yudkowsky and myself conceived of a strategy in which an advanced civilization (or Galactic club) could monitor for potentially dangerous post-Singularity mind-types and quickly stamp them out of existence.

7. Police probes

It’s not unreasonable to suggest that probe-making civilizations would also be thinking about defensive measures. Sandberg recently came up with an idea for anti-berserker policing probes (what I've started to call Sandberg probes). These devices would be on the lookout for bad news of any kind and take action.

Civilizations might want to establish quarantined areas; policing probes would ensure that nothing gets through the defenses and ensure the integrity of a specified region. Xenophobic civilizations might want to set up quarantined areas to prevent memetic infection, to protect themselves against invasion of any kind, or simply due to a fear of the unknown.

The best way of stopping a replicator, argues Sandberg, is to nip it in the bud. To do so, an advanced civilization would require widespread surveillance and enough power to deal with possible threats. And because replicators could emerge outside a given region of control, a civilization would want to have widely stockpiled defenses. The easiest way of doing this? Yup, you guessed it: make a replicator that spreads and builds these stockpiles and quietly waits for signs of something threatening.

So, where are all the probes?

Given all this technological potential, one must wonder why we haven’t encountered any extraterrestrial probes. Why haven't extraterrestrials communicated with us? Why haven't we be uplifted....or destroyed?

This conundrum was first articulated by Frank Tipler and has become a critical driver of the Fermi Paradox. It's been a cause of much the contact pessimism that has taken root since the 1970s (my own inclinations included). If it's so easy for probes to colonize the Galaxy, then where the heck are they? Tipler concluded that extraterrestrials simply don't exist.

Carl Sagan and William Newman came up with a different answer. They were convinced that Tipler had it all wrong and that all this talk of probes was sheer poppycock. Sagan and Newman, in their 1983 paper titled "The Solipsist Approach to Extraterrestrial Intelligence," calculated that von Neumann probes, should they exist, would eventually start to consume most of the mass in the Galaxy. Consequently, they concluded that intelligent civilizations would never dare construct such probes and would try to destroy any such device as soon as it was detected.

I'm not so convinced. Probes with even a modicum of AI and smart programming could be programmed to stop after a certain reproductive threshold has been achieved (time-to-produce schemes, maximum number of iterations, etc.). These probes wouldn't be simple mindless automatons. Moreover, the Sagan and Newman theory violates non-exclusivity; it might explain why most civilizations wouldn't dare embark on such colonization schemes, but not all. All it would take is just one.

And interestingly, Sagan and Newman seemed to be arguing for counter-measures against probes -- a strategy that Sandberg has argued would require self-replicating police probes. Moreover, as Sandberg writes,

One of the interesting things with police probes is that it makes strategic sense to announce that they are around to civilizations that might "break the law" - yet not reveal exactly how strong they are or what their modus operandi is. So the Fermi paradox appears to say that there are no police around here right now.

Further, says Sandberg, one species' police is another species' invader - we would probably not like having some alien probe impose their view of what is an unacceptable activity on us, and vice versa. And the process of making police probes will likely be indistinguishable from making other replicators. Consequently, there might be a race to set up the first interstellar police force.

At any rate, the reason for the absence of probes is still a mystery. And as the future ruler of Galaxy, you're going to have to assume this is the case. So you better get going and create a fleet of self-replicating probe before somebody else does it first.

Frank Stratford: Tapping humanity's potential through space exploration

From Frank Stratford's Space Review article, "Our potential in space":

So why would humans want to explore or live in such places? The one argument that has often been glossed over or ignored is, in my opinion, the most important, and many others are beginning to see this. This motive for sending humans into space comes down to rediscovering the importance of realizing our potential as a people. If scientific discoveries and resource utilization or spin-offs are not enough to get our governments and businesses interested in investing more in space, perhaps it’s time to take a different approach
.......
When I think of what the colonization of space could achieve for us I only have to look at what we have achieved here on Earth to understand what could be our future in space. Yes, we will always carry the negatives with us wherever we go. There will still be problems here on Earth as long as we exist, but growing onto new worlds and new horizons is in our genes. All societies that ceased to look outward have ceased to exist, from the records we have of great civilizations of the past. When apathy, internal politics, and agendas take over, that’s when we lose sight of our potential for greatness.

Read Stratford's entire article.

Stross: Space colonization is not in our future

I'm sure most readers of this blog have stumbled upon Charlie Stross's recent post, The High Frontier, Redux, in which he argues that space colonization is not in our future (Charlie's post was BoingBoing'd and Slashdotted and of this writing has over 452 comments!). He crunches the numbers and offers some interesting food for thought about the limitations and absurdities of space travel and colonization.

He says,

This is not to say that interstellar travel is impossible; quite the contrary. But to do so effectively you need either (a) outrageous amounts of cheap energy, or (b) highly efficient robot probes, or (c) a magic wand. And in the absence of (c) you're not going to get any news back from the other end in less than decades. Even if (a) is achievable, or by means of (b) we can send self-replicating factories and have them turn distant solar systems into hives of industry, and more speculatively find some way to transmit human beings there, they are going to have zero net economic impact on our circumstances (except insofar as sending them out costs us money).

I recommend that you read article; there's lots to consider.

That said, I agree with Stross that space colonization is not in our future -- or anybody's future for that matter. But I disagree with him as to why this is the case (this is largely what I'll be speaking about at TransVision 2007 next month).

