An idea of how to reach the stars … semi-virtually.
I remember when I learned about the speed of light in physics, that nothing can go faster than it. Strangely that really annoyed me, I felt imprisoned in the universe that would have limits that were impossible to overcome. Then it was learning of the relationship to the energy required to push anything toward this prison speed, that it increased exponentially as the speed was approached. The mass would appear to become greater and greater, requiring more and more energy to push it. I spent a lot of wasted time trying to break the Lorentz transformation and making it work like it should have. It’s failure however did produce a few ideas that gave me some relief, though I never quite worked out how to achieve them. The more I thought about the principle however the more I saw it as a solution to much more. Decades later, as I am training myself to think of more basic things, for basic needs, my business plan work is getting shredded by these ideas distracting me. So here we go… If I write down the basic ideas then maybe these concepts can wait for a more convenient moment, though I would love to have the resources to research their possibilities…
So, it seems, we are imprisoned by mass. We may be able to cross the universe in many ways in metaphysics in an instant, or the electron can pretend to be in every position of the universe in the next moment, but pushing a spaceship to a new part of our stellar neighbourhood is going to require a lot of energy. Of course the more energy you need, the more you need to store, the more massive the payload and throwing this all across the cosmos is going to be a big loss.
So the payload should ideally be as small as possible.
The smaller the payload, the less can be done with it.  Unless…
What is the smallest manufacturing object we can make? What can be created that would use the mass, the elements, compounds, and energy that exists at the destination. Can a minute machine be created that could make many more functional machines, that in turn can produce more meaningful components at the other end. What is the smallest machine that can be created. Could it be a molecular machine?
Indeed, could there be a means of not needing to throw any mass at all, is there a massless means of making a machine to begin with?
These tiny generic, stem cell type machines can get to work and produce larger and larger paraphernalia. They may be later more generic forms of 3-D printers that could produce any components needed later, not known until the first sensory equipment is created and perceiving that distant environment.
I had something called ’Philliform’? when I was a kid, a kind of mix between Lego and Meccano, and I used to imagine these as creating forms across space. Needing maybe a set of basic forms and energy producers out of which anything we wanted could be created. Could this be the way that we build our homes in our galactic neighbourhood?
Could this be the means of creating our homes on nearer planets, before we take the risks and travel physically to them. Our first sense of these far off places could be the machines created as avatars, sending our augmented senses home through a rather time delayed virtual reality. Our eyes would not be created here on earth, but in some far off region in space, closer to the things we wish to see.
Wormholes that would be destroyed by throwing through too massive a missive through them would instead be taken advantage of maybe through nanotechnology. Using the smallest possible little workers that would create our eyes and ears at the other end and stretching our existence to maybe even other galaxies. Even if a wormhole crosses into the past, could something be started off in build in this time to be ready now.
Imagine a link to a spacetime millions of years ago and building our sensory equipment. If it would require numerous years to build it would still be enough to record our current probably past? To arrive now, millions of years later from the point it was sent, or to us a moment ago. Our existence would expand into the cosmos, possibly building from these remote bootstraps. Trillions of little machines all building together at each opportunistic plot of spacetime we find and care to enter.
Now, .. where was I?