Colonizing the Proxima Planet

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-08-18 10:49:24

There is rumors of an Earthlike planet orbing Proxima Centauri, much like this fictional treatment by Stephen Baxter:
http://www.fantasybookreview.co.uk/Step … oxima.html

Proxima by Stephen Baxter
Rating
9.2/10
Ambitious science fiction, both intriguing and thought provoking.

A Recommended Book of the Month
"The very far future: The Galaxy is a drifting wreck of black holes, neutron stars, chill white dwarfs. The age of star formation is long past. Yet there is life here, feeding off the energies of the stellar remnants, and there is mind, a tremendous Galaxy-spanning intelligence each of whose thoughts lasts a hundred thousand years. And this mind cradles memories of a long-gone age when a more compact universe was full of light...
The 27th century: Proxima Centauri, an undistinguished red dwarf star, is the nearest star to our sun - and (in this fiction), the nearest to host a world, Proxima IV, habitable by humans. But Proxima IV is unlike Earth in many ways. Huddling close to the warmth, orbiting in weeks, it keeps one face to its parent star at all times. The 'substellar point', with the star forever overhead, is a blasted desert, and the 'antistellar point' on the far side is under an ice cap in perpetual darkness. How would it be to live on such a world?
Needle ships fall from Proxima IV's sky. Yuri Jones, with 1000 others, is about to find out...
Proxima tells the amazing tale of how we colonise a harsh new Eden, and the secret we find there that will change our role in the Universe for ever."
I found this an ambitious science fiction novel which was both intriguing and thought provoking. With its strong opinionated characters, exotic planet, and healthy helping of mystery, this had me hooked.
Yuri in particular was an enjoyable anti-hero, the archetypal fish out of water, who nonetheless manages to cope in very trying circumstances.
What makes this all enjoyable, is the way author Stephen Baxter manages to contrast the human flaws and concerns against the backdrop of technology and science. He makes the reader understand how small and insignificant we all are.
He also contrasts the densely populated colonies of Mars and Mercury and an array of space stations with the desolate, remote natural world of Proxima.
Underlying everything is the very primal struggle for survival. The colonists stranded on the planet go through a terrific ordeal which Baxter never trivializes or glosses over. This is a group with very human needs and opinions on how they cope. The ensuing debates and internal conflicts all convince.
This is a riveting novel, and for all its many dramatic plot strands, it holds up well, achieving a high level of gravitas. The future Cold War between the super powers of the UN and China resonate, as does the territorialism and competitiveness. Baxter has managed to create a plausible future, in fact, like a lot of great sci-fi writers, he could in fact be talking about our current world as much as his imagined future one.

New Eden sounds like a nice name for a planet, if it turns out to be real, it would be a nice motivation to get a project going. What if NASA sends out a probe to the opposite side of the Solar System from Proxima, to use the Sun as a gravitational lens at 1000 AU? I think the SLS would be helpful in this, we could launch a nuclear reactor into space and send it to 1000 AU, then use the Sun's gravitational lens to focus the light of this planet onto a digital camera and then send the image back to Earth 5.9 days later. At 300 km/sec it would take 16 years to get there. this is roughly 20 times the velocity of Voyager 1 as it is heading away from the Solar System. There are probably easier ways to image this planet, but if we find something that looks interesting, we might want to build a probe that can send us more detailed images of it, the same velocity will get us to Proxima Centauri in 4,250 years! We might want to improve upon this just a bit.

I saw this video:
http://www.fantasybookreview.co.uk/Step … oxima.html

Antius · 2016-08-19 11:21:04

I suppose it does depend upon the mode of travel. Travelling 4000 years in a space colony a mile in diameter is going to be much more comfortable for those involved than travelling 100 years in something the size of a nuclear submarine. If the people travelling are the ones that finance it, then finance is actually quite easy. A bigger ship can include redundancy and the capacity for self-reparability. Also, it is technically much easier to imagine building a nuclear engine with an exhaust velocity of 300km/s than 30,000km/s. Zubrin's nuclear salt water rocket could probably do it. We might even be able to engineer something that can breed the fuel as it goes along. That way you start the journey with a million tonnes of thorium chloride, rather than needing a million tonnes of fissile material.

