posted on Nov, 8 2007 @ 04:54 AM
In the last 1000 years (500 really) humans have gone from living in isolated pockets of land with barely no knowledge of the existence of the rest of
the planet, to exploring and to a point populating every extremity, from the highest peak to the deepest ocean trench. No doubt, when this planet is
formally recognized as being unable to sustain life properly, and technology permits, humans will begin to populate other planets.
By that time, Mars will probably have a breathable atmosphere thanks to human engineering, and thus small asteroids will be burnt up like they are
here on earth, and the big ones, like the one that caused the Siberian explosion, will have a tiny chance of hitting population points, a smaller
chance even than earth has, because on Mars population centres will be tightly condensed around one point due to commodity supply. I'm not sure what
you mean about a gravity pad. Are you talking about something that creates an artificial gravity feild to replicate the 1G we feel here on earth? In
that case, probably not. The technology to make something like that isn't around. The only artificial gravity we can really come up with is
centrifugal force, but even that isn't all that effective due to the Coriolis effect.
Evolution will become an issue after a few generations are born and raised on another planet with a reduced gravity. Like Clarke proposed in his
Space Odyssey novels, there are going to be complications when a body so used to a .5G environment is forced into a 1G one. I can't really
think of a way around that . . . but it may not be that important at all.
I guess there's only one way to find out.