Is it Possible to Live Forever throughout Space?
Is it possible to live forever throughout space? Our future space program will include exponential increases in unique cosmologic data. This massive influx of accelerating intelligence, in a short time will expand the capabilities of humanities space program. The United States has drastically changed its strategy of exploring and utilizing space in the last few years. NASA has shifted its plans from sending humans back to the moon to sending rockets with robots to Mars and the asteroid belt, and then following that up with manned trips to Mars and the asteroid belt. DARPA and NASA have started a space program to research ways to travel to the stars called the 100 Year Starship™ Initiative. There are other plans that may supersede these forward thinking quests. Humanities comfortability, adaptability, and demand for computer brain interfaces, cybernetic limbs, and bionic organs will rapidly evolve our world into a species (culture) of cybernetic humans. Companies have been created so that we will have the ability to record our memories and then upload our memories and identities into robots, machines, and virtual entities creating a robotic human species. As these diverse bio, nano, robo, and virtual stages evolve, living forever in space becomes more and more practical. This will also factor into what type of environments we will need when leaving earth.
Jason Dunn explains why we have not colonized space (earth’s gravity well) and his revelation at Singularity University about payload, 3D printing, and free unlimited complexity that his new company Made in Space is now putting into play.
Our space program is becoming an industry, based on private companies and small groups of entrepreneurs with ideas of their own, helping humanity think outside of the box. The Ansari Xprize successfully inspired many individuals from around the world as it challenged the world powers and succeeded. The challenge was to build and launch a spacecraft capable of carrying three people 100 kilometers above the earth's surface, twice within two weeks. From this challenge many people have started companies based in space. Paul Allen is building a jet that will carry rockets into low orbit making it less expensive and dangerous than traditional liftoff. Peter Diamandis has announced the creation of Planetary Resources a company to mine minerals and water on asteroids and along the way mass produce telescopes, fly-by telescopes for near earth asteroids, swarms of data acquiring artificially intelligent robotic vehicles to study distant asteroids, and of course asteroid mining space craft. Multiple companies are creating trips into space for the consumer. Virgin Galactic will be the first private company that offers trips into low orbit in 2012. Excalibur Almaz is offering a service for serious space explorers to go to the moon and beyond. The Google Lunar X PRIZE has 26 teams competing to safely land a robot on the surface of the Moon, have that robot travel 500 meters over the lunar surface, and send video, images and data back to the Earth by 2015.
Is it possible to live forever in space? Living forever will be helped by the space program as we spread ourselves beyond our solar system into deep space and other galaxies. Our ability to experience and interact with extreme properties of physical laws will give many new facts of nature’s extremes and create practical tools in other areas of space. When cosmic catastrophic events occur and destroy entire solar systems, our distribution into other planetary systems and galaxies will help keep our future species alive and evolving. The space program will give humans and our newly created synthetic life forms vast domains for research and development.
