Sci-Fi story idea

I have had a story idea percolating in my brain the last month or so. Let me lay it on you and tell me what you think:


The story has three main threads.

1. In the not too distant future humankind sends out its first interstellar expedition. Radio signals are detected from a planet circling a star about 11 light years away. New technology is created so that a speed of around 50% the speed of light is feasible. Despite the new drive technology it will take about 50 years round trip. 22 years each way and 4 or five years to explore the distant star system. When our intrepid astronauts take off the world is, except for technology , little different from the world we know. At first just about everybody follows the progress of the ship. After awhile the public gets tired of the story and more mundane, closer to home concerns crowds out the expedition in the public psyche. To make matters worse after 50 years the ship does not come back. Everybody assumes they are lost. In time they are all but forgotten.

2. In the mean time back on Earth, computer technology advances at dizzying rate. It's Moore's law cubed. Computers get faster, smaller and smarter. Artificial intelligence exceeds all expectations. A new technology is developed that allows people to be literally downloaded to a virtual universe inside the new molecular computers. The computing devices are housed in solid blocks of diamond and are just about indestructible. The down loaded people are for all intents and purposes immortal. They can create virtual worlds, satisfy any desire. At first only the elite are allowed to be downloaded. Great scientists, philosophers etc. With all the time in the world, these godlike individuals are able to mightily improve the lot humankind. Soon war, famine and disease are just about wiped out. It's a new golden age for human kind.

But there is trouble in paradise. Rich people as they approach death buy their way in. Powerful people bully their way in. Nobody wants to die, everybody want to live forever in virtual heaven. There is a backlash, a group of hackers figures out how to download themselves on the cheap. Some surplus parts, an illegal piece of pirated software and suddenly the cyberworld is no longer the exclusive enclave for the super brains and the elite, "Joe Six Pack"has found the back door. Society begins to collapse. All over the world mindless bodies are found
'jacked in" to computer consoles. Soon there are more people in cyberspace than there are walking around in the flesh.

3. Not every one is thrilled with the state of the human race. After about a century the entire human population left in the flesh numbers only about a couple of hundred. Life isn't so bad for them, Technology makes life pretty easy compared to their ancestors and they still have the option of downloading themselves when they get close to death. There are a few that refuse to consider the idea because of philosophical or religious reasons. One day the president of earth gets a notice from an automated space sensor. Low and behold it's our old buddies from the interstellar space ship. It seems that the reception from our stellar neighbors was less than, well:stellar(sorry couldn't resist). Our el presidente gets an idea. We have our astronauts that are essentially visitors from the past, they haven't been contaminated with idea of a virtual paradise, he has at his disposal a whole world of resources, super advanced technology and whole lot of preserved personalityless bodies in cold storage. As the craft approaches from deep space he orders the ship's computer to keep the crew in stasis and puts the ship in a parking orbit.

Next he wakes up the all of the sleeping robots , A.I.s and automated manufacturing plants in orbit. He consults the big brains inside the big diamond block computer. Over the next few years he has a super space ark built in orbit. He has genetic samples taken from all of the "empty" bodies and proceeds to engineer a new human race, free of all genetic defects , stronger, smarter and more resistant to disease. He has the a big box computer chock full of super geniuses loaded up on the new ship. After all of his preparations he wakes up the crew of astronauts and flat out lies to them.

After he listens to their adventures he tells them that the human race is extinct, killed by a mutant virus. It is up to them to find a new planet and use the human seed stock to start a new earth. Only this time it's going to be done right and that they are charged with making it happen. At first our heroes are bummed, they didn't get a ticker tape parade or anything. Eventually they agree reluctantly. But there is a fly in the ointment(several actually,many potential plot twists possible). The big box brain has been infested with billions of our little hacker buddies. The elites consider them to be the equivalent of computer viruses. The hackers have there own ideas about how the mission should carried out or even if it should be carried out at all. Half of the way to mankind's new home virtual civil war erupts inside the big box. Who controls the ship and the mission is in doubt. Meanwhile our heroic astronauts are again in suspended animation blissfully unaware of the turmoil and when they get to their new home things get really interesting.

So what do you think?

Let me know.
(some rights reserved, if you steal any of my ideas, at least give me some credit)

Sincerely:

Emoose, head Mutant