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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.
