Created page with "You can think about this another way though. To take root amongst the stars, life should be adapted to space; not planets. Terraforming Mars will be a beautiful project but aft..."
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You can think about this another way though. To take root amongst the stars, life should be adapted to space; not planets. Terraforming Mars will be a beautiful project but after huge amounts of effort it won't even double the living area for the Biosphere; Mars is smaller than the Earth. On the other hand, if we create life forms that can live on the surface of Trans-Neptunian objects of which there are estimated to be a trillion then we can increase the living surface for life by a massive factor (perhaps 10000). Imagine the diversity of life in the solar system with a trillion worlds with the surface area of 10000 Earths. Each world's life forms will diverge and radiate into many species because each will be a island. And all we have to do to start this process irrevocably, is create one well adapted species of complex autotrophe that can survive on the surface of one of these worlds and can launch its seeds at other worlds. The beauty of colonizing minor planets is that their gravity is so low that a simple mechanical catapult can launch a seed into heliocentric orbit. A catapult can be built by bending a springy tree limb down to the surface and then releasing it. This is not beyond the realm of posibility for a tree to do.--[[User:EricSaumur|EricSaumur]] 23:01, 28 February 2012 (UTC)