The High Frontier, Redux (On Space Colonization)

mechanical_fish:

I'm not at all sure that we have the means to make the Earth less habitable than the Moon or Mars. The Moon is pretty darned uninhabitable. Mars likewise. Assuming the absolute worst of the nuclear winter hypotheses to be true, we could perhaps destroy most of the higher life on Earth. But even after a nuclear winter the Earth would still have substantial amounts of water and oxygen, and almost certainly a functioning biosphere of some sort. [1] Which is more than can be said for the Moon or even Mars. Meanwhile, we most certainly don't have the technology to reach an extrasolar Earth-like planet, and spending tens of billions of dollars to have humans dork around in near-solar orbit won't change that fact one bit. If you really do dream of settling other planets, you need to spend far fewer dollars on far more radical experiments. Or you need to read Charles Stross: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the_high... Possibly both. -- [1] Bacteria are hard to kill. Many of them thrive on the lightless ocean floor at extremely high temperatures. And unicellular creatures built our oxygen atmosphere, so the loss of it probably won't bother them too much.

Originally from this thread: From this thread - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=832280