[ganadiniakshay]

I actually believe its highly important we achieve this sooner rather than later. Because we are currently limited by death for a lot of things. One example is Inter-Planetary Space Travel. If you could live longer then you can travel farther and explore more.

[humbledrone]

Assuming you mean interstellar space travel (interplanetary spaceflight is quite achievable with current human lifespans and technology), we don't need to live longer to do it.

Due to the principle of special relativity, if you could build a spaceship that accelerates at a constant 1g, the people on the ship could get anywhere in the entire galaxy without aging more than 24 years [1]. So a person could easily travel from one end of the galaxy and back in a normal human lifespan. Of course to a "stationary" observer (e.g. on Earth) watching the spaceship, it would appear to take a couple hundred thousand years for the trip to take place. But this doesn't matter a bit to people aboard the ship (well, aside from the fact that everyone they left behind on Earth would be dead just a few months into their trip).

So the hard part isn't getting people to live long enough. It's building a ship that can accelerate at a constant 1g for years on end. :)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_travel_using_constant_ac...

[m-j-fox]

I had this thought but the downer is: where are you getting your energy? And all of the mass you need to eject to keep your rocket accelerating, you'll have to carry with you. I guess if you could stop and eat some suns along the way -- but we're not talking about current technology anymore.

[Cyph0n]

I think that cryogenic hibernation is a significantly easier way to achieve interplanetary travel.

Immortality -- to me at least -- doesn't seem like it will end up providing that many benefits to humanity as a whole. Population control will become much more difficult, unless all over-aged males are somehow forced to undergo a vasectomy. And I highly doubt that people living longer will lead to increased productivity. On the contrary, I think that people will rely on welfare more and more as they age, not because of health, but because of burnout. The obvious solution to this is the creation of a general AI that provides the majority of humans with unlimited income for life. But then, if everyone is rich, people will quickly get bored after experiencing everything they're interested in, making immortality essentially useless!

[euyyn]

It might be that I just don't follow the topic, but cryogenic hibernation sounds to me like just a science fiction idea with no real advancement ever having happened. Curing illnesses, instead, we do constantly and steadily. So the latter seems to me much more easier.

[Cyph0n]

I don't think curing illnesses is the same as extending life, but if it is I might agree with you.

[euyyn]

Well, so far curing and preventing illnesses is how we've extended life. There's room for an argument that, after we're done with all current major illnesses, we'll still have to solve the problem of debilitating aging to increase life further. But who knows if that's just pessimism.

Even if it's the case, we're also doing steady progress in the "make people more robust" department: orthopedics, transplants, pacemakers, better nutrition and supplements, better environmental health, ...

I guess it makes sense, because there's strong and continuous economic pressure to achieve those things, while there isn't a case (yet?) for getting to hibernation via baby steps.

[lawless123]

>But then, if everyone is rich, people will quickly get bored after experiencing everything they're interested in, making immortality essentially useless!

Says you.

[Cyph0n]

Yes, it's nothing but an opinion.

[rublev]

As if it's not going to be exclusively available for the ultra billionaires. Immortality will be the final divider of the classes.

[philipkglass]

It's not going to be exclusively available for ultra billionaires, if it is possible at all. There are lots of things that would be powerful advantages if only a tiny elite had access to them: vaccines, antibiotics, anti-retroviral drugs, digital computers... but if a thing is demonstrated possible at all, others will figure out how to do it again. And if the first inventors refuse to sell or share the technology it will just be spread by the second or third group to figure out the trick.

[jacquesm]

Already wealth is a big factor in longevity.

[rwallace]

Consider the cost of polio vaccine versus the cost of keeping a polio victim undead for a year in an iron lung. It's ineffective medical treatment that really costs. Even if you don't care about human life, even if money is your only preoccupation, we need life extension technology to stop the cost of end-of-life care from bankrupting modern society.

[myhf]

Nonsense. The promise of natural death for ultra billionaires is the only thing protecting them from the guillotine.

[ekianjo]

I don't think they will conduct clinical trials on ultra billionaires only. THere's not enough of them to know if it works...

[fapjacks]

On the other hand, some really fucking rotten ideas go into the dirt when people die, too. And somewhat related to that idea, but more specific, there is a lot of truth behind the saying that science advances one funeral at a time.