Taming Aliens

[Scowling Dragon]

Usualy in a movie, when Humans land on a planet with giant aliens on it they usualy make giant robots to counter the giant aliens.

But then I saw a novel idea, from a boardgame of all places. In it, humanity lands on a chaos planet with lava, and other alien stuff. And filled to the brim with giant aliens. And instead of running away, the humans tame the giant beasts and do the next logical step:

Go to war against each other using them (Thats the point of the Board Game).

So I started thinking how this concept could be expanded. They start breeding them for qualities? They start shipping them to other planets for war?

Are there any other media things that have Humans tame the aliens rather then run away from them or make robots to fight them?

[KillianHawkeye]

They tried this in Alien Ressurection. Needless to say, it didn't go well for them.

[Scowling Dragon]

They tried this in Alien Ressurection. Needless to say, it didn't go well for them.

Thats the cliche. What about when it goes right?

[Devonix]

Thats the cliche. What about when it goes right?

Then you get Dinoriders

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpuhLkh358Y

[Lord Seth]

Thats the cliche. What about when it goes right?Then you get Pokémon.

[Connington]

The main problem is that there really isn't much point in a spacefaring civilization taming xenofauna, aside from some benefits to the exotic pet trade (or the exotic food trade). Whatever the alien beasties can do, our machines can almost certainly do it better, and without complaint and without having to drag along perishable food or muck out the stables.

[Mauve Shirt]

Lord Seth already said it, this would quickly turn into Pokemon. :smallbiggrin:

[Scowling Dragon]

The main problem is that there really isn't much point in a spacefaring civilization taming xenofauna, aside from some benefits to the exotic pet trade (or the exotic food trade). Whatever the alien beasties can do, our machines can almost certainly do it better, and without complaint and without having to drag along perishable food or muck out the stables.

Well that depends on the tech level and how the science fiction works.

In nexus ops, its a much cheaper and more efficient option.

[Cyrano]

One could play this way in Alpha Centauri.

[Reluctance]

Domestication takes a long freaking time. When you've just landed, you wouldn't know which animals are good candidates even if you didn't have more pressing needs first. Plus, from a narrative standpoint, these creatures are either threats to be dealt with or curiosities to be understood.

Once the planet itself has been tamed, that's another issue. Lo and behold, tamed alien beasts are a staple in any sci-fi world that has more of a human presence than a handful of recently-landed settlers.

[Soras Teva Gee]

Well that depends on the tech level and how the science fiction works.

In nexus ops, its a much cheaper and more efficient option.

Cars did not replace horses simply because they were better but because they were/are much cheaper. A car needs occasional maintenance and care and only consumes fuel when in operation, an animal requires these things daily whether in use or not.

So aside from novelty pet and food value the only real reason to domesticate animals on other worlds would be if for some reason they could perform a function a machine simply could not. Which would only be for a very narrow range of functions.

Giant animals for mounted cavalry will almost certainly never be of benefit for example. They will all get shot dead on day one of the conflict by more sensible people who brought RPG-7s and M2 machine guns to the fight after having arrived in some helicopters.

[PersonMan]

Thats the cliche. What about when it goes right?

I imagine the most likely place one would see it is:

-absurdly rich people with tamed [insert absurdly dangerous animal here] to show how absurdly rich they are

-the typical 'we are on the edge of civilized space and the planet is hell' place. Deliveries of equipment, etc. are few and far between. Equipment is usually as cheap as possible (in other words it breaks as soon as you need it) and it's just easier to tame animals than it is to try and get the higher-ups to send better stuff or fix the current batch (again).

[thubby]

The main problem is that there really isn't much point in a spacefaring civilization taming xenofauna, aside from some benefits to the exotic pet trade (or the exotic food trade). Whatever the alien beasties can do, our machines can almost certainly do it better, and without complaint and without having to drag along perishable food or muck out the stables.

for that to work you have to make at least a few baseless assumptions about said fauna.

the natural world does a lot of things our technology simply can't.

horses are inconvenient because they eat what is capable of being farm land or human food, and produce waste hazardous to us. if an alien horse ate rocks and crapped crude oil, we'd probably use them for a lot of other things normally done by slow, expensive field equipment.

[Pokonic]

Hmm, eve fwe did manage to tame a sizable amount of giant doom beasts, we would probably find a way to breed them until they could fit inside the pocket of some absurdly rich man's coat.

[Scowling Dragon]

for that to work you have to make at least a few baseless assumptions about said fauna.

the natural world does a lot of things our technology simply can't.

horses are inconvenient because they eat what is capable of being farm land or human food, and produce waste hazardous to us. if an alien horse ate rocks and crapped crude oil, we'd probably use them for a lot of other things normally done by slow, expensive field equipment.

Pretty much exactly. And if one beast could eat plants (Instead of that hard to get fuel) and sunlight, could reproduce without needing a factory, and could spit plasma then they would be a better choice then the machines.

[Tebryn]

Pretty much exactly. And if one beast could eat plants (Instead of that hard to get fuel) and sunlight, could reproduce without needing a factory, and could spit plasma then they would be a better choice then the machines.

No they wouldn't. You have to grow the plants for the thing to eat. Eating sunlight...well then they wouldn't be animals. They'd be plants or some hybrid of the two. Reproduction is a messy business with a lower success rate than a factory. The young have to be raised to adulthood, cared for so they don't get sick or eaten and housed along with their mothers and fathers. If you're doing this to supply anything short of yourself than you're going to need a lot of space.

Where as a factory produces a working object once the thing is finished being built. Could actually run on sunlight as well considering photocells, require no other food and minimal care to take care of. Oh and because they're easier to build losing one won't require you to wait long or to spend lots of money to make sure the young baby survives to be an adult.

So in summery. No, it wouldn't be better than a machine.

[Forum Explorer]

No they wouldn't. You have to grow the plants for the thing to eat. Eating sunlight...well then they wouldn't be animals. They'd be plants or some hybrid of the two. Reproduction is a messy business with a lower success rate than a factory. The young have to be raised to adulthood, cared for so they don't get sick or eaten and housed along with their mothers and fathers. If you're doing this to supply anything short of yourself than you're going to need a lot of space.

