Re: starship-design: unmanned missions

[Lindberg <lindberg@olywa.net>]

Steve VanDevender wrote: 
> If an AI could control the ship well enough to reduce the amount
> of human work needed to operate the starship's basic systems,
> thereby reducing the number of human crew and the required life
> support equipment and supplies, it would be well worth it.
> 
> An effective AI could also operate a slow interstellar ship that
> travels at low or sub-relativistic speeds, such that the travel
> time would be longer than a human lifetime, where the human crew
> would spend most of their travel time in suspended animation.
-------------------
Steve, (dropping AI now)
 sounds like a neat idea. honesty requires that i confess my ignorance
of suspended animation, except what i've picked up at the movies. May i
ask how sus anim would work, or alternately, if you feel that human sus
anim has any kind of future at all.  I do know that some people are
being frozen immediately post-mortem, but my dad (who is a doctor) says
that this behavior is in the same class as 'crystal healing' etc. On the
other hand, certain other vertibrates (some kinds of frogs, i think) do
this naturally.  I can't yet judge. Please edify me.
-Nels Lindberg