[ExI] is a FTL drive a dream without any physics to back it up?

[Eugen Leitl]

On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 01:19:37PM +0100, Stefano Vaj wrote:

> What would be the point if we were to deliberately slow down our subjective
> time? If we object to those opposed to life-extension research that there

When you travel, you want to travel as light as possible.
You might want to save juice when cruising, and you certainly
can't take much company, particularly gods which count
in km^3 and more. There isn't much space on a ~kg payload.

> is no real reason why one should get more bored in a 1000 years lifespan
> than one does in a 80 years one, the same would apply to hyperfast
> "intelligence" emulation.

I think pioneers would travel as seeds, not as full organisms.
You'd probably have a baseline metabolism which does error
correction in transit, and radiation background will cause 
much bit rot.

> So, for interstellar travelling, a FTL one day's journey - lasting, say,
> 10,000 subjective years anyway to a superfast AI - would be neither less
> nor more boring for it than a relativistic 50 years' one.
> 
> If boredom was the problem we would indeed be better off by sending a few
> frozen monkeys...

If you can devitrify monkeys, you no longer have to send monkeys.