RE: B Ark Colonist and Colonial Industry... [LONG[

G'day guys,

Karl wrote:
> Maybe he considers men expendable ?

May be ;)

Roger wrote:
>If you're just worried about keeping up the numbers, 
> men _are_ expendable as long as you maintain genetic 
> diversity... of course, you don't tell them that.

The nuture vs nature crowd may disagree on you with that one ;)

Binhan added:
>Just give them permanent sterilzation after they've made 
>the requisite donation to the reproductive sperm/egg bank.  
>If they want kids, they can grow them in a tube.  This 
>would allow greater genetic diversity to the communinity, 
>since if the person in question leaves or is killed, 
>you still have access to the genetic material.

While I can see why you may want to do this from a genetic diversity
standpoint, just a couple of things spring to mind here...

a) I kinda like having kids myself and a tube seems a tad impersonal ;)
b) based on today's tech its probably going to be a petrii dish ;)
c) based on the problems confronting medical science over this issue its
as
likely as FTL that we'll be growing babies in tubes or petrii dishes

>Besides by that point, cloning should be an accomplished 
>technology and you could generate gametes from a clip off 
>someone's finger or even have their complete genome on file.

That may well be true (as might the genetic engineering you mentioned in
another post), but I think there will be a lot of social upheaval over
that
(at least in some quarters) and it may not be as general as assumed.
Though
it does allow for some cool scenario backgrounds. In my spin-off
GZGverse
future history I actually have what the non-participants call the "Clone
Wars" where a group who only reproduce by cloning have a "religious war"
with a group who routinely use genetic engineering to tailor children to
the
colonies needs (including warrior castes etc)... both sides believe the
other's practices are abhorrent and beyond belief.

Cheers