How are the planets discovered? Probes? Earth based sensors? How much do we know about it?

• Perhaps one thing that could be done, is the continuous sending of probes, and the resulting feedback is more or less, a steady stream of data. In this manner, the ship could constantly update its evolutionary parameters. As a ship came closer and closer to its destination, the spectrum of possibility would steadily diminish, and the evolution parameters (slow alteration of the ship environment) would be more and more permanent.

• So, when a probe is sent out/initial astronomical projections are set, the crew begins slowly evolving as the ship's environment changes based on the first info received. However, if a new probe is sent out every year, then once the first probe reaches the planet, there would be constant feedback from every subsequent probe. As each probe learned new information, a ship would respond by tweaking its evolution to account for the new info.

• I don't see why there are multiple probes except for redundency. Two or three should be enough. -- DaveK - 25 Jun 2004

• I don't understand the nature of probes. Are they not the same as an unmanned ship? So don't they travel at roughly the same speed? So where is the advantage in using them? I see some sort of telescope (light-based, radio-based, or some other technology) being used. So, from earth, the age of the signals that the project planners have to use is a function of the distance. I.e., if the planet is 100 light years away, then the data is 100 years old. While the colonists travel they can use similar equipment to obtain progressively newer data as they get closer to the destination. -- AnnelieseFox - 24 Jul 2004

• Probes can be faster because they don't need the extra mass of the support systems for the humans. Also the first one to a system can fly by and not have to slow down to orbit the star. Probes can be sent to multiple stars before a decision is made to choose one particular star. If the travel time to the star is very long then waiting for the report of the probe would cost too much time. Perhaps the probe could visit a series of stars in a small but distant reagion of space and the coloninist's ship follows behind changing course until a suitable planet is found. The problem with that is that the people don't know what the environment is until well into the trip. Hmmm, maybe that is why they have to evolve. The original target was earthlike but some catastrophe ruins it and they have to find another world. -- DaveK - 26 Jul 2004

• This is still my biggest concern with the idea. Probes or telescopes, the data needed to push evolution into a certain direction maynot be accurate because it will be old. When we look out into the universe now, we don't see what the universe looks like now. We have a very skewed image of what things really look like. If we launch our ship based on telescopic evidence of a star and its planet, and try to slowly introduce environment changes to spark evolution toward being able to live on that world, we are sure to run into the fact that here now does not equate with here then. The same is true with probes. Any signal from the probes will take time to reach the ship, and it will take time for the probes to reach their destination. I offer this compromise: Use probes that are connected to the ship through quantum entanglememt. We would have to fudge the science abit to allow entanglement to pass information. However, regadless of how long the probes took, once in place, all data recieved would be real time. Said probes could be nothing more than fist sized packets of sophisticated instruments and light enough to be able to be accelerated to near light speeds and able to cross distances in shorter times. See Dave's excellent numbers on relativity and near light travel. We can also make use of telescopes, et. along the way. -- EmptyKube - 27 Jul 2004