Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!ndcheg!uceng!dmocsny
From: dmocsny@uceng.UC.EDU (daniel mocsny)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: Space travel and the human spirit
Summary: It's going to be tight.
Message-ID: <682@uceng.UC.EDU>
Date: 11 Feb 89 18:23:33 GMT
References: <4246@drivax.DRI> <14484@cup.portal.com>
Distribution: usa
Organization: Univ. of Cincinnati, College of Engg.
Lines: 62

In article <14484@cup.portal.com>, hkhenson@cup.portal.com (H Keith Henson) writes:
> *I* (at 47) expect not only to go into space, but to
> travel to the stars.
> ...  Progress (much of it being made within 50 miles of where I live) in
> the fabrication of ever smaller computers parts will take only a few decades
> to reach the size scale where molecular repairs can be made to human cells.
> There is no reason those who make it to that time should *ever* have to die,
> and the same technology will reduce the cost of just about everthing to that
> of firewood (grow your own spaceship).

I hope you're right, because dying is not something I want to be
around for when it happens. But I think the race against the clock is
going to be tight for most of us. At 47 years can expect anywhere from
2-4 decades of further existence if you avoid accidents, homicide, and
disease.  Will that be enough time? No doubt our
information-processing and nano-fabrication technologies are moving
forward, but cellular repair on the scale you envision is an
exceedingly complex problem. In the past four decades our computers
have improved by six orders of magnitude in terms of raw processing
power available from a given input of material and energy.

Assuming this progress can continue, we will have another million-fold
improvement in next four decades. Will that be enough? Keep in mind
that our ability to fully exploit computer hardware lags
significantly, by perhaps a decade or two. The human genome has a raw
information content of ca. 1 GB. Significant advances in software must
occur before we can develop algorithms that can meaningfully work this
kind of information, irrespective of how much processing power is
available. Our progress in software has been arithmetic, not
exponential.  Many commercial packages are still written in assembler.
Finally, unless geneticists make real progress, they don't expect to
be able to map the human genome, let alone fiddle with it
comprehensively, for several decades.

Don't get me wrong, I believe that what you say will eventually
happen. Immortality, recreational space travel, and unimaginable
personal wealth should follow naturally from mature
information-processing capability. But within 2--3 decades? 
I'm not sure we could make the necessary cultural adjustments that
quickly, even if the technology became feasible (i.e., what is to
stop such tools from becoming forces for destruction?). Even now,
we cannot seem to organize society to take full advantage of the
present potential of computers.

Finally, what little I know of the thermodynamics of irreversible
processes leads me to the hunch that immortality will be much easier
to confer on the young than on the old. Diseases are always far
simpler to cure when caught early. Aging is probably a profound
example of this. I could see genetically-engineered aging-resistant
children in the next 3 decades. But to fix someone with massive
cellular damage already in place?

(My apologies to reader who feel this subject is straying from space.
I feel that the impact of information technologies on the eventual
privatization of space will be profound.)

Cheers,

Dan Mocsny
dmocsny@uceng.uc.edu

"Prophecy is difficult, especially with respect to the future."