A colony ship's crew

[Broomstick]

There's plenty of people in cold climates who are not in tune with them and just compensate with technology. In fact it's probably most of them, beyond things like heightened resistance to local disease and lighter skin color to allow for better use of sunlight to produce important vitamins: the rest is knowledge that comes from living in such a climate since you were a child, and knowledge like "how to dress in order not to get sick during Polish winter" is not necessrily translatable to "how to survive living in alien permafrost for years", anyways.

There are multiple ways of coping. In Europe, skin color might have lightened in response to needing vitamin D, but in North American the Inuit/First Nation people didn't get paler because their diets supplied the vitamin D they needed. Instead, the North American peoples developed shorter limbs in comparison to their torsos, whereas the Old World arctic people did not.

Likewise, the high altitude people of Tibet show different physical adaptions than the high altitude peoples of the South American Andes, even though both peoples show differences from the rest of humanity.

It's not just a matter of choosing the "best" tribe, as it were, it's a matter of having access to as much genetic diversity as possible. It's conceivable that people might colonize a planet so harsh they need every cold weather or high altitude or hot weather or desert adaption humanity has ever come up with, and that's going to mean people who are a mix of ethnicities.

[Broomstick]

What? I thought the cameras were disabled for reasons of power conversation. Also, it's not like there's much to photograph in near interstellar space, the power is being used for instruments that actually produce data.

From NASA Voyager FAQ website: camera was turned off to save power, but is kept that way because system that was supposed to decode images doesn't exist anymore. And anyway, my point was about obsolescence of formats. How many people today would be able to read Laserdisc? MiniDisc? ZIP?

Not a whole lot, but there are people who offer their services doing just that, converting old files to updated formats.

I wonder if the image decoding system was allowed to disappear because the camera had been turned off, and if it was still operational maybe they would have kept that system functional.

And yet... we still have people using the plain text format. I think for quite a few things we'll have minimum formats that computers of the future will continue to understand.

*shrug* I never objected to that. In fact, by the thing I alluded to be blocked by trying to send single music file for a week I meant text communication. Still, what can you send by it? A short novelette between more important messages?

I've downloaded very large books in *.txt format from Project Gutenberg - because they have less extraneous features plain text files transmit rapidly. Even if the size of "extra" messages is limited to "short novelette" you can send larger works as a serial.

One thing that space programs, remote outposts, and the like have discovered is that psychological health is as import as physical health. People can endure some very unnatural situations provided they are given the proper support. On a very long space voyage providing "frills" such as new novels or music or whatever might well be seen as vital to the health and function of the crew.

This trend will not continue indefinitely.

That might be, but to get to a barrier stopping growth in compitung power we would need to hit at once barriers in physics (hardware), mathematics (software) and economy (cost). Also, system loaded on a ship would need to be lightweight, take little space, energy and be resistant to errors. This alone might make latest consumer formats from Earth less viable.

So they don't have the latest formats, so what? I have trouble imaging that, in a project as large and as expensive as interstellar colonization that they wouldn't come up with a work-around for that.

Funny, though, various agencies have been studying this problem even during our time period. This is not an insurmountable problem.

And yet, after 60 years of trying we have little to show for it except for a string of completely debunked models trying to predict various aspects, much less whole

It's just as important to know what doesn't work as what does.

It's not determined how much being "accustomed" to climate is a matter of genetics vs. adaption available to all humans. There have been some dark skinned people of tropical descent who have done quite well in the arctic, one example being Matthew Henson. Rather than trying to determine an exact profile of what humanity needs on a distant world it would be easier just to send a wide variety of traits.

But he had access to all survival gear he could get easily with himself. The question to planner of such starship would be - do we pack extra supplies that might easily add hundreds of millions to ship's launch, or do we try to pick people with genetic advantages that would need less of them?

Use of technology is one of the hallmarks of humanity. There are no humans without technology, and much of that technology has always concerned survival.

But you don't have to take every conceivable piece of equipment with you, what you need is the knowledge, how to make such technology. Knowledge occupies very little physical space and has very little weight.

What you do is take BOTH things - both the genes and the knowledge.

Yeah, but the technology in this case costs energy to get to orbit, then to another world, and can run out. Even simple vitamin supplements would need to last colonists how long before they can turn their attention from manufacturing of vital colony components to starting less essential chemical production?

Why do you need to take every conceivable supplement with you? Take what you need to make the supplement. For something like vitamin D that might be as simple as having some of the lighting in the ship put out UV. You have to light the ship anyway, right?

Plus, the problem might not be simple skin colour controversy. You want to promote diversity among the colonists? The most diverse genetic code is found in Africans. The more north/south you go, the less diverse DNA. Should we exclude people of say Inuit and Aborigine descent on the grounds their ancestors were a small group with not enough diversity among them?

Just because sub-Saharan Africa is the most genetically diverse group of humanity doesn't mean the diversity from the rest of the world is valueless. If you going for maximum diversity you'll include the Inuit along with the Khoi-San.

