[ExI] Billions of Interstellar Planets

[Dan]

On Friday, September 30, 2011 12:13 PM David Lubkin <lubkin at unreasonable.com>> wrote: 
> Eugen replied:
> 
>> If you're solid state, self-healing, fully static and relativistic,
>> time and space is of no essence. In fact longer hops will be better
>> for the cruise duty cycle, and will assert you're keeping ahead of
>> the joneses.
> 
> I am not at present solid state, etc. Given what we know, I am more
> confident of my personal prospects for an indefinitely long lifespan
> from repairing and augmenting my current form than from migration
> to a different substrate.
> 
> Repair in situ is essentially a modest improvement on nature.
> Solid state sentient life is conjecture, as is migration from meat to
> chips, as is a CELSS sufficient for an interstellar journey.
> 
> As a cautious man, I like having the option of getting to another
> star system with (more or less) my current body, long-established
> propulsion and vehicle, and never being more than a short hop
> from an outpost of civilization.

Regarding CELSS, interstellar planets or ice worlds and such would allow a weaker form of this because one could use the bodies as resources, heat sinks, and the like. E.g., if your habitat is near or in an ice world, you might not have to worry about miniscule losses of volatiles for thousands of years as you might effectively be able to get more of these from the ice world rather than trying to recover them at ultra-high efficiency.
 
Also, regarding current biological bodies, I'm sure many would opt to migrate to and across space were the technology available to do so now rather than wait around for migration to solid state. Even were we close to the latter, if the former existed now, I still think many would opt for it anyhow. Yes, some here would disagree with that choice, but I still think many would make it.
 
Regards,
 
Dan