Dr hartleby
A very imaginative piece.one in a milion.We should come to the reality that our planet is a spaceship,whose immense capabilities we ignore as i put in the essay LIVING IN THE SHADOWS OF THE SUN: REALITIES, PERILS ESCAPADES MAN, PLANET AND KARDASHEV SCALE.MAKING THE GREAT TRANSITION by Michael muteru here, http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/2101.to rate/review.Thanks All the best
John,
Great essay, a pleasant and inspiring read. Underrated, but a little less so in a moment. Thank you and well done.
However I feel Oscar Wilde may well have referred the the theoretical 'rut' as much as the 'gutter' we're in. If we're ever to escape Earth I've suggested we need to escape Earth-bound thinking. I hope you'll like my own essay showing the way to achieve that and your own vision; convergence of disparate and incoherent physics.
Best wishes.
Peter
John,
You have an idea, a rather complete plan, and a catchy phrase to hang on it -- Starship Culture. These are ingredients for success in our culture.
I like your germ of starship development and then the culture to sustain it, while you pose the difficulties of sustained space travel. Your cheerleading for the idea at the end is also the championing we need, much like Kennedy's pledge to get us to the Moon.
High marks for your plan and your challenge to get us in the right direction.
My essay speaks of "Looking beyond" scientific orthodoxy and "within" the mind, which Einstein compares to the universe. I call it the neural universe.
Jim
Dear Mr John Hartley
Earth is overpopulated and in the course of time we should go also to the universe. The problem is that our population growth so fast that it is a question if the migration into the space will happen fast enough.
Preparation for space migration demands also preparation for space problems also on earth. For instance, it can be built up one self-sustained building inside of desert or even below the water. The energy for such a building should came from the sun or from other alternative sources of energy. Sun power stations are progressing too slowly. We need a robots for such self-sustainability and they are also progressing too slowly. Additionally, the first pioneers in the space should be robots. The should build up buildings and all equipment. They should also extract metals from soil of planets or from comets.
This should be also a huge project, so we should to sustain clean earth as long as possible that travel in to space can wait a little. One condition for clean earth as long as possible are also electric cars. Their fast introduction can be also one exercise for space travel.
For solutions of space travel we will need also strong artificial intelligence, much stronger than human brains. For introduction of it we need also know, what consciousness is and whether it is a quantum phenomenon. In the last year it was firmly confirmed that photosynthesis is a quantum phenomenon. If one biological phenomenon is quantum one, it is possible that all biological phenomena are quantum ones. If we want to know, what is consciousness, we need to know what matter is in its essence. Thus we need also theory of everything (TOE), before strong artificial intelligence will be developed. TOE will maybe tell us about sense of our existence. Besides, maybe TOE will help to solve some technical problems.
Best regards
Janko Kokosar
