If they found a planet just like earth...

[Kulindahr]

... and scientists said we could build a starship to take fifty thousand people there, but the accountants said it would cost a trillion dollars --

1. Should we do it?
2. Who should we send?
3. Would you go?


(for the sake of discussion, assume the ship can go 99.99% of the speed of light)

 

[Sigma-taylor-E]

1) Yes
2) The most fittest and healthiest of the population. The moral dilemma though as to who choose, though is rather daunting.
3) Yes I would go.

 

[JayHawk]

I would love to go. I have been adventuring my whole life and I likely to never stop. I was born too late for the sailing ships and too early for the starships.... sighhh....

Hell yes we should send it but if we have light speed technology then we should send a probe first. I wouldn't wanna be an invading force or if we chose to invade then I wouldn't wanna go prepared.

We should require education and a gene scan to go. In other words if your genealogy carries a propensity for MS then you should not go. While that may sound callous I would prefer not to knowingly introduce our current diseases into a society that may come with it's own unique diseases.

We should also require every primitive skill. The education need not be collegiate. An organic farmer for instance. Skilled craftsmen. It would take enormous planning. And if we could send a single starship with 50,000 then we could easily send fifty.

 

[looseliam]

It may be beneficial to send a small contingent to get that world ready for when the Earth is really fucked.

The idea of destroying two planets at once doesn't sound wise.

I wouldn't want to go. As for who should go, definitely not the accountants =]

 

[Críostóir]

We should send frozen embryos and thaw them out and start them gestating in artificial wombs 19 years before arrival, with robots made to act like moms and dads and a whole fake society. Cuts down on the weight, and avoids the problem of the starship culture descending into barbarism during the centuries (of subjective time) it would take to get there.

Which is to say:

1. Sort of no ("we" shouldn't go).
2. See above.
3. Not being a frozen embryo, I'd have to say no.

 

[gsdx]

2. Who should we send?

People who are smart enough to know how to take care of it without fucking it up the way we've fucked up this one.

 

[JayHawk]

Cristoir.... you seem to have got it whereas I missed it.... at 2.6 million light years away we would have quite a trip ahead of us...lol

Perhaps Kuli your hypothesis should include the discovering of wormholes or some such phenomenon that allows less than millions of light years for reaching the next galaxy

 

[Críostóir]

Wait, did he say 2.6 million light years away?

We can make a ship that will fly for 2.6 million years? There haven't been HUMANS ON EARTH for that long.

 

[guyfromNY]

It's a cookbook!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[USEDCAR]

And will the United States be in charge of it?


I'll stay on earth i don't want to start from scratch

 

[Stardreamer]

1 Yes!
2 A colony charter group should set the criteria for what is needed skills, demographics, etc. and recruit. It will be their world, they need to determine what goes into it.
3 YES!

 

[birddog7]

I can tell you who should not go on that trip: Politicians...

Would I go? Yes, I've had enough of this hell hole. They wouldn't pick me, though. I'm no where near good enough in any respect...

 

[TheFireGod]

I'm guessing that this question had the implication that the world would still be the same with the exception of the new planet and the starship.

1. Yes
2. Draw lots? Or the most important to start a colony? The English dumped their undesirables to the Americas and look how that turned out.
3. Not really. I wanna explore this world before going to the next one.

 

[Saybrooke]

I'd be too nervous

To serve man is a cook book!

 

[Kulindahr]

I would love to go. I have been adventuring my whole life and I likely to never stop. I was born too late for the sailing ships and too early for the starships.... sighhh....

Hell yes we should send it but if we have light speed technology then we should send a probe first. I wouldn't wanna be an invading force or if we chose to invade then I wouldn't wanna go prepared.

We should require education and a gene scan to go. In other words if your genealogy carries a propensity for MS then you should not go. While that may sound callous I would prefer not to knowingly introduce our current diseases into a society that may come with it's own unique diseases.

We should also require every primitive skill. The education need not be collegiate. An organic farmer for instance. Skilled craftsmen. It would take enormous planning. And if we could send a single starship with 50,000 then we could easily send fifty.

People with the right skills -- like myself -- with genes we wouldn't want to pass on -- again, like myself (bipolar) -- could be sterilized and serve as workhorses not tied down by family. 50k is ample for genetic diversity, so a force of, say, 10k not involved in reproduction would be a benefit.

BTW, at a trillion dollars a ship, I don't think anyone would go for sending fifty!

We should send frozen embryos and thaw them out and start them gestating in artificial wombs 19 years before arrival, with robots made to act like moms and dads and a whole fake society. Cuts down on the weight, and avoids the problem of the starship culture descending into barbarism during the centuries (of subjective time) it would take to get there.

Which is to say:

1. Sort of no ("we" shouldn't go).
2. See above.
3. Not being a frozen embryo, I'd have to say no.

Interesting. We could take this and send a force of, say, five thousand or the ten I suggested above as a work force -- I don't trust our level of robotics to get a colony right.

