Interstellar Seed of Life
Growing at Every Layer and Level
Many years ago I couldn’t help but deeply ponder the question:
What is the purpose of life?
For days, weeks, months, and years… it presented itself to me at odd moments, in the calm, and in the chaos.
I would think of everything I had learned about life. I would think of it on long timescales, and short timescales. I would think about how it is connected and how it is opposed.
Eventually, I concluded that: the purpose of life is to grow. How could it be anything else.
Once I had my answer, another question immediately filled its place.
What is my purpose?
A much more relevant question. Life encompasses a lot more before and after me. Where as my life is a much more relevant timeframe to positively grow into. Generally, I’ve found that contributing my unique perspective, skills, energy to my family, friends, and community feels the most fulfilling.
Grounded to Grandiose
Having listened to thousands of hours of philosophers, novels, meditations, and thinkers; both past and present.
I found and retained a story told by Alan Watts which exemplifies the cosmic perspective of earth growing life and people.
Where upon I connected it to Elon Musk’s baseline mission: “To expand the scope and scale of consciousness.”
Which lead me back to my universal feature of life, that it grows, and produces seeds which can be taken by the wind far away to grow in new soil.
Through these philosophies I came to formulate a concept I call: The Interstellar Seed of Life. I have since been learning to determine how I can contribute in a way which is relevant right now, to me, my family, friends, and at every level possible.
This is the story Alan Watts told.
Look: here is a tree in the garden, And every summer it produces apples, And we call it an apple tree Because the tree "apples" — That's what it does.
Now here is a solar system inside a galaxy, And one of the peculiarities of this solar system Is that, at least on planet Earth, It "peoples" — In just the same way that an apple tree apples.
Now Maybe, perhaps two million years ago. Someone came from another galaxy In a flying saucer. And had a look at this solar system. They looked it over, shrugged their shoulders, And said, "Just a bunch of rocks," And they went away.
Later on, perhaps two million years later, They came around and looked at it again And said, "Excuse me — We thought it was a bunch of rocks, But it's peopling! And it's alive after all... It has done something intelligent."
You see, we grow out of this world In exactly the same way That apples grow on the apple tree. If evolution means anything, It means that.
But you see, we curiously twist it — We say, "Well, first of all, In the beginning there was nothing but gas and rock, And then intelligence happened to arise in it, Like a sort of fungus or slime On top of the whole thing."
We're thinking in a way That disconnects the intelligence from the rocks. But where there are rocks, watch out!
Watch out, because the rocks are going eventually to come alive. and they are going to have people crawling all over them...
In the same way that the apple tree produces apples, the earth produces life, including people. I imagined one step further that a seed must be generated and find new soil to take root in. Beyond earth, even beyond our sun.
I am not of the belief I will see an interstellar starship in my lifetime, but I recognize that to build and participate in its creation and dreaming it into reality, is to contribute to the greatest purpose of life. TO GROW.
Even further to build the technologies which benefit me, you, our families and a everyone at all levels, both right now, and in the future simultaneously.
Core Concept
The Interstellar Seed of Life aims to build local longevity through the technology also required to expand beyond Earth. Spreading life itself throughout the cosmos.
Just as seeds travel to new environments to grow into trees then to grow creating more seeds. Humanity must build the seeds that carry life beyond earth. There are a lot of layers and levels to get it right, and a lot of trial and error needed to get there. We may not get it right any more than the trees seeds get it right, but we will benefit from our ability to build, grow and spread seeds as the trees do.
A Space Terrarium
Our journey through the stars demands lots of conscious effort and complex planning. The basic idea is to encapsulate life into a terrarium with energy as it’s only input. Everything else will be 100% recycled, as there is not much ability to gather expendable resources in space. Until landing somewhere.
A self-sustaining terrarium-like starship
A complete ecosystem including but not limited to:
Bacteria and fungi
Plants and animals
Human inhabitants
A closed-loop resource recycling system
Energy generation through advanced fission-fusion reactors
Digital and AI-managed life support systems
Theater of Mind
A tumultuous mental experiment would be to ask yourself, if you were god, what do you lack?
God lacks limitation. Limitations give meaning to existence. If one could do anything without any constraints.
What would be the point of anything?
Take for example a video game, they often come with “sandbox mode” where they player is all powerful, cannot die, can create anything, use any tool, and travel with teleportation. I found that while this can be fun to learn more about the game, eventually I become bored. Then I move on to playing easy mode, then medium, and finally hard mode.
My daughter, only 1.5 years old, prefers to climb up the higher stair, even when she is right next to a lower one.
It is more fun and meaningful to embrace our limitations and to grow within them. “Physics is Law, everything else is a suggestion”
The Interstellar Seed of Life embodies this idea by embracing the challenges of space and physics, seeking to overcome them through ingenuity, technology, and persistence.
While it’s not yet clear to me what inhabitants would need to believe and practice in their terrarium. We at least know that there will need to be a strong passion and adherence to faith in the mission to bring it to fruition.
Similar to the many ocean and pilgrimages people have taken across earth, the starship voyagers will need similar reasons and belief to make it through their journey to the new world.
Governance and Implementation
The Orders of Magnitude framework provides one possible structural backbone for this ambitious project:
Scales from individual to ship level governance
Enables effective decision-making at all team levels
Addresses challenges from crew management to colonial administration
Technical and Biological
We must understand our diets, our microbiomes, and even the viruses embedded in our DNA to create a complete, resilient ecosystem. The ship will be a full-scale terrarium, a self-sustaining ark that carries everything needed to grow and thrive in new, distant environments.
This pursuit is not just about survival; it is about embracing our role as stewards of life, pushing the boundaries of what is possible, and finding excitement and purpose in the act of transformation, creation and exploration.
Creating a successful Interstellar Seed requires deep understanding of:
Complete life cycles and ecosystem interactions at multiple levels
Macro Scale
Human Scale
Micro Scale
Nano Scale
Human nutritional and biological needs
Microbiome and viral components of human biology
Water and resource management
Long-term ecosystem stability and recoverability
Greater Purpose
This mission transcends survival. It represents:
Humanity's role as stewards of Earth's life
Faith in human creativity and exploration
The challenge of preserving and spreading life
A testament to human ingenuity and determination
This vision combines practical engineering challenges with profound philosophical questions and foundations about humanity's place in the universe and our responsibility to spread life beyond our home planet.
Success requires:
Overcoming existing social structures and Fermi filters
Understanding complete ecosystem requirements
Maintaining a self-sustaining biosphere
Managing complex biological interactions
Humanity's role is as stewards of life, tasked with spreading Earth's biosphere to the cosmos—not merely for survival, but as an act of creation, curiosity, and exploration.
Prophecy
The Interstellar Seed of Life is a prophesy of life’s future, whether we participate or not.
By building universal human foundations of faith, harnessing thorium-based molten salt reactors, building ecospheres, and integrating advanced AI systems, we can successfully embark on long-duration space missions and build off-world colonies.
This will improve Earthly life’s longevity, while simultaneously enabling us to spread life beyond our planet.
Looking Ahead
The challenges are immense, but so is the potential. By rethinking both our governance structures, our approach to energy, and our mind-body teleology, we can overcome the limitations that have long held us back.
In my next article, I'll delve into the concept of Limit Training—how pushing our physical and mental boundaries can lead to the breakthroughs necessary to turn these visionary ideas into reality.