Why Hacking DNA Is the Secret of Deep-Space Travel | Hacker News Reader

Why Hacking DNA Is the Secret of Deep-Space Travel

popularmechanics.com

55 pointsjonbaer13 comments

The way we are talking about space travel is probably the same way the people of Florence, Italy spoke of Da Vinci flying machines, submarine and his armored "car."

When you consider the dangers of just getting to Mars and how long that project will take, I suspect we are a century or two away.

http://www.da-vinci-inventions.com/armoured-car.aspx

My first thought was I can think of many more pressing and immediate use cases for hacking DNA.

Or by analogy, it's a bit like articles at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution explaining just how useful the steam engine could prove for building armoured cars.

"When you consider the dangers of just getting to Mars and how long that project will take, I suspect we are a century or two away." Compare how dangerous it was to set man on the Moon in the 60s to getting to Mars. Its just risk. You can manage risk. Getting there isn't the real problem. Staying alive is.

The Moon shot was an awesome feat. If we threw our Iraq/Syria/Afghanistan budget perhaps we could overcome the logistical challenges, such as the massive amount of weight we would be sending. The food bulk, return fuel, zero-g health effects, cosmic ray brain damage and timing the return voyage.

It was already possible in the 90s: http://www.amazon.com/Case-Mars-Plan-Settle-Planet/dp/145160...

I'm reminded of author Peter Watts' _Blindsight_ where travel beyond the asteroid belt required genetic modification (to allow the squishy hairless monkeys to hibernate for the required time).

I've always thought the only realistic way life would spread throughout the galaxy would be by engineered space-faring cells. Being synthetically created, they would technically be human offspring.

In Alistair Reynolds' Revelation Space universe, there are mentions of the "Americano era", which was an earlier attempt to settle star systems in the way you describe. The Americano civilication crashed in one generation because growing up without parents, a higher percentage (I think ~2-3%) of people became murdering psychopaths. That such people would be off their rockers is a plausible hypothesis, but fortunately no-one's tested it.

The headline reminded me of the anime "Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet"

It's pretty good and on Netflix, at least it is in Australia.

I thought this was going to be about hacking our own DNA (perhaps like the water bear) to harden it for space travel.

I am reminded of H. R. Giger's designs for the movie Alien. They don't seem so far-fetched now.

And especially the prequels...:)

No mention of self-modification?

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