Cloning Would Make Faster-Than-Light Interstellar Travel Possible
I’ll say this for the current season if Eureka - it’s got me thinking about space travel. And my thoughts turned to two of the more common scenarios when it comes to deep space exploration:
1. The development of spacecraft capable of faster-than-light travel, allowing humans to commute to neighboring galaxies in a more reasonable time frame (it would still take many years to make a trip, mind you).
2. The “slow-boat” spacecraft, wherein several generations of families bridge departure and destination points (or the crew is put into a cryogenic state). Likely aboard a large vessel capable of sustaining a populace for a looong trip - over hundreds of years.
The likelihood of FTL travel becoming a reality is still science fiction at this point. And the logistics of the slow-boat approach is daunting - besides sustaining life for hundreds of years, all it takes is for one thing to go wrong at anytime to jeopardize the mission.
But what about a combination of the two? Let me explain:
An unmanned spacecraft would carry all the cargo needed to create a habitat on a distant planet. It would make the slow, arduous journey without anyone asking are we there yet? Along the way the ship would deploy satellite relays to form a communications link to Earth.
Once at the new planet, the ship would deploy all the facilities needed to support human life.
Here is where the faster-than-light part comes in: instead of physically sending people on the long trip, their DNA sequence would be broadcast to the distant base - at the speed of light. Cloned humans are then created at the remote base.
This is essentially teleporting people à la Star Trek, if you think about it. Except it would be copies of people living in a distant galaxy.
I don’t want to offend those who abhor cloning, or host the ongoing debate about the subject here. It’s merely an idea based on the current state of science, where cloning humans is far more attainable than warp speed. Also I wanted to remove the risk to people as much as possible, and employing the unmanned flight approach would do just that.
Posted on August 10, 2011, in Health, Safety and tagged Ideas, NASA, Space. Bookmark the permalink. 3 Comments.
Why exactly would the DNA sequences need to be beamed to the base? That way it would take years before the sequences reached that base, since light does not travel that fast.
Would be better if the ship took the DNA sequences with it. Maybe it would be even better if the ship could make two copies of itself and send them to the next nearest stars.
By the way, if the ship would be capable of synthesizing humans out of just their DNA sequence, it probably would not need to take cargo with it, since it could probably synthesize a simple base as well on a distant planet with nanobots or whatever.
You caught me Diederik! I should’ve said the distant planet would be hospitable to life. I also failed to mention that transporting any actual DNA - even frozen tissue, could be a gamble. Depending on the cloning process, I think it would be ideal to select the candidates for cloning transmission when the bas is ready (which could take years, as well), so the best of the best can be screened in the here and now, instead of guesstimating hundreds of years in advance, imho.
I like the idea of sending along even more spaceships to go even further, but my thinking is to save cargo. Build new ships from the materials found on the new planet and go from there.
Nanobots or robots would be beneficial to such an expedition too - for maneuvering the ship on it’s way, and setting up the base on arrival. I like the cut of yer jib, ser.
Cloning is a good idea to make interstellar travel more attainable. Also, developing relativistic space drives could make faster-than-light more feasible.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSkxPghXTCg