Re: starship-design: unmanned missions

[A West <andrew@hmm.u-net.com>]

At 20:23 10/02/98 -0600, you wrote:
>     I agree that manned missions would be dangerous, but I also believe
>that it would be necessary due to our current standings on improvisation
>and creativity compared to that of computers. 

"the capacity of a computer chip will double every year" Gordon Moore 1965

Since then, every year to 18 months, computer power has doubled.
If this trend continues, we will unimaginably powerful computers in 50
years time - maybe like comparing the on-board computers in the space
shuttle to the PC I am sending this mail with....
Never underestimate the potential computers have - soon they will reach the
sort of speeds you might need to write a program that can improvise and be
creative....

Andrew West