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Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition

projecthyperion.org

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Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition

#121

Post by os2warpman »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #115
os2warpman wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can build and maintain a system capable of sustaining the lives of 1,000 humans for 400 years, why do you care about interstellar travel anymore? “The indefatigable spirit of exploration” isn’t the answer. People, as a mass, only explore to find new resources due to scarcity. There are exceptions, but they tend to be thrill seekers or publicity hounds seeking to capitalize on a measure of fame upon their retur…

> People, as a mass, only explore to find new resources due to scarcity Empirically totally untrue as to be trivially disproven by like half of wealthy social media. > thrill seekers or publicity hounds seeking to capitalize on a measure of fame upon their return Everyone on these ships would be a celebrity on Earth. (Ideally, if they so chose.) Again, a simple reading of one-way trip settler-explorers across history…

> Empirically totally untrue as to be trivially disproven by like half of wealthy social media.

A week in Bali is not the same thing as interstellar travel…

Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition

#122

Post by sien »

WalterBright wrote: post #116

My design would be to send a nanobot builder. Then you could beam it instructions on what to build, based on what it finds at its destination. Sort of like sending a cell capable of life and creating more life. Aliens are always sending such probes here in scifi, so why don't we do it, too?

How would you power it?

Solar sail or nuclear?

How big would the payload be?

Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition

#124

Post by JumpCrisscross »

lerp-io wrote: post #123

space is for boomers, just fix earth.

To the extent this philosophy has merit, it’s in the societies that embrace it being virtually guaranteed to become poorer and thus, possibly, lower in population and energy and material intensity compared with their peers who keep technologically advancing.

Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition

#125

Post by JumpCrisscross »

os2warpman wrote: post #121
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People, as a mass, only explore to find new resources due to scarcity Empirically totally untrue as to be trivially disproven by like half of wealthy social media. > thrill seekers or publicity hounds seeking to capitalize on a measure of fame upon their return Everyone on these ships would be a celebrity on Earth. (Ideally, if they so chose.) Again, a simple reading of one-way trip settler-explorers across history…

> Empirically totally untrue as to be trivially disproven by like half of wealthy social media. A week in Bali is not the same thing as interstellar travel…

> A week in Bali

Are you genuinely unfamiliar with the folks who launch off on their own into the deep wilderness for years on end. Not only for vanity, but largely to do groundbreaking research?

Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition

#126

Post by Metacelsus »

Mistletoe wrote: post #61

What's the cost for getting all that to space? Is it still about $4,000/kg? What's a rough idea about how much Chrysalis would weigh? 2.4M tons it says. ~2.2B kg = $8.8 trillion dollars just for the launch costs alone? I also thought this was interesting from the 2nd place booklet. Did not know this. >The chance of a successful pregnancy in deep space without a geomagnetic field is essentially zero. >During mitosis a…

>During mitosis and meiosis, microtubules depend on a stable magnetic field to orient the mitotic spindle and ensure accurate chromosome segregation — processes critical for embryonic growth. A spacecraft lacking any magnetic field would halt human reproduction, dooming both the mission and the survival of the colony.

Speaking as a biologist that's not true.

Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition

#128

Post by qingcharles »

virgildotcodes wrote: post #12
codeulike wrote: post #2

Link to Canva presentation for the winning entry https://www.canva.com/design/DAGmr3ubC8E/LHHAeeAIGGQe_TkZVs-...

Reading through this in detail just cements that we are never leaving this solar system unless we discover some new physics to get around our speed limitations.

Adding to the issue that it is relative pointless (IMO) to send meat popsicles all that way when a robot can make the journey about a million times easier and just send us some postcards.

I hate to be a Debbie Downer, but it's kinda boring out there. We'd certainly not want to make the trek until the robots had scoured the galaxy looking for a fun place to visit. And by that time we'll all be living in some post-Singularity holodeck and won't give a hoot about some empty rock 600 light years away.

Send the bots. I'll watch the highlight reel from my pod.

Re: Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition

#130

Post by JumpCrisscross »

yincrash wrote: post #79
Aaargh20318 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Particles are indistinguishable, this means that the specific particles that make up a physical object (like a human) are not important, you could replace all of them with different particles, ship of Theseus style, and it would be the same object. What makes an object unique then is the specific configuration of the particles that make up that object. This configuration is a form of information. Fortunately, we alre…

There's a reason Star Trek teleporters have a "Heisenberg compensator", we cannot record both the position and momentum of a particle precisely. Scanning the "configuration of particles" to transmit to this theoretical printer is the first impossible roadblock. The human you scan can never be the same exact person printed.

To the extent what they’re suggesting isn’t bunk, it’s in being able to transmit genetic information and then print it to a womb. Then have a generation of psychopaths raised by a robot.
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