[SPOILERS] Maybe the Ark is not a bad place to live

[cantremember]

There are some things that make little sense to me about the Ark. IIRC they say that those inside the Ark will never be aware of the outside world, they'll simply drift through space without any awareness of it. They also say that once on the Ark, there's no return. I question this.

1. The digital copies inside the Ark are the same (theorietically) as the digital copies inside, for example, Carl's construct body, or even Simon himself. Since digital data is easily transfered through computer systems, that should make it easy to transfer a copy from one digital location to another. For example Simon's original scan directly to the Ark, although arguably it was a "legacy scan" so it might not be compatible.
Regardless, since you can copy scans to the Ark, you should be able to copy from the Ark back to another entity. Of course the only challenge would be acquiring such an entity, since they'll be drifting in space, but let's imagine the Ark is sitting in the lab. You should be able to extract a scan from it and place it in a physical construct body, similar to Carl. That would make it possible to leave the Ark into the real world, if of course such a construct is available.
With that in mind, why not equip the Ark with mini constructs which can be used via digital pilot seats inside the Ark to move around outside the Ark, for maintenance purposes?

2. Yes, the people inside the Ark are physically all just located within some processors and storage units, not themselves physically anywhere but electrical circuits. That wouldn't make it possible for them to have a window to the outside world, but hey, aren't they forgetting something? A digital window perhaps? Like, a camera?
Place a camera at the front of the Ark and channel that into a big digital "screen" (bytes) inside the Ark. That would be the same theoretical setup as Carl's construct's cameras which he uses as his eyes. Carl is a digital electrical circuit who can pick up digital signals from other devices installed onto his physical body, like cameras. Other useful devices could include thermometers, pressure calculators, solar panels etc. So all these devices should easily be possible to channel into the digital world of the Ark, which should make it possible to have a control room inside there for controlling the Ark's physical entity. Isn't this quite obvious?
Now, it is true that those on the Ark will never regain a human body. Perhaps that's what they meant by no return.

Those are some interesting points, for 1 I presume that they figured the likelihood of ever finding technology in outer space that they would be able to transfer to would be almost zero. Also, the entities in the Ark can't "move", even if they could copy themselves back out, the entities living in the Ark are there to stay until the Ark dies.... I suppose maintenance was a non-issue to them since they mention it can live for thousands of years roaming in space, perhaps their electronics and space probes are more durable in the future.... But to me they only lengthened life a bit, as the Ark's lifetime isn't infinite even in space, someday, thousands of years later, it will stop working, and along with it end the last remnants of "humanity".