Critical time (Mars Society defense)

From: Robert Reed
To:
Sent: Tuesday, April 03, 2001 1:46 PM
Subject: [spacesettlers] Re: Critical time (Mars Society defense)

> I believe that individuals and private groups, instead of the
> government, should colonize space. I, too, am an O'Neiler, as I
> believe that we will do best by mining the Near Earth Asteroids, and
> building colonies out of them. But we shall not underestimate the
> importance of Mars. While it is true that a lot more people will
> live in space settlements as opposed to terrestrial settlements, Mars
> is a good planet not only for humans (although a significant
> population of humans will live on Mars), it is a good planet for
> expanding life in general. On a terraformed Mars, many animals will
> evolve to the new environment. For instance, there will probably be
> more flying creatures, and the birds and insects wouldn't need wings
> as large as they would need on Earth. So just imagine the diversity
> of life on Mars.
>

I would not think that life diversity on a terraformed Mars is likely to
happen. A terraformed Mars would be a colder version of Earth, probably. On
Earth, you see that the places with more biodiversity (rainforest, coral
reefs, etc) are the warmer ones - it seems that there is a clear correlation
between energy input and diversity of the ecosystem. So, I would expect that
a Martian biosphere would show much less variation than the Terran one.

Oddly, I think that *space habitats* would supply the framework for the
evolution of a much greater biodiversity than the one we have on Earth.
Besides being countless, space habitats would form almost completely
isolated ecospheres, therefore providing the isolation needed for the
generation of new species.

Anyhow, I don't see the argument of generating biodiversity as a compelling
one. Personally, I'm more interested in offering something useful for
Humanity, not for the whole biosphere (although an O'Neilian colonization
would also have beneficial "green" side effects).

[snikt]
Lucio