Where as a factory produces a working object once the thing is finished being built. Could actually run on sunlight as well considering photocells, require no other food and minimal care to take care of. Oh and because they're easier to build losing one won't require you to wait long or to spend lots of money to make sure the young baby survives to be an adult.

So in summery. No, it wouldn't be better than a machine.

Give him a break. He gave a vague example and you specifically tore it apart.


It could work, but almost never for war, due to animals tending to not be death machines. The ones that are death machines don't tend to domesticate well. Basically the conditions need to be something like this:

1)Doesn't use precious resources

2) Performs some valuable function

3) Can out perform or match a machines work

After all I'm pretty sure we'd still be using horses if they could run at 120km/h and not get tired at all while pulling a carriage that was carrying all of your possessions. (At least I would)

Or condition 4 and 5 which can stand alone

4) Are incredibly adorable and relatively safe

5) Are incredibly tasty

[Sith_Happens]

Hmm, eve fwe did manage to tame a sizable amount of giant doom beasts, we would probably find a way to breed them until they could fit inside the pocket of some absurdly rich man's coat.

So, to repeat, it would be Pokemon.:smalltongue:

[Connington]

It's worth remembering that out of all of the huge biodiversity that Earth has, there are only a baker's dozen of species that humans can use for anything but companionship or some biological byproduct (meat, milk, hide, hair). In order for domestication to be commercially viable, animals typically have to have meet a checklist of traits.

They can't be too aggressive or too shy. The right temperament is really only common in social animals with defined hierarchies that humans can coopt. It can't be exclusively carnivorous or hyper-specialized to one plant like the panda, for economic reasons. If it's meant for transportation or riding, it has to accept a load on its back.

Additionally, if we want the animal to properly domesticated and bred in captivity, it needs to have mating rituals compatible with tight spaces and zero privacy, and it can't take more than a couple of years to grow to usable size. Otherwise it winds up like the elephant, left to breed in the wild and then captured once mature.

Also, biochemical barriers might make a lot xenofauna and flora completely inedible, which puts one of the major uses of domesticated animals in jeopardy.

One animal that probably would be widely embraced would be something that could fly, and was big enough to either take passengers or at least small cargoes. It would still be subject to all the restrictions mentioned above (and large flying birds are rarely herbivores), and it could probably only exist on a world with quite low gravity.

[Tebryn]

Give him a break. He gave a vague example and you specifically tore it apart.

No. Not when the "vauge example" can be so easily dismissed. Especially with the sunlight comment. If you've got space flight that is a viable bit of locomotion the idea that a simple beast of burden out preforming machinery seems to be utterly fatuous. I ignored the Plasma Cannon. That's about as good as you're going to get.



It could work, but almost never for war, due to animals tending to not be death machines. The ones that are death machines don't tend to domesticate well. Basically the conditions need to be something like this:

I fail to see how anything that has through evolution developed a plasma cannon would be anything short of a top tier predator.


1)Doesn't use precious resources

Food is a precious resource. So is space to grow said food.


2) Performs some valuable function

That a machine cannot do as well at a cheaper cost or that a machine created by a space faring race couldn't preform.


3) Can out perform or match a machines work

When you can name an animal that can do that I'll be more convinced. As you point out below, we don't use work animals when we can use machines.


After all I'm pretty sure we'd still be using horses if they could run at 120km/h and not get tired at all while pulling a carriage that was carrying all of your possessions. (At least I would)

Except they can't. Which is why we use cars and machines.

Or condition 4 and 5 which can stand alone


4) Are incredibly adorable and relatively safe

Adorable beasts of burden with plasma cannons.


5) Are incredibly tasty

Since we all like to be making stuff up, why not just clone the meat? We've done that in this the year 2012. Further negating any need to use valuable land to raise animals and take the many years to domesticate said plasma cannon wielding beast and all the food and space it would require to keep the beast alive.

[Scowling Dragon]

And whats it with Dragons! What a ridiculous concept! And so is magic, and so is the idea of faster then light travel, and cloning meat! And so is fantasy and non fiction in general! Non fictitious things are for morons!

Lets chuck it all in the bin! Its harsh reality for us cause we are all gritty realists!

WRAWRAWrAWRAWRA!

[Connington]

I think we're getting into a SF vs Fantasy thing here. Some stories labeled as SF are really more Fantasy with spaceships and rayguns. And that's fine. Liking rocky road doesn't mean hating mint chocolate chip.

Incidentally, bioengineering can produce give a veneer of plausibility to a setting with implausibly useful critters in it. The colonists could bring them along as a replaceable low tech substitute for machines, or they may have been left behind by precursors.

[DigoDragon]

The main problem is that there really isn't much point in a spacefaring civilization taming xenofauna, aside from some benefits to the exotic pet trade (or the exotic food trade). Whatever the alien beasties can do, our machines can almost certainly do it better, and without complaint and without having to drag along perishable food or muck out the stables.

Assuming the civ has he ability to put an infrastructure in that can maintain the robots. If so, then yeah, the machines will do the work just fine and the beasts get pushed aside. If not, there could be merit in taming the wildlife for work. Or even food.

[Brother Oni]

Assuming that the new colonists don't have a regular resupply of spare parts and their machines are complex enough that replacement parts can't be fabricated on site, attempts at domesticating local fauna may well make sense.

If all you had left to move your cargo was yourself or a semi-friendly beastie, most people would go for the beastie, assuming that they won't kill you at the drop of a hat.

[Soras Teva Gee]

Assuming that the new colonists don't have a regular resupply of spare parts and their machines are complex enough that replacement parts can't be fabricated on site, attempts at domesticating local fauna may well make sense.

If all you had left to move your cargo was yourself or a semi-friendly beastie, most people would go for the beastie, assuming that they won't kill you at the drop of a hat.

This is true, but this is also self limiting because beyond a certain threshold of development it would become obsolete as some entrepeurnial individual would import the factories to make said parts locally.

