http://www.lifeboat.com

"With the survival of the human race at stake, we have to be successful.

Mathematician, computer scientist, and prophetic SF writer Vernor Vinge foresees a time when many intertwined technological revolutions will exponentially combine to cause scientific advancement to rapidly increase, achieving as much advancement per day as is typically achieved per year. He has dubbed this phenomenon the Singularity and believes it will happen around 2020"

I read one of that guy's books a while ago, A Fire Upon The Deep. Rather groovy, a bit of fun.

If that's the case then I can't wait to be around when it happens. The website seems pretty cool, but the whole idea seems kind of useless. Has any one organization saved a failing society, as ours is?

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"Mercy is a chimera. It can be defeated by the stomach rumbling its hunger, by the throat crying its thirst. You must always be hungry and thirsty."

--Dune

The Sublunar Harem

Science grows as a punctuated equilibrium -- there are long-standing plateaus in which no adavancement occurs, separated by quick upheavels in which advancement occurs almost overnight. Science has progressed this way since the time of Aristotle.

What gives this guy the justification for the belief that scientific advancement will buck all of its previous trends and instead become "exponential?"

- Warren

Well advancement has been accelerating, hasn't it? We're doing more and more all the time. It might be too positive a viewpoint, but maybe at least one worth consideration.

__________________
"Mercy is a chimera. It can be defeated by the stomach rumbling its hunger, by the throat crying its thirst. You must always be hungry and thirsty."

--Dune

The Sublunar Harem

Better safe than sorry.

I wonder if you could get a mobile space colony that can behave similar to a living thing? Hook on to an asteroid, extract material, and then grow a "bud" similar to the way a freshwater hydra does. Later the new colony could break off from its parant.

I have been thinking about this possibility for years, and am currently (half-jokingly) planning an organization called COG, or Counsel of Geniuses. I'm planning on somehow getting a hold of a rocket and taking a couple hundred intelligent, capable people to survive nuclear holocaust, comet impact, etc... Send me a PM if ya wanna join. hehe

(these are not actual product claims and the validity of this is questionable. Restrictions apply. Results may vary. Do not attempt to use this post as a flotation device. Not copyright Dylan, Inc.)

Do you have to be a geinius (iq of >200) or can you just have an above average inteligence.

quote:

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Originally posted by chroot
What gives this guy the justification for the belief that scientific advancement will buck all of its previous trends and instead become "exponential?"

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you just have to be of above average intelligence, or have some special unique ability that could help the colony: computer scientist, farming engineer. it's pretty much if you come to sciforums.com for fun, i'll probably consider you in.

What i'd like to know is how these space colonies plan on supporting themselves. How will they get food and oxygen ?

For food and oxygen probably there'd be small farms. water, it seems would be another problem--asteroid mining or mars ice cap?

I thought I might design an orbiting colony, but I designed an intersteller starship first...

Starship Generations

Cant it be both? A starship and a colony... all a starship is is a colony with an engine strapped on one end.

Anyway you want to get your colony into orbit around something (mabe not earth) so why not have it fly itself there. The engine can later pop off and fly itself back.

Modular design perhaps? What do you think?

How would a ship of that magnitude be able to make it out of the earths atmosphere ? It would require alot of thrust to defeat gravity.

It would be assembled in orbit from thousands upon thousands of components. The components would be launched individually using a Skyhook, read Topic #9, Starship Generations .

I think that people with average or below average intelligence still feel and can be good people even if they don't understand things as well as the geniuses. Me? According to the net test I took I'm slightly above average, ever so slightly, for a teenager.

It disapointed me. I had such a wonderful superiority complex going...

__________________
"Mercy is a chimera. It can be defeated by the stomach rumbling its hunger, by the throat crying its thirst. You must always be hungry and thirsty."

--Dune

The Sublunar Harem

Life goes on. You know even back in the days of Columbus, when mankind's domain was thought to be even smaller and more finite, people still did their thing. This fascinates me.

It's an astonishing fact.

You're definitely right Pollux--I'm including people who are of average intelligence also--everyone can help the COG colony. Intelligence is just a perk.

Is it a space ship for exploring outer space and finding another home planet for humanity

or

a stationary space station for surviving the next asteroid impact on earth ?