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From: toms@fcs260c2.ncifcrf.gov (Tom Schneider)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: Why bother? (was Re: Terraforming, sun shield)
Message-ID: <2078@fcs280s.ncifcrf.gov>
Date: 27 Feb 91 16:18:16 GMT
References: <1991Feb22.164032.16901@zoo.toronto.edu> <1991Feb22.192438.26397@athena.mit.edu> <6956@harrier.ukc.ac.uk>
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In article <6956@harrier.ukc.ac.uk> sss3@ukc.ac.uk (S.S.Sturrock) writes:
>Nice idea this terraforming, why can't we make lots of new worlds for people
>to live on, then we don't have to worry about contraception, or the population
>problem, excellent plan guys.  We make a mega mess of this world, get all
>green and caring but still we don't consider the one all important green issue,
>our propensity to overpopulate.  OK, so it's a tangential argument but what the
>hell, I'm a tangential sort of chap :-)

I suppose that besides the sense of exploration (at least before it's settled!)
and challange of engineering is the question of what we are doing as a
species.  Do we want to survive in the long run?  If so we should seed some
other planets or space itself by colonies so that major events on earth like
ice ages and asteroid impacts don't destroy us completely.

This raises some other long-range questions we have not really addressed.  How
long do we want our species to survive?  Forever you say?  Well, then we'd best
be moving very quickly to get off planet!  The dinosaurs were around several
hundred million years (someone can correct me on that number if needed!); do we
want to last that long?

Do we want to be sufficiently advanced so that we can create slow moving star ships
to get to the nearer stars so that when our sun blows we won't fry?

>Shane Sturrock, Biol Lab.  Canterbury, Kent, Great Britain.

  Tom Schneider
  National Cancer Institute
  Laboratory of Mathematical Biology
  Frederick, Maryland  21702-1201
  toms@ncifcrf.gov