In a message dated 6/2/00 9:46:59 AM Pacific Daylight Time, asa@nada.kth.se
writes:
<< As I see it, terraforming isn't about creating more planets for humans
to live on, but to create more planets for life in its various forms
to evolve on. Ecopoiesis rather than colonisation. It is my current
opinion that the best places for more or less traditional humans to
live in are likely o'Neill style habitats. It doesn't seem likely
posthumans would need planets either. Of course, being able to
technologically adapt to odd environments means that (post)humans
could visit and enjoy these ecosystems, even when they radically
differ from terrestrial conditions, but the ecosystems are a goal in
themselves rather than a tool for colonisation.
Personally I want to technoform Mercury by implanting an ecology of
replicating machines there. >>
Aha! So we Biotify the solar system and then much of the rest of the milky
way galaxy, so that maybe life (brain-life) evolves? As far as Gerard O'neil
goes, Freeman Dyson had a point when he noted that it would be easier to
simply inhabit the asteroids and comets by hollowing the insides of these
places and then set them a-spinning to create a centifugal force to imitate
gravity. Planet Mercury would as Sir Arthur C. Clarke noted in Rendevouz
with Rama, that "with Mercury, the lack of minerals, for humanity, could be
fore-stalled a thousand years".
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:12:24 MDT