Planetary evacuation

[Red Dwarf]

Okay, simple scenario. You have a refugee ship in orbit capable of holding 500,000 people. You have 500,000 people down on the ground. What's the best way to get them up there as quickly as possible?

[ZedNova]

Well, if we had to do it right now the US would have to use a trampoline.

[Superfluous J]

Rockets.

And 10 characters.

[No one]

Nukes.

Project Orion had problems, but it would have been effective. Also, if we're evacuating the planet then we probably wouldn't care about many of those problems.

[lajoswinkler]

Canons. You never said they need to reach the ship intact or alive.

[SargeRho]

Like this:

http://william-black.deviantart.com/art/Right-Before-394197608

Edited September 5, 2014 by SargeRho

[Camacha]

Just be aware that if you were able to rescue 200.000 people each day, you would only keep up with the growth of the population. The number of people alive today would still be stuck on Earth.

[Nibb31]

500 000 people isn't a planetary evacuation. It's a medium-sized-city evacuation.

In what scenario would we have something on orbit massive enough to contain habitation, life support, and supplies for 500000 people, while not having a way of transporting those people to orbit? Surely the effort of building something that huge surpasses the relatively insignificant technical problem of ferrying the people up there.

Also, in any scenario where we have the resources or technology to build such an ark, we would be better off digging thousands of self-sufficient underground shelters for a fraction of the effort, which could save orders of magnitude more people.

[-Velocity-]

Well, as long as we're talking sci-fi, why not just scan in their brains/minds/whatever and transmit the information to the ship. The ship can grow or build new bodies for the transferred minds and upload their consciousness to the new bodies when they are finished. Unfortunately, that still leaves the original instance of the person's consciousness stuck on the planet, but assuming that the information is copied perfectly, then there is no functional difference between the original and the copied minds.

That of course assumes that all information that makes up our consciousness and memories can be copied. The only thing that can't be copied in the universe is quantum information. However, quantum information can still be transferred to a remote location via quantum teleportation. So if the mind makes use of quantum effects to create consciousness (and current research suggests it does not) then minds could only be transferred (via quantum teleportation), not copied.

Edited September 8, 2014 by |Velocity|

[Fr8monkey]

2 words... Space Escalator.

[vger]

You need a ship, AND... more military power than you can imagine, to repel all the millions of people who didn't get picked.

[jwenting]

if you can build such a ship you have solved the problem of cheap transportation to orbit, so you just use the method you developed to build the ship...

But most likely the 500.000 people or more already living on orbit to build the ship would be the ones getting on the ship and blasting off, poking their noses at all the fools down below who funded it all for them.

[Darnok]

Ascension anyone?

Generation ship

I have sad news for you

In 2013, anthropologist Dr. Cameron Smith estimated a minimum viable population of 14,000 to 44,000, greatly exceeding previous estimates.

If anyone is going to do evacuation you and your familly probably won't have a ticket.

[-Velocity-]

Generation ships are silly and inefficient and will probably never be built. It's simply vastly more efficient to store organisms in data banks of some sort, and just grow them when you reach your destination. We have vast strides to make in biological technologies that will probably be completed well before we're ever ready to launch some gigantic spaceship on a 1000 year journey. When we have made those advancements, we'll be able to grow humans in vats or whatever the equivalent is.

You need at least 20,000 people for a colony? So what, that's just:

Human genome: ~3.2 billion base pairs

Four different base pairs -> each base pair represented by two bits

Eight bits in a byte-> each byte can hold four base pairs;

Storage capacity required for complete human genome = 3.2 billion / 4 = 800 MB

Storage capacity required for your entire colony's genome = 800 MB * 20,000 = 16 TB.

So you can store your entire colony's genome in a small, manageable amount of memory. (Obviously, you'd want to back that up with probably (at least!) triple redundancy for your 1000+ year voyage.)

The biggest challenge right now is assembling an arbitrary DNA molecule. We can't do that- not yet. But with the way biotech is advancing, and the huge amount of room it has to advance further, it seems fairly reasonable to suppose that a solution will be found eventually. It certainly seems more likely than some gigantic, battlestar galactica colony ship that costs 100 million billion billion dollars. Even if colony ships somehow become practical, if a vastly cheaper alternative is available that has the same effect, no one will build them anyway.

[Kryten]

If you produce an arbitrary DNA molecule, you've got an arbitrary DNA molecule; that doesn't help you very much. You can produce viruses in that manner because viruses are self-assembling, but cellular life is anything but.

[-Velocity-]

If you produce an arbitrary DNA molecule, you've got an arbitrary DNA molecule; that doesn't help you very much. You can produce viruses in that manner because viruses are self-assembling, but cellular life is anything but.

So what? You're fixating on a problem I am pretty sure we have ALREADY solved. You can take a frozen embryo- it probably doesn't even have to be from the exact same species as the one you intend to grow- thaw it out, remove the original DNA, and insert the DNA of the species you want to grow. Don't we already do this today? Regardless, compared to piece-by-piece molecular assembly of a DNA molecule, finding a cell to receive your assembled DNA is easy.

[Kryten]

We can exchange entire nuclei; there's a lot more in there than just pure DNA.

[-Velocity-]

We can exchange entire nuclei; there's a lot more in there than just pure DNA.

Regardless, compared to piece-by-piece molecular assembly of a DNA molecule, finding a cell to receive your assembled DNA is easy.

[Kryten]

'Assembled DNA' is a lot more than bases in the right order. To produce a viable embryo, you need properly modified histones associated with it.

[KerbMav]

Ascension anyone?

Is it any good?

[Seret]

It's simply vastly more efficient to store organisms in data banks of some sort, and just grow them when you reach your destination.

"Just"?

While I agree there are some huge bonuses to the concept, there are also some huge challenges. How do you grow them? Who raises these children? The infrastructure this would take looks a lot like a generation ship anyway.

[WestAir]

...That of course assumes that all information that makes up our consciousness and memories can be copied. ...

That's such a cop out method of transporting life. It's no different, in the end, from copying a person then shooting the original in the face. The original is dead - what does he care if his copy transverses great distances or not? He's gone. Consciousness, sentience, etc all. DEAD.

This whole "mind upload / make copies / etc" is nothing but murder once the original guy is disassembled. Murder isn't progress.