a. turchin. ark starship - too early or too late?

8/14/2019 A. Turchin. Ark Starship - too early or too late?

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Ark-starship too early or too late?

A. V. Turchin, Russian Transhumanist Movement

It is interesting to note that the technical possibility to send interstellar Ark

appeared in 1960th, and is based on the concept of "Blust-ship" of Ulam. This blast-

ship uses the energy of nuclear explosions to move forward. Detailed calculations

were carried out under the project "Orion".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion) In 1968 Dyson

published an article "Interstellar Transport", which shows the upper and lower

bounds of the projects. In conservative (ie not imply any technical achievements)

valuation it would cost 1 U.S. GDP (600 billion U.S. dollars at the time of writing) to

launch the spaceship with mass of 40 million tonnes (of which 5 million tons of

payload), and its time of flight to Alpha Centauri would be 1200 years. In a more

advanced version the price is 0.1 U.S. GDP, the flight time is 120 years and starting

weight 150 000 tons (of which 50 000 tons of payload). In principle, using a two-tier

scheme, more advanced thermonuclear bombs and reflectors the flying time to the

nearest star can reduce to 40 years.

Of course, the crew of the spaceship is doomed to extinction if they do not find a

habitable and fit for human planet in the nearest star system. Another option is that

it will colonize uninhabited planet. In 1980, R. Freitas proposed a lunar exploration

using self-replicating factory, the original weight of 100 tons, but to control that

requires artificial intelligence. Advanced Automation for Space Missions

http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/aasm/Artificial intelligence yet not exist, but the

management of such a factory could be implemented by people. The main question

is how much technology and equipment should be enough to throw at the moonlike

uninhabited planet, so that people could build on it completely self-sustaining andgrowing civilization. It is about creating something like inhabited von Neumann

probe. Modern self-sustaining state includes at least a few million people (like

Israel), with hundreds of tons of equipment on each person, mainly in the form of

houses, roads. Weight of machines is much smaller. This gives us the upper

boundary of the able to replicate human colony in the 1 billion tons. The lower

estimate is that there would be about 100 people, each of which accounts for

approximately 100 tons (mainly food and shelter), ie 10 000 tons of mass. A

realistic assessment should be somewhere in between, and probably in the tens of

millions of tons. All this under the assumption that no miraculous nanotechnology is

not yet open.

The advantage of a spaceship as Ark is that it is non-specific reaction to a host of

different threats with indeterminate probabilities. If you have some specific threat

(the asteroid, the epidemic), then there is better to spend money on its removal.

Thus, if such a decision in the 1960th years were taken, now such a ship could be

on the road.

But if we ignore the technical side of the issue, there are several trade-offs on

strategies for creating such a spaceship.

1. The sooner such a project is started, the lesser technically advanced it would be,

the lesser would be its chances of success and higher would be cost. But if it will be
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/aasm/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/aasm/


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initiated later, the greater would be chances that it will not be complete until global

catastrophe.

2. The later the project starts, the greater are the chance that it will take "diseases"

of mother civilization with it (e.g. ability to create dangerous viruses ).

3. The project to create a spaceship could lead to the development of technologies

that threaten civilization itself. Blast-ship used as fuel hundreds of thousands of

hydrogen bombs. Therefore, it can either be used as a weapon, or other party may

be afraid of it and respond. In addition, the spaceship can turn around and hit the

Earth, as star-hammer - or there maybe fear of it. During construction of the

spaceship could happen man-made accidents with enormous consequences, equal

as maximum to detonation of all bombs on board. If the project is implementing by

one of the countries in time of war, other countries could try to shoot down the

spaceship when it launched.

4. The spaceship is a means of protection against Doomsday machine as strategic

response in Khan style. Therefore, the creators of such a Doomsday machine canperceive the Ark as a threat to their power.

5. Should we implement a more expensive project, or a few cheaper projects?

6. Is it sufficient to limit the colonization to the Moon, Mars, Jupiter's moons or

objects in the Kuiper belt? At least it can be fallback position at which you can check

the technology of autonomous colonies.

