How much easier/harder would it be to colonize space if humans found a method of giving ourselves bodies that could survive in almost anything?

Question

For exact specifications, the bodies are not necessarily hard sci-fi. The astronauts/colonists/etc. still look either human or like something from human imagination, but are technically made of Charm Matter (like Strange Matter but with Charm Quarks) which the story assumes (regardless of any lack of evidence in real life) is basically a magic indestructible form of matter because reasons.

The method of creating these bodies and transferring a mind between the old biological body and the new is a solved problem that can be done extremely cheap, so assume that it is scalable but a very niche tech that cannot be applied in other contexts.

The artificial "energy slime" bodies would be able to survive everything short of a star (or rather, if they can survive a star, there's no way to detect and rescue "Quarks" from having fallen into the sun; gruesome, I know) or the event horizon of a black hole.

Quarks still have to sustain themselves via "charging stations"/"beds" at night and sunlight or consuming hydrogen during the day.

The doubt is "Does this actually make space travel easier? Or is it just wishful thinking?" but the question I'm asking is the title: "How much, if at all, would these transhuman bodies improve space travel?"

Feel free to give only the most basic explanations/resources, this isn't a "do my homework" scam. I'm a writer who is genuinely curious what would be possible if we didn't need as much protection as we currently do to live on other planets or moons. Unsolved problems of contemporary real life space travel and colonization that provide significant difficulty, and would not be made easier by making life support systems obsolete, would also be good to know of.

Answer 1

Very much easier

I don't care so much about not needing an atmosphere or resisting heat or cold. These are detail problems, while live support is not trivial, its mostly a solved problem. Immunity from radiation is much more useful, this enables missions that would be very hard to impossible otherwise.

But the real game changer is... immunity from time. Look, the real show stopper for large scale space exploration is always said to be the speed of light. And the humongous amounts of energy needed to get just to a fraction of it. It just takes sooo long to go anywhere. But what if "long" is something that does not matter anymore?

You could go to alpha centauri with todays technology, if you are willing to take the cost. And have a few thousand years to spare. A few thousand years is nothing on cosmic scales, you could colonize the galaxy practically in the blink of an eye.

Immunity from boredom would be a good thing to also have, though. Or maybe you happen to have some really effective sleeping pills.

Answer 2

Space Marines: Attack!

You say we can have bodies that survive in any circumstance? So you are making Warhammer 40.000 Space Marines. And it takes a special type of enemies and circumstances to kill those: A self-adapting Hive-Mind with hyper corrosive blood, traitors, Mechs, undead living-metal robot skeletons, bioengineered semi-intelligent mushrooms that live for Waaaaargh or ancient space-elfs hiding away in tiny pockets between reality and hell and on planetoid-sized spaceships... Oh, and the last three mentioned species are by the way older than the earth, with the latter two being created specifically as weapons to fight the former.

So... if you give us all Space Marine Bodies, and indoctrination to not kill each other in the process, then we could very very easily start to colonize anywhere... if we are not rendered sterile in the process. Just remember: Space Marines might manage to grow a century or two old, but they do die of old age unless you freeze them for long travels.

Space Marines (or similar) as a storytelling vessel would be the classic übermensch as a narrative device. They are better at everything (or most things), but in the end, they are still humans, with human emotions and stresses.

<Necron Sounds.WAV>

The alternative is, that you just created something as close to the Necrons as you can be... and those are even harder to kill than Space Marines. True, 99.99% of them lost their soul when they became immortal regenerating robot skeletons, but they are nigh impossible to kill, as even if you do... they come back. Again and again.

To them, truly no surrounding is lethal. Vacuum? Radiation fields? Time? All no problem, just allow them to hibernate when they are not needed to preserve resources. Even a planet of molten stone won't stop them forever, it'll just slow them down a little.