Last edited by Antius (2016-08-19 11:22:46)

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-08-19 23:27:22

Here is the video I meant to show you in the previous post:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WtgmT5CYU8
It has some interesting ideas, here is what you need:
1) Nuclear Fusion spaceship capable of reaching 1% of the speed of light (3,000 km/sec) and then slowing down again with a total delta-V of 6,000 km/sec.
2) Strong artificial intelligence
3) The ability to freeze human embryos and then revive them, and gestate them in an artificial womb.

We then send out 10 of these starships, one of them can reach Proxima Centauri in 425 years traveling at 1% of the speed of light. The ship arrives, lands on the planet, and from local materials it begins to construct robots, which then build a habitat for humans, and then the human embryos are revived, implanted in artificial wombs, are brought to full term and are born, they are raised by AI parents, disguised as humans, the humans reach adulthood and then have children of their own. The AI ship then constructs 10 copies of itself and send them to 10 other nearby star systems to repeat this action.

Antius · 2016-08-20 04:08:26

Tom Kalbfus wrote:

Here is the video I meant to show you in the previous post:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WtgmT5CYU8
It has some interesting ideas, here is what you need:
1) Nuclear Fusion spaceship capable of reaching 1% of the speed of light (3,000 km/sec) and then slowing down again with a total delta-V of 6,000 km/sec.
2) Strong artificial intelligence
3) The ability to freeze human embryos and then revive them, and gestate them in an artificial womb.
We then send out 10 of these starships, one of them can reach Proxima Centauri in 425 years traveling at 1% of the speed of light. The ship arrives, lands on the planet, and from local materials it begins to construct robots, which then build a habitat for humans, and then the human embryos are revived, implanted in artificial wombs, are brought to full term and are born, they are raised by AI parents, disguised as humans, the humans reach adulthood and then have children of their own. The AI ship then constructs 10 copies of itself and send them to 10 other nearby star systems to repeat this action.

Sounds a lot like the seeder ships in Arthur C Clarkes 'Songs of Distant Earth'. It would reduce the cost of space colonisation, as the seeder ship might be the size of a 747 rather than the size of a small world.

A less desirable but less technologically challenging solution would be a small generation ship. If it can reach 2% of C then it would arrive in 2.5 centuries. At a stretch, we might be able to design systems that survive and carry enough spare parts to last that long. We would kit it out inside to be as human freindly as possible. I think with a little effort the results would surprise people. If people still get depressed, we put them on Prozac.

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-08-20 07:00:56

For a Generation ship, I'd pick a Bernal Sphere that is a mile in diameter it rotates once per minute, and has an initial population of 10,000.

Terraformer · 2016-08-20 07:41:25

If we're going for slow colonisation, I think the most likely method will be suspended animation with rotating crews. The ship doesn't have to be built to sustain the entire population, only a small fraction, so the mass should be significantly reduced over a generation ship with the same population.

Though I still think we'll colonise the stars primarily through stepping stone colonisation, perhaps with fast ships propelled by beamed power. The stars aren't going to be that much further away in a few thousand years, there's no hurry.

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-08-20 08:53:54

If you look at that video, he has a point. I think nuclear propulsion is closer than laser arrays thousands of miles wide. We do have frozen embyos, all we need is nuclear fusion propulsion and artificial intelligence, and as he said we have real examples in the Universe to go by, stars, and us! Anyway a laser array requires sustained effort on the home front, and more importantly, it needs the laser array to slow it down, beam power across light years, hit a reflector and then hit the ship to slow it down, that sounds like mighty fancy shooting if you ask me, hitting a target you can't even see, a target who's light would be 4.25 years out of date, such an unprecedented degrees of precision and anticipation, it is much easier to build a fusion powered starship. AI is around the corner, we already have frozen embryos, we just need someone to raise them to adulthood upon reaching the destination.

Terraformer · 2016-08-20 13:43:16

We have frozen embryos. We don't have artificial wombs. So that's all three that you'd need to develop.

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-08-20 17:23:29

It takes much less energy to grow an embryo than to travel at 10% of the speed of light. Now perhaps the AIs need bodies, no reason we can't house a computer with an AI in an organic body that is capable of giving birth, that would be your "artificial womb". The AIs can grow a series of bodies, one after another until they arrive at their destination and then they can give birth to a live human and be its parent.

