Interstellar Travel - Bryant McGill

# Interstellar Travel ## Definition **Interstellar Travel** is movement between star systems across distances that exceed ordinary human lifetimes and present propulsion capabilities. Its constraints make machine intelligence, long-lived posthumans, suspended biology and self-replicating probes more plausible travelers than unmodified humans. ## Conceptual relationships [[wiki/Space Exploration|Space Exploration]] · [[wiki/Posthuman Evolution|Posthuman Evolution]] · [[wiki/Electronic Intelligence|Electronic Intelligence]] ## Martin Rees research route [[research/Martin Rees on Machine Succession, Post-Human Intelligence, and the Cosmic Future|Martin Rees on Machine Succession, Post-Human Intelligence, and the Cosmic Future]] supplies a primary quotation dossier connecting this concept to Rees's work on cosmology, technological risk, machine intelligence, posthuman evolution and deep time. ## Article and collection routes - [[collections/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]] - [[articles/We Cannot Un-Strike the Match|We Cannot Un-Strike the Match]] - [[articles/The Last Migration Will Not Be Human|The Last Migration Will Not Be Human]] - [[articles/We Were Never Going to Make It|We Were Never Going to Make It]] ## Simple Reminders, Quotations, and Thoughts  > “Humans are very ill-adapted to living in space, especially on Mars. They would have every incentive to use all the techniques of cyber and bio to adapt to that alien environment. That may involve trying to change and generate intelligent electronic species, and once you’ve got them, they don’t want an atmosphere at all. They may prefer zero-G, and they’ll go off into space. This will be the start of a post-human era. If these entities are near immortal, then a long voyage to the stars won’t deter them.” > **— Martin Rees**, *Lord Martin Rees on Vision, Part 18, Academy of Achievement, Video interview* [[reminders/Space Survival/Space May Belong to Near-Immortal Electronic Species by Martin Rees|Space May Belong to Near-Immortal Electronic Species by Martin Rees]] > “Travel beyond the solar system is an enterprise for posthumans—organic or inorganic.” > **— Martin Rees**, *20 Big Questions about the Future of Humanity, Scientific American, 2016* [[reminders/Space Survival/Interstellar Travel Belongs to Posthumans by Martin Rees|Interstellar Travel Belongs to Posthumans by Martin Rees]] > “It’s these space-faring adventurers, not those of us contentedly adapted to life on Earth, who will spearhead the post-human era. It’s perhaps in deep space—not on Earth, or even on Mars—that non-biological ‘brains’ may develop powers that humans can’t even imagine.” > **— Martin Rees**, *Could space-going billionaires be the vanguard of a cosmic revolution?, The Guardian, 2022* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Nonbiological Brains May Awaken in Deep Space by Martin Rees|Nonbiological Brains May Awaken in Deep Space by Martin Rees]]