🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <19463@mindlink.bc.ca> Nick_Janow@mindlink.bc.ca (Nick Janow) writes:
>
>Do you have to have a planet under you just because your parents did?  Let
>your imagination roam...  :)

Indeed we *may* need a planet under us, and a particular one at that, if
the environmental biologists are right about some of the things they're
currently nattering about. Some of them think a particular magnetic field
is important for biological development, not to mention radiation shielding.
They seem to think that a 1 G gravity field is important as well. And on
and on. 

We like to think that life is infinitely adaptable, but what it adapts
*into* may not be recognizably human or even terrestrial under extra-
terrestrial conditions. A long term space habitat could clarify the 
importance of the various environmental inputs supplied by Earth on 
the development and maintainence of human and non-human life.

It's likely that we can artificially duplicate any conditions needed
to maintain human life off Earth indefinitely, but we can't be sure
that we haven't missed some subtle factor until we actually try it.

Gary
-- 
Gary Coffman KE4ZV          |    You make it,     | gatech!wa4mei!ke4zv!gary
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