(Making the loose assumption the required resources are present, but sufficiently Earth-like that we'd go there loosely implies this anyways)

[MLai]

What about taming and training a shapeshifting animal? Like a giant amoeba-like organism? In their own natural habitat, they assume their own variety of shapes for survival. But the colonists capture the babies and train them to assume various shapes useful for civilization. Because they're endlessly adaptable, they may be worth more than ordinary machines.

[Serpentine]

Anne McCaffery has this, in both the Dragonriders of Pern and (iirc, it's been a long time) Decision at Doona and the other Doona books. In Pern, they even genetically engineer some of the local wildlife to be more useful. It may be of note that the colonists were sort of future-Amish - they colonised the planet with the intent of being as low-tech as possible.

...has no one mentioned Star Wars yet? :smallconfused: Or did I just miss it?

Contrary to most people here, apparently, I think it's inevitable that if we go to another planet with life, if it's even vaguely possible we'll at least end up taking on native organisms as pets. It's just what we do. And if there's something we can find a use for, we'll use it - probably not exclusively, unlikely even a substantial proportion of the time so long as the technology for a different method is there, but there will still be people who prefer a space-horse to a space-tractor.

[Fragenstein]

...has no one mentioned Star Wars yet? :smallconfused: Or did I just miss it?

I'm surprised I haven't spotted a Firefly reference.

If we're dealing with realistic propulsion and interplanetary travel times, early settlers are going to be strapped for cargo space and energy way out in the black. It's inevitable that they'd develope a colonial mentality where every available resource is used to its fullest. If that includes space horses that have already adapted to the working evironment, then I'm pretty sure a use could be found for them.

If we're dealing with more advanced fictional technology where massive armadas stretch out across space with unlimited fuel and are capable of porting entire star systems, then it's a little less likely that people would bother putting the wildlife to work. But those earlier frontier days? I have no problems believing that plans would be structured around making the most of what's already there...

... assuming we ever get out that far and actually find something worth taming, that is.

[Forum Explorer]

No. Not when the "vauge example" can be so easily dismissed. Especially with the sunlight comment. If you've got space flight that is a viable bit of locomotion the idea that a simple beast of burden out preforming machinery seems to be utterly fatuous. I ignored the Plasma Cannon. That's about as good as you're going to get.




I fail to see how anything that has through evolution developed a plasma cannon would be anything short of a top tier predator.



Food is a precious resource. So is space to grow said food.



That a machine cannot do as well at a cheaper cost or that a machine created by a space faring race couldn't preform.



When you can name an animal that can do that I'll be more convinced. As you point out below, we don't use work animals when we can use machines.



Except they can't. Which is why we use cars and machines.

Or condition 4 and 5 which can stand alone



Adorable beasts of burden with plasma cannons.



Since we all like to be making stuff up, why not just clone the meat? We've done that in this the year 2012. Further negating any need to use valuable land to raise animals and take the many years to domesticate said plasma cannon wielding beast and all the food and space it would require to keep the beast alive.

Why? In some ways a horse today is better then a car. After all a car uses up valuable and expensive gas. It is also limited to roads, generally.

A horse is durable, relatively inexpensive to keep fed and can go nearly every where. In an emergency they can act as a guard, way home when lost, or even a food source.

I fail to see why you keep bringing up the plasma cannon or what that has to do with my point at all.

1) Depends on what they eat. If we can't eat the food or use that land, then it isn't a valuable resource. On a new planet your most abundant resource is space.

2.) Yes pretty much. Remember not all Space faring races are necessarily FTL. Or much FTL anyways. In plenty of fiction they are sending the colonists on a one way trip. And on that trip they won't be able to bring an abundance of machines with them. Or the environment is too harsh on machines which require constant maintenance and repair. With parts you may not necessarily have.

3.) Name a real life example? Well horses in a specific scenario. Camels can as well.

4.) ENOUGH WITH THE PLASMA CANNONS! That was never my point. It was never in my point. In fact I deliberately said that nearly all wild animals would prove to be mostly useless for war.

5.) Technology isn't present, it's less efficient, it doesn't taste as good, it uses up too much energy. There are an abundance of animals to work with already. Perhaps the animal has multiple uses then just it's meat. There are a ton of reasons why.

[Aotrs Commander]

Why? In some ways a horse today is better then a car. After all a car uses up valuable and expensive gas. It is also limited to roads, generally.

So is a horse, for any meaningful work. Using a horse for work (e.g. transportation) is not like taking a ride across the country in any way. You simply do not transport anything (of industrial scale) cross country, and never have - roads have existed long before the combustion engine for a reason! Wars have always been, and still are - fought over roads and other transport networks and the nodes thereof (i.e. cities et al). (You just don't drive tanks across the landscape willynilly - even modern battles arte essentially fought down roads and the land surrounding them.)

Even occasions where something like it has been attempted (most famously, perhaps by Hannibal over the Alps) it was a monumental undertaking, and even when successful, extremely costly in terms of men and material (upper estimates suggest 50% losses, though, of course, most ancient data on numbers is murky at best.)

Not to mention that proper supply chains with horses are much slower than mechanisation - horses don't have great endurance, really, when operating at full output, and only passable when doing the long haul.

Their haulage capabilities are better than humans on foot, granted, or they wouldn't be used at all, but they aren't optimal by any stretch of the imagination.

(Also, by the time you're talking about FTL-capable societies capable of reaching other planets, you would expect them to be far less reliant on combustion engines, and more reliant on electrical power, probably generation by either solar power or nuclear or anti-matter power plants. And if you're looking at lower-than-light cryosleep colonies, that would be even more important, because of keeping the mass down and maximising power-to-mass ratios.)


A horse is durable, relatively inexpensive to keep fed and can go nearly every where.

Not... not really at all, on any of those counts, certainly not in comparison to mechanisation. Horses need a lot of food - if you're going to use them for heavy and constant work, you essentially have to feed them on horse-rocket-fuel (oats). And you need to transport a carp-ton of oats around if you want to do that, and growing horse food is a lot more time-consuming and effort-consuming than industrial processes.

If horses were genuinely better than mechanisation, they wouldn't have, y'know, ever fallen out of use.



