A NASA engineer suggests typing people on other planets.

Adam Steltzner, lead engineer of the Curiosity project at NASA JPL, speaking at the Future Is Now conference, offered several options for the colonization of other planets. According to him, people can be sent to other star systems in two ways: either by manipulating space-time (traveling through a wormhole or with a warp engine ), or after rethinking the fundamental idea of ​​what we represent.

“The best option for conquering space can be typing people, organically, on another planet,” said Stelzner.

By all accounts, the colonization of other planets is the only way to ensure the long-term survival of the human race. The problem is that we don’t even know how to fly safely to Mars, let alone distant stellar systems. If instead of a person to send instructions to print, then the problem can be solved.
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First, you need to send human genetic material to another planet. According to Stelzner, this can be done with the help of bacteria that can survive in space . The idea is to put segments of human DNA into bacteria cells before shipping. “Maybe we colonize other worlds not with astronauts in space suits, but with bacteria,” said Adam Stelzner, “such considerations seem beautiful, fantastic.”

Stelzner explained that the concept of printing people on other planets was not invented by him, but by George Church (George Church) and Gary Ravkan (Gary Ruvkun) from the genetics department of Harvard Medical School. Although, in fact, she had previously met in science fiction works.

Gary Ravkan says that ideas of terraforming other planets used to be expressed with the help of genetically modified bacteria that can create an oxygen-containing atmosphere, fertilize the soil, and prepare an uninhabited planet for the landing of colonists. “If you offer terraforming, you can also suggest sending bacteria with parts of human DNA,” says Ravkan. “This is not some kind of madness.”

But the real insanity is the way how to assemble the sent segments into a living human body. Here we cannot do anything yet, because modern technologies do not allow decoding information from DNA and growing the body, as it happens in nature. But scientists hope that with the development of genetic engineering technologies, cloning and bioprinting this will become possible. Smash the genome of a particular person into segments, put them into bacteria - and send to the desired planet for assembly. “We've only been studying DNA for 50 years,” says Ravkan. “In 5,000 years, this will seem like child's play.”

Adam Stelzner believes that a good idea could be radio transmission of the human genome to the Universe in the hope that someone will receive this signal, be able to interpret it correctly and genetically reconstruct a person. “In my opinion, this is very much like 3D printing,” says Stelzner.


Print a human kidney on a 3D printer

This is similar to how the digital biological converter , which is being developed by the American company Synthetic Genomics Incorporated, under the leadership of the pioneer of synthetic biology Craig Venter, works. The device makes a digital copy of the organism's DNA (for example, a virus or a microbe) - sends it to another place where a new organism is created with DNA from a digital copy.

The strategy of colonization by sending DNA is an extremely speculative idea. It is not known whether this is possible in practice. But, at least, it does not contradict the basic laws of physics, does not require traveling with excess of the speed of light or an infinite amount of energy.