Void · 2016-08-20 17:24:28

The Oort cloud is thought to go almost 25% of the way to Proxima Centauri, and is estimated to have around 2 Trillion objects in it. So set up housekeeping on a selected suitable one as far out as you can go, and you then have a better starting point. Of course getting laser propulsion to push you might be much harder, but of course to even think about setting up out there, you would have to have a plentiful power source at location anyway. Plus, if you master the Oort cloud, out of the 2 Trillion objects of the Oort cloud, you would perhaps have .1% (Just a guess) that were worth also bothering with. Starting at the edge of the Oort cloud may also reduce your chances of collisions with objects at a high speed with your starship.

If there is any descendent of humans that is partly organic in nature, it would likely be a cyborg. I am a cyborg already. I have fillings in my teeth!

But if we are talking about advanced cyborgs, we would also be talking about advanced cybernetic add-ons to the brain. In that case, you can reduce the size of the organic brain (Perhaps). If you do that you can reduce the size of the whole body, and still have it resemble homo saps. That's short for homo sapiens.

There is a deeply rooted phobia against that, because in nature either a large creature kills and eats smaller ones, or a swarm of creatures (Which in some ways resembles a single large creature), kill and eat a singular large one. This is similar to the way we usually prefer to choose larger bodied men as our primal (Primate) leader. Although there have been exceptions to that.

The human race runs in a process control loop. One solution is to have big bodied people, (Robust), another is to have smaller bodied people (Graceful, it would be hoped).

My opinion alone: The female usually prefers a larger and more physically competitive (Robust) male. The male sometimes prefers a more graceful female, but not necessarily. If you are a farmer with a lot of hard labor to do, you might very much see beauty in a strong female.
Starships if well designed should not require a lot of hard labor, however, and gracefulness offers a greater brain proportion to body size, so for that the budget should be able to afford small people with proportionally larger brains.

While we are playing Frankenstein, we can violate our genetic programming and cause longer life spans. Our lifespans are set shorter, so that the species remains responsive to evolutionary pressure. Something like how our individual cells are supposed to kill themselves if something is wrong with them. And if going that far, perhaps you could borrow hibernation abilities from animals that can do so. That would reduce the load.

And if you are going to slow down a starship, consider magnetic braking.

But none of this is really my problem.

Last edited by Void (2016-08-20 17:46:22)

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-08-20 17:34:03

Void wrote:

The Oort cloud is thought to go almost 25% of the way to Proxima Centauri, and is estimated to have around 2 Trillion objects in it. So set up housekeeping on a selected suitable one as far out as you can go, and you then have a better starting point. Of course getting laser propulsion to push you might be much harder, but of course to even think about setting up out there, you would have to have a plentiful power source at location anyway. Plus, if you master the Oort cloud, out of the 2 Trillion objects of the Oort cloud, you would perhaps have .1% (Just a guess) that were worth also bothering with. Starting at the edge of the Oort cloud may also reduce your chances of collisions with objects at a high speed with your starship.
If there is any descendent of humans that is partly organic in nature, it would likely be a cyborg. I am a cyborg already. I have fillings in my teeth!
But if we are talking about advanced cyborgs, we would also be talking about advanced cybernetic add-ons to the brain. In that case, you can reduce the size of the organic brain (Perhaps). If you do that you can reduce the size of the whole body, and still have it resemble homo saps. That's short for homo sapiens.

I was just thinking of the opposite of a Cyborg, and inorganic brain with an organic body. You see the inorganic brain doesn't age, it can turn itself off, as human brains can't, but it can grow one organic body after another, and maybe it will look human from the outside, and may prove to be indistinguishable from humans, its brain might be programmed to act like a human brain sending all the necessary signals to the various parts of its organic body. The organic body would consist of all the organs in a human body except the brain, it would have the DNA of a particular person, upon arrival the organic robot would then clone its tissue to produce a human child.

Void · 2016-08-20 17:54:54

Watch out for peasants with pitchforks, tommy!

SpaceNut · 2016-08-21 07:54:50

Well the new planet needs to be explored first and any type of risk to radiation ect will need to be acessed long before we set out on any journey or colonization efforts can be taken. The issue of time to location bloats the size of the vehicle and life support system even for a small crew but its still got all the issues of site selection to how do we land the mass required for a surface stay if even possible. To which these are the same issues for venus or mars and they are not light years away.....