[PeZook]

It's not just a matter of choosing the "best" tribe, as it were, it's a matter of having access to as much genetic diversity as possible. It's conceivable that people might colonize a planet so harsh they need every cold weather or high altitude or hot weather or desert adaption humanity has ever come up with, and that's going to mean people who are a mix of ethnicities.

Are these differences at all significant for a technological colony? If the target planet is so much of an edge case that it's a question of either having fat folds beneath the eyes or dying, I think setting up in space would become the better option

After all, we're talking antimatter torch engines or similarly exotic drive technology ; One would think technology would have improved so much by the time we get those that these evolutionary adaptations would become even less relevant than today - certainly it would be more important to have a proper gene pool and technical expertise, than to have the best possible environmental fit? Esp. since an alien planet is going to be an alien planet, and virtually guaranteed to need novel technological solutions, and posessing of challenges that no biological adaptations evolved on Earth could handle.

IOW, rejecting a psychologically stable supergenius engineer because he's black and the target planet is kinda chilly sounds rather ridiculous. But what about Vitamin-D production?!

Well, it's make from effin' SHEEP WOOL, and in the future we might be able to just use genetically engineered bacteria or fungi to do it.

Use of technology is one of the hallmarks of humanity. There are no humans without technology, and much of that technology has always concerned survival.

Also, it's an alien planet. You will haveto overpack anyways because it's either "spend 200 billion dollars more on the ship", or "lose the entire 20 trillion when the expedition fails because they lacked sufficient means of producing XYZ fabric".

Kind of like Soyuz astronauts who pack guns and MREs and blankets and other survival gear just in case they overshoot the steppes of Kazakhstan by a few hundred miles and have to fight off fucking bears while waiting for rescue: that's a non-insignificant payload for a small ship like the Soyuz, but losing three cosmo/astronauts would be so much worse.

[Broomstick]

It's not just a matter of choosing the "best" tribe, as it were, it's a matter of having access to as much genetic diversity as possible. It's conceivable that people might colonize a planet so harsh they need every cold weather or high altitude or hot weather or desert adaption humanity has ever come up with, and that's going to mean people who are a mix of ethnicities.

Are these differences at all significant for a technological colony? If the target planet is so much of an edge case that it's a question of either having fat folds beneath the eyes or dying, I think setting up in space would become the better option

After all, we're talking antimatter torch engines or similarly exotic drive technology ; One would think technology would have improved so much by the time we get those that these evolutionary adaptations would become even less relevant than today - certainly it would be more important to have a proper gene pool and technical expertise, than to have the best possible environmental fit? Esp. since an alien planet is going to be an alien planet, and virtually guaranteed to need novel technological solutions, and posessing of challenges that no biological adaptations evolved on Earth could handle.

Humans survive in Earth climates they don't have biological adaption for all the time - we're tropical apes that have colonized to the poles, and underneath the furs that's true of the Inuit as much as the Masai. The technology is essential, but the genetic adaptions can give an edge in marginal survival situations. It's not just appearance - on an alien colony those who utilize their food more efficiently are going to have an advantage over colonists without that adaption if something happens to the food production.

IOW, rejecting a psychologically stable supergenius engineer because he's black and the target planet is kinda chilly sounds rather ridiculous. But what about Vitamin-D production?!

I'm the one arguing for maximal genetic diversity. While a black skin might be a disadvantage on a planet with little UV light we need his "supergenius" genes (whatever those are). Bring all the variations you can and let time sort out what works best. You'll find exceptional individuals where you "shouldn't" - Europeans, for example, capable of summiting Everest without supplemental oxygen and able to tolerate high altitude better than many Tibetans. Those guys won the genetic lottery in a sense. If you're going to a planet with a thinner atmosphere you'll want to capture both the thin air tolerance genes and the "genius" genes, and neither of those are locked into a single ethnic group. Now do the same for every desirable trait you can imagine. You can't take a billion people to a new planet, but you can take a diverse group then add in eggs and sperm in cold storage for even more diversity. Maybe you'll have a system where people are expected to produce X children of their own plus Y from cold storage gametes. Of course, you will get instances of infertility and you'll get those who produce 2X and 2Y of kids. What's important is that the average birthrate is sufficient to grow your colony.

I expect initially there will be greater losses than after a couple generations as the colonists learn about some hazards the hard way.

Also, it's an alien planet. You will haveto overpack anyways because it's either "spend 200 billion dollars more on the ship", or "lose the entire 20 trillion when the expedition fails because they lacked sufficient means of producing XYZ fabric".

Exactly.

[Zaune]

Another thing I'd like to point out is that the massive escalation we're seeing today in computer hardware, data storage density, and constant progressive obsolescence of file formats... that's not a permanent part of the human condition. It's something very much present in our lives, which span the transition from paper-dominated information storage in 1980 to cloud-dominated storage in 2020, and Moore's Law applying with a vengeance.

