When will we be able to send frozen embryos to other star systems to colonize habitable extrasolar planets?

i can not make a prediction, since we have not found any habitable planets we could send them to.
then we would have to solve the problems of who is going to raise the seedlings once they come out of the incubators, and how you are going to feed them.
In essence, you can only start growing them once the ship has arrived at the planet, and they have to be raised on the surface of a probably inhospitable planet.Which means you need androids with Artificial Intelligence, as well as enough raw materials to start an initial colony.

@ragingloli – Yes, but when can we expect findings of habitable exoplanets? Certainly before 2060, right?

I can’t make a prediction of that. We do not know how probable it is that any given planet in our galaxy is supportive of life, let alone habitable for humans. assuming a constant speed in exoplanetary research, we would need an estimated probability that an observed planet is habitable to make a prediction on when we will have the first match.
And even then there is the possibility that the found planet(s) are out of range of anything we could build at that time. And it is not just that the ship has to last long, but also its propulsion system, onboard computer system, embryo storage facilities, maintanance androids and fuel must last long enough for the trip. Since space is not empty, a ship without propulsion will invariably come to a halt eventually. And if the ship runs on windows, it will probably break down in the middle of the trip.

Does your thinking include why and whether you would want to send some embryos and robots to a distant solar system? I’m curious about that. I can imagine a lot of different results – in fact, I’ve been designing a game about it on and off for a long time.

I’m sure determined humans could do this, but why they would want to and what the actual result would be, I’m not so sure of. It sounds more difficult to me to know that we would be sending them someplace they could sustain life, and that they’d have what they need to do so.

Also seems like a harder problem to me to survive our current selves. We’re killing our own planet here and in denial about it.

I am not buying into the predictions of people who speculate about computer intelligence and a “singularity” – it seems to me the theory is missing a lot of understanding about what the effects of computational power and information are – kind of like people who thought the first computers might just be sentient for some reason. That’s a different topic though.

I think the main advances humans could focus on for their survival and travel plans would involve peace, self-understanding, ecosystems, sustainable world ecology, very different economic systems, sustainable safe green energy (I still like the idea of clean fusion), and only after all of that, propulsion, life support, finding other interesting places to go, etc. And we’ve still got many planets to explore in this solar system. We could even hear back from the explorers in less than a decade, instead of hundreds or thousands of years.

This question makes me wonder how a colonization would work out. Is our goal just to inhabit another planet with humans or is it to create a network?
I wonder how much the distance would factor in, and how much the colonials would rebel. (because if they’re human embryos, they will, to some point)

I guess what I’m asking is, to what expectations are we shipping these embryos for??

If so, they would certainly have a culture all their own.

It will happen we the human race learns how to not be so destrutive. As of right now we are a virus that can’t even come together to save our own planet as it withers away. We don’t need to look to other supporting planets to inhabit, we should fix this one. That being said, there will MOST likely be a huge company that bribes the government in some form or another just to gain publicity and fame. If that does happen, I hope for a massive failure…. Or the colony surpasses us, and enslaves the earth. Imagination…its crazy isn’t it!

This would make a very intriguing sci-fi novel, and I for one would be fascinated to read it, although as a writer, I would never take on such a daunting task as this.

Can you imagine just how different those people would be from us? They would be raised by AI, which would have shortcomings of actual human parents, some good, some not so good. It boggles my mind to imagine what sort of society this future form of travel and human development would create.

@ragingloli – Do you expect computers build around 2060 to run on windows operating systems?

@Zaku – Why? Because humans are explorers. Stephen Hawking once said: it’s spaceflight or extinction. I also have great doubts about the singularity. The hardware might be available in 30 years, but the software? The androids in my scenario don’t have to be smarter than humans. Human imagination required for interstellar travel will spark many great ideas helping humanity on Earth develop in a sustainable way.

@noelasun – Yes, the humans developing from the frozen embryo will very likely rebel. I thought about this a great deal in my scenario. But the androids can be prepared to deal with the rebellion and offer guidance. Our expectation? Develop the capability to colonized the galaxy. As for spaceflight or extinction, I’d support the first option.

@laureth – Agreed. How would it differ? I think democracy won’t work during the first decades of the colony.

@AtSeDaEsEpPoAoSnA – Why not fix Earth and at the time use human imagination to improve space travel capabilities?

@evelyns_pet_zebra – There is a sci-fi novel exploring the scenario. The more we understand the human brain the better the AI programs to be used by the androids will become. All parents have certain shortcomings and the androids would be no exception. Human kids can handle these shortcomings up to a point. In my opinion this society in the distant future would be very interested in their roots. They would look in at the night sky spotting a yellow dwarf (the home star of their ancestors) and wonder how it all began. We can send along a huge history database. Maybe we should leave out how to build nuclear bombs. But they might figure it out eventually. So I guess we also need an ethics database. The androids could be the first spiritual leaders.

Yes, I think it’s possible. The why, though – you say because humans are explorers… which I get, but what would be doing the exploring? Embryos. So you launch these ships out into the cosmos, then you probably die of old age. And if you don’t die of old age, what happens is all these separate humans, if you managed to give them the ability to survive, start new existences out of communication with you for hundreds of years, and then you hear what they decide to communicate to you – you’re creating eventual neighbors, rather than exploring. What if some of them get pathological?

@Zaku – The exploring would be done by the androids and the humans raised by the androids.

Ok. What I meant to illustrate was what occurs to me about the proposal, which to me seems like if I were the person with the yearn to explore, that yearning wouldn’t be very well addressed by sending robots and embryos out on a mission that wouldn’t reach their destination until i was long gone, and that, it seems to me, even when it did arrive, would be exploring for and by itself, and then developing a whole separate identity.