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-08-21 09:58:03

The bloat comes from having to keep people alive through the journey, I would say it would make more sense to have the ship operated by AIs, and when it arrives it can gestate frozen human embryos and raise actual humans to settle the planet. The main problem with generation ships is that the population tends to expand during the journey so you have to plan to population expansion or enforce strict population controls so that the resources of the ship are no used up! Now remember when I said, for a Generation ship, I'd pick a Bernal Sphere that was a mile wide? The standard Bernal Sphere is 500 meters wide, a mile wide Bernal Sphere is 3 times larger! so it has 10 times the living space.

The standard Bernal can house a population of 10,000 people, mine has living space for 100,000 people, but I would send only 10,000 people in it to make allowances for population growth over two and a half centuries, during that journey there is no additional material to build stuff out of except what you brought with you. Once we arrive in the system, there is material we could build new habitats out of an we can accommodate population growth once we are there. That is why I would suggest a starship that is crewed by AIs, they could be built like the Terminator robot, artificial parts on the inside and human organs on the outside, including a womb. If fact the exterior human body parts could have the DNA of the future humans to be born, We might not even have to freeze them. Just have the robots wear one human body after another until they get there, then they can mate and produce real human children or they can clone themselves to produce humans. Basically you have human bodies minus the brain - a computer with resident AI takes over the functions of the human brain, the electronic brain does not age, new parts for it can be fabricated if necessary, and the software can be downloaded into a new computer if necessary, so the AIs can survive the long journey through space, and they can hibernate, go into automatic mode and do whatever to avoid getting bored. The starship need not be that big.

The robots human bodies would need food, they would age, the robots then get new human bodies to replace them as needed and they go on. The food gets recycle, the air and the water too. The AIs can live in a virtual world when they are not moving their organic bodies about or performing bodily functions. This can all be automatic as opposed to involving higher brain functions. Once there, humans are raised and they populate the planet.

Last edited by Tom Kalbfus (2016-08-21 09:58:43)

Antius · 2016-08-21 10:16:48

Why not simply build a 100m wide ship containing a few hundred people, who can then begin rapid population growth when they arrive? A cylinder 100m wide and 100m long has 2600 cubic metres of living space per person for a crew of 300. I think such a ship could be made quite comfortable and would be much more affordable to accelerate to 2%C than a bernal sphere. Remember the end result is the same - we colonise another star system. A bigger ship is always a more expensive ship. Frozen embryos could be gestated in real human women after colonisation begins. With each new generation at least a few women may choose to carry a surrogate child. So the genetic diversity of the population would gradually increase.

Last edited by Antius (2016-08-21 10:22:12)

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-08-21 11:36:49

I guess the main problem is you are asking humans to sacrifice their lives to the endless void of space, they would be going on a journey that they would never see the end of. At 2% of the speed of light, it would take 212.5 years to make the journey to Proxima Centauri, if you bring frozen embryos, they can wait, send actual humans, and they will die on the spaceship before they get there, maybe their great great great great great grandchildren will live to see planetfall, but they won't. You are asking generations of humans to live in a confined spaceship for their entire lives, and I don't think their descendants will be well adapted to exploring a planet once they finally arrive. An Artificial Intelligence can hibernate, there is not much for them to do over most of the ship's travel time anyway other than just exist. We don't need humans that live onboard a spaceship just so they can produce children and grandchildren that also live onboard the spaceship. I think what we need are AIs that can act human and who know how to raise human children. For an AI, they don't have to necessarily perceive all 212.5 years of travel time, they can go dormant for most of that time, "waking up" only to do periodic checks of the ship, and then going dormant again. Their real job begins when planetfall draws near, it is then that they raise children, teach them, educate them, and then they can land on the planet and colonize it. For the AIs, who's software is modeled after a human brain, they can shut down, and not perceive the 212.5 years of travel time nor have to adapt to it. For the human children, they grow up on a starship, and the starship is timed to arrive at the planet on their 18th birthday, so they have their whole lives ahead of them, they get to have families and expand across the planet's surface.

Antius · 2016-08-21 12:16:50

If we can build such AIs and an artificial uterus capable of gestating human embryos, then I guess this plan outperforms any conceivable generation ship. Maybe ultimately we can store genetic codes on a data crystal and use molecular protein machines to build the first embryonic cells. It all depends upon how far you are prepared to accept technology will go from where we are today.

