I've recently started reading aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson. The novel takes place near the end of a 150 year interstellar voyage. The spaceship is enormous and made to be as light as possible (obviously by Kim's standards that means in has lakes inside big enough to have boats and storms on it). Arguably his characters in this story are the most human like (but that's not the point). Do you believe that ever a interstellar ship would be made big enough to have free roaming deer inside it. Or for that matter do you believe that if Mars ever get's terraformed Humans would build a space ship big enough to hold a group of genetically diverse enough adult whales and send them to mars. Or will these creatures be conceived of printed DNA in a artificial uturus and be trainend by mechanical placebo parents programmed to teach the organic it's proper behaviour and then leave?
meh sort of it is a interesting idea tough, say if Mars ones becomes terraformed and has a northern ocean with krill in it, will we import Wales, Could those creatures even survive on (a terraformed) Mars? Insects during the Carboniferous era where enormous compared to todays insects because of a diference in the O2 content, salt contents might differ the northern Ocean would behave differently seasons would last longer There would be less light the gravity would be different the relativly little features on the northern hemisphere means storms would more easly form. There wouldn't be a magnetic field. Assuming the temprature is right and there is ample food would a whale even survive under these conditions without getting genetically altered and having a pseudo parent that shows them how to navigate a new world.
The nearest exoplanet which (judging by the extremely small amount of information we can gather with today's technology) might have gravity, weather and natural resources to support a human population is about 1,000 light-years from here. That means that a ship would take many centuries to reach it--if not millennia. Several generations of humans would be born and die during the voyage. We'd probably want this ship to be rather large, if only to host a human population that's large enough to comprise a community, not just a crew. To make it even larger, in order to host large non-human animals, would certainly be a challenge. With the technology of the future, perhaps this can be done. I don't think there's any reason to assume that it's impossible. However, it will take a lot of resources. Terraforming Mars is probably a more difficult project than building a spaceship that can hold a thousand people and keep them alive for hundreds of years. It's considerably colder than Earth, and I don't know of anyone who's figured out how to fix that. Before you bring the whales, you need to make sure that the oceans you're building (using techniques that you haven't described yet) will remain liquid. This is your story, so it's up to you to fill in the details. Carrying the whales from Earth to Mars will be pretty hard on the whales. You can't possibly build a ship large enough to simulate their natural habitat. Even the smallest cetaceans cover ranges measured in tens of miles. The large ones cross entire oceans. You've probably read "Cachalot" (the French word for "sperm whale") by Alan Dean Foster. It takes place about half a millennium in the future, when the whales have already been moved from Earth to a planet that's entirely water. But he doesn't explain how it was done. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Keep in mind that terraforming will require terrestrial life to be brought to Mars, starting with lichens and mosses. Thus terrestrial life will be there already. Even in the best/fastest cases it would take centuries to get to the point where there is enough free oxygen to support animals.
I used to like Kim's stories. Now they give me a headache, his characters had Always been weird The first 100 from his mars trilogy where if not terrorist like Warlords. I Always pittied Phillis who would have made a far better main character altough like Vlad she was essentially more of a plotdevice still only South parks Kenny has endured more non sequitur murder attempts. 2312 was weird I didn't like it's main character I stopped reading afther the Sick tranny (seriously?) demanded to be crucified on Mercury overlooking the destroyed city. Aurora is a meh? It's a ship build in the 2500 and operating in the year 2650. I like aspects, I like the fact that they used Less advanced technology so that 2000 people could be expected to know ever system and be able to repair everything. I like the fact that ship records are complete but extremly dodgy but they should have made a story on why theirs no summary of everything (Did nobody in a 150 years managed to compact information? Better have the information jumbled by some reason). The main character isn't the brigtest person in the world. What I didn't like no matter how much they hammer on it the main character altough no rocket scientist isn't really stupid. The ships eco systems seems to be developed to appear natural but are extremly artificial. I also feal the author is grasping with the concept of a ecosystem like a creatinist is with evolution. Having wild animals (Cougars, dear etc) running around in your habitat is yust poor planning especially concidering it's only has a 40Km circomference. The inhabitants are either ferral, (boring) space hippies, or generic scientist performing experiments that could be done on earth. This in a situation of a crew preparing to arrive in a new world. No mineralogists, no engineers, no designers. Theirs no mentioning of similar ships that have launched or arrived before. The ship is slowing down and it has effects on the habitats but no body seems to be prepping for their arrival in anyway even the worlds they are abouth to colonize don't get studied (probes from Earth passed in the past and they use that data but the do not seemed to be bothered to look out of the windows). The Original crew where the best and brightests from Earth in stead of low level convicts (this would have made more sence as they where doomed to die in transit (because of the 150 year time span).
