I agree with you that humans in their current form will forever be earth-bound. But it’s not because of a lack of funding or initiative. It’s because it would be absolute insanity to consider exporting humans off the planet. The example I like is, suppose elephants were sentient, and coexisted on the planet with humans. Equal intelligence. Would it make sense to develop rockets to lift elephants into space, when humans are so much lighter? Of course not, go with the humans. So then, why lift humans into space when robots are so much lighter?
Intelligent, conscious entities, children of humans, will almost certainly spread out into space. But the human form is so ridiculously wasteful compared to a human consciousness operating in a robotic machine that it will never make sense to expend the effort required to spread humans around.
Freeman Dyson brings up this very issue, his approach was the Astrochicken. But I don’t think even he really got how it will all play out.
Arthur C Clarke did, I think. The human form is just a stepping stone. The story doesn’t end there.
Which Arthur C Clarke novel(s) are you referring to? Even in 3001, he depicts humans colonizing the solar system, so I’m guessing it’s not the Space Odyssey series.
The first explorers of Earth had long since come to the limits of flesh and blood; as soon as their machines were better than their bodies, it was time to move. First their brains, and then their thoughts alone, they transferred into shining new homes of metal and of plastic.
In these, they roamed among the stars. They no longer built spaceships. They were spaceships.
But the age of the Machine-entities swiftly passed. In their ceaseless experimenting, they had learned to store knowledge in the structure of space itself, and to preserve their thoughts for eternity in frozen lattices of light. They could become creatures of radiation, free at last from the tyranny of matter.
Into pure energy, therefore, they presently transformed themselves; and on a thousand worlds, the empty shells they had discarded twitched for a while in a mindless dance of death, then crumbled into rust.
I agree with you that humans in their current form will forever be earth-bound. But it’s not because of a lack of funding or initiative. It’s because it would be absolute insanity to consider exporting humans off the planet. The example I like is, suppose elephants were sentient, and coexisted on the planet with humans. Equal intelligence. Would it make sense to develop rockets to lift elephants into space, when humans are so much lighter? Of course not, go with the humans. So then, why lift humans into space when robots are so much lighter?
Intelligent, conscious entities, children of humans, will almost certainly spread out into space. But the human form is so ridiculously wasteful compared to a human consciousness operating in a robotic machine that it will never make sense to expend the effort required to spread humans around.
Freeman Dyson brings up this very issue, his approach was the Astrochicken. But I don’t think even he really got how it will all play out.
Arthur C Clarke did, I think. The human form is just a stepping stone. The story doesn’t end there.
Which Arthur C Clarke novel(s) are you referring to? Even in 3001, he depicts humans colonizing the solar system, so I’m guessing it’s not the Space Odyssey series.
2001 - A Space Odyssey:
The first explorers of Earth had long since come to the limits of flesh and blood; as soon as their machines were better than their bodies, it was time to move. First their brains, and then their thoughts alone, they transferred into shining new homes of metal and of plastic.
In these, they roamed among the stars. They no longer built spaceships. They were spaceships.
But the age of the Machine-entities swiftly passed. In their ceaseless experimenting, they had learned to store knowledge in the structure of space itself, and to preserve their thoughts for eternity in frozen lattices of light. They could become creatures of radiation, free at last from the tyranny of matter.
Into pure energy, therefore, they presently transformed themselves; and on a thousand worlds, the empty shells they had discarded twitched for a while in a mindless dance of death, then crumbled into rust.
--Galaxy Express 999