The long and the short of it is, larger animals really aren't all that efficient as a replacement for mechanised vehicles. If they're all you've got (in the situation where you have a one-way colony trip or something), then heck, yeah, use the local wildlife. But if you come with a full industrial base, then barring very odd peculiarities of physiology (like, I dunno, Pokemon or dragons or superpowers or something), then they aren't a replacement.

There may be occasions where local wildlife may be more efficient for some purposes, of course, but it'd be the exception rather than the rule, barring essentially fantasy-scale (i.e. dragons, magical creatures et al) biologies. By and large, a dedicated piece of technology is going to be more efficient than an animal, which won't, obviously, have been optimised for the job at hand; and even with genetic modification, it's still an animal. (Of course, if it's so heavily bio-engineered to the point that it's practically a biological robot/droid/construct, then yeah, okay, fair point; but I think that's a stage or five beyond "tamed!")

[Sith_Happens]

Adorable beasts of burden with plasma cannons.

Does Hyper Beam count as a plasma cannon?:smalltongue:

[Forum Explorer]

@AORTS

But I'm not talking about their use in transportation. Well industrially anyways. and I haven't done the math but I'm pretty sure it's cheaper to feed my horses then I am. Between my horses and a car it's close. In between the occasional maintenance, gas prices, and insurance my car is costing around 400$ a month.

Machines haven't completely eliminated the work done by horses, therefore machines aren't 100% better. It's likely close to 98-99% but sometimes a horse is still the better choice.


And yes it generally is the exception. No body is arguing that. We are just saying the exception exists and therefore its reasonable for humans to domesticate alien animals that meet that exception. I suppose what we are arguing is that the exception would still exist even in a space faring civilization.

[Soras Teva Gee]

I agree fully with the Lich here.

I will simply add horses were not done away with because just because they slower but because they are less effective and more expensive in the end.

Vehicles consume fuel much more efficiently. And that fuel will be more flexible. If we don't have mobile solar power stations or micro-fusion reactors, you can still haul gasoline far more economically then bags and bags of food. And then run a portable generator off it to power your camp nessecities at the end of the night.

Though more likely extra-solar colonies will just drop down some centralized solar power stations and have vehicles run back and forth to them while gradually expanding the sphere of human influence.

EDIT:


@AORTS

But I'm not talking about their use in transportation. Well industrially anyways. and I haven't done the math but I'm pretty sure it's cheaper to feed my horses then I am. Between my horses and a car it's close. In between the occasional maintenance, gas prices, and insurance my car is costing around 400$ a month.

Machines haven't completely eliminated the work done by horses, therefore machines aren't 100% better. It's likely close to 98-99% but sometimes a horse is still the better choice.

Looked this up quickly and found a horse estimated at around $3,728.50 (http://www.allabouthorses.com/horse-care/horse-budget.html) so about $310 a month not including boarding. A nominally modest savings for one horse which actually surprised me. Then again my car doesn't cost me $400 a month so there's lots of room to argue these costs.

Of course its a modest bit less for a singular horse who by definition has only a fraction of the power of a car. You will not be able to put loads on a horse and then ride it as well. Practical horse driven society I've read a couple of times use multiple horses per person. For remounts if you want to get anywhere at higher speed, hauling of goods, and so forth. I understand the Mongols maintain massive herds per person... and they overwhelmingly stuck to the steppes of Eurasia were you wouldn't have to haul your horses food.

And there are place where horses and other animals are still used, but that's been acknowledged. Its a niche and will remain a niche. Unless we have the mythical One Biome Planet of fiction humanity is not going to have to colonize planet Mountains of Afghanistan or such but will land on a fairly open plain and start there.

[Forum Explorer]

Though more likely extra-solar colonies will just drop down some centralized solar power stations and have vehicles run back and forth to them while gradually expanding the sphere of human influence.

EDIT:



Looked this up quickly and found a horse estimated at around $3,728.50 (http://www.allabouthorses.com/horse-care/horse-budget.html) so about $310 a month not including boarding. A nominally modest savings for one horse which actually surprised me. Then again my car doesn't cost me $400 a month so there's lots of room to argue these costs.

Of course its a modest bit less for a singular horse who by definition has only a fraction of the power of a car. You will not be able to put loads on a horse and then ride it as well. Practical horse driven society I've read a couple of times use multiple horses per person. For remounts if you want to get anywhere at higher speed, hauling of goods, and so forth. I understand the Mongols maintain massive herds per person... and they overwhelmingly stuck to the steppes of Eurasia were you wouldn't have to haul your horses food.

And there are place where horses and other animals are still used, but that's been acknowledged. Its a niche and will remain a niche. Unless we have the mythical One Biome Planet of fiction humanity is not going to have to colonize planet Mountains of Afghanistan or such but will land on a fairly open plain and start there.

I don't know about this. Well it really depends on how advanced the civilization is. But for starting a new colony wouldn't it be better to have one or two primary power sources (+back ups) and set them up as close together as reasonably safe? Then you build around and between the power stations with very few vehicles used initially.

I imagine the animal in question would likely be domesticated to provide the common person with a way to get around quickly, and to explore.

Cut out the lessons and it comes to 230.71 a month. Add in using grazing as a way to cut food costs and the price drops even more. In fact a lot of the maintenance stuff has the same cost for multiple horses. So the price drops even more per additional horse. Also that website has some weird costs like books and bedding.

Er kinda lost my point. What exactly am I trying to argue here? :smallconfused:

[Scowling Dragon]

Just think Tyranids people. Stupid tameable tyranids.

[Karoht]

I recall vaguely hearing a statistic that a General Motors factory line pumps out a new truck every minute. During WWII tanks and planes were rolling out of factories pretty darned quickly.

Can a breeding program beat that?
How about every hour?
Every day?

I know insects reproduce pretty fast. Simple and small organisms (ants and beetles) might be useful, but not necessarily for tasks like fighting a tank.
Though, should we find a varient of termites which can eat metal, they would become rather potent ammunition to huck at the enemy tanks. Especially in a guerilla warfare situation.

[Scowling Dragon]

Youve all made this thread so boring. :smallsigh:

[Tebryn]

Pretty much exactly. And if one beast could eat plants (Instead of that hard to get fuel) and sunlight, could reproduce without needing a factory, and could spit plasma then they would be a better choice then the machines.


