Re: Sa'Vasku Colours

On Tue, 23 May 100 aebrain@dynamite.com.au wrote:

> >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
> 
> There would be a more practical reason: it seems from current
> knowledge that Life transforms planets at least as much as planets
> transform life.

very true.

> Given that a different set of life-forms would have different amino
> acids, different sets of proteins etc it may be the case that Terran
> life may not be compatible: if the two mix, one has Got to Go, if only
> from massive allergic reactions, or clogging up of biochemical
> reactions with unrecognised and undegradeable proteins that block
> receptors.

hmm. i would say that this was unlikely - things that knack our bodies
tend to be things that have evolved to do so; some random molecule from
an
alien biochemistry is *extremely* unlikely to bind to any of our
receptors, enzymes, etc, because they are designed to be very specific
for
their targets. with most proteins, a single carbon atom out of place on
the target can reduce the binding affinity by orders of magnitude. otoh,
if molecules fromn the local environment did get inside us, they might
well be very hard to get rid of. now, if they are big, they probably
wouldn't get past the gut wall, as there would be no specific
transporters
for them. if they were small and stayed in the blood, the kidneys would
probably get rid of them (the kidneys basically dispose of anything
below
a certain size which isn't specifically retained). however, if they were
small and able to cross cell membranes, and were particularly fond of
sticking to, eg, phosphate groups, you might find that, eg, they pile up
in the cell nucleus, hugging our DNA and making a mess of things
(cancer,
etc).

> Most Biochemistry is just a cross between playing with children's
> building blocks and a real-time version of 3-D tetris where the blocks
> can change their shapes in limited ways anyway.

oi! i'm not spending four years slogging my brains out to get a degree
in
russian vide games, you know! :)

> (sorry Beth :-) ) Add a whole new set of blocks in the
> game and things may not work too well.

as long as the blocks are different enough, they won't stick together,
so
we don't have too much to worry about.

> ANYWAY...
> 
> The ecosphere of a planet - things like the pH of the atmosphere,
> Oxygen content and so on depend upon the life forms that are there. Do
> a wholescale Xenocide on an Earthlike Planet and you may quickly find
> you have a Venuslike planet instead.

ah, but as long as you get your own life in soon enough, you can rescue
it
from venushood and make it a fitter, happier, more productive Earhlike
world. of course, this may require tailoring much of the life that lives
on it, but that's par for the course.

> Don't do a wholescale Xenocide,
> and you may find that lithophillic (Rock-dwelling) bacteria and things
> that lurk in out of the way places like Black Smokers may well come
> back and bite you in the nth generation.

i suspect that the best option may lie between the two extremes - bash
most of the life out of the way and replace it with your own, and then
be
prepared to smack down any other locals which get in the way.

> Summary: The "Do Not Disturb" signs may be not for particularly
> ethical "Only you can prevent Forest Fires" reasons, but more like
> those found on Toxic Waste Dumps. They're more trouble than they're
> worth to decontaminate, bare bedrock would be cheaper to terraform.
> 
> Of course with the advances in BioTech that can be expected in the
> next 200 years, and the fact that the Kra'Vak and Phalons at least are
> in competition with us, this may not be valid, or the validity may be
> reduced. Or maybe the usual way of colonising is to first convert a
> planet into bare bedrock, and then re-seed. A very unfriendly thing to
> do to a neighbouring species.
> 
> The Tuffleyverse doesn't seem to work this way though: the wars are
> all relatively bloodless, the usual method of attack is not to cause
> all enemy-occupied stars to become Novae, nor to bombard all
> enemy-occupied installations with cheap Gigatonne Planetbusters as
> soon as they're detected. The fact that small-unit combats occur a la
> StarGrunt or even DS2 means that megatonne or larger nukes are not the
> preferred primary weapons.

bear in mind that most Tuffleyverse history has been human history; i
accept, though, that we don't see the KV rebooting captured planets,
which
indicates that the adapt-to-local-life model is the dominant one.

tom