7. The sooner the spaceship starts, the less we know about exoplanets. How far and

how fast the Ark should fly in order to be in relative safety?

8. Could the spaceship hide itself so that the Earth did not know where it is, and

should it do that? Should the spaceship communicate with Earth? Or there is a risk

of attack of a hostile AI in this case?

9. Would not the creation of such projects exacerbate the arms race or lead to

premature depletion of resources and other undesirable outcomes? Creating of pure

hydrogen bombs would simplify the creation of such a spaceship, or at least reduce

its costs. But at the same time it would increase global risks, because nuclear non-

proliferation will suffer complete failure.

10. Will the Earth in the future compete with its independent colonies or will thislead to Star Wars?

11. If the ship goes off slowly enough, is it possible to destroy it from Earth, by self-

propelling missile or with radiation beam?

12. Is this mission a real chance for survival of the mankind? Flown away are likely

to be killed, because the chance of success of the mission is no more than 10 per

cent. Remaining on the Earth may start to behave more risky, in logic: "Well, if we

have protection against global risks, now we can start risky experiments." As a

result of the project total probability of survival decreases.

13. What are the chances that its computer network of the Ark will download the

virus, if it will communicate with Earth? And if not, it will reduce the chances of


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success. It is possible competition for nearby stars, and faster machines would win

it. Eventually there are not many nearby stars at distance of about 5 light years -

Alpha Centauri, the Barnard star, and the competition can begin for them. It is also

possible the existence of dark lonely planets or large asteroids without host-stars.

Their density in the surrounding space should be 10 times greater than the density

of stars, but to find them is extremely difficult. Also if nearest stars have not any

planets or moons it would be a problem. Some stars, including Barnard, are inclinedto extreme stellar flares, which could kill the expedition.

14. The spaceship will not protect people from hostile AI that finds a way to catch

up. Also in case of war starships may be prestigious, and easily vulnerable targets -

unmanned rocket will always be faster than a spaceship. If arks are sent to several

nearby stars, it does not ensure their secrecy, as the destination will be known in

advance. Phase transition of the vacuum, the explosion of the Sun or Jupiter or

other extreme event can also destroy the spaceship. See e.g. A.Bolonkin Artificial

Explosion of Sun. AB-Criterion for Solar Detonation

http://www.scribd.com/doc/24541542/Artificial-Explosion-of-Sun-AB-Criterion-for-Solar-Detonation

15. However, the spaceship is too expensive protection from many other risks that

do not require such far removal. People could hide from almost any pandemic in the

well-isolated islands in the ocean. People can hide on the Moon from gray goo,

collision with asteroid, supervolcano, irreversible global warming. The ark-

spaceship will carry with it problems of genetic degradation, propensity for violence

and self-destruction, as well as problems associated with limited human outlook and

cognitive biases. Spaceship would only burden the problem of resource depletion,

as well as of wars and of the arms race. Thus, the set of global risks from which the

spaceship is the best protection, is quite narrow.

16. And most importantly: does it make sense now to begin this project? Anyway,

there is no time to finish it before become real new risks and new ways to create

spaceships using nanotech.

Of course it easy to envision nano and AI based Ark it would be small as grain of

sand, carry only one human egg or even DNA information, and could self-replicate.

The main problem with it is that it could be created only ARTER the most dangerous

period of human existence, which is the period just before Singularity.

2009.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/24541542/Artificial-Explosion-of-Sun-AB-Criterion-for-Solar-Detonationhttp://www.scribd.com/doc/24541542/Artificial-Explosion-of-Sun-AB-Criterion-for-Solar-Detonationhttp://www.scribd.com/doc/24541542/Artificial-Explosion-of-Sun-AB-Criterion-for-Solar-Detonationhttp://www.scribd.com/doc/24541542/Artificial-Explosion-of-Sun-AB-Criterion-for-Solar-Detonation

a. turchin. ark starship - too early or too late?

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