Why? In some ways a horse today is better then a car. After all a car uses up valuable and expensive gas. It is also limited to roads, generally.

A horse is durable, relatively inexpensive to keep fed and can go nearly every where. In an emergency they can act as a guard, way home when lost, or even a food source.

Others have already addressed this but I actually have some personal experience with this. My raise, board and ride horses for a living. While the estimate was given was fairly low the price of food, the fact the animals need constant exercise, breeding is a complicated mess, vet fees are rather expensive and finding a doctor that takes care of horses is rather hard to do and a much longer list of other issues.

A horse is...somewhat durable depending on what you want to do with the horse when you're done. Lame Horses are no good for any kind of heavy work, as are a good many breeds of horses to begin with. Horses...are not very smart creatures and your run of the mill horse isn't going to be doing much guard duty. Not even sure where you got that. Are there breeds that can do that? Ya but they're rather expensive. I'd sooner trust an infant to guard somewhere over a horse. I can't count the number of times I've been thrown off a horse because it got spooked by a moving tree limb or something of little consequence. And these are horses bred to be ridden and be calm. You are correct about getting to eat the horse however. I've heard it's rather tasty but having been raised in a family whose occupation is raising and taking care of horses...well...you don't discussing eating the family dog do you?

Where as a car doesn't get spooked ever. While maintenance fees are a slight bit higher depending on what you need fixed when a car breaks down you can fix it. When a horse breaks down...there are generally two options. You stud it or you put it down. Horses are in almost no conciveable way better than a car. Especially now with the push for "Green" energy and the like.

I
fail to see why you keep bringing up the plasma cannon or what that has to do with my point at all.

I bolded it above. It wasn't a point you were making. It was a point I was bringing up because the OP brought it up.


1) Depends on what they eat. If we can't eat the food or use that land, then it isn't a valuable resource. On a new planet your most abundant resource is space.

I agree, I think I said that as one of the reasons raising livestock or other animals would be a detriment to.


2.) Yes pretty much. Remember not all Space faring races are necessarily FTL. Or much FTL anyways. In plenty of fiction they are sending the colonists on a one way trip. And on that trip they won't be able to bring an abundance of machines with them. Or the environment is too harsh on machines which require constant maintenance and repair. With parts you may not necessarily have.

So you're saying if the tech doesn't work it becomes viable to use the local wild life? How does that not refute the argument right there? Machines can do it better. We can't use the machines. We have to settle for the local creatures who evolved dealing with what our machines cannot do or are not present to do.


3.) Name a real life example? Well horses in a specific scenario. Camels can as well.

Well, having lived with horses since I was born along with the above and other posters...horse isn't a good example. I will contend however that a camel is for it's environment sometimes better than a car due to cars not being very good in the sand. However



4.) ENOUGH WITH THE PLASMA CANNONS! That was never my point. It was never in my point. In fact I deliberately said that nearly all wild animals would prove to be mostly useless for war.

Right, but I wasn't just refuting you now was I? We're talking about a creature that can spit plasma as per the OP's general example. It's relevant.


5.) Technology isn't present, it's less efficient, it doesn't taste as good, it uses up too much energy. There are an abundance of animals to work with already. Perhaps the animal has multiple uses then just it's meat. There are a ton of reasons why.

Sure, hypotetically if you somehow managed to get to another planet and lost all your tech then it would become viable. I think having to use "Lose your tech" is a pretty telling refutation in and of itself. -IF- you don't have a means to do it better than the animal, than you use the animal. Well yes, no one's arguing that are we?


Does Hyper Beam count as a plasma cannon?:smalltongue:

Probably. :smallamused:



Youve all made this thread so boring. :smallsigh:

I've found it honestly really amusing.

[Soras Teva Gee]

I don't know about this. Well it really depends on how advanced the civilization is. But for starting a new colony wouldn't it be better to have one or two primary power sources (+back ups) and set them up as close together as reasonably safe? Then you build around and between the power stations with very few vehicles used initially.

Oh one certainly has backups. Like gas and electricity. Or many redundant power generators. You can have multiple options and they will all outperform animals.



I imagine the animal in question would likely be domesticated to provide the common person with a way to get around quickly, and to explore.

Personal transit is the area that places the most premium on not loosing time however. That's its point otherwise one would walk. Of course the earliest stages there won't be a personal transportation need because everything will be nearby enough to walk or be official business enough to requisition a vehicle.


Cut out the lessons and it comes to 230.71 a month. Add in using grazing as a way to cut food costs and the price drops even more. In fact a lot of the maintenance stuff has the same cost for multiple horses. So the price drops even more per additional horse. Also that website has some weird costs like books and bedding.

Er kinda lost my point. What exactly am I trying to argue here? :smallconfused:

And poking around I saw a range of estimates. Plus there are a number of ways to save on a car in labor that would be more likely in a colony before getting started. Since you know its the sort of thing that would have a lot of mechanically inclined (for all the machines needed) and self-reliant folk to begin with.

Also remember that this is at best gross monetary savings for vastly inferior performance, to match what singular vehicles do you need to multiply the number of animals. I've done DC/NYC areas on a single fill up with my car in a day, how many days of feed does that come to on a horse not to mention time (and therefore money) lost.

Now for the truly personal short excursions humans have another invention... the bicycle.

[Karoht]

Youve all made this thread so boring. :smallsigh:What? You don't like my relevant idea about termites that eat metal? Bah.


I do recall also a friend of mine talking about a book, where they used plants to make guns. They grow the ammunition separately, in magazines no less.

Basically the concept was pretty simple. The plants use enzymes to synthesize resins which could be as strong as ceramics and formed into gun parts and bullets. The plants also uses enzymes to produce some kind of explosive charge.

I think the same book also made use of a honeycomb of resin as body armor or tank armor, I forget which. The concept is, the resin is pretty tough. The honeycomb contains pockets of liquid resin. When the resin is exposed to atmosphere it hardens rapidly. The pockets of resin are under high pressure, so if a round manages to penetrate the outer layer, the resin pops outward, encounters atmosphere, and hardens, sealing the breech.

