Re: Sa'Vasku Colours

On Sun, 21 May 2000, Laserlight wrote:

> Beth said (speaking of the killer octopi)
> >So do I!!!!! They may look beautiful, but feeding them must be
> a right
> >royal pain in the butt!
> 
> This "If you're allergic to seafood, you have 8 minutes to have
> a significant religious experience" line is one reason why I'm
> thinking that colonization may be easier if there isn't any
> native flora or fauna on site. 

or if there is, get rid of it. the first step in colonisation is
scouring
the planet, the next is terraforming it :). not popular with the greens,
i'd imagine.

no but seriously folks, my thinking is that if a planet has native life,
we won't colonise it. not only because it would be hard, but because it
would involve knackering the local ecosystem - violating an ecological
prime directive sort of thing. it would get declared a 'white planet', a
planet for science, to be free from human colonisation.

instead, we'd settle dead worlds, where our terraforming bacteria can go
to work unopposed and without threatening an existing ecosystem. now, if
lifeless but suitable (appropriate insolation, sufficientlystable
geology,
available organic elements, etc) planets turn out to be rare (as i think
they will - i reckon that if life can emerge, it will), this will be a
problem, and the ecological arguments will go out the window, probably
shortly followed by the ecologists. oh well, this is why we have zoos.

tom