But I don't think the smaller generation ship idea is so bad. Remember we are still talking about a vessel the size of an aircraft carrier. It can be decked out inside and landscaped and each family would have their own apartment. Leisure time would be abundant and the internal volume of a 100m diameter habitat would still approach 1million cubic metres. Plenty of space for recreation.

Last edited by Antius (2016-08-21 12:17:16)

Void · 2016-08-21 12:24:01

A alternative is a cyanobacteria swarm brain. That is if such a planet exists, and if it has significant bodies of liquid water.

I'm not saying I am in favor of it or against it, but I will further describe the notion.

Your tiny ship sails in a lifetime or less to the planet. (Method(s) to slow it down not included, but a harsh entry into the atmosphere might be acceptable as the final phase.

The Cyanobacteria have been engineered with a whole lot more DNA than is normal, and they are "Stem" cells as well.

They go into a process of replication. Then as might be suitable they would differentiate as well.

They would likely need an ocean or sea reasonably hospitable.

They would have communication skills with each other, and form a mind. From there, they would perhaps have been endowed with a means to construct a signaling device, which would somehow be able to transmit information back to our solar system, and they would as well receive uploads from Earth, with more information.

Then if you really want to get weird, they would be able to propagate a higher form of life, and that one propagate a higher one, and so on. Bacteria, tiny fish, bigger fish, aquatic mammal, and I am thinking your comprehend what would come next.

From there, we have to question the oxygen supply for fish, mammals, and "what else".

Probably not going to be there.

So, dolphins hold their breath for long periods of time. Why not other mammals?

So, a creature that uses photosynthesis generates oxygen for the animal creatures.

But now I will gross you out. The fish/mammals will breath blood, which the "Plant" will supply them with. If you create a "Human", then that "Human" will have the capability to both breath blood with a special organ, or breath air. I imagine that the "Plants" will have their roots in the sea, and their blood portal on portions on the beach. The Cyanobacteria may treat it as a queen, and donate food to it. The "Humans" build technology, and an Oxygen source on land, and then can leave the beach.

How nano machines would fit in, I have not specified. Perhaps the Cyanobacteria would be able to synthesize them, give birth to them.

Crocodile blood is supposed to be better than our blood for holding Oxygen, perhaps synthetic nano blood would be even very much better, and less repulsive a though.

Oh, by the way the "Humans" would return the used blood to the "Plant".

Last edited by Void (2016-08-21 12:36:50)

RobertDyck · 2016-08-21 16:13:07

You guys have a bizarre debate that I'm really not following. Obviously colonizing Proxima would require better propulsion. The idea of "star shot" to send a fly-by unmanned probe at 20% the speed of light does make sense. But to bring it down to something reasonable and technical that we can actually talk about.

We don't have an artificial womb yet. Why? What is a womb? It's a sterile enclosure to hold the baby. The amniotic sack is a membrane that grows from the zygote itself. Amniotic fluid within the sack is also produced by the zygote/embryo/fetus. So the enclosure has to be sterile, temperature controlled, humidity controlled, you need some sound for stimulation to ensure brain development. Speakers can certain provide sound. So what's missing? The key thing is something for the placenta to grow into. The umbilical cord connects the placenta to the fetus; both the placenta and umbilical cord are also grown from the zygote.

The placenta grows right into the tissue of the uterus. Arteries and veins have capillaries connecting them, just like tissue in the rest of our body. The structures of the placenta that grow into the uterus are similar to villi in our intestines. They have a thin membrane that allows fluids to pass through. This fluid exchanges with the mother's body. The mother provides oxygen and food, and receives waste. Our body produces various waste products, many are broken down by the liver to recover nutrients and energy. The final waste product from the liver is urea. Our kidneys filter out urea and salt and some other waste products, the product is urine (piss), which goes through a duct to our bladder. I don't know if waste from the baby is urea that has to be filtered by the mother's kidneys, or less processed waste to be handled by the mother's kidneys. I suspect it starts as less processed, then the baby's liver gradually takes over that function.

"Villus" is singular, "villi" is plural. Here is a diagram of an intestinal villus. (Click for Wikipedia article on intestinal villi.)

And diagram of the placenta. Note the structure is also called a "villus". (Click for Wikipedia article on placenta.)