The experience of interstellar colonists in the year 2100 might be quite different. By that point, they may well already have "good enough" computer hardware, such that backwards compatibility actually becomes more important than steadily updating the software to take advantage of new capabilities of the hardware.

I reckon we're not far off that point now, actually. Only a few specialist applications (high-traffic servers, some scientific applications, Dwarf Fortress) ever really push a modern system to its limits; if I were setting up a smallish business today I wouldn't plan to replace the company's computers en masse for about seven years.

[Irbis]

And yet... we still have people using the plain text format. I think for quite a few things we'll have minimum formats that computers of the future will continue to understand.

Actually, I thought on this a bit and have to retract my previous agreement - even simple text files produced today can be very well impossible to read on older systems. You see, things saved today are likely to use UTF-8 or and other UTF variant; That would be overly luxurious in times of ISO/IEC 8859 encoding or earlier ASCII that packed data much more densely. This works both ways, too - old systems understood things like Codepage/Win-1250 but since Microsoft abandoned it less and less programs are compatible.

And this is considering English encodings only. National encodings change and mutate even faster, being abandoned all the time (who remembers what LATIN and Mazovia were even in my home country?) - this is partially the reason why UTF was developed. So, yes, text file from 1993 sent to 2013 has a big chance of being not understood, and vice versa.

I reckon we're not far off that point now, actually. Only a few specialist applications (high-traffic servers, some scientific applications, Dwarf Fortress) ever really push a modern system to its limits; if I were setting up a smallish business today I wouldn't plan to replace the company's computers en masse for about seven years.

One of these applications happens to be entertainment, be it games or high quality movies, which is what we were discussing. And as long as something similar to capitalist exists, there will be push to put new, 'improved' (regardless of it being really improved or not) product on market next year. Even if computing power remains relatively level, assuming that communication between frozen system and latest one 10-20 years forward will be possible is folly IMHO.

[Broomstick]

And yet... we still have people using the plain text format. I think for quite a few things we'll have minimum formats that computers of the future will continue to understand.

Actually, I thought on this a bit and have to retract my previous agreement - even simple text files produced today can be very well impossible to read on older systems. You see, things saved today are likely to use UTF-8 or and other UTF variant; That would be overly luxurious in times of ISO/IEC 8859 encoding or earlier ASCII that packed data much more densely. This works both ways, too - old systems understood things like Codepage/Win-1250 but since Microsoft abandoned it less and less programs are compatible.

And this is considering English encodings only. National encodings change and mutate even faster, being abandoned all the time (who remembers what LATIN and Mazovia were even in my home country?) - this is partially the reason why UTF was developed. So, yes, text file from 1993 sent to 2013 has a big chance of being not understood, and vice versa.

Actually, by "plain text" I did, in fact, mean the old ASCII. As a matter of fact, I do have text files dating all the way back to not only 1993 but as early as 1986 and my current system has exactly zero problems reading them (well, as long as they've been copied to a compatible media, but I did copy files from large floppies to small floppies to hard drives over the years). Likewise, I still have an old Pocket PC Jornada from the 1990's and it can read modern files saved into a *.txt format. Before I got my Kindle I used to routinely download books in plain text from Project Gutenberg and load them onto the Jornada prior to taking a trip, as an early form of e-reader. That was as recently as two years ago. Of course, by saving a new file to plain text/ASCII you do lose a lot of formatting but if what you're conveying is text-based data that's not really a problem as far as conveying information goes.

This back-compatibility problem is not as great as you seem to think.

[Forgothrax]

I would imagine there would have to be some preparation necessary for "down-teching" such a colony. Unless universal assemblers and sapient AI become a thing by 2100, any colony ship sent is going to have to devolve to a lower "technology level" so to speak while new personnel are reared and trained and infrastructure is built that can produce more complex technologies. It could easily take decades to centuries for a colony ship to return to late 20th-century technology, let alone the technology of 2100.

[PeZook]

Irbis, you keep comparing an interstellar mission to Voyager, but this is fallacious. Voyager's mission support was planned to last for 12 years, and its extension was incidental and unplanned ; For an interstellar colonization mission, it will be planned for however long it takes for the ship to reach its destination/communication to become completely impossible due to distance.

Whoever launches a ship like that can just stockpile contemporary computers and spare parts for them (really, a rather trivial cost compared to the overall costs of the mission) and preserve knowledge of relevant data formats to make conversion possible for a long, long time. That is assuming, of course, that manufacturing technology won't improve tot he point of making it possible to just produce short series of old computer designs on demand for a modest cost. In fact, such technology is likely to be developed specifically for this mission!

[SMJB]

As to the genetic thing--exactly how much space does it take to store ten million frozen ova or so? Even assuming that certain groups are better-adapted to the new environment and we somehow have a clear enough picture of planetary conditions which groups these are (how, exactly?--all our observations are taken from lightyears away!), is it really not worth upping the payload to a hundred million ova in order to avoid the controversy of selecting like that?