Chris J

@Mołot ah this answer makes sense to me now!! thanks both

that was one of my thoughts, although ships manage it... I suppose this because they are getting up to speed... how about placing them nearer the sun? Would there be a point where the wind would be negated by the effect of gravity?

I'm not sure that dogs/cats would count as slavery, cats quite often come and go as they please, whilst dogs have co-evolved with people. We have been shaped by them as much as we have shaped them. Dogs in a home setting are usually an equal member of the family. The only way to stop them coming back 'home' would be a mass cull...

@Burki true, but I also don't know how to drive a train.. or how to change tracks, or even more importantly, how to close the electronic doors! If you have a working knowledge of trains I'd risk it, if not I'd steer well clear

the trouble with trains is the tracks! And what happens when you meet a stopped train?

@NexTerren It's how the Bourne films work, creating super spies from soldiers.. just taking it a step further. Spy flicks aren't my specialty so don't think an answer would be that coherent but hope this gives you something to consider.

Have you thought about something like a transferable consciousness? James Bond has had many different faces over time... you can have your agent commit an act of terrorism/espionage and then pop them into a new body. To keep it within the realms of science, you could make these to be some kind of hypnotic state... "Your name is Bond, James Bond"

@LuísHenrique mostly I wanted to know the timeframe, I wanted it to be long enough that a generational ship was out of the question but long enough for problems to creep into the system

@LuísHenrique that's where I'm going with this :) what kind of messed up monsters would we be with perfect parents

@LuísHenrique apologies, reconstruction is the term I've used which is misleading, it's more like building a human shaped sack of meat and giving it a human-like personality for the first generation. whilst the second generation will be cultured and be more human

@MikeScott We got voyager out of the solar system back in , I'm not concerned about getting there in a timely manner, this would be a one way trip

@LuísHenrique Science doesn't progress along all avenues at the same time, solving problems in physics is different to creating some human-like constructs, both are equally implausible in my mind at the moment

@MikeScott conventional means are anything that has been proved to work as at this point in time, fission/fusion/anti-matter are all off the plate. I'll update to reflect this.

@DonaldHobson "At present, antimatter costs $62.5 trillion per gram" - I'm not sure that it's believable to have a tonne of the stuff

@Chinu in this world, fusion and anti-matter are still a long way off from being applicated. unless you're talking about fusion bombing? would that work in space?

@KingofSnakes the plan is to get into the path of the comet and let it pick us up on the way (great big smash but our replicators can fix that)