Hmm. Looks like the mother's body grows blood vessels into the placenta itself. The placenta grows structures into the mother's womb to anchor it. According to this diagram, the mother's arteries empty into a space inside the placenta called the "intervillous space", then mother's veins return blood. Villi of the placenta open into this intervillous space, washed in mother's blood. Credit for the diagram is "Henry Gray (1918) Anatomy of the Human Body", a book often called "Grey's Anatomy", a basic text book of the medical profession.

Stages of development: (click for larger view)

So how do you produce an artificial womb? The key is interface to the placenta. The placenta itself is grown by the baby. To start with we need a spongy something soaked with hormones that will encourage the placenta to implant itself.

We need tiny tubes the size of mother's blood vessels to pierce the placenta into the intervillous space. Some tubes will provide artificial blood, while other tubes will return that fluid. We have artificial blood that can carry oxygen. For a womb, that artificial blood might require some hormones to promote growth of placenta villi. The artificial blood will require nutrients for the zygote/embryo/fetus. Waste products will have to be filtered out. So processing the artificial blood will require a heart/lung machine and dialysis machine.

The most difficult part appears to be the tiny tubes. They have to be a bio-compatible material, and have to pierce the placenta.

Details of nutrients the zygote/embryo/fetus requires have to be worked out, and waste products it produces. Will a dialysis machine remove all waste products?

Antius · 2016-08-21 17:03:25

RobertDyck wrote:

You guys have a bizarre debate that I'm really not following. Obviously colonizing Proxima would require better propulsion. The idea of "star shot" to send a fly-by unmanned probe at 20% the speed of light does make sense. But to bring it down to something reasonable and technical that we can actually talk about.
We don't have an artificial womb yet. Why? What is a womb? It's a sterile enclosure to hold the baby. The amniotic sack is a membrane that grows from the zygote itself. Amniotic fluid within the sack is also produced by the zygote/embryo/fetus. So the enclosure has to be sterile, temperature controlled, humidity controlled, you need some sound for stimulation to ensure brain development. Speakers can certain provide sound. So what's missing? The key thing is something for the placenta to grow into. The umbilical cord connects the placenta to the fetus; both the placenta and umbilical cord are also grown from the zygote.
The placenta grows right into the tissue of the uterus. Arteries and veins have capillaries connecting them, just like tissue in the rest of our body. The structures of the placenta that grow into the uterus are similar to villi in our intestines. They have a thin membrane that allows fluids to pass through. This fluid exchanges with the mother's body. The mother provides oxygen and food, and receives waste. Our body produces various waste products, many are broken down by the liver to recover nutrients and energy. The final waste product from the liver is urea. Our kidneys filter out urea and salt and some other waste products, the product is urine (piss), which goes through a duct to our bladder. I don't know if waste from the baby is urea that has to be filtered by the mother's kidneys, or less processed waste to be handled by the mother's kidneys. I suspect it starts as less processed, then the baby's liver gradually takes over that function.
"Villus" is singular, "villi" is plural. Here is a diagram of an intestinal villus. (Click for Wikipedia article on intestinal villi.)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3d/Intestinal_villus_simplified.svg/94px-Intestinal_villus_simplified.svg.png
And diagram of the placenta. Note the structure is also called a "villus". (Click for Wikipedia article on placenta.)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e6/Gray39.png
Hmm. Looks like the mother's body grows blood vessels into the placenta itself. The placenta grows structures into the mother's womb to anchor it. According to this diagram, the mother's arteries empty into a space inside the placenta called the "intervillous space", then mother's veins return blood. Villi of the placenta open into this intervillous space, washed in mother's blood. Credit for the diagram is "Henry Gray (1918) Anatomy of the Human Body", a book often called "Grey's Anatomy", a basic text book of the medical profession.
Stages of development: (click for larger view)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/06/HumanEmbryogenesis.svg/300px-HumanEmbryogenesis.svg.png
So how do you produce an artificial womb? The key is interface to the placenta. The placenta itself is grown by the baby. To start with we need a spongy something soaked with hormones that will encourage the placenta to implant itself.
We need tiny tubes the size of mother's blood vessels to pierce the placenta into the intervillous space. Some tubes will provide artificial blood, while other tubes will return that fluid. We have artificial blood that can carry oxygen. For a womb, that artificial blood might require some hormones to promote growth of placenta villi. The artificial blood will require nutrients for the zygote/embryo/fetus. Waste products will have to be filtered out. So processing the artificial blood will require a heart/lung machine and dialysis machine.
The most difficult part appears to be the tiny tubes. They have to be a bio-compatible material, and have to pierce the placenta.
Details of nutrients the zygote/embryo/fetus requires have to be worked out, and waste products it produces. Will a dialysis machine remove all waste products?

