What If Humanity Sent a Seeder Ship into Space? | Unveiled

What if Humanity Sent a Seeder Ship into Space?

Distances in space are often insurmountably vast, with even our fastest probes taking decades or centuries to reach nearby galaxies, stars and exoplanets. It’s because of these distances that just getting into a spaceship and freely exploring outer space isn’t really an option. So, what if there was a better way to send humanity to new horizons?

This is Unveiled, and today we’re answering the extraordinary question; what if we sent a seeder ship into space?

Before the concept of seeder ships there was the idea of sleeper ships, popular in science fiction for years now. These are when a crew is loaded onto a spaceship and cryogenically frozen, keeping them in stasis for however long it takes their vehicle to reach their destination. In reality, though, we’re still a long way away from being able to freeze an adult indefinitely before bringing them back to life. Let alone bringing them back to life in a distant, alien world or galaxy.

Seeder ships offer an alternative, however, with the basic idea being that we could freeze those who have yet to be born and send them into space, instead. We know that human embryos can be frozen and safely thawed here on Earth. As can separate sperm and egg cells. It’s vital technology for fertility treatments… but could it now be just as important for space exploration? And how would embryo space colonization work?

While its mission would be very different to that of a sleeper ship, a spacecraft carrying human embryos or reproductive cells would still need to be loaded with extremely advanced tech. Specifically, it would need an intelligent AI not only to keep the craft moving and functioning but to eventually thaw and raise the embryos. AI is, of course, already used in space exploration - for example, to detect dangerous debris around a ship - but this would be something far more complex. We’re talking fully automated in-vitro fertilization, embryo culture and development of life. IVF carried out entirely by machines. The entire journey of birth without human intervention.

Then, whenever the ship arrives at its destination, those embryos would need to be carried to full term, most likely in artificial wombs. Currently, back here on Earth, there’s a widely held fourteen-day rule prohibiting experimentation on embryos - including inside artificial wombs - beyond that timeframe. We have, though, already seen some success growing mice embryos in space… suggesting that the same thing could be possible for humans. All of which means that if humanity were to ever send a seeder ship into space, then the ethical guidelines around keeping embryos in general would basically have to be rewritten. Which would really make for a disturbing world… one where trial runs for the seeder ship are carried out on the ground, meaning lab-grown children born purely for scientific purposes. It could all make for an unusual but deeply unsettling dystopia, even years before the seeder ship itself got off the ground.

But, say humanity does reach this point? AI-led IVF is a reality, and all existing embryo laws have been thrown out for the sake of this future world. There are still countless hurdles awaiting a seeder ship on its journey, namely that we haven’t yet found any exoplanets that might make a good destination for even a human settlement – let alone for a colony that hasn’t been born yet. The one major advantage this approach would have over a sleeper ship is size. Seeing as the human life frozen aboard it a) would be tiny to begin with, and b) would never need to walk or eat or experience daily life on the ship itself, the vessel could be built small. And less size could equal more speed, meaning less time between launch and landing. But, even so, the likelihood is that the ship would find itself adrift in space for generations. If anything were to go wrong, there’d be nothing anyone on Earth could do about it. And, even if it did one day reach a safe and life-enabling environment elsewhere, there’d be no going back from whence it came. That luxury of choice just wouldn’t exist for anyone born on a seeder.

And that would be the harsh reality for the rest of their lives, too. In practice, a seeder ship would be one of the most complicated scientific and technological feats ever even attempted. Self-replicating AI would likely be at the heart of the effort, with intelligent machines perhaps even arriving on a target planet before the ship does, to prepare for embryo arrival. From that moment, though, or from when the first human beings are born from the ship, what kind of a life would they lead?

Even should it all go to plan, these infants, then children, then teens would still need to be raised, cared for and educated entirely by the AI that brought them there. Robots and machines would be their mothers and fathers and teachers and friends. It would be an existence unlike any other, producing a generation of humans who will have never met another human besides those they shared their ship with, and were born alongside. Can you imagine what life would be like for them?

Again, the total absence of choice would be front and centre of the countless ethical issues such a mission would raise. It’s one thing filling a spaceship with a crew of consenting adults, no matter how dangerous their trip could turn out to be… but it’s another to force life to try to survive so far away from its natural home. How would you feel if you grew up to realise that you had been born lightyears away from the home of your species, all in the name of science? Of course, no human being chooses where they are born or even to be born at all… but this takes that fact of life into all new territory.

There’d be no telling how well each seeder ship occupant would be suited to a difficult life on an interstellar frontier. We know that regular astronauts go through exhaustive training to be able to do their jobs, but this would go way beyond even the international space station in terms of isolation, frustration, confusion and loneliness. None of these space-born colonists would have lived their lives dreaming of outer space and striving to make it, they’ll just have grown up having to deal with it. Would the society that launched the seeder ship be infringing on the bodily autonomy rights of the future-humans onboard it? Would those future-humans really represent Earth, having never actually lived on it? This one’s a hypothetical, sci-fi scenario which raises just as many questions as it answers!

One thing’s for sure, embryo space colonization could easily produce a band of far-off people who justifiably resent the rest of humanity. Their very existence would be the result of human endeavour and ingenuity, yes, but they will have also been doomed to a desolate life with only the same people (in the same situation) for company. What, then, if they were to turn their attention back to Earth? Or if humanity had sent more than one seeder ship out into the cosmos, and they got together? Would we have inadvertently created whole planets of people, whole space-faring societies, who hate us? Bearing in mind that they will also have lived their whole lives in and around extremely sophisticated, probably self-replicating AI… and we might’ve created a formidable enemy for ourselves. An enemy from across the stars with a pretty sizeable score to settle.

So, could a seeder ship ever be considered a good idea when trying to preserve the future of humanity? Practically speaking, it has a lot going for it. It would require a smaller ship, that ship could then travel faster, and the human species could reach multiple planets and galaxies in a much shorter time frame. Technologically speaking, though, all of that is so much easier said than done… and, right now, we’re still so far away from it being even slightly achievable.

It’s ethically speaking where this hypothetical solution to interstellar space travel falters most of all, however. There’s no choice offered to the life at the heart of this mission, and no way out of the distant, robotic world it’s forced into. In theory, it’s one way of creating a human outpost in the stars. In practice, it could breed an Earth-despising super force. And that’s what could happen if humanity sent a seeder ship into space.