Biologically adapting humans for exoplanet colonization

"I actually don't agree. The solar system is vast and contains stupendous amounts of resources but only one planet on it is habitable and it's capacity is somewhere in the billions."

The point of the OP was to bioengineer people so that they could colonize other planets.

"You can colonize space in theory, but in practice it's useless."

That sounds like an argument against space colonization in general.

Edited by DeMarquis on Dec 8th 2022 at 10:26:10 AM

That sounds less of an argument against space colonization in general, but it seems like a very pointed argument against space habitation.

What do you see as the difference?

Mining and automation basically. It is technically more possible to make robots that can extract resources than it is to make a planet habitable for humans.

It is also likely more possible to build something in space, granted, but space habitats like O'Neil cylinders are not exactly tested to idiotproofing yet.

To be more specific the difference is that extracting and producing rescues doesn't necessarily need bodies on the planet as long as automation progresses at its current pace or faster. Space habitation is defined by actually living in space, as in living on another planet (or space habitat)

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Dec 10th 2022 at 12:09:44 PM

>The point of the OP was to bioengineer people so that they could colonize other planets.

Sure, but that's an extremely broad statement that covers entire orders of magnitude of difficulty. You can't bioengineer your way out of colonizing mars or venus. But if you were to encounter other planets with primitive life, you'd still need genetic modification to be compatible with the biosphere (e.g. due to chirality). Even a perfect earth-like biocompatible world would require genetic modification if it turned out it had significantly higher gravity. or, say, more radiation exposure.

In fact, the main argument for the precise scenario OP has mentioned is that it would be much, much easier to move people through FTL to worlds that are already fairly earth-like than to terraform existing planets in Sol.

>That sounds like an argument against space colonization in general.

That's because it is. People are incredibly fragile beings, flesh in general is extremely fragile to the stuff you find out there (extreme pressure, temperature, radiation, chemicals). In a realistic scenario you might find outposts or even small cities on other planets for research purposes (like how we have research outposts on antarctica and also for squatters' rights) but nothing major. Antarctica is infinitely easier to colonize than Mars or the Moon or Venus or name literally any body in our solar system. But all we do is minor exploitation.

That's nothing to say about the stupendous, mind-numbing demands that interstellar travel would put on any sort of civilization. Sending even one colony ship would be the greatest endeavor humanity has ever done, on par with creating all of civilization itself. Why invest so much into something that's never going to produce any tangible benefit?

There's a reason why writers keep coming up with magitech terraforming and FTL or suspiciously habitable worlds, because the alternative makes any sort of human colonization look ridiculous.

And to be absolutely clear here: that's fine. if you want to tell a story of how we colonize other worlds then just handwave or excuse the parts that stand in the way of telling your story. In this case, easy FTL is the big handwave.

>That sounds less of an argument against space colonization in general, but it seems like a very pointed argument against space habitation.

I would argue that humans are fundamental to anything involving colonization. Mining the moon with robots is not something i'd call colonizing, but rather exploitation.

Edited by devak on Dec 10th 2022 at 10:28:30 AM