A good piece of research. From your description it does appear that the process is at least plausible, albeit complicated. I read a while back that a baby relies on its mothers immune cells for defence during the first weeks of its life. Presumably, these would need to be provided as well. I presume a dialysis machine would do the trick for filtration, as humans manage to live on dialysis for decades. An obvious way to answer the question, is wether women on dialysis can carry children? The main problem on Earth is that people receive dialysis intermittently, whereas kidneys function continuously.

Last edited by Antius (2016-08-21 17:03:51)

RobertDyck · 2016-08-21 17:54:35

The mother's liver may break down some waste products from the baby. Until the baby's liver develops so it can do it. We don't know, I'm just guessing.

RobertDyck · 2016-08-21 18:27:21

National Center for Biotechnology Information, U.S. National Library of Medicine: Vascular Biology of the Placenta.

maternal blood enters the placenta through the basal plate endometrial arteries (spiral arteries), perfuses intervillous spaces, and flows around the villi where exchange of oxygen and nutrients occurs with fetal blood. It has been estimated that there are about 120 spiral arterial entries into the intervillous space at term. Maternal blood traverses through the placenta intervillous space and drains back through venous orifices in the basal plate, then returns the maternal systemic circulation via uterine veins. Maternal-placental blood flow is propelled by maternal arterial pressure because of the unique nature of low-resistance uteroplacental vessels, which accommodate the massive increase in uterine perfusion over the course of gestation. During pregnancy, maternal blood volume increases progressively from 6–8 weeks of gestation and reaches a maximum approximately at 32–34 weeks and then keeps relatively constant until term. In general, maternal blood (plasma) volume is increased up to 40–50% near term compared to the nonpregnant state. Gowland et al. studied maternal blood perfusion in human placenta from 20 weeks of gestational age until term using echo planar imaging (EPI). They found that in normal pregnancies the average perfusion rate was about 176 ± 24 ml/100 gram/minute.

fig2.2.jpg
The above figure shows blow flow within the intervillous space opposite to the diagram from 1918. And it labels the wall of the intervillous space on the mother's side as part of the mother's body. That could be easier. If the placenta has a blood-tight covering over the wall of the womb, will villi in the blood between the two walls, and the wall on the mother's side is part of the mother's body? Then we manufacture a rubbery material that has structures to perform the function of placental septum, which is just a wall that controls blood flow. If "veins" are in that septum, we can manufacture the rubber septum to have tubes to take up return liquid. And the stratum spongiosum would be rubber as well, the wall between septums. Tubes to provide synthetic blood would open in the rubber of the stratum spongiosum. Development may require septums to rise up. The diagram appears to show mother's blood flows as a fountain from a central location, then drains back into the mother's body from surrounding drains. Before the septum rises, there are drains that will become the base of a septum. And hormones to promote the chorion to grow along the surface of our rubber stratum spongiosum.

fig2.3.jpg
This shows spiral arteries in early pregnancy. Spiral arteries reduce blood pressure before it exits into the intervillous space. As pregnancy progresses, the spirals open up and eventually break down into simply straight openings, providing full pressure of mother's blood into the space. We could do this with a pump that increases pressure as pregnancy progresses, rather than a spirals that act as pressure regulators.

SpaceNut · 2016-08-21 19:06:25

A bit of research links for the frozen.....

http://uscfertility.org/fertility-prese … -freezing/

Sperm banks store samples at -196˚ in liquid nitrogen. Frozen sperm has a long “shelf life,” and can be thawed and successfully incorporated into a fertility treatment cycle even decades later

Ya that's not long enough....

http://uscfertility.org/egg-freezing-faqs/

It takes approximately 4-6 weeks to complete the egg freezing cycle which contains a large amount of water. When frozen, ice crystals form that can destroy the cell. The egg thaw rates of 75% and fertilization rates of 75% are anticipated in women up to 38 years of age.

Not so good there either....

