Long term preservation in space?

[DevoutCatalyst]

Travel to Mars, do you mean humans? AI robots will replace humans in space. Astronauts will be unemployable and will have to learn to farm and grow endive or something*.

Humans will go to space for the reasons that always seem to be forgotten. Curiosity, and because it's there. No, there's absolutely no compelling reasons for humans to do so, but since when has that stopped any human from doing things that are pointless?

Sounds about right. I think we'll attempt to go to Mars and back and hopefully without much harm to the astronauts. I don't see us repeating that if AI robotics develop in a way that will accomplish far more than fragile humans could ever. It's still human exploration of space when we use machines in place of warm bodies. Most of us wouldn't want to dig the foundation of a skyscraper with hand shovels when we have machinery that does it far better and without needlessly degrading individual human life. I cannot foresee starships a la Star Trek with humans aboard in their present biological configuration ever.

PS: My tax dollars paid for this,

[Shibboleth]

Even at very cold temperatures I think that things would still change. It would be crazy slow but I would think that the petroleum in the rubber coatings of wires would separate and they would start to dry rot and crack. Same with fluid in the human bodies. It would take a very very long time with anything above absolute zero but stuff would move in the bodies and the bodies would break down. Cohesion, adhesion, and capillary movement would still function in zero gravity.

[arthwollipot]

Sounds about right. I think we'll attempt to go to Mars and back and hopefully without much harm to the astronauts...

I don't think there's much chance of that. Space is dangerous, and people have already died doing it. It hasn't stopped us.

...I cannot foresee starships a la Star Trek with humans aboard in their present biological configuration ever.

Well that's because Star Trek starships don't function according to the laws of physics as we know them.

[CarbShark]

Sounds about right. I think we'll attempt to go to Mars and back and hopefully without much harm to the astronauts...

I don't think there's much chance of that. Space is dangerous, and people have already died doing it. It hasn't stopped us.

...I cannot foresee starships a la Star Trek with humans aboard in their present biological configuration ever.

Well that's because Star Trek starships don't function according to the laws of physics as we know them.

More Europeans died discovering and exploring the New World in the 15th and 16th century than have died in the exploration of space in the 20th and 21st centuries.

[Shibboleth]

I think that our future is in nano technology where things auto repair, the space ship, the human bodies, etc.

[daniel1948]

Sounds about right. I think we'll attempt to go to Mars and back and hopefully without much harm to the astronauts...

I don't think there's much chance of that. Space is dangerous, and people have already died doing it. It hasn't stopped us.

...I cannot foresee starships a la Star Trek with humans aboard in their present biological configuration ever.

Well that's because Star Trek starships don't function according to the laws of physics as we know them.

More Europeans died discovering and exploring the New World in the 15th and 16th century than have died in the exploration of space in the 20th and 21st centuries.

It was a LOT less expensive to send a person to sea than it is to put a person into space. And during the age of exploration, the people paying the bills didn't give a rat's ass about the lives of sailors. It was common, when a ship was no longer seaworthy, to insure it to the hilt and send it off with a captain and crew to drown. Cost is the real obstacle to space colonization. Making it just safe enough is obscenely expensive.

I think that our future is in nano technology where things auto repair, the space ship, the human bodies, etc.

Auto-repairing nanotechnology is sci-fi. Nanotechnology auto-repairing people is fantasy. The future is ever-more expensive technology, employing ever-more-sophisticated techniques, available to the ultra-wealthy, while simple medical procedures and medicines become less and less available to the poor.

[arthwollipot]

Cost is the real obstacle to space colonization. Making it just safe enough is obscenely expensive.

Which is why it is being done by billionaires, who aren't constrained by normal human emotions.

[daniel1948]

Cost is the real obstacle to space colonization. Making it just safe enough is obscenely expensive.

Which is why it is being done by billionaires, who aren't constrained by normal human emotions.