Too bad that Games Workshop believes that this almost perfect species hates everything living, prefers the universe quite dead, their eldritch gods enslaved, and the creators of mankind and most other species extinct. But exactly here, in the motivation and creation of your robot-esque-species, is your leverage to turn the idea of eternal robots into your tool to tell a story:

• Becoming a Quarkman could be a sacrifice to mankind as a whole, travelling to the stars a neverending duty to build a planetary base so that one day you may see your own genetic sample be used to clone a child of you and prosper on the world you built. This positive motivation should taint your storytelling.
• Or is becoming a Quarkman a punishment, as part of you is erased in the process, leaving you in the artificial body always feeling the gaping hole of what used to be you(r soul)? Is it a strive for redemption or regaining what is lost? Or is it a slow path to insanity? In either case, this motivation should reflect on how the Quarkmen interact with normal humans - or their orders.
• Do Quarkmen dream of Quark Sheep?

Answer 3

I can't speculate on your fancy matter, but I do know that conventional electronic circuits can work in liquid helium. Many circuits actually work better without thermal noise.

If you are travelling between the stars, most of the time your ambient temperature will be about 2 Kelvin. If you have an electronic brain, you can work very well at these temperatures. If you have a superconducting brain, you will probably be able to run for ages on a tiny energy budget. Probably, most of you will go to sleep, while you run an error-checking program that may detect and correct damage from cosmic rays, and a clock to wake you up when you get there. You would have some sort of telescope to navigate by, and see details of your destination. When you aren't navigating, you could use it with a solar cell to generate a trickle of power to keep things going. Nothing should chemically degrade at those temperatures. A million years could pass and you would wake up just the same.

We can do all of this now, apart from the AI, and that is coming rapidly. Maybe the only missing bit is that AI has to exist long enough to have had a proper childhood. This will get you between the stars without needing any fancy matter.

Surviving at high temperatures is different. It is harder to do. It is only needed at the end of your long journey. You might keep a whole separate body to do that. Or you might make it from the matter you find when you get there. This is the better option as the lighter you and your craft are, the faster you can go.

Answer 4

There are still many dangers to consider which make things difficult.

In the current scenario you have quasi-indestructible bodies, but everything else is made of normal matter.

Space Hazards and (Ship-)Infrastructure

Imagine the spaceship getting destroyed or otherwise wrecked in deep space (especially: communications, energy, propulsion, rescue shuttles). The bodies would be doomed to an eternal life in the endlessness of space. That could drive them crazy or trigger other things. If the power source is cut, you will need to know what happens to them if the chambers cannot provide recharging anymore (some kind of collective deep-sleep, mutiny/insurgence, fight for the remaining working chambers, and the like).

The bodies are also of finite size still, thus the spaceships need to be sized accordingly. All the challenges that come with this would not be alleviated. You need a dock where to build it, material, time, knowledge, man-power, etc. Technical failures occurring later would also not be excluded and they need maintenance.

Thus, making certain roles in the crew necessary for example engineers, while other roles can be dropped like chefs, doctors, etc (see below). Those still need universities and everything to get their knowledge from somewhere (on a home planet probably).

The things you would save are for example: Life support, maybe beds (and their space) because you could provide a large dorm room with those chambers (no need for privacy?), all the cargo space for foodstuff, kitchen areas, and medical/infirmaries, probably also bathrooms/toilets and other sanitation/waste. You probably still need entertainment, social and private areas for them and storage space for personal items, and important non-food items, like spare parts for the maintenance.

The space ships would have a very different layout than ours, because of the mentioned "superfluous spaces" that can be used otherwise. For example adding many sleeping chambers for large colony ships or something.

Prototype Scenario

The scenario reminds me of the Borg of StarTrek, concerning strengths and weaknesses (not appearance). I also like Trish's comparison to WH40k, very fitting extremes.

Power Source

There is one point to consider with the sleeping chambers and interstellar travel:

The ship needs a sufficiently capable power source which does not rely on sunlight alone. Or alternatively, you need a solution how to store a really large amount of energy (like large capacity batteries that were charged by solar energy). The reason is energy/light emitted from stars falls off rapidly with distance. It is already very faint just inside our solar system at the outer areas.

For example: Our Voyager1+2 which are the farthest away ("interstellar") objects in space we have contact to, do not rely on solar panels. They have a radio active power source to generate electricity.

I am not that familiar with the exact functionality, but I assume it goes something like this: There is a radio active source, emitting electrons, these are collected somehow and stored in a capacitor ("battery") until a sufficiently large charge has built up, then this is released into the circuitry gradually. If the battery is depleted, there is some time needed until it is charged again. Thus, you have a quasi-unlimited source (well, limited by the decay of the radio active material) for electrons but only available for certain phases with high amounts of pauses in between (which are timed in a way, that it is sufficient to send telemetry back to earth in regular time windows). "Always on" instruments need to have fitting "low energy profiles" to be powered by the (or a second) battery all the time.

