quote:
Originally posted by dmm:
BB,
I agree that humans could not live undomed on the _surface_ of gas or ice planets. But why can't they live elsewhere, floating in the atmosphere of a gas planet, or in caverns or oceans under the surface of an ice planet? Then they might only need minor, reversible genetic engineering to allow them to live there, given the right atmosphere. (Yeah, yeah, I know I'm still ignoring a lot of biology. But this is space opera, not serious sci-fi.)
If they are "floating in the atmosphere" of a gas giant, they are either in a floating dome or you have made them into something which is not "human". You are talking about pressures higher than the bottom of the oceans, and a high gravity trying to pull them deeper. They would have to be naturally buoyant like a fish or a blimp, able to tolerate the pressure, able to move without contacting the surface, etc... That is a new species, even if it has a human fore-brain.
On an ice planet, you are talking about temperatures where gases are liquid, etc... It isn't any warmer in a cave. You know, they drop liquid nitrogen on warts so they quick freeze and can be broken off. You are talking about making the entire human body able to tolerate that sort of cold. Again, by the time you get done with that the result is (a) not bilogically human or even "life as we know it", but rather an entirely different species, and (b) could not live in any other environment.
Not even in space opera do you see that degree of genetic engineering. What you see in space opera is adapting people to live in the sorts of unpleasant environments we have here on earth, again like gills & flipper feet & webbed fingers to live underwater or fur & blubber to live in the arctic w/o needing an Eskimo suit.
In SE4, people try to capture populations that breath other atmosheres so they can colonize w/o domes or atmosphere conVersion. I can see genetic engineering as something that might let you create your own. They would still be specialized to one atmosphere rather than able to breath everything. You would be making these people in a lab, not converting them from existing people, and they would be expensive, and would need to be treated in the game as a separate race. Creating people to live w/o a dome on an ice or gas giant planet would be a MUCH bigger deal than making people to breath a different gas, and therefore even more expensive.
[This message has been edited by Barnacle Bill (edited 02 February 2001).]