Today we took a walk up to Fuertes and listened to a talk by Jack O’Malley-James. He talked at a high level about some techniques used for searching habitable planets and such. It made me think of a thought experiment during the talk. I figured it might be worth sharing in this post.

Here’s a thought experiment:

You haven’t been born yet, but you have two choices. You can be born and live a normal life, like you are living now. Or you can be born into a special program where you train for a mission to deep space. Here’s the mission. Let’s say there’s a new piece of technology that allows one to gather all kinds of data about exoplanets and such. In fact it also allows us to see exoplanets in way more accuracy than we can today. But in order for it to work, the tool has to be in interstellar space, that is outside the heliosphere or outside the range of the sun’s plasma. This is something crazy like 10^10 miles away. The tool also requires a human to operate. So the space agency is planning on sending a human into deep space and you’re one of the candidates who, if you choose, will be born and raised in this program as an astronaut. You’ll learn all the necessary cosmology, piloting, engineering, survival etc that you need to know in 18 years. And then you’ll leave. Now with current technology, it took Voyager 1 about 40 years to break the heliosphere (but it also had flybys with Jupiter etc). Let’s say we can cut that down to 30 years. So you’ll be in space for 30 years going out until you finally hit the heliosphere. Then, you’ll spend two years making observations. You’ll finally be able to confirm whether all those “goldilocks” planets harbor life. You’ll also be able to see all kinds of other cosmological things like earlier galaxies and star formation and whatever other cool astronomy stuff you can think of. Then after 2 years of making discoveries, you’ll turn around and head back to earth. If you make it back before dying of old age, you’ll land safely, at age 80. All of your communication with the space agency has been limited to the mission so you get to see how the earth has changed in the 62 years you were gone. You’re very wealthy now and you become retired. So you can spend the rest of your days doing whatever, and you go down in history as the greatest space explorer ever. Would you do it?

Ok there are some obvious modifications. Do any of the following affect your decision?

• You’re given a partner to help with the mission, so you’re not alone the whole time
• You’re guaranteed to survive till you get back to earth
• There’s a cure for cancer….but you have to go out an extra 5 years to get it.
• You’re the only human who can do this mission. So either you do it, or it’s never completed.
• Something else?

I’d like to think I’d do it if it was for a cure for cancer, even though I’d probably not make it to 90 years old. But I’d also do it if I had the internet (but no news) in real time mainly so I could continue learning. Really the only thing I would care about accessing are books, articles, music, wikipedia, and the like. Yes I know having the internet would be impossible, but it’s a thought experiment so I can say whatever.

By the way, I’d like to think I came up with this all on my own, but I’m no doubt stitching/stealing together elements from the films Moon, Interstellar, the Martian and Alien – all of which have similar flavors or features in common with this scenario. If you haven’t seen any of them, no worries, they’re not really worth watching anyways…except Moon – definitely check that out if you ever get a chance. I think there are a number of interesting questions to be explored here. What does it really mean to be on earth? Can we distinguish that from say being in a spaceship (if it’s a large one like in Alien)? What would you really be sacrificing? I suspect most people’s immediate reaction will be “the people.” But I don’t know, that’s not a very satisfying answer. Another question here is should you really be thinking about yourself in this context where the potential to be gained is that for all of humanity and future generations (suppose for some reason you’re the only human who can do this mission)?