Bioethics of Terraforming p3 Gregory Benford, David Levine and Kim Stanley Robinson - Aussiecon4

71 views · Published 26 April 2011 · 14:18 · Indexed 28 September 2026

Channel: Science, Technology & the Future · 2011 · Science & Technology

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Gregory Benford, David D. Levine and Kim Stanley Robinson

The main question is: why would we want to go?

We could be doing it as an insurance policy. Kim Stanley Robinson said that this notion is both simplistic and naive. Mars is not easy. Mars is cold and inhospitable. It is dusty. Dust gets into everything. It has less energy than Earth. While 15% less sunlight might not be detectable with the human eye, generating energy through solar power will require more effort. Terraforming is largely in the realm of Science Fiction, and the question is if we should attempt it in the first place. Is it ethical to modify an environment that may harbour information vital to understanding our origins?

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