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Michael Penn
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 April 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 13138
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| Posted: 24 March 2026 at 1:51pm | IP Logged | 1
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Life as a matter of self-replicating strands of nucleic acids appeared on earth fairly early in cosmic terms and possibly could have already appeared in countless places all over the galaxy, let alone universe. And life itself seems to be almost impossibly durable. However, human life is so, so, so very much not. We are, like other highly evolved life-forms, inextricably tied to our place of origin, and in extremely limited ways. Our only hope -- just a dream, a fantasy, really -- is to survive long enough to evolve Star Trek style into beings of pure consciousness... or something.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 135895
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| Posted: 24 March 2026 at 2:17pm | IP Logged | 2
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I was most intrigued to learn DNA existed before life. Life happened almost accidentally, as DNA strands scooped up organic molecules as armor.
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Dave Kopperman
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 27 December 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 3992
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| Posted: 24 March 2026 at 2:59pm | IP Logged | 3
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Probably a variant of the Avatar model is the way we go, if we do go: genetically modify ourselves to the environment of the place, not modify the environment to suit ourselves. Minus the remote control.
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Brian Hughes
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 15 June 2015
Location: United States
Posts: 418
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| Posted: 24 March 2026 at 4:17pm | IP Logged | 4
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The extreme enginerring challenges that come from space travel have provided us with so many inventions and innovations, I cannot discourage the effort of attempting this journey, though I fear the first attempt will be disasterous.
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Michael Penn
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 April 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 13138
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| Posted: 24 March 2026 at 5:16pm | IP Logged | 5
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>> ...modify ourselves... <<
Most likely the sooner we humans can do that just to survive on earth, the better -- for us, anyway.
(A little tiny microcosmic for instance: I recently smashed the living daylights out of my shin and likely have some mild infection at the wound-site, and I need to take some precautionary antibiotics now for a week. Who knows what would've happened to me 100 years ago?)
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Tim O Neill
Byrne Robotics Security
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 10966
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| Posted: 24 March 2026 at 7:52pm | IP Logged | 6
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I heard that the vast deserts and absence of life may
indicate that Mars was once run by Repulicans.
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Peter Hicks
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 30 April 2004
Location: Canada
Posts: 2113
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| Posted: 24 March 2026 at 10:12pm | IP Logged | 7
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Today, NASA announced that the Gateway space station proposed to orbit the moon is officially cancelled. It was always a make work project to keep employing all the ground staff who work on ISS. Many of the station components are already built, or well under construction, and NASA will see if the components can be repurposed for a moon base (which will now be a priority project).
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Andrew Bitner
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 01 June 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 7576
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| Posted: 25 March 2026 at 2:12am | IP Logged | 8
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What I think is a possibility is that we send out seedships to potentially habitable worlds. The ships would have to be vastly more advanced than anything we could build now, with the ability to seed a planet with robots that could create a habitat for organic life that might be "printed" the way we do 3D printing now. (Or if we solve the problems of cryogenic suspended animation, we could send down colonists--though their survival would be an open question.)
If those hypothetical supercomputers are REALLY smart, they might be able to tinker with human genes to create a version of humanity able to live on alien worlds.
PROJECT HAIL MARY posits that we would put people into medically induced comas for a period of years but the odds of surviving that long are pretty terrible. It works in theory but I'm not sure a lot of people would volunteer if the odds were like 20% or so.
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Andrew Bitner
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 01 June 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 7576
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| Posted: 25 March 2026 at 2:15am | IP Logged | 9
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Living on the Moon won't be a long-term proposition for individuals either. Low gravity is damaging to the human body; it's not as bad as total weightlessness, but it's not good. That's not even getting into the dangers of solar and ambient radiation, meteor strikes, catastrophic loss of life support...Much like the ISS, those who stay on the moonbase would have to rotate out relatively often.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 135895
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| Posted: 25 March 2026 at 6:21pm | IP Logged | 10
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The Moon really serves only as a spaceport for Mars. All the excitement and glamor so many of us grew up with has been crushed by the harsh realities. The energy needs to be focused on Earth.
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Dave Kopperman
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 27 December 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 3992
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| Posted: 25 March 2026 at 6:27pm | IP Logged | 11
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I actually am not sure of the answer to this; in a lot of the sci-fi and futurist stuff I read as a kid, the moon (and occasionally the asteroids) were used essentially as mines. Not sure if the science still supports that as a proper effort-to-reward ratio? It’s not something that’s really mentioned much anymore.
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