What's so special about Earth?

I think we might miss solar eclipses. There's no other planets that I know of other than the Earth where the moon fits precisely over the sun.

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Air, no protection from Gamma rays, temperatures that would kill us. There is nothing life sustaining elsewhere. That's a pretty good starter list.
 
Magical Realist said:
Are there any unique things to Earth that we'd miss if we moved to another planet?
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Would sort of depend on the planet's ecosystem, topographic variations, plate tectonics, daylight spectrum, and so on. And what we could bring along with us, or manufacture/grow/cook when we arrived. Assuming this was one of those rare "terrestrial type" planets with a breathable gas mix, minimal ionizing radiation, manageable allergens and pathogens, and a way to grow strawberries, I would guess the missing would be more about "it's lovely, but it's not home." You would try and pick colonists who were more open to new experiences and less inclined to homesickness, i.e. the pioneering type.
 
It's unlikely to be Earth-like in the Star Trek style: typical southern California vegetation, rocks, land forms, weather, etc.
The colours will be just different enough to be disorienting; the land-forms and distribution of water (assuming there is surface water) will be different enough to feel strange; the flora and fauna can be wildly different, and quite possibly unaccommodating. The diurnal cycle and seasons are likely to be different durations and proportions, as is the gravity.

I think we would all have a lot of things to miss and long for....
... unless the people who live on that planet had never been on Earth at all, because they're a brand new generation, conceived on Earth three hundred years before, born aboard ship 20-30 years before expected landfall and raised as colonists. To them, any habitable planet would be the sweet promise of liberty (or nightmare of agoraphobia).
 
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I put forth a proposal to start a Mars colony in Valles Marineris*, where the colonist lived in the walls of the canyon and there was a "roof" over a portion of the canyon (with walls at the ends, of course). Local materials, especially mundane sand, were used to produce the roof and the walls.

The roof would be triple layer with self-sealing gel between the layers.

As we've found water ~250 miles below the Earth's surface we might except the same on Mars. Imagine the impactor that created the impact fracture valley longer than the distance from New York to LA landed in a sea that drained into the subterranean and still remains there.

Or we could order water from Amazon. ;)

*VM for short
 
Absent warp speed: If you left earth today: By the time you made it to an earth like planet you and your fellow travelers would all be dead.

So we have a spaceship with a lot of dead people.
What are you gonna do with all those bodies?
Grok?
 
Jeeves said:
It's unlikely to be Earth-like in the Star Trek style: typical southern California vegetation, rocks, land forms, weather, etc.
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I love when they report "M-class planet. No life forms found."
And then they beam down and it's literally forested from one end to the other.
 
sculptor said:
Absent warp speed: If you left earth today: By the time you made it to an earth like planet you and your fellow travelers would all be dead.

So we have a spaceship with a lot of dead people.
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Er.
1. Colony/generation ship*
2. Relativistic time dilation
3. Hibernation

*OK, you'd be dead, but I'm pretty sure your descendants wouldn't leave the bodies to pile up in the trash room.
 
Likely the one thing that will be missed most is the ability to feel the sun and wind on your face. Any planet is likely to require some sort of spacesuit to go outside the habitat.

The chances of finding a planet that has a breathable atmosphere are slim (we would likely find a domed-habitable planet long before finding an open-air habitable planet). Especially since, for it to have a breathable atmo, it would probably have to be populated by alien vegetation - which means we're still stuck in spacesuits to protect us from alien pathogens.
 
DaveC426913 said:
I love when they report "M-class planet. No life forms found."
And then they beam down and it's literally forested from one end to the other.
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Birds are singing, crickets are chirping, Jem'Hadar materialize out of the air....
(yes, but it's fun!)
 
I agree with Dave; I'd be surprised if any other world's will be inhabitable. Even where the atmosphere has similar composition to modern Earth (for most of Earth's history Earth did not) it seems to require active biology and nothing is more inventive at making poisons and allergens than biology, not to mention predators, parasites and diseases. Even given such things as the same biochemical basics with the same chirality I expect pre-existing life will be the biggest barrier to occupation.

Actually I think that any future humanity that is technologically capable of reaching other stars (something I think extremely unlikely) will have no real need to colonize planets and will prefer space habitats, where conditions can be made just right; wanting land to own and remake into colonial farmsteads will look like very primitive urges. To me it already sounds self indulgent and irresponsible; I expect preventing terrestrial biology getting loose and ruining what may be the most valuable thing about another world - the alien biology and biochemistry - seems more likely than commitment to terrarizing the place. Although arguably finding a world with only very simple and limited life could revive those ancient urges to migrate and conquer (terraform) and colonize.
 
sculptor said:
Absent warp speed: If you left earth today: By the time you made it to an earth like planet you and your fellow travelers would all be dead.

So we have a spaceship with a lot of dead people.
What are you gonna do with all those bodies?
Grok?
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You've never read The Forever War?

But why would they send a ship that couldn't/wouldn't accomplish the mission?
 
sculptor said:
By the time you made it to an earth like planet you and your fellow travelers would all be dead.

So we have a spaceship with a lot of dead people.
What are you gonna do with all those bodies?
Click to expand...
What you do with a crewmate who dies is give them a burial in space - eject the body in a container and set it adrift.
But there would be no crew members awake on the long trip: they would be in stasis pods - assuming it was manned mission in the first place.
More likely, what would be sent are frozen embryos, started in vitro from the most adaptable DNA available, tended by robots en route. When approaching the habitable planet of choice, the robots would defrost them, put them in incubators, then birth them and take care of the children. Ideally, births would be staggered, so that not all colonists arriving at the planet were the same age.
 
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