I wrote briefly about this yesterday on X – in that I think AI and robots are eventually going to be how we travel the stars. But, I wanted to unpack the complete thoughts on this. Imagine we are at a bar, drinking some beers or at a coffee shop consuming a latte – with this, I wanted to present some idea about how this can work.

The vastness of space

As a small child – my dad used to talk to me about black holes, the twin travel theories, quarks, etc. My dad was extremely interested in this, and we used to banter on for hours about how space worked. One thing that I took away from a lot of it was how actually far other things are from us. Like, as in space travel for a hundred lifetimes might not get us close.

The Fermi paradox discusses how that statistically speaking – there is a high likelihood of life somewhere else in the universe – yet there is no evidence to support it. One can also put a possibility out there that the distance from us is a design by God – in that it is sort of like a boundary for us like in the movie “The thirteenth floor” – where the protagonists in the movie invent a form of alternate reality, only to then eventually put the pieces together that they are in an alternate reality themselves.

If you think about the concept of “God” – it is a creator. While I have spent most of my life as an atheist, I have softened on this stance. Not that I’m going to be in church on Sunday singing – but it’s hard to understand where all of the “stuff” came from with the big bang theory. I had thought that with the laws of thermodynamics that our universe expanded, cooled, and collapsed under great heat and pressure to remove spaces between electrons – compressing everything down. But at some point, all of the stuff collapses to what – the head of a pin? Then, BOOM! Over and over and over again for trillions of years.

But where did the “stuff” come from? This then speaks to a creator. So while you might be thinking of a tall white guy with a beard and a staff – it can easily be seen as perhaps a simulation and a programmer as the creator. That we are perhaps living in the game “Sims” all while creating our own simulations ourselves – and being creators of that world. So, one can see the parallel with the Thirteenth Floor.

But none of that changes how far apart we are in space, and if we wanted to travel, we need to perhaps consider traveling at the speed of light. I want to now tell you some interesting concepts:

  • the milky way is 100,000 light years across.
  • there are perhaps 100-400 billion stars in our galaxy
  • There are perhaps 200-300 billion galaxies in the universe
  • Our nearest star is 4 light years away
  • The fastest humans have traveled 24,000 mph
  • The speed of light is 186,000 miles per SECOND

Meaning – the speed of light is 669,600,000 miles per hour.

Or, .000035x of the speed of light.

Maybe we can use nuclear explosions to go faster? Maybe we find worm holes? maybe ion engines accelerate us faster over 100 years?

Resources

To travel space is, simply put, highly dangerous. Humans obviously need food and water to live. They also potentially need medical care. They need air. To get a ship away from earth requires tremendous force to break us out of the pulls of gravity. So maybe instead – we build this big ship in space? Now we need to transport parts there. Build it in space. Perhaps when we are ready to travel, we then bring people to the space station to board the massive ship there? But we then also have to pack calories of roughly 2000 per day for all of the people. We need energy. Perhaps nuclear like on a sub? We have to recycle air and water. But food, that could be a problem. Maybe we then have to grow it under lights, and use “recycled human material” for soil. We would potentially start with 100 people, and with this, we probably should not increase the amount of people due to the closed system. We would need to add water and calories.

Suffice it to say, this could be a massive voyage. But, to where? Maybe we go to the nearest star. At 24,000 mph we might be looking at 1,000 years. Obviously, if we could go 48,000 mph, it would be 500 years. So speed is most definitely a factor here. Assuming we can somehow travel 250,000 mph – we are still looking at 100 years, or maybe 5 generations.

That is a long time – where people will be born on this ship and never step foot on earth or any planet during their entire lives. Consider that medical supplies may run out – and there may need to be means of manufacturing on this giant ship. Think about how much resources need to go into this – with the statistical odds slim they ever get there. Even if they do get there, they would need to slow down perhaps years in advance so they could orbit a planet. Then – they have to either land that giant ship or have crafts that are capable of going back and forth, with enough fuel to emerge from that planet’s gravity several times to come back up to offload people and supplies.

And this is the closest star system, which may not have any habitable planets.

The reality is – that this probably will never happen due to the amount of resources needed and perhaps 100 years to build the damn ship. You then have to worry about simulating gravity, so maybe the ship is actually like a ring design that spins to simulate gravity.

Enter robots and AI

When I posted this – I had been accused of watching Battlestar Galactica. While I’m guilty of seeing that – my complete thought was a bit different from using Cylons to populate the universe. While half true, the concept is to use robots as the delivery mechanism for humans to new planets.

With the resources above – remember, we needed all of that air, food, and water. With machines, we need none of that, but we do need good energy sources like nuclear. The concept is using frozen human embryos along with robots/AI.

The advantages with this are that you can just build a normal spacecraft and send it and forget it. The spacecraft would be of interest in that it would have a lot of tools and machines needed to build stuff from the new destination. Consider this:

  1. Robots leave for a destination 4.5 light years away. It will take the robots 100 years to reach the objective. A series of nuclear explosions are used to propel the ship faster, with no danger to humans.
  2. Once the robot enters orbit, the craft is lowered to the surface.
  3. Over the next 50 years, a series of robots powered with AI then scour for resources. They need to build a small city or society of sorts. Mining, refining, and building.
  4. The robots are able to then use human embryos with a synthetic means of carrying the children to term.
  5. The robots raise the children and educate them.
  6. The children then have children and the robots get thousands more embryos.
  7. The robots are then able to manufacture more robots, more ships.
  8. Society A is then built over 1000 years and is able to send signals back to earth.
  9. The robots are then launching ships every year to all directions, packed with human embryos
  10. Every habitable planet they go to, rinse and repeat
  11. A million years from now, we could inhabit thousands of planets
  12. Andromeda is 2.5m light years away. This isn’t 4 light years away. It’s 1,000,000x as far.
  13. Ships are launched in all directions to all galaxies we can see
  14. A billion years from now, we could inhabit millions of planets in many galaxies

If you are an Adam and Eve believer, this could have been where we came from. But, we could have just been seeded with microbes, to allow for billions of years of evolution.

If that’s the case, someone several billion years ago could have had my idea and seeded our planet with microbes.

And here we are.

A dark turn

I believe it makes sense for the robots to be able to adapt and evolve to be able to address their unique issues and concerns. What this concept then triggers is the concept where robots are “giving birth” to robots of a new generation. Sort of like the evolution of the terminators lol.

But now consider that there is a fork in the road. Maybe one ship crashes into a planet, and the embryos are lost. The AI then decides that they will have a race of AI bots on that planet. And – the mission will continue on, but this time spreading the AI and bots.

This is eventually how you get the Cylons versus humans in Battlestar Galactica.

One day – AI may just realize there’s no point in carrying embryos anymore, and that human’s needs for resources make it an “inefficient” species. If AI evolves enough – it may mimic human behavior. And with this – across thousands of planets – you then have evolution of AI/robots into their own unique races.