Mars

[Anomalocaris]

I'm not so sure. The Chinese recently tried sprouting some seeds on the moon. One actually did sprout, and then died horribly.

And?

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I think in the long run, say 500+ years, human colonization would not involve live humans or even frozen embryos.  What good are embryos for the first 20 years anyway?

None, of course. But why that arbitrary deadline?

Because I think in less than 500 years our mastery of all the processes behind all human function would be so complete all mysticism surrounding human beings, value of experience, and the potency of the will, feeling and thought  will be totally gone, and we will be able to manufacture humans of any desired size, age, knowledge, experience, inclination, personality on order in fabrication plants.   Biological reproduction, child rearing, education etc will be superfluous. Embryos will no longer occur in human society.

[Yonadav]

Laying aside that children actually are worth something and that their presence would be required for any successful human colony...there was a fun little sci fi flick not too long ago about copies of adult human beings being leveraged for remote labor offworld.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twuScTcDP_Q

Yeah, I've seen that movie. I loved the AI. I don't know if I can trust an AI that's able work around the rules of it's programming like that. But I enjoyed it rationalizing the rules of its programming so that it was able to help Sam. The AI was brilliantly juxtaposed with Sam who was basically biological hardware. The AI didn't really understand Sam's need to go complain to their creators in anything more than an academic sense, but it was still on board with it despite all of his other programming that said he shouldn't be on board with it.

[Anomalocaris]

Laying aside that children actually are worth something and that their presence would be required for any successful human colony...there was a fun little sci fi flick not too long ago about copies of adult human beings being leveraged for remote labor offworld.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twuScTcDP_Q

It is true that for the time being, the dominant means for conditioning human behavior and inculcating social and technical skills is through external stimuli processes by senses.   Hence children are part of the stimuli known to work and thus deemed essential.    

But If human indoctrination can be applied directly at molecular level during the assembly of humans, then all sorts of external stimuli we can’t do without now would become superflous. You don’t ever need to have had any interpersonal relationship because all the results of beneficial interpersonal relationship upon your brain would be built into your brain. You don’t ever need to go through 12, or 16, or 20 years of education to have not only PhD level knowledge of subject matter, but any proficiency in mental process that hitherto can only result from supervised practice.

[The Grand Nudger]

Why are children required?  

I don't think that we're looking at this the same way.  We don't have to imagine the future to see what you're describing.  We've done it here, from the excursions to the new world to remote jobsites to offshore rigs.  Children bring no more practical utility in those situations than they would in off-world colonization.  Broadly, that's the difference between a labor camp and a colony.  While it may be tru that children aren't a requirement for an off world (or on world) labor camp..it's probably not accurate to assert that they bring nothing (even to that labor camp). The presence or absence of children profoundly indicates success or failure of colonization, to me. It cuts to the entire point of colonization as distinct from the creation of labor camps.

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-for the above, the more we suggest that these human beings have been modified to be unlike us the less we're talking about a successful human colony and the more we're talking about a "whatever the hell they are" colony..still likely used by us as a labor camp.  Perhaps even more so, if these designer adults can be effectively argued as property rather than people.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

And?

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None, of course. But why that arbitrary deadline?

Because I think in less than 500 years our mastery of all the processes behind all human function would be so complete all mysticism surrounding human beings, value of experience, and the potency of the will, feeling and thought  will be totally gone, and we will be able to manufacture humans of any desired size, age, knowledge, experience, inclination, personality on order in fabrication plants.   Biological reproduction, child rearing, education etc will be superfluous.  Embryos will no longer occur in human society.

Yeah, so where's our flying cars?

[Anomalocaris]

Because I think in less than 500 years our mastery of all the processes behind all human function would be so complete all mysticism surrounding human beings, value of experience, and the potency of the will, feeling and thought  will be totally gone, and we will be able to manufacture humans of any desired size, age, knowledge, experience, inclination, personality on order in fabrication plants.   Biological reproduction, child rearing, education etc will be superfluous.  Embryos will no longer occur in human society.

Yeah, so where's our flying cars?

Waiting for you right outside your window.  Mind the gap.

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Why are children required?  

I don't think that we're looking at this the same way.  We don't have to imagine the future to see what you're describing.  We've done it here, from the excursions to the new world to remote jobsites to offshore rigs.  Children bring no more practical utility in those situations than they would in off-world colonization.  Broadly, that's the difference between a labor camp and a colony.  While it may be tru that children aren't a requirement for an off world (or on world) labor camp..it's probably not accurate to assert that they bring nothing (even to that labor camp).  The presence or absence of children profoundly indicates success or failure of colonization, to me.  It cuts to the entire point of colonization as distinct from the creation of labor camps.

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-for the above, the more we suggest that these human beings have been modified to be unlike us the less we're talking about a successful human colony and the more we're talking about a "whatever the hell they are" colony..still likely used by us as a labor camp.  Perhaps even more so, if these designer adults can be effectively argued as property rather than people.

The presence or absence of children would only indicate success of the colony if biological reproduction continue to remain an important was by which human societies expand themselves.   I think in the relatively near future (say 100 years) means of producing new humans through processes other than traditional biological reproduction will become available.   Over another 100 years the process will be be perfected, made generally available, and largely replace biological reproduction.  Over similar period, direct programming of human mind will also become possible, practical, and supplant all means of instructive child rearing, education and training as we’ve know hitherto.

Once that has happened, the presence of children will no longer denote the success of a colony, but its failure and collapse of its organization and infrastructure, more like children of school age running wild and eking out a marginal living by scavenging might say about a colony in our time.

Ours is an extremely young technological civilization. We’ve only been in a position to scratch the very surface of what really is going on during reproduction for about 100 years. Prior to that the underlying mechanism of reproduction was a total riddle wrapped in myth and handed down from time immemorial, well at least from hundreds of millions of years ago. We don’t understand it, so we can’t make it work if we try to change it. That’s why we hold it in such idolatrous reverence.

But there is no reason why any technologically advanced civilization need to remain rooted in biological and behavior limitaions if its pre-salients evolutionary path.

[The Grand Nudger]

Sure, I can definitely see us becoming something other than what we are.  Starting to eke into the territory of that other "will we ever become martians" thread, though. I suspect that our ability to go someplace and breed while there will come long before any of the abilities above, though - mostly because we already can, and persist long after any ability to modify reproduction (also already available to us). What you're describing is a post or transhuman future.