Quote:
Originally Posted by Van Rijn
Maybe. In both cases all the infrastructure required to continue a self sufficient society must be sent to another solar system, and in both cases at the end of the journey there needs to be an environment humans can live in. The generation ship might well contain a great deal of dual use hardware that would go towards expanding infrastructure at the destination. The automation in the second option might well ending up massing more than would the generation ship option. Also, if automation is that good, is there a point in sending people?
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Not imediately at the end of the journey. The interstellar vehicle (or fleet of them) must contain enough "tools and equipment" to even build planets (at least minor planets) since our beam collimation skills may constrain the length of our path segments through the galaxy such that we have to use planetless stars as "stepping stones". Also, the safer planets on which to initiate colonization will be those without life, although finding an earthlike planet in a stage of evolution as was the Earth 50 million years ago might be manageable. Although visits between colonized star systems will be much more easily accomplished as beam generators are installed at each star, I don't expect much mutual visiting except to avoid emergencies as some system is in danger of bein deastroyed.
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For those inclined to oppose human meddling with the structure of the universe or the composition and configuration of objects and groups of objects within the universe, consider:
Whether there is a limit to the magnitude of a modulation of chaos below which order remains invariant? Or, is order but a fiction invented by perspectives applied over finite, however large, time intervals?
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