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-08-22 00:07:22

How do you know its not long enough? We have never froze anything for 212.5 years! The thing is, freezing them is just a means of storing information in molecules. Interstellar space is colder than liquid nitrogen, one need look no further than the planet Pluto to see that!

Void · 2016-08-23 00:10:21

I will rejoin.

Score: Tom wants to provide a method to get from point A to point B.
He seems to have given up on the idea of transporting Earth born humans to another star system, but still seeks to provide "Homo Sapiens" to another star system, perhaps by an alternate means, even perhaps transfer eggs and sperm and a method to raise them to productive adulthood.

Spacenut feels that our ability to deliver the required germ lines is very uncertain.

RoberDyck has provide an explanation of the placenta. That is convenient, as I may want to go parallel to it later.

I was ignored and dismissed rudely

So, starshot:
http://www.space.com/32546-interstellar … rshot.html

But what about transferring a microbe (As a prelude to what else I intend), to another star system? I presume starshot would confirm a potential habitat on the target planet prior to such action.

I intend that the organisms carried will have the endurance to repair themselves periodically, with assistance, and will be multimorphic and or polymorphic in nature. Programmed DNA. And they will carry the instructions for various life forms, including "Homo Galacticus".

The launch of the craft will I presume be similar to starshot. However, it will have to be larger. It will include as mentioned organisms which sometimes behave like some organisms we have on Earth. For instance:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinococcus_radiodurans

http://www.livescience.com/1029-lazarus … ealed.html

(That's a fun one maybe we can send freeze dried corpses to the stars and resurrect them (Zombies?)) (It does suggest possibilities for trans/pan spermia I think).

So your little starship has a power source, some diodes, and the diodes turn on periodically, lets say once a year, and provide your organisms light to grow and to repair radiation damage.

Oh these multimorphic/polymorphic organisms might also be able to be like a cyanobacteria sometimes.

As a power source, I am hoping for Dynamic Braking:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_braking

You pushed the craft to a high speed, but occasionally you need to make a mid course correction. Perhaps you can use superconductors reacting to plasma being passed though, to generate power for your microbes to warm up and have light. Each correction will slow it down though.

When you reach the solar wind of the target star, you would use this to slow down. In that case you might need to dissipate heat to the universe.

So, now perhaps you have a method to deliver your payload to the planet, and as the last act, a fast burn into the atmosphere, and a splashdown in the ocean, and a dispersal of the microbes into the ocean.

The microbes multiply, and if it is encoded in their DNA, they may form collections of organisms, flocks, sponges, even a computer of sorts, but perhaps not a fast one. A great hope would be that they could create some type of signal to communicate with Earth, and a method to receive from Earth. I will leave that vague, but I have a few ideas.

I said Flocks, and Sponges. What if a flock of Photo Bacteria were programed to feed a sponge? What if the sponge, then could metamorph into a more advanced creature. What you want is a Parent/Host (For Homo Galacticus).

Parent/Hosts come in various kinds:
Human Mother birthers.
Human male collections help to host: Human Mother Birthers.
Sea Horse Males.
Fish that keep their young in their mouth.
Placental Mammals (Female).
Marsupial Mammals (Female).
Others.

DNA has junk in it, and also it might be possible to splice the genomes you want into the cells you send. The cells should express just one organism at a time however.

So, in a way, you have "Stem Cells".

It may be possible to use tailored Viruses to delete sections of DNA later on and remove the Multimorphic/Polymorphic aspects.

Anyway, you know what I am after. Free floating cells in the sea are photo organisms, and have a drive to interact with a "Royal" large multi-cell organism. Perhaps the Royal, is immobile, and grows on the beach, like a beached whale, but instead of a tail, it has a finely branched root system in the ocean, that the photo organisms interact with, giving nourishment and Oxygen to the Royal.

The "Royal" is a Hermaphrodite, and has a mouth like a whale, but does not eat with it. Instead it is the door to a womb/pouch. The Royal generates Sperm and Egg (The DNA should be in the common genome).

The gestation involves, a placental start, and perhaps a marsupial stage that lasts very long.

So at first the baby is on an umbilical, for longer than a human. It might be able to go outside the mouth for short times. Later it is a marsupial pouch setup. Instead of milk, something more that can also carry Oxygen.

I will make another post for the Placenta even though it is related to this.

Last edited by Void (2016-08-23 01:06:13)

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