Originally posted by ZeroKnowledge
"Moral obligation"? I think that we have enough mess we cannot handle down here, failing all possible moral obligations to our-self and next generations.
So universe will have to wait until we will be able to take care of us first. Sorry. Yes, i know - i am horribly immoral.

Which all require resources.

To which you want to limit us to the resources available here, when there is an entire Universe of abundant resources. The Sun itself is power generator that literally drives every energetic process on Earth with a tiny fragment of its energy output.

But we should limit ourselves to here because of a misguided discipline issue? A variety the like of which is the same as my teenager doesn't clean his room, so I locked him in there with no food until I see a consistent ability to maintain it....oh wait he died! Gosh who'd have thunk it!

Perhaps life on Earth was seeded by a similarly irresponsible species as ourselves.

That would explain a few things.

As far as the moral implications go, I do agree but I don't feel that there is "right" or "wrong" or "responsible" or "irresponsible" in nature. Nature does not care. Nature will always find a balance, at least on the whole, at the possible expense of local systems.

Originally posted by Aeons

Originally posted by network dude
I agree that we need to learn how to be a productive member of the universe before we go spreading our ideas around. Lets give our planet a few more years to see if we destroy ourselves over greed before we start reaching for any brass rings.

Currently as far as we can determine, we are the ONLY productive members of the Universe.

I refuse to support us being trapped on one hunk of floating rock because you have moral quibbles about floating hunks of rocks.

How is sending microbes on a journey that will take anything from 100's of thousands of years to millions to arrive at it's destination going to stop us from being trapped on Earth exactly?

Whether they launched said mission tomorrow or not, we'd still be trapped here & most likely the human race will be long extinguished by the time our little microbial friends are even anywhere near their target planet.

Then how many hundreds of millions/billions of years will it take for them to 'evolve'.

A complete waste of money & resources if it ever were to go ahead!

They want to help spread life out into the cosmos, then maybe they should help to put humans on Mars & build a permanent off-world colony.

I said this the other week:

Perhaps one day seeding life on barren worlds will be viewed as a moral imperative, rather than engaging in their preservation (as is your imperative today).


Directed Panspermia is a testable theory. We have the means to test it and so we should.


*All the naysayers might as well shut up and stop wasting their time protesting this - because this is going to happen no matter how loud their whinging and moaning becomes.

Plus, the louder the whiners protest - the more people they attract who think directed panspermia is a great idea.



[edit on 15-2-2010 by Exuberant1]

The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth.

this scientist is a crackpot..who in the right mind would seed planets with evil human scum???
Besides I think the universe is capable of seeding life it self... it seeded us didnt it?

yet another self-hating person.

You are the reason why we need to hive ourselves.

You self-hating types sometimes get power - and today that means that if the right self-hating psycho does they can wipe everything off our big rock.

All we need is ONE of these guys, and the only place we know KNOW in the Universe that contains life - abundant, varied, life - is gone.

Just ONE of them could do it.

Asteroids, supernovas, ELEs, viral plagues, etc. got NOTHING on the self-hating human's chance of annihilating us and everything else.

If we were suddenly gone, the Earth would continue. But these people have the possiblity of stopping all life. The only animal on this rock that even has the barest possiblity of hiving off the biosphere is us.

Hiving off our biosphere is the only way to assure that life continues.

[edit on 2010/2/16 by Aeons]

Seeding does not have to be taking a young planet and contaminating it with our own genetic material. Instead we could have robots terraform dead worlds or worlds not capable of sustaining life on their own - and making them suitable for life.

Locally speaking:

Mars - We could have robots mine ice from somewhere else in the solar system and send it to Mars. To build up an atmosphere and add water. Sure it could take hundreds of years, but if robots are doing it so what. In the meantime we could build giant green houses to start establishing life there. And seed some of them with endangered species. For our own needs we usually only care about plant life, so if some of the other players for a sustainable ecosystem are from endangered species - so what. Its good for them, and could make up for a tiny fraction of our destruction of life on this planet.

Venus - We could have robots create a "thick" blanket of satellites to block out most of the Sun and start cooling it down. At the same time they could convert solar energy and eventually beam it down to energy collector stations. Then ... who knows ... but eventually establish life there as well. We might have to start with artificial shelters again.

Moon - We could have robots simultaneously create large subterranean caverns [to minimize the effects of radiation] for life, while also exploring for useful minerals. Then either - or both - feed light back in via solar cells that convert the electricity back to life, or transport light via optic cables. Again we could use some endangered species for some of the key players in a sustainable ecosystem. Just think of the moon base that could be built at the same time. Well, would actually have to be built ahead of time.

Also, think of the knowledge to be gained. Isn't that what humanity is about - Knowledge.

Knowledge is an excellent way for us to get our way. Knowledge is a tool to survive better.

A plant can undergo many changes derived through time through selection, through slow adaptations, or due to severe curtailing of viable seeds due to some climatic effect.

This is pretty understandable to people.

Our species has undergone several near extinction events, and in the process have adapted by getting smarter to take advantage of a World where the climate has changed severely over and over in the short period of time that we have been a species.


The biosphere - the living things that interact to make up the biological environment of the living on the exterior of this rock - the layer of "alive" sitting on this big rock - it has undergone the same process that our species has. The biosphere has been knocked back and recreated from scraps over and over.

The biosphere has adapted.

What the biosphere hasn't done yet is found a way to "seed" itself.

It cannot reproduce itself elsewhere. It is doomed to eventual destruction, some point at which it cannot recover. Some event that doesn't leave enough of its components around to reboot the living shell.

But the biosphere has found a way to seed itself.

By having a component that CAN get off the rock and take a sampling of it with them.

That's us.

Ever other adaptation has failed so far, in taking too long to come to fruition. They niched too well. They were too slow in the temperate climate, and got wiped out in the same events that cause the biosphere problems.

The consistent climate changes that have almost annihilated us over and over are the impetitious that drove us to become more intelligent and adaptable. We are part of that biosphere.

Anything we do will require anything from a microcosm of the biosphere to a functional copy of it.

We are not a VIRUS. We are a SEED. We are currently the only possible long term solution our planet, and indeed all life as we know it, has to survive in the Universe.


[edit on 2010/2/27 by Aeons]

If anyone thinks to ponder on that for a while you can consider this.

Intra Solar System travel will probably look quite similar to what you and I see on TV. People in big engineered hunks of metal.

Inter system travel or long term extra planetary settlement will not just be us sitting on or inside big pieces of metal. We'd be on or in something that was alive in some manner.

This distinction should also be considered by the UFO sighters. Intra-stellar travel of a being would almost certainly require their micro environment to be partially alive.

One cannot "poison" something that doesn't have anything on it.

Rocks floating around have no moral or ethical obiligations.

I dare you to pick up a rock and poison it. Tell me how it goes.