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Haha... this leads into the whole question of why we want to go to another planet terraform it and populate it in the first place.
.. i would like personally to see the human race populating two petri dishes rather than one. When I examine why it is i might feel that way, I would rely back on the selfish gene theory where i would care about the propogation of my genes, then my families, then the human race in general, then other dna based lifeforms in that order.
So i guess my proposition of contemplating changing ourselves to inhabit Mars more quickly and more successfully, is that by changing what might be 1% of human genes to get to Mars, we would be preserving and protecting 99% of them.
.. but i believe we are close to straying off topic of terraforming, except as to say, i believe we should not consider terraforming as 100% of the solution to surviving long term on Mars, but to change ourselves as a fractional part of that solution to surviving there.
Well eventually maybe, but
+ that is about developing a space faring human variant rather than a Mars human variant/race
+ That is probably a 1000 to 10,000 year timeframe away technolywise
Id prefer the topic wasnt dismissed so easily.. we are at the technology borderline already to make some changes to ourselves which would be an advantage in colonising mars, and which would give us a race of ourselves which would still be human to our current ethical standards.
Weve already started the discussion when we talk about fixing bad genes that cause genetic diseases. Thats all we are talking about.. fiddling a few genes to move along the path.
What is this whole terraforming idea proposing.. that Mankinds approach to locating anywhere is to completely change the ecosystem whereever we get to, and not adapting ourselves to any degree. Like British colonialists taking Oak trees, rabbits and deer everywhere with them.
A lot of discussion in the forums is about how to change Mars completely to suit us, how to build perfect habitats to support us how we are, the expensive engineering to get us there.
Changing ourselves seems the obvious answer. My options for a designer human:
To survive lower gravity:
+ A circulation system that doesnt expect gravity.
+ bones that dont decalcify
+ thinner bones
To survive lower atmospheric pressures
+ bigger lungs
+ straight through breathing like birds ..haha
+ a valve in your throat which closes automatically in case
of accidental decompression.
To survive radiation.
+ Some insect genes for selective chitin covered limbs, or at least torso to protect the organs.
+ Cholorphyll in your skin so if your rover runs out of food, you can just lie in the sun to await rescue
Any other ideas... if we can breed bees without stings, glow in the dark cats etc.. then some things would be quite easy even in the short term.
Given it is unlikely we would ever terraform to completely match an earth atmosphere and habitabt, The best way would be that we would build an ecosystem piece by piece by specifically breeding and genetic engineering species to build up that ecosystem.
e.g. animals whose bones and circulation systems dont expect high gravity, bigger lungs for thinner air etc.
We would start with bacteria , lichens with radiation resistance and work up from there.
Finally we would genetically engineer ourselves to subsist on the ecosystem we have build so we dont have to build and drage around all that expensive life support talked about in the other thread
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