I'm not suggesting any of it is plausible, but there are parts of the logic that sound like they could happen. Plants are pretty awesome when you get down to it.
And Fungi? Man, there are Fungi out there that feed on radioactivity. Godzilla might be an iguana crossed with a fungus, think about that.

[Forum Explorer]

I bolded it above. It wasn't a point you were making. It was a point I was bringing up because the OP brought it up.


So you're saying if the tech doesn't work it becomes viable to use the local wild life? How does that not refute the argument right there? Machines can do it better. We can't use the machines. We have to settle for the local creatures who evolved dealing with what our machines cannot do or are not present to do.



Well, having lived with horses since I was born along with the above and other posters...horse isn't a good example. I will contend however that a camel is for it's environment sometimes better than a car due to cars not being very good in the sand. However


But you kept bringing it up when you were discussing my argument. I don't really care that much about what the OP says beyond the amount I care about what anyone in this thread says. He brought up a concept and we are discussing that. He has no authority over anyone else's points.

Let's clarify my argument shall we? I believe that when colonizing another planet with life on it domesticating the native animals may prove useful, depending on the circumstances. What I've been trying to bring up are times when those circumstances would occur. Like the machines not working properly, or not having replacements for them, and no way to easily make more.

Let's clarify what I think you are saying: That any civilization that is capable of colonizing another planet has technology that is superior to animals and thus will never domesticate an alien animal.

I've also had horses since I was very young, though we've generally only used them for entertainment and reselling them after training them. But seriously enough about horses. I didn't want to derail this subject so badly.

[Tebryn]

Let's clarify my argument shall we? I believe that when colonizing another planet with life on it domesticating the native animals may prove useful, depending on the circumstances. What I've been trying to bring up are times when those circumstances would occur. Like the machines not working properly, or not having replacements for them, and no way to easily make more.

I got it from the start.


Let's clarify what I think you are saying: That any civilization that is capable of colonizing another planet has technology that is superior to animals and thus will never domesticate an alien animal.


No. I am saying that likelihood of them doing is rather low unless said technology is unusable. Which is what has been said across the board I think. Technology replaces less suitable methods of transportation or the like. Science > Nature generally speaking.

[Karoht]

Symbiotic Organisms.

First off, recall that the mitochondria in your cells, were once a separate organism. That might not seem like a big deal right away. Until you consider that there are bacteria that can survive being in a nuclear reactor and not have their DNA chains destroyed, along with Fungi which can metabolize x-ray and I think gamma ray types of radiation. Perhaps we might find another micro-organism which would be compatible with our cells, and it might take up residency, protecting us from or making us able to survive more exposure to radiation.

Sci Fi gave us two excellent symbiots to consider, comics gave us another.
Star Trek gave us the Trill. They carry the memories from one host to another. They also (unfortunately) take over quite a bit of the host's metabolic functions and partially act as a set of redundant organs.

Stargate gave us the Gould(?) who work much the same way.

Pretend for a moment that we found an organism which we could utilize the same way. Redundant organs would be probably pretty useful in some instances. It might make soldiers more resilient or endurant. It might allow them to survive the alien environment with a bit less difficulty or maybe even none at all. IE-The amount of arsenic in the atmosphere would be lethal to humans, but with the symbiot to help filter it out, it's survivable without major short term health effects and/or manageable long term health effects.

Marvel comics gave us the symbiote which eventually became Venom and Carnage. Being able to 'wear' an organism which gives the user enhanced capabilities, or even just allows them to function better in the alien environment, is a pretty significant perk. If it were to convey improved strength or stamina or agility or awareness or stealth capabilities, or even just the ability to understand the locals (or even reply back properly) those would be pretty awesome.

Guyver gives us an example of a symbiote which turns into full body armor. Okay, hokey, but providing an exoskeleton has some perks, and doesn't sound too implausible.


As for battlefield implimentation, consider that a symbiotic organism might only require us to find them, and then surgically implant them, making them useful pretty much immediately.
Standard side effects caveat and all that jazz (the sci fi and marvel comics examples are filled with them), as long as there is compatibility (admittedly, not all that likely on an alien planet, but hey, this is sci fi we are talking about) then as soon as a protocol is established, you're good to go.

[Brother Oni]

No. I am saying that likelihood of them doing is rather low unless said technology is unusable. Which is what has been said across the board I think. Technology replaces less suitable methods of transportation or the like. Science > Nature generally speaking.

Until science encounters nature that it has never seen before (the film Avatar, for example).

Aside from simple supply issues, there may be political reasons in the colonists wanting independence from their parent planet and domestication of animals (for food or labour) is a good start if technology is not robust enough to be reliable or usable.



First off, recall that the mitochondria in your cells, were once a separate organism. That might not seem like a big deal right away.

Unless you know a bit about cellular biology and realise how dependent we are on their energy generation.

The first Parasite Eve isn't just pure shlocky science for the benefit of a game. :smallsmile:

[Morph Bark]

One point I haven't seen brought up yet: fuels generally need extensive progresses to be created from natural resources. These progresses require lots of pretty specific machinery. I would think that on a space trip to colonize another planet more general machinery or stuff to create or preserve food and create suitable living conditions would be prioritized, thus keeping the fuel-making machines out. Even if they would be included on the trip, why would we assume we could find the natural resources on that planet to process into fuel? Plus we would also need machines to dig it up, unless our machines all use wood (or its rough equivalent) for fuel, but I ain't ever heard of a spaceship working on wood.

Another thing is, why would we assume the creatures living on other planets would be like Earth animals? If they developed entirely seperately from Earth creatures, they would be very different. Some of those creatures might entirely live off sunlight, be covered in armoured plating, or their excrement might be a valuable metal.

[Soras Teva Gee]

One point I haven't seen brought up yet: fuels generally need extensive progresses to be created from natural resources. These progresses require lots of pretty specific machinery. I would think that on a space trip to colonize another planet more general machinery or stuff to create or preserve food and create suitable living conditions would be prioritized, thus keeping the fuel-making machines out. Even if they would be included on the trip, why would we assume we could find the natural resources on that planet to process into fuel? Plus we would also need machines to dig it up, unless our machines all use wood (or its rough equivalent) for fuel, but I ain't ever heard of a spaceship working on wood.

