Nanomachines?

[Scoobes]

Dr.Henry_Killinger said:

Scoobes said:
If you want to use internal nanomachines then you'll need to make sure they have a significant biological component to overcome the immune response (or effectively make the immune system assume they're naturally meant to be there).

Also, I wouldn't have the AI tightly controlling the genetic pool to reduce diversity. This simply increases the likelihood of disease spreading and affecting the majority of the population and potentially across multiple colonies. Whilst the AI can regulate the nanomachines and enhance the attributes needed for space survival, I don't think scientists would find limiting genetic diversity to be a particularly good idea in the mid to long-term.

Naturally, yes diversity is important. But in this case it is really not, because these colonies are seperated by upwards of thousands of years. If diversity was allowed to occur then when these colonies meet up again they will likely be different species entirely. In fact, diversity is important in the natural world because of a constantly changing environment. The environmnet inside these colonies will not only be stable but identical with every other colony.

In this case, I don't think diversity would be beneficial and possibly even harmful.

Well, speciation would take longer than thousands of years. Maybe hundreds of thousands of years, but even then, if the environment of each colony is tightly controlled and identical, the selection pressures will also be the same effectively reducing the chances of speciation. The need for diversity in such a setting is more as a plan B in case a virus mutates within the environment and infects and kills the majority of the population due to a lack of diversity. Or if something from the external environment contaminates the colony.