First, Stross's analysis fails to take into account future civilization types; I get the sense that he takes a normative view of today's technological and economic realities and projects them into the future. This is surprising, not only because he's an outstanding science fiction visionary, but also because he's a transhumanist who has a very good grasp on what awaits humanity in the future (in fact, he was the WTA's transhumanist of the year for 2004). Specifically, he should be taking into account the possibility of post-Singularity, Drexlerian, Kardashev Type II civilizations. Essentially, we're talking about post-scarcity civilizations with access to molecular assembling nanotechnology, radically advanced materials, artificial superintelligence, and access to most of the energy available in the solar system.

Stross also too easily dismisses how machine intelligences, uploaded entities and AGI will impact on how space could be colonized. He speculates about biological humans being sent from solar system to solar system, and complains of the psychological and social hardships that could be inflicted on an individual or crew. He even speculates about the presence of extraterrestrial pathogens that undoubtedly awaits our daring explorers. This is a highly unlikely scenario. Biological humans will have no role to play in space. Instead, this work will be done by robots and quite possibly cyborgs (which is how the term 'cyborg' came to exist in the first place).

Stross does mention the possibility of probes being sent out, but again, fails to account for the economic benefits of self-replicating probes. He notes the extreme distances involved in space travel -- another way of saying that it takes too long. Given the alternative mind-space and clock-space that a machine mind could inhabit, time is not a very helpful variable when discussing the limitations of space travel.

Spacecraft propulsion was another topic that Stross addressed. My feeling is that he should have spent more time analyzing some of the more radical possibilities for star-to-star space travel. I'm fairly convinced this is not an inhibitor to space colonization.

Finally, Stross's analysis invokes far too much sociology and rationalization. Cost and time scales aside, he did not take into account the drive for scientific advancement and exploration. The search for life on other planets is a rather important one -- it's a mystery we seem rather hell-bent on solving. Moreover, it's difficult to predict what private individuals or groups may do on their own. I can totally imagine an eccentric and motivated crew that organizes a mission into space.

As for my own arguments against space colonization, like I said, that's the topic I'll be addressing at TV07. Stay tuned for more over the coming weeks.

Michael Huang on the Fermi Paradox

Michael Huang of the Space Review has posted a good overview of the Fermi Paradox. In his article, titled The Other Side of the Fermi Paradox, Huang notes that "By examining the possible futures of extraterrestrial civilizations, we are simultaneously examining the possible futures of our own civilization." Put in another way, says Huang, "if an alien civilization somewhere had their own version of the Fermi paradox, they would be speculating on our future in the same way that we speculate on theirs."

Bingo.

One of the reconciliations to the paradox cited by Huang is the Park hypothesis, which states that advanced civs have not colonized the galaxy because they don’t want to. Strangely, Huang claims that "staying on Earth is a mediocre future for humankind."

I've observed that the psychological and aesthetic desire to explore space often leads to a space exploration bias. This quite obviously has a bearing on any analysis of the Fermi Paradox. Space enthusiasts tend to be incredulous to the suggestion that interstellar colonization is not in our future. But as Huang himself admits, the possibility exists for "the creation of virtual reality worlds so impressive that real world challenges, such as space colonization, pale in comparison."

Indeed, if advanced civs stay at home you can bet that there's a damn good reason for it, and I'm certain it won't be a mediocre one.

New audiocast posted

My latest audiocast has been posted here. You can subscribe to this feed.

In this episode I discuss Bjork's colonization simulation and Fermi's Paradox, the recent change to the Doomsday Clock, my rebuttal to Nigel Cameron, and how Fight Club portrays the modern male.

Bjork's colonization simulation does not explain Fermi's Paradox

A number of science sites are proclaiming that the Fermi Paradox may have been solved by Rasmus Bjork, a physicist at the Niels Bohr institute in Copenhagen. Unfortunately, his claim does not withstand scrutiny; the Fermi conundrum is still far from being answered.

Bjork is making a point that many others have made before, that ETI's have not had enough time to colonize the Milky Way. What makes his claim different, however, is that he used a computer to simulate the migrational spread of intergalactic probes.

In his simulation, Bjork had a single civilization launch 8 intergalactic probes to search for intelligent life. Once on their way, each probe would send out eight more mini-probes to search for the nearest stars and look for habitable planets. He was careful to set the parameters such that the probes would only investigate the galactic habitable zone of the Galaxy. Bjork also set it up such that the probes could travel at 30,000km/second, or a tenth of the speed of light.

Based on these settings, Bjork discovered that it would take these probes 10Gyr to explore a measly 4% the Galaxy -- roughly half the age of the Universe. This data would indicate that there most certainly has not been enough time for ETI's to thoroughly explore the Milky Way.

His analysis, however, fails to take into account the likely nature of intergalactic exploration and colonization. In Bjork's simulation, he tracks the progress of a mere 72 probes. Given this ludicrously limited strategy, it would take these 8 primary probes and 64 sub-probes 100,000 years to explore a region of space containing 40,000 stars. Such an effort would almost certainly be considered futile by any civilization, and it's doubtful any ETI would embark on such a project.

Instead, what Bjork should have considered is the potential for ETI's to proliferate Von Neumann replicating probes. Advanced civilizations with access to molecular assembling nanotechnology would be capable of launching self-replicating probes. Initially, the spread of Von Neumann probes would be slow, but like any exponential process, progress would eventually explode. It's been estimated that these types of probes could reach all four corners of the Galaxy anywhere from 5 to 50 million years. That's a far cry from Bjork's projected 250Gyr.

So, no, the Fermi Paradox has not been solved. Far from. And it's high time that cosmologists and astrobiologists stopped using technology from Star Trek to inform their research.