As for subjective time, if we're moving 99.99% of the speed of light, and the planet is like thirty LY away, the subject time is going to be (if I'm getting the math right) a little over three years.

Cristoir.... you seem to have got it whereas I missed it.... at 2.6 million light years away we would have quite a trip ahead of us...lol

Perhaps Kuli your hypothesis should include the discovering of wormholes or some such phenomenon that allows less than millions of light years for reaching the next galaxy

I didn't specify a distance! Let's assume it's close enough that subjective time won't exceed twenty years. That would give a range of approaching two hundred light years.

1. I dunno. How much will rent be on that planet?

2. Let's send people who know how to pack lightly. And ones who do well with crying children in confined spaces.

3. I think I would. I've not been known to avoid an adventure, although I would miss the beauty of the earth.

Crying children -- you think people will have kids on the trip? I didn't even consider munchkins going along!

I presume a new planet that's earth-like will have it's own beauties. Though I'd want to know one thing before deciding for sure to go: does it have at least one moon, and is it big enough to provide substantial tides?

 

[Stardreamer]

I'm guessing that this question had the implication that the world would still be the same with the exception of the new planet and the starship.

1. Yes
2. Draw lots? Or the most important to start a colony? The English dumped their undesirables to the Americas and look how that turned out.
3. Not really. I wanna explore this world before going to the next one.

I think you are confusing America with Australia. Most of the English colonies in the Americas were mercantile concerns sponsored by English companies on an investment in the colony's eventual trade. While some of the charter groups were made up of socially outcast communities, they weren't dumped there, they went willingly in the hopes of building a better community.

Its the same model I was proposing above, founding colony charter groups to raise funds, recruit members and set the stage for the colony's development.

 

[MoufOfKhaos]

1. Yes.
2. Don't care.
3. No.

 

[Stardreamer]

We should send frozen embryos and thaw them out and start them gestating in artificial wombs 19 years before arrival, with robots made to act like moms and dads and a whole fake society. Cuts down on the weight, and avoids the problem of the starship culture descending into barbarism during the centuries (of subjective time) it would take to get there.

Which is to say:

1. Sort of no ("we" shouldn't go).
2. See above.
3. Not being a frozen embryo, I'd have to say no.

Have to watch that, they might just wind up being libertarians.

 

[healingduck]

Should we do it- Hell yes. That would be amazing to find a planet like earth. Who knows what they would find. If we were able to sustain life on our planet, chances are there would be life on that planet.

Who would you send- 50k seems like a large number of people. I don't know who I would send... probably scientists and the geniuses... I don't know. lol. I think it would be pretty cool to have more than one planet inhabited by humans though.(until there is a war between the planets...)

Would you go- Probably not. Despite how messed up this world is, I like it. Not to mention the people who did go would need to build everything and start from scratch. It would be interesting to explore the planet though and find out what is out there. That would probably be one of the more tempting reasons that would make me want to go.

 

[Críostóir]

BTW, at a trillion dollars a ship, I don't think anyone would go for sending fifty!

You're assuming the cost is the same no matter what size the ship is.

Interesting. We could take this and send a force of, say, five thousand or the ten I suggested above as a work force -- I don't trust our level of robotics to get a colony right.

I was assuming that all other tech would advance about as far as the spaceship tech. Did you know that right now NO ONE IN THE WORLD has a rocket that can boost to the MOON? (We might be able to make Saturn Vs again if we tried, but we don't, and no one else even has the capability.) If we're going to make a spaceship that can go 99.99% of the speed of light (a NAFAL ship, essentially), it's reasonable to assume we'll have advanced AI and robotics to the point where perfect imitation humans are commonplace, and the ship itself could be managed by what's known in the field as a "godlike AI."

As for subjective time, if we're moving 99.99% of the speed of light, and the planet is like thirty LY away, the subject time is going to be (if I'm getting the math right) a little over three years.

I don't know how to do the math. I'm pretty sure it's not quite as simple as percent of speed of light equals percent time dilation. Might be, but it's also true that being in a gravity field slows time too. We're in slower time than satellites in orbit; they have to have their clocks set slow in order to synch with devices on Earth (yes, an understanding of relativity is required for GPS to work). So it might be a lot more complicated. I don't know the physics though.

I didn't specify a distance! Let's assume it's close enough that subjective time won't exceed twenty years. That would give a range of approaching two hundred light years.

Oh, if subjective time won't exceed 20 years, there's little advantage to my embryo idea. I was assuming hundreds of years.

I presume a new planet that's earth-like will have it's own beauties. Though I'd want to know one thing before deciding for sure to go: does it have at least one moon, and is it big enough to provide substantial tides?

It would have to be. There wouldn't be any significant life on Earth if not for our moon.