Re: starship-design: Suspended Animation

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

Kelly,
    Remote control of a "steady push" starship on a b-line and at constant distance in unimpeded space, 50 years from now, will be quite more simple - and sure - than present-day control of manuvering military aircraft at variable range in the atmosphere. Its going to be as easy as controlling a present-day VCR. Redundancy could assure against failures. Critical manuvers could count with a temporary human crew from the "main" ship. Tugboat "command" ships, or a travelling attachable "bridge-ship" might suffice.
    Active repair crews would be composed of dozens or hundreds of year 2040 model maintenance bots and AIs for each human. Life-support, accomodations and R&R requirements would be correspondingly lessened. They would also multiply the human crews response capacity  to emergencies. As in todays industries and stock brokers, expert systems and AI would allow the crew to "bring along" as earths best as consultants and managers.
    If asteroid mining spurs the development of automated mini-foundries, mini-refineries and mini-factories (or pre-processing plants) - and raw materials asteroids / comets are sent along with the ship / fleet - then the main foreseeable non-human obstructions to the mission will have been resolved.

Antonio


Kelly St wrote:

> In a message dated 5/9/98 10:53:41 AM, arocha@bsb.nutecnet.com.br wrote:
>
> >Kelly St wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >> In a message dated 5/6/98 5:31:42 AM, lparker@cacaphony.net wrote:
> >
> >>
> >
> >> >Antonio,
> >
> >> >
> >
> >> >
> >
> >> >
> >
> >> >Most of the crew requirement is at the other end. En route needs would
> >
> >> >
> >
> >> >actually be very small. In fact a bridge and engineering crew of twenty or
> >
> >> >
> >
> >> >thirty would probably suffice and they could be rotated.
> >
> >> >
> >
> >> >
> >
> >> >
> >
> >> >Lee
> >
> >>
> >
> >> To maintain a craft the size of a fleet of aircraft carriers?
> >
> >>
> >
> >> Kelly
> >
> >
> >
> >Hello Kelly,
> >
> >    If you have good AI and semi-autonomous maintenance robots, there is no
> reason
> >why not.
> >
> >    Check out present-day oil tankers. Those guys navigate with a *lot* of
> low-activity,
> >low-alert time on their hands. Of course, a watch on which nothing happens is
> usally
> >a good watch. There is no _technical_ reason why robot oil-tanker "convoys"
> could
> >not be launched today, with a full crew on one "main" tanker and token humans
> on
> >the other "slave" tankers.
> >    Guess that goes for aircraft, too. Since the pilot is only really
> necessary
> >for takeoff and landing, and since a runway can only land or launch one plane
> at
> >a time, computer autopilots today could do the flying and circling - and one
> "head-plane"
> >or "on-land" pilot could VR land or takeoff the planes.
> >
>
> Ships and aircraft normalls are pretty boring, but they need folk on hand to
> react to emergencies.  Current attempts at remote controled military aircraft
> are embarasing.  So embarsing that political backstabing is starting to be
> used to cancel bad press.  (Seems the best high tech jobs crash ever tenth
> flight.)
>
> Nieather of these needs to operate for years at a time.  That needs active
> repair crews, which are in your examples several times larger then the crew.
>
> >    Given another 50 years.....
> >
>
> >----
> >By the way, if metabolism is reduced, does that mean that cellular life-time
> would
> >be extended during "sleep"?
>
> Possibly, but given the unliklyhood of surviving prolonged comas....
>
> >Antonio
>
> Kelly