100-Year Starship some way off

--- In spacesettlers, sraj wrote:

> ----------------
> Is there really a problem?
>
> 1. The robots need to be self replicating only to
> a limited extent. The complex electronics for a
> hundred slave robots will be carried from earth;
> only the heavy mechanical elements need to be
> fabricated on site. Five master robots will be on
> the spacecraft fully assembled.

So far so good, but keep reading.

> 2. There will be two way contact between Alpha
> Centaurus and Earth (with a time lag of 4.4
> years). It will be unlike a normal conversation;
> just a streaming conversation to keep the two
> sides updated.
>
> 3. The children will realise who they are by the
> age of two.

Will they? By ten, certainly. By five perhaps.
By two? I can't say that it's impossible, but I
have my doubts.

> There will be extensive video libraries in the
> nurseries, and streaming videos from earth.
> Each child will have a dedicated video stream
> from parents/relatives from Earth.

Not good enough for most parents I've met, not for
most children. But keep reading.

> 4. The technology for the artificial womb will be
> destroyed once its purpose has been served.

Why? I don't see any reason it couldn't go right
on being used by the women living in the new worlds.

> 5. Settlements in orbit around stars looks more logical.

Yep.

OK, now for the reason I asked you all to keep reading.
The idea of mind uploading has entered this thread. Well,
what if those five master robots are uploaded human beings?
There could be, say, twenty-five of them, with five active
for one-year shifts, all the way to Alpha Centaurus. Once
there, they are all active and start, with robot nannies
and nurses and teachers and such helping, to raise the
frozen embryos.