Actually getting to another planet strongly implies fully capable space industry and therefore the power/fuel situation is already fundamentally solved. Even if chemical fuels are still preferred for say future-Jeeps they will already be avoidable at least long enough to get things going.

More likely electric vehicles, either solar powered or tapping a shared source, will be the order of the day. Fuel is just convenient to say.

(Mind you the prerequisite of sustainable habitation in space makes planetary colonization an entirely dubious concept anyways...)


Another thing is, why would we assume the creatures living on other planets would be like Earth animals? If they developed entirely seperately from Earth creatures, they would be very different. Some of those creatures might entirely live off sunlight, be covered in armoured plating, or their excrement might be a valuable metal.

While obviously not confirmable it is still reasonable to assume that planets that could support human life must support biochemically similar life forms. Its why for example we can breathe, because back in the pond scum phase life altered the atmosphere to increase the oxygen.

That also places limits on whats all that sensible and viable. Evolution has variety but also limits.

Plenty of creatures can be say armor plated, those exist and have exist on Earth independently multiple times. However they aren't going to be tougher then say steel and able to stand up to the more serious weapons we already have available.

Excreting metal is an interesting idea but only makes a lot of sense if its merely being collected because its highly present in food source and thus just needs filtering out.

[Melayl]

That also places limits on whats all that sensible and viable. Evolution has variety but also limits.
And current scientists are just beginning to tap the usefulness of those limits.


Plenty of creatures can be say armor plated, those exist and have exist on Earth independently multiple times. However they aren't going to be tougher then say steel and able to stand up to the more serious weapons we already have available.
Actually, we have creatures here on earth that (were they to be of similar size to humans) would basically be bulletproof. Certain invertebrates have shell microstructures that scientists are copying to make body armor. And they're just made up of the same materials our bones are. Imagine if they were made of a boron-silicate (an actual bulletproof material) or other stronger material.


Excreting metal is an interesting idea but only makes a lot of sense if its merely being collected because its highly present in food source and thus just needs filtering out.

Even if the metal was already there in high quantities, which would be easier and cheaper? To create a factory and chemical/mechanical process to refine the metal (not to mention harvesting it on a large scale), or simply having the local wildlife do what it does best and then gather the remains?

Or, what if they excreted an entirely new substance that was highly useful? If they could be domesticated/trained enough excrete them where desired, it'd be pretty darned useful, and cheaper than trying to make them ourselves. Like spiders, barnacles, and various other creatures already do. We'd love to be able to have spiders spin nice long threads for us to make threads/cables/fabrics out of. Or have barnacles drop glue and filiments exactly where we want them.

Just because technology can do a thing doesn't mean it can do it cheaper and better than nature can.

[Soras Teva Gee]

And current scientists are just beginning to tap the usefulness of those limits.


[QUOTE]Actually, we have creatures here on earth that (were they to be of similar size to humans) would basically be bulletproof. Certain invertebrates have shell microstructures that scientists are copying to make body armor. And they're just made up of the same materials our bones are. Imagine if they were made of a boron-silicate (an actual bulletproof material) or other stronger material.


You fail to appreciate the scale of the problem involved. I can accept for example that an armored creature may be immune to small arms fire. This means all of nothing as far as serious combat goes because that's only the smallest scale available to humans with current tech.

An M2 machine gun which while hardly something you fire from the hip can be carried and supplied by a few men. And its .50 cal bullets can punch through a half inch steel plate and is considered an anti-vehicle weapon. This is WWII tech here, though given fire arms don't have anywhere to go as a tech. The same caliber is also what goes into those miltary sniper weapons that score kills a mile away

And that's just one weapon another that would be common as dirt would be the RPG-7 that can give tanks trouble. I here its successor can even trouble an Abrams on a good hit. This is arguably an even lighter option.

Then of course their's grenades, mines, mortars, and grenade launchers of various sorts and so forth. This is ALL without even getting into weapons you aren't going to port around with infantry.

Animals are only possibly going to be used where infantry is... of course infantry being intelligent soliders have the minds to take and use cover that an animal will lack. And anything big enough to say ride on won't be good for stealth. So really their only role in warfare would be to be transport in areas where vehicles can't go that you leave tied to a tree or whatever when combat seems likely. Potentially useful niche maybe, but hardly going to revive traditional cavalry.

No I do not believe theres going to be the magic animal that takes an RPG to the face and keeps going.


Even if the metal was already there in high quantities, which would be easier and cheaper? To create a factory and chemical/mechanical process to refine the metal (not to mention harvesting it on a large scale), or simply having the local wildlife do what it does best and then gather the remains?

If animals are producing it means it doesn't need any refinement out of the environment, since they wouldn't be producing it otherwise. Since the only reason they would excrete usable metal would be if something in their diet was so rich in metal they needed to filter said material out.

Of course that's no small grant right there. It one thing to suppose a soil would be rich in a material we'd want to use in a manner that also cycles through plants and animals. But unless someone's got a geological dissertation extrapolating from known principles how this is possible I remain skeptical.

Heck that I cannot rule it impossible does exactly nothing towards making it actually viable. And not say a novelty that happened on maybe one known planet for a hundred years time until the deposits accessible by the animals were depleted for all time.



Or, what if they excreted an entirely new substance that was highly useful?

What is substance composed of, what does it actually do, why is that valuable, how come this process is not replicable in a few test tubes. Since its entirely new and all.

Mind you this has possiblities. Obviously we benefit everyday from bio-chemical products. However the problem is just throwing some incomplete idea isn't speculation with any weight behind it.



Just because technology can do a thing doesn't mean it can do it cheaper and better than nature can.

Actually because technology is not saddled with having to keep a living thing alive making any other products of the process secondary where not tertiary.... yeah if it can do it then it does do it better. It can be streamlined and controlled to be more effective, so if that can be done it is done

Not that there aren't products we don't harvest more directly. Like harvests. But that's talking simply more variety in areas we already have. New foods and so forth could even drive some domestication. But it still comes down to a lot of The Same But More.

