As one goes farther out into the solar system, one begins to notice a diminishing of an element, namely oxygen.
How do you know it's not out there ? It could be hidden away, where you couldn't smell it. You're not Krypto, y'know ! .
A + B = D- What goes through a person's head to post something like this? I think it's spelled "D," "a," "h"? And the farther out - or closer - into the solar system, one begins to notice a diminishing amount of the possibilty of life. Although not all life depends on oxygen (could be silicon based). And I'm sure there have been many threads about this under Astronomy. Even on Earth - carbon based - extremophile chemolithotrophs fluorish without oxygen by utilizing sulfur or methane. Please post another thread if you want to follow up on these comments.
Room temperature, gaseous O2, maybe. But there's lots of O in stars, and lots of O frozen in and/or on all manner of planets, moons, minor planets and comets.
OTHER LIFE.... that doesnt use oxygen.... would be the greatest threat to our species...... since they would want to terraform our world to their use....... anything which isnt oxygen breathing would be competitors... in dominance in the galaxy... other oxygen species.. would be compatable. -MT
I'm sure they would understand, and not kill us all by ridding our atmosphere of it's poisionous oxygen
Are you kidding? Unless there's a serious shortage of planets, I doubt anyone with interstellar travel is going to decide it's worth the effort to try and alter Earth's ecosystem and atmosphere to their needs - it's just not sensible.
That doesn't make any sense when you know about organisms that compete. But then, neither does your punctuation.
any species... which has developed the means to travel the stars.... is certainly capable of terraforming. and there are only so many planets in the galaxy. -MT
That's interesting, but you would think by the time we mastered interstellar travel, we would probable figure out the oxygen thing, too. We could simply take it with us.
Energy+water+C02+green plant = sucrose + oxygen. Just put a couple plants on our space ships and we should be good to go, yeah?
What if the robots get tired of us instead ? Why not send just the robots ? The O² dinna matter, cap'n.
` One presumes by then they would be saddled with formidable inferiority complexes, and we would browbeat them into submission with clever quips concerning their obvious obsolescence. .
Sorry Par, but you weren't very explicit in what you initially meant. Your post afterwards leads to an interesting possibility. That is, if we were to acquire some means of taping into anaerobic metabolism for sustenanc - as "the ticket out." Theoretically, this is a possibility, though remote. Input into this angle?
You can make a sustainable biosphere, like a big terrarium, and the crew can span generations, a sort of miniature Earth, or Ark.