Poll: You can make a type of technology from sci-fi real. Which do you choose?

[Rowan93]

Other: Simple way to get all of the above? Working cryogenics, with a way to wake up that isn't going to expand all the water in my cells and kill me.

This way, I get to sleep until all this stuff is developed in the future. Also, I'll be in the future.


I'll take my 1 internets in internets, thank you very much.

The water doesn't expand, they've fixed that bug. They do it by replacing the water with antifreeze.

The science verdict is still "it probably kills you", so cryogenicists (scientists who study extreme cold) will insist you call it "cryonics" and not "cryogenics".

It is a good bet though, provided you're not religious, because it's definitely closer to "probably" than "definitely" according to the definitions of "death" that don't say you were dead when they started the procedure. Probably kills you is way better than certainly kills you, which is what everything else does.

Also, between signing up and the time of your (first) death, they might find a kind of antifreeze that works better, and prove it by having it not kill mice. You probably get an advantage then.

 

[Rowan93]

FTL, because FTL is the only impossible one. All the others are going to happen anyway. Possibly in our lifetimes, but I only think that because I'm a crazy robot cultist.

 

[Da Orky Man]

It is a tossup between FTL drives or Terraforming. All I know is we NEED to leave Earth behind and get on new planets, to new solar systems. It is the only way to handle the increasing population.

Whichever of those you pick, you still have to at least get into LEO the old-fashioned way, and in rocket terms that's literally half the work. So you'd have to ship those colonists up into orbit using rockets, which costs $20,000 per kilogram.

$1,600,000 for each person. If you want to make a dent in the earth's population, you'll have to ship, what, a billion? Half a billion? Try the population of the US, 300,000,000 (ish) people.

That would cost $480,000,000,000,000. The GDP of the entire world is $63.12 trillion.

So, if your colony ships were all ready and waiting in orbit to go where no-one has gone before, just putting the passengers and crew on the vessel would cost eight times the GDP of the entire planet.

There are much cheaper ways available, but we'd have to build them first, and none will be here soon enough.

Then lets uses Battlestar Galactica style Jump drives. Though it's iffy to FTL-jump towards and close to a planet, given the risk of jumping into the planets crust itself, you can safely jump from inside atmo to, say, within a few light-seconds of Mars.

 

[DioWallachia]

Anything here can be mastered if we had more time. So biological enhancements and organic inmortality like amebas or micro organism at a macro level could gives us Biological Inmortality

 

[Kevlar Eater]

Android/Cyborg. If we can work out the stuff that would make them rebel and kill us all, they'd be perfect serve/sex bots. If they're realistic looking enough (but not so that they would scare people) and their privates functioned realistically enough, populations in the developed world would drop drastically (Japan even more so).

Also, some Mass Effect-obsessed person would doubtlessly want an EDI replica.

 

[XMark]

The coolest items on the list violate known physics... so I'll go the "other" route and say that I would wish for the technology to build space elevators to become instantly available. Space travel would suddenly be super-cheap and we'd become a true spacefaring species within a decade.

 

[The_Waspman]

Well, I'm going to go with the future fuel thing, because we'll need that sooner rather than later. Also, not to be a boring old stick in the mud, FTL travel is literally impossible, so I cant in good conscience vote for that.

 

[Mr. Omega]

Ok, so let's just ignore the scenario completely. You have this list of sci-fi things, and you can make one of them a reality. Which do you choose?

1: Terraforming planets. We can have the technology to make outside worlds inhabitable. But with space travel as it is now, moving there is practically a one-way trip.

2: Teleportation Technology It's completely safe unless someone purposefully screws it up. It's been spread around so you're able to go anywhere on Earth if there's a proper landing area.

3: Androids/Cyborgs Yes, there's the chance of the robot apocalypse, but having all this cool stuff makes it worth it, doesn't it?

4: Biological Enhancements Think the Super Soldier Serum, or Adam without the nasty side effects. If you get it legally, that is...

5: Flying Cars/Jetpacks Yes, traffic accidents will become even worse, but nothing say "Welcome to the Future!" than flying cars.

6: The Futuristic Fuel Source It won't actually MAKE the future technology, but today's technology will certainly run better. It's the "energy crisis" solved in a snap. Plus, further tech can be made eventually.

7: Faster-Than-Light Travel It'd be expensive, and we don't know where to go, but we have an easy way to move faster than light. And that's awesome.

8 (becuase that's all I can manage to fit in polls): Other If you can think of something else. Try and keep it broad, like Laser Weaponry or Clones or Holograms.

We're asking your question on the facebook, if you're interested in comparing answers or getting a wider demographic sample

http://www.facebook.com/EscapistMag

I would have linked you in or something but I didn't know your facebook account ^_^

 

[Mr. Omega]

Ok, so let's just ignore the scenario completely. You have this list of sci-fi things, and you can make one of them a reality. Which do you choose?

1: Terraforming planets. We can have the technology to make outside worlds inhabitable. But with space travel as it is now, moving there is practically a one-way trip.

2: Teleportation Technology It's completely safe unless someone purposefully screws it up. It's been spread around so you're able to go anywhere on Earth if there's a proper landing area.

3: Androids/Cyborgs Yes, there's the chance of the robot apocalypse, but having all this cool stuff makes it worth it, doesn't it?

4: Biological Enhancements Think the Super Soldier Serum, or Adam without the nasty side effects. If you get it legally, that is...

5: Flying Cars/Jetpacks Yes, traffic accidents will become even worse, but nothing say "Welcome to the Future!" than flying cars.

6: The Futuristic Fuel Source It won't actually MAKE the future technology, but today's technology will certainly run better. It's the "energy crisis" solved in a snap. Plus, further tech can be made eventually.

7: Faster-Than-Light Travel It'd be expensive, and we don't know where to go, but we have an easy way to move faster than light. And that's awesome.

8 (becuase that's all I can manage to fit in polls): Other If you can think of something else. Try and keep it broad, like Laser Weaponry or Clones or Holograms.

We're asking your question on the facebook, if you're interested in comparing answers or getting a wider demographic sample

http://www.facebook.com/EscapistMag

I would have linked you in or something but I didn't know your facebook account ^_^

I don't really use my facebook account, but thank you. I checked it out, and I'm flattered .

 

[Heronblade]

Recombinant energy, IE: the ability to create and disassemble matter to and from its purest form. The replicators and transporters found in Star Trek would be two somewhat limited examples of what this can do.

With it, nearly unlimited energy/fuel is within our grasp, as is functionally unlimited resources of any type that can physically exist.

Given that kind of free reign, about half of your poll options almost immediately become possible anyways. increased resources plus the ability to brute force long term trial and error experimentation really gets the gears moving for science.

Plus building that space elevator I've been advocating for nearly a decade becomes a breeze...