Re: Argosy Mission Overhaul

[Brian Mansur <bmansur@oc.edu>]

>From Brian,

>Brian
>Why worry about a dying drone when you have a
>million others to handle its job?  Fortunately, this system doesn't apply 
to
>human societies where we do bother to heal the sick.

>Tim
>The strength of us is that we are all different. Making us so different
>takes many years. When you would simply preprogram us, we would all make 
>the
>same mistakes and die out quickly. (This isn't a complete arguement, but I
>hope it makes you see that mass AI production may not be as nice as you
>think).

Brian
Who said that all AI's (if that is indeed what we end up needing for 
practical manned interstellar flight) are all of the same variant?

>Brian
>The Argosy design that I have in mind is, in fact, a maser driven sail
>attached to a ion rocket with a habitat that carries colonists and 
explorers
>to a starsystem already visited by Pathfinding/Pathmaking robots.  Those
>robots are assumed to have set up a maser system for decelerating the ship. 

> This solves what has always been our biggest problem, stopping.

>Tim
>Of course you still need to stop the robots (may be easier because their
>mass is smaller).

Brian
My point exactly.