Re: starship-design: Suspended Animation

[Antonio C T Rocha <arocha@bsb.nutecnet.com.br>]

Stephen Harley wrote:

> --
> stephen.harley@dial.pipex.com
> http://ds.dial.pipex.com/s.harley/

Neat.

> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Subject: Re: starship-design: Suspended Animation
> Date: Sun, 03 May 1998 22:58:21 +0000
> From: Stephen Harley <stephen.harley@dial.pipex.com>
> To: Antonio C T Rocha <arocha@bsb.nutecnet.com.br>
> References: <000201bd67ed$17212480$cd4431cc@destin.gulfnet.com.gulfnet.com>
>      <19980428.193945.6326.3.jon_jay1@juno.com> <19980430.174506.8718.1.jon_jay1@juno.com> <354BE5BC.666F6892@bsb.nutecnet.com.br>
>
> (.........)
> ... But as Kelly keeps pointing out if something goes wrong your going to want as many people avalible to help out. It's no good if you've only got 10% crew awake and something goes wrong and you have to wait a week for the resident specialists to wake up.

It might not have to be that way.
Automation can effectively multiply human capacity. That is what technology is really for.
Within 50 years AI and robotics ought to permit at least semi-autonomous capacity in hydroponics, piloting, systems maintenance, biology and medicine.
I imagine that AI databases and robots will surely be able to handle nearly all foreseeable procedures alone. Maybe engineering problem-solving AI will also be quite developed by then.
Thus, in emergencies requiring human intervention, it will allow for 10 people do do the work of 100 or 1000.
This, plus redundancy in waking-crew, supplies and "equipment" ought to be enough to allow the crew to fulfill their objectives.

In other words. Within 50 years most of the resident specialists will possibly be in AI. That, plus the multiplying effect of semi-autonomous robots, ought to give a "skeleton" crew enough leeway in an emergency to solve the problem or keep it at bay until "great humans" are effectively awakened to tackle it. Perfect safety is inviable. It suffices for the chances of survival to be "good enough". (That means it would suffice for me).

> (.......)
> --
> stephen.harley@dial.pipex.com
> http://ds.dial.pipex.com/s.harley/