Hi Board

[Raoul] To colonize the galaxy will take far too long for us, humans.

Well no one ever thought they'd do it in person!

[Raoul] I'm sure we'll need successors of another kind to spread our memories, our cultures, our humankind all over the universe.

Yeah. Our descendents!

[Raoul]Humans only last less than a century and are built for the 1G gravity of our planet, breathing the air of our planet. If we want to leave our planet, there are many worlds within our solar system, but none are suitable to our kind of life. Closed ecological systems can exist, but with a huge emphasis in control, safety, closed environment, and thus severely restricted freedom.

Maybe. But Mars doesn't seem so nasty that it can't be made a new home for us. If we can thicken the atmosphere then all we'll need to live outdoors is an oxygen mask and a woolly jumper.

[Raoul] Colonize other star systems? Here, already, the distances are completely incompatible with our human limitations.

Maybe. But there's no harm in trying.

[Raoul]The solution would be to commit mankind's future to another kind of "consciousness". There might be a great reluctance towards this, but I'm pretty sure anyway that mankind will become extinct long before our Sun becomes a threat.

Why assume that they won't be us? If work towards uploading into more suitable media then they'll be human by any reasonable definition of the term that is not body biased.

[Raoul]And let's suppose we do have a successor for whom a world with oxygen, 1G, water is not less hostile than a totally airless asteroid or even vacuum.
Why colonize anything, in that case?

To see what we can see. But once we escape death and the need to reproduce we'll need something new to focus on, such as that big wide Universe out there.

[To colonize a place means to live there and use the benefits found on the spot.
If our successors can go anywhere and feel no less at home there than here, they won't need to colonize!
Raoul ]

They won't need physical inputs? I doubt that. Thinking beings need energy to think and they'll need new experiences. Hence they'll want to expand out in to the Galaxy. Maybe not as an exponential "technoplague" but nonetheless they will go

Adam