Space Colonization Wiki
Register
Advertisement
Human embryo

Human Embryos as seen through a microscope.

Embryo space colonization is a theoretical interstellar space colonization concept that involves sending a robotic mission to a habitable terrestrial planet transporting frozen early-stage human embryos or the technological or biological means to create human embryos.[1] The proposal circumvents the most severe technological problems of other mainstream interstellar colonization concepts. In contrast to the sleeper ship proposal, it does not require the more technically challenging 'freezing' of fully developed humans (see cryonics). In addition, in contrast to both a sleeper ship and a generation ship, the resources needed to build a spacecraft for an embryonic space colonization effort are considerably lower in terms of pure mass and complexity of the spacecraft. Furthermore, embryos may be launched from the Earth by cheap human-incompatible space guns.

Basic Concept[]

Human Embryos are frozen and placed on an interstellar ship occupied by a human or robotic crew, once the interstellar ship reaches its destination the embryos are either grown in some sort of artificial womb or a biological womb may be used from a surrogate mother. Theoretically, given enough time a colony of a few hundred embryos may grow into a huge population of people.

Challenges[]

A robotic crew would have to be made up of very intelligent artificial intelligence with a motherly instinct to raise and keep the babies safe from any potential dangers. secondly we would need a large number of Embryos to make the population diverse enough as to not lead to inbreeding and the negative health effects that come from it. Thirdly is shielding from any cosmic radiation or other factors that may damage the embryos.

Ethics[]

Having people be born without a human parent figure far from their home world may be considered unethical or immoral.

Advertisement