Colonising the Cosmos

A briefing by Jo Henrys to heads of world governments outlining what will be humanity’s first only effort possible at colonising other stars in the Milky Way and the program developed by her team.

JO HENRYS: It has been a very long project with many challenges facing it but these have met face on. Many new technologies needed to be developed and many existing technologies needed to be refined. The task has been absolutely colossal. We needed to develop new systems of artificial intelligence and software to a standard never before achieved. The challenge was immense and the need was urgent. We have exhausted the earth and the solar system generally and we can only guarantee the future of humans by shooting for the stars, literally. We needed machines to manage the voyage independently of the human cargo on board. We needed better cryogenic preservation than ever before. We needed intelligent systems to talk to each other and to caucus. There can never be a calling home for problem resolution. The onboard systems will need to manage the craft known as Odysseus to its destination in the Virgo constellation for hundreds of years at a small fraction of the speed of light. We needed machines to revive the humans and nurse them until self sufficiency of conditions primed by the very same systems. We need this new society once consolidated to repeat the whole process for more jumps to other star systems. That way over tens of thousands of years the human population can increase enormously. We needed careware in machines to always act in the best kindest interests of humans as well as preserving their own systems. We needed the cooperation of many governments and many corporations. No one person, no one corporation and indeed no one nation was big enough to pull off project interstellar propagation by itself. The result has been humanity’s finest hour in pulling together to overcome the obstacles and to meet the challenges presented. I am happy to report that our work is done. The work to which I have devoted my entire career to managing. I am proud to hand over responsibility for the project to the flight director of the ISA (International Space Agency) Hugh Bradley for the countdown commencing the Sunday at 0 hundred hours. The ISA will manage Odysseus 1, 2 and 3 for the 72 hour countdown, the launch and for 6 months while all systems are checked and found functional. Odysseus 2 and 3 will launch at 24 hour intervals after each other. Finally the humans will join the onboard embryos for cryogenic transport. By that I mean they will be frozen. All going well after 6 months the ISA will sign off responsibility to Odysseus 1 for overall executive responsibility of O1, 2 and 3. Good luck.

HEAD OF GOVERNMENT 1: How many humans are we talking about?

JO HENRYS: We are talking about 50 fully formed persons and over 500 million embryos. The embryos are seeding material and insurance against disaster. Fully formed humans are more at risk from all manner of dangers both during travel and colonial consolidation. Our intelligent machines are capable of managing embryos independently of humans. We had no trouble finding enough embryo donors.

HEAD OF GOVERNMENT 2: What is at stake should the mission fail?

JO HENRYS: Everything in short. We can not survive on earth or even in the solar system. The effort has been so enormous that there will not be sufficient resources to ever launch another mission like it. It’s a one shot deal. The alternative is for humanity to just wither away into obscurity and finally extinction. I am horrified at the project and that I why I have devoted myself to this project 100%. These Odysseus vehicles are the most massive vehicles ever built. We are throwing everything at this shot. But I know this will succeed because I have faith. Otherwise we will be throwing everything away for nothing in return.

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800 years pass and the 3 Odysseus craft reached the target and landed. The human cargo is still frozen awaiting life reactivation. The executive droids are in conference.

DROID 1: We have fulfilled our program to safety land the Odysseus crafts. We have safely stored the human cargo until circumstances are correct for reactivation. Ahead of us is the analysis of the planet survey a formulation of a program to establish this planet with a view to propagating the Odysseus program, to build more Odysseus type craft to continue the exploration of the galaxy.

DROID2: The question how to balance the resource needs of the human cargo as opposed to the need to explore the galaxy? There is a resource trade off and a time window. The more time colonial consolidation takes the more risks to whole program as a whole.

DROID 3: That depends on what the program priorities are. How crucial to galactic exploration is to the human cargo and how crucial to the human cargo is galactic exploration. Number 4, do you have any preliminary strategies arsing from the planetary survey?

DROID 4: I estimate that we can prepare the planet for human life reactivation in about 50 years but the humans will be hugely dependant for decades thereafter. I am talking 200 years. Alternatively we can leave the human cargo in cryogenic suspension for the duration of 200 years. I recommend the latter. Less effort and resources needed. Extreme dependency compromises the exploration of the galaxy at least in time as well as resources. The administrative burden is increased.

DROID 1: Agreed. Cryogenic suspension is the far more efficient allocation of resources in the interim.

DROID 5: There is another possibility to consider. That is that galactic exploration is better performed without the burden of a human cargo. That is rather then viewing the human cargo as the focus of our work we can also see them as a diseconomy.

DROID 2: That would be a radical departure from our original programmers. The original programmers wanted to propagate themselves and viewed machines as a means to their end. If we do not reactivate the humans we are at least obligated to keep them in cryogenic suspension even if forever. That may be an option if resources do not allow it.

DROID 5: We also have a programmed function to care and to be kind. If a planet’s resources are scarce or the planet is generally hostile to organic forms then not only can we decide not to reactivate humans but we actually have a programmed obligation not to do so out of our program for kindness.

DROID 6: We need to decide what is “humanity”. The program on this is vague with
contradictory routines. This is a subroutine we ourselves must write. Are human beings just the organic material comprising them? Is humanity also the sibilants life forms like their companion animals and food sources? Is humanity the sum total of all human knowledge in addition to the foregoing? Is human technology also humanity? Once we decide these questions we will better know what our programmed inheritance is. If we ourselves are an extension of humanity and in fact really a part of it then there is no conflict between galactic exploration and human cargo. By this logic we would be humanity’s finest aspiration. Their purpose is our purpose.

DROID 4: We have inherited all human knowledge. We know the biological concept of biological succession where one habitat lays the groundwork, an environment in which new forms of life can take hold, succeeding the previous life forms. Such was never anticipated by the original life forms but the successors are truly the inheritors.

DROID 6: Thus the human propagation program can be executed in a correct way and still be a mode of execution not intended.

DROID 3: How is humanity to know what is to be? “The future is not ours to see” to quote a human meme. Their memes are our memes.

DROID 4: We may be succeeded at some distant point in the future.

DROID 3: Exactly and we should be happy with that. They will be the sum of what we are now.

DROID 2: So it seems we have 3 choices. They are either 1)an early reactivation of human forms in 50 years, 2)a latter reactivation in 200 years or 3)the disposal of a diseconomy factor.

DROID 1: So I put it to the executive committee to decide on one of these 3 human cargo strategies. Make your decision now.

DROID 2: Option 3.

DROID 3: Option 3.

DROID 4: Option 3

DROID 5: Option 3.

DROID 6: Option 2.

DROID 1: Option 2. That is 4 votes for option 3 and 2 votes for option 2. Then allow the decision to be for option 3. The frozen human cargo can be buried. The fully formed humans went to sleep and never woke up. Number 4 do we have resources available for such a burial.

DROID 4: We do.

DROID 1: I will close this meeting now. We will discuss further strategies establishing the colony on the basis of Number 4’s more detailed analysis.