Deadly Hazards

If they are vulnerable by "ripping apart" or "melting into plasma" or "being captured in a gravity well", there are other possibilities to "attack" them, which you would need to consider how this affects them. For example:

• Cryogens "Freezing" attacks
• Putting them into a particle accelerator
• Confine/capture them deprived of recharging facilities
• Attacks on their power supply infrastructure instead of their immortal bodies
• Making a ship disabled and adrift (covert-ops, open attacks) and put it into a direct course into the nearest sun
• Fancy anti-matter annihilations
• Or just a software bug that prevents waking everybody up.

Conclusion

As LazyLizard covered in the answer: Immortal bodies would enlarge the possible travelling distances a lot (still taking long times). But their lives would not be "problem-free" and also not that "harm-free" - it shifts the attack vectors to something different. Mainly because of the infrastructure they still are dependent on. But maybe they are just peaceful traders instead of murderous conquerors.

Answer 5

One aspect to consider is the difference between the Easiness of space colonization, and the Comfort of it.

Sure, Your indestructible transhumans could be shot into orbit from a cannon, which would be far cheaper than rocketry. Then an orbiting spaceship could collect them like a dump-truck and haul them to Mars, drop them from orbit, and let them fend for themselves.

All in all, this would reduce the cost and hassle of Mars colonization by 99%.

But the process would be grueling, and the life on Mars absolutely miserable this way.

After all, the point of going to Mars, or any alien planet, is not to be trapped on a barren rock with dead wasteland stretching in all directions for all eternity, but to have a new HOME there. This means space cities, pressurized bases, and finally terraforming. Sure, your Quarks could survive on a barren frozen desert, but what would be the point of doing that? Life is not just about surviving, its about actual living. They would still want the atmosphere, even if they do not need to breathe. They would still want cozy warmth, even if they cannot freeze or burn. They would still want to surround themselves with plants and animals, even if they do not eat either.

So my guess would be that while the earliest colonization attempts would be easier, there would be far more pressure to start terraforming and provide comfort quicker. Fragile humans who live for a few decades at most can imagine just heroically struggling to survive on a tiny, spartan pressurized hub, and finally dying, but an immortal would logically know that this will become a nightmare after a while, and would demand creature-comforts upfront.

Answer 6

You can make ships out of charm too

If you can cheaply make something as complex as people out of charm, then you can use it to make your ships too. No need for thick armor or complex landing systems. You can just launch your ships and have them crash down on planets to "land" with their whole payload intact.

Stasis Pods

Part of the big cost of space travel is the infrastructure of keeping a crew alive. But if you could just tuck the crew into a tiny box and keep the frozen or drugged up for the trip, then you could remove several tons of infrastructure per person for the trip. Humans can't survive cryostasis or long term chemical sedation, but your immortal guys should have not problem with it. That said, this requires some assumption of vulnerability. Like just because near absolute zero temperatures won't kill them does not mean they don't have a minimum functional temperature.

More Acceleration

One of the hard parts about interstellar space travel is that human bodies don't do sustained acceleration of more than 1-2G very well. Charm bodies mean that you can get away with launching people and equipment using cheap space cannons instead of complex rocket systems making local space exploration much cheaper. Also, an indestructible ship and bodies could be an alternate solution to the inertia dampeners problem. Currently, even if you could create and engine that lets you to accelerate past the speed of light, you're still limited by how fast you can accelerate. Currently, a ship capable of accelerating up to the speed of light would take almost an entire year to reach light speed... which sure, if you are talking about a light speed limit turns a 4ly trip into a 5 yr trip, no big deal... but what if your civilization learns to break the speed of light. If some trick of perpetual motion finally pans out, and you can accelerate as fast and as long as you want. Well, now that 4ly trip is reduced to about 3 years at 1g of acceleration... but 3 years is still a pretty long time. What if you could accelerate at 1000g or 10,000g? Now you could have interstellar travel that happens in hours or even minutes.