Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!munnari.oz.au!uhccux!ames!dftsrv!taiga!knox
From: knox@taiga.gsfc.nasa.gov (Robert Knox)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: Why bother? (was Re: Terraforming, sun shield)
Keywords: survival, species longevity, relatives
Message-ID: <1991Feb27.182703@taiga.gsfc.nasa.gov>
Date: 27 Feb 91 23:27:03 GMT
References: <1991Feb22.164032.16901@zoo.toronto.edu> <1991Feb22.192438.26397@athena.mit.edu> <6956@harrier.ukc.ac.uk> <2078@fcs280s.ncifcrf.gov>
Sender: news@dftsrv.gsfc.nasa.gov
Reply-To: knox@taiga.gsfc.nasa.gov (Robert Knox)
Organization: NASA/GSFC code 923
Lines: 77

In article <2078@fcs280s.ncifcrf.gov>, toms@fcs260c2.ncifcrf.gov (Tom
Schneider) writes:
|> 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?
|> 

    These days I find this perspective increasingly weird.  Mammal
species
typically "only" last a few million years before being succeeded by 
more or less distantly related species.  If we are capable of
comprehending
the notion that the sun might blow in several billion years and
worrying
about it, why can't literate human beings develop a broader notion of
the 
"we" that ought to be saved?  One should be concerned not only about
direct
descendant species, but at least those that will be derived from
relatives 
which could exceed our intellectual and technological abilities some
time in 
them future.  Instead, human beings are rapidly killing off our
relatives 
among the primates--insuring that any successor will be more distantly 
related than that should we happen to destroy our own lineage.  Doesn't
it 
now seem more plausible that we'd be surpassed by machine intelligences
than 
descendants of sister primates?  What kinship do you feel for an entity
that 
shares only your intellectual/cultural heritage and none of your
metabolism?

    More fundamently, doesn't the biosphere that produced us deserve to
keep 
a range of chances around rather than starting with the assortment of
prokaryotes, rodents, weedy plants, fungi, and invertebrates that will 
undoubtedly survive our worst efforts?  The dream of off-planet survival
of 
the species ought to be extended to engineering and seeding other
suitable planets with our mother biosphere

--not so much for human habitation or to solve the problems we can see
today
but to keep alive and spread the marvelous evolutionary accident that
produced 
us.


--Bob

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- Robert G. Knox, Research Scientist
- Biospheric Sciences Branch, Mail Code 923.0
- NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland  20771 
- knox@taiga.gsfc.nasa.gov         | BITNET: knox@ricevm1