Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to Cultivating life on Earth and elsewhere.

I believe you're absolutely correct.
Bowser — (archived)

Maintaining an organism the size of humans on another planet is too complex to manage unsupported. Medicines, metals, spare parts, oxygen, water, fabrics, recreation, etc., and so on are essential to humans. Energy may not be a problem for smaller communities AT FIRST, or even in the long run, but how would one replace a compressor or motor or plastic tubing, antibiotic or anesthetic? How about the machines which diagnose illnesses, do liver scans, that sort of thing.

Who will teach the next generation of physicians and mechanics? Computers? What happens when cosmic rays take out their CPUs, as will happen? From whence will the next generation of computers come? Can it be done in an alien environment without computers? What will make the new solar panels to replace those degraded by radiation?

I believe the only way to see that life has a chance in other places is to recognize that we are all creatures of DNA, and spread that around - wait for some of it to land, and some of it to evolve.

On the larger scale, humans haven't distinguished themselves as anything but predators and capitalism is by definition predatory. We will have to settle, I'm afraid, for an Earth-based Panspermia, which, I believe, is how we got started.

Arf

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