Nobody is doing space colonization. Bezos is trying to start a space tourism business for billionaires, sub-orbital and eventually LEO, and Musk is running a for-profit business taking people and supplies to and from the ISS. Musk talks about colonizing Mars, but what he really wants is for the government to pay him to transport supplies and people. He'll invest his own money in building the capacity, but that's with a view to selling transport services. He won't finance a colony. He expects to make his investment back.

[CarbShark]

Cost is the real obstacle to space colonization. Making it just safe enough is obscenely expensive.

Which is why it is being done by billionaires, who aren't constrained by normal human emotions.

Nobody is doing space colonization. Bezos is trying to start a space tourism business for billionaires, sub-orbital and eventually LEO, and Musk is running a for-profit business taking people and supplies to and from the ISS. Musk talks about colonizing Mars, but what he really wants is for the government to pay him to transport supplies and people. He'll invest his own money in building the capacity, but that's with a view to selling transport services. He won't finance a colony. He expects to make his investment back.

I think he expected to make money on Twitter too

[daniel1948]

Cost is the real obstacle to space colonization. Making it just safe enough is obscenely expensive.

Which is why it is being done by billionaires, who aren't constrained by normal human emotions.

Nobody is doing space colonization. Bezos is trying to start a space tourism business for billionaires, sub-orbital and eventually LEO, and Musk is running a for-profit business taking people and supplies to and from the ISS. Musk talks about colonizing Mars, but what he really wants is for the government to pay him to transport supplies and people. He'll invest his own money in building the capacity, but that's with a view to selling transport services. He won't finance a colony. He expects to make his investment back.

I think he expected to make money on Twitter too

My point isn't that his scheme will succeed. My point is that he's not going to fund a Mars colony. He's promoting a Mars colony in the hopes that he can sell rocket transportation.

[Shibboleth]

Auto-repairing nanotechnology is sci-fi. Nanotechnology auto-repairing people is fantasy. The future is ever-more expensive technology, employing ever-more-sophisticated techniques, available to the ultra-wealthy, while simple medical procedures and medicines become less and less available to the poor.

My body is auto repairing nano technology. Creating something that will eventually do the same as my body only better can happen. Yes, there is a cost/benefit analysis to everything. I would say that extending people's lives too much is a bad idea due to over-population but I really think that in the next 50 years we will start to see a population crash.

AI and virtual reality will remove the need for many to find relationships and marry. I love my wife and she is my eternal companion but marriage is hard. Having an AI wife that is designed for me would have been very appealing in my youth.

[daniel1948]

Auto-repairing nanotechnology is sci-fi. Nanotechnology auto-repairing people is fantasy. The future is ever-more expensive technology, employing ever-more-sophisticated techniques, available to the ultra-wealthy, while simple medical procedures and medicines become less and less available to the poor.

My body is auto repairing nano technology. Creating something that will eventually do the same as my body only better can happen. Yes, there is a cost/benefit analysis to everything. I would say that extending people's lives too much is a bad idea due to over-population but I really think that in the next 50 years we will start to see a population crash.

AI and virtual reality will remove the need for many to find relationships and marry. I love my wife and she is my eternal companion but marriage is hard. Having an AI wife that is designed for me would have been very appealing in my youth.

The human body is not nano-technology. It is biology. Through biology we have cured many diseases, eliminated a few (or at least one), developed drugs that improve and prolong life, etc. If that's what you mean by nano-technology you are using the word differently than it's normally used.

A lot of people compensate for the lack of a companion with various artificial means, from social media to chat bots to sex dolls. A realistic humanoid sex doll that can carry on any sort of intellectual interaction is unlikely to ever exist, and certainly will not exist within the next hundred years, by which time resource depletion or climate change or global war will have put an end to our technological civilization and nobody will have the means to build a rubber blow-up sex doll, much less a realistic talking one.

Of course, anybody who can afford an automobile can buy a RealDoll (tm) today.