You just have to first hack (or maybe even just ask nicely) another suitable species (or their technological artifacts) wherever you want to go, and have them create the biological substrate and download/upload mechanism on their end. This limits travel to already inhabited corners of the universe, but that's better than nothing I suppose.
The tricky thing is that hacking is usually an iterative process, and these iterations are going to be an extreme exercise in patience.
Actually, another tricky thing: how do you know that the other end is actually cooperating? If the aliens are dicks they could give you the thumbs up while having zero intention to reconstitute your consciousness. If you wanted to round-trip some brave soul as a means of verifying everything works, they could just send one of their own minds back instead, just for the fun of wreaking havoc.
> The tricky thing is that hacking is usually an iterative process, and these iterations are going to be an extreme exercise in patience.
No kidding! On the first try you accidentally end up causing a revolution because the targets/specimens ended up learning about the scientific method, gunpowder, and other dangerous things instead of just getting a proper advanced consciousness installed. So now all you can do is try to shape said species technological progress towards building the correct technology that you can hijack for your own purposes when ready.
> You just have to first hack … another suitable species (or their technological artifacts) wherever you want to go, and have them create the biological substrate and download/upload mechanism on their end.
I presume humans are the result of such a hack a few billion years ago.
Interstellar travel require patience, at least to get beyond the initial latency.
The tricky thing is that hacking is usually an iterative process, and these iterations are going to be an extreme exercise in patience.
Actually, another tricky thing: how do you know that the other end is actually cooperating? If the aliens are dicks they could give you the thumbs up while having zero intention to reconstitute your consciousness. If you wanted to round-trip some brave soul as a means of verifying everything works, they could just send one of their own minds back instead, just for the fun of wreaking havoc.