[Knaight]

Most of my points have already been made. However, there is a misconception throughout this thread that needs correction, regarding domestication and taming. This thread is about taming aliens - that means capturing and training wild aliens individually. Breeding programs aren't involved in this at all, and the length of domestication is completely irrelevant, as domestication is a completely different process than taming a wild animal.

[Karoht]

What is substance composed of, what does it actually do, why is that valuable, how come this process is not replicable in a few test tubes. Since its entirely new and all.Photosynthesis has still not yet been completely copied in a lab environment, yet we understand the chemistry behind the reaction quite well. It is a process which is not replicable currently (though there are some projects which I hear are getting very close), and if it were replicable might have some value. Military value? Probably not. Though we might get better solar energy collectors out of the deal which do have a range of uses, but not necessarily a direct military usage.



Mind you this has possiblities. Obviously we benefit everyday from bio-chemical products. However the problem is just throwing some incomplete idea isn't speculation with any weight behind it. Well, this is supposed to be a speculation thread, in a sci-fi sort of direction. Hence why I threw out stuff like symbiotes, plants being used as weapon fabrication (I wish I knew what novel that was from or if that was my friend just talking out his arse, might be a good read), and termites that eat (insert substance here).

Insects could potentially be used to create fuel sources. Look at bacteria and fungi being used to break down farm manure and make bio fuels, methane, pentane, butane, etc. Insects could be used to create chemical weapons maybe. If termites are already pumping out CO2 and Methane as well as some other poisons by eating wood, it's not a stretch to imagine that they could pump out other chemical weapons.
Oh, and there is a project to use Termites to make hydrogen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termites#Termites_as_a_source_of_energy

While I doubt we will be seeing something like Mustard Gas from insect colonies any time soon, an alien planet (particularly if they run on Arsenic or Phosphorous instead of carbon) might be able to provide us with something nasty in that department.



Actually because technology is not saddled with having to keep a living thing alive making any other products of the process secondary where not tertiary.... yeah if it can do it then it does do it better. It can be streamlined and controlled to be more effective, so if that can be done it is doneIt is also easier to iterate and improve on technology. Selective Breeding and Eugenics* programs are NOT considered short term projects typically. Building a bigger motor to drive a larger vehicle is not considerably difficult to improve upon.


*Eugenics is not considered a science as it is classically considered a social theory. Also, I am not an advocate of Selective Breeding or Eugenics in any way, shape, or form. Just clearing that up now before this turns into an arguement that will inevitably get the thread locked.

[Coidzor]

Did someone already mention dragon riders of pern?

I mean, it's pretty weird and all, and they took the native life forms and gene-tweaked them and inserted a lot of weird psychic stuff into the mix, but it's somewhat like the OP.

Ahh, Serps did, just didn't turn up on my first pass, haha.

[Melayl]

You fail to appreciate the scale of the problem involved. I can accept for example that an armored creature may be immune to small arms fire. This means all of nothing as far as serious combat goes because that's only the smallest scale available to humans with current tech.

An M2 machine gun which while hardly something you fire from the hip can be carried and supplied by a few men. And its .50 cal bullets can punch through a half inch steel plate and is considered an anti-vehicle weapon. This is WWII tech here, though given fire arms don't have anywhere to go as a tech. The same caliber is also what goes into those miltary sniper weapons that score kills a mile away

And that's just one weapon another that would be common as dirt would be the RPG-7 that can give tanks trouble. I here its successor can even trouble an Abrams on a good hit. This is arguably an even lighter option.

Then of course their's grenades, mines, mortars, and grenade launchers of various sorts and so forth. This is ALL without even getting into weapons you aren't going to port around with infantry.

Animals are only possibly going to be used where infantry is... of course infantry being intelligent soliders have the minds to take and use cover that an animal will lack. And anything big enough to say ride on won't be good for stealth. So really their only role in warfare would be to be transport in areas where vehicles can't go that you leave tied to a tree or whatever when combat seems likely. Potentially useful niche maybe, but hardly going to revive traditional cavalry.

No I do not believe theres going to be the magic animal that takes an RPG to the face and keeps going.
Actually, I do understand the scale involved. I also understand the incredible structures that nature and animals can create. The invertebrates I mentioned have created shells that, increased a few times in thickness would actually be bulletproof now, all with only a bone-like material. That'd equate to a mouse-to-rat-sized creature that was immune to small arms fire. Scale that up to something the size of a horse or a buffalo, just using the same material, and it would shrug off heavy arms fire, at least for a time. Now, use stronger, more resilient materials in the same structure, and you have something that could, in fact, be unpenetrated by an RPG. The concussion would likely still harm it, but the shell wouldn't penetrate the creature. That's] why our scientists are looking so closely at animals. Evolution has already done millions of years of research and testing for us.



If animals are producing it means it doesn't need any refinement out of the environment, since they wouldn't be producing it otherwise. Since the only reason they would excrete usable metal would be if something in their diet was so rich in metal they needed to filter said material out.

Of course that's no small grant right there. It one thing to suppose a soil would be rich in a material we'd want to use in a manner that also cycles through plants and animals. But unless someone's got a geological dissertation extrapolating from known principles how this is possible I remain skeptical.
Why do you think it wouldn't need any refinement? It could very easily be in molecular form, bound in chemical structures in the plants, and require a good deal of processing to release. It could be part of the energy synthesis of the plant (or the animal, for that matter) to bind such minerals. Iron is present in many plants here on earth. Go out, pick some, and make me a nail. Just a 1 penny finish nail. Unlocking all the iron in the plants, converting it into ore, and making that nail is going to use hundreds of millions of gigawats of energy cost you millions of dollars. Even getting 1/10th of the iron you'd need would cost millions.

If an animal could do it, it would require very little energy, and only enough cost to keep the animal healthy.


What is substance composed of, what does it actually do, why is that valuable, how come this process is not replicable in a few test tubes. Since its entirely new and all.
Spider silk is great for sutures, creating bullet-resistant fabrics (better than Kevlar), industrial cables, and other uses I can't recall at the moment. Scientists can create all the proteins in test tube, but the spinning process of the spider has yet to be replicated. The best science can do is strands of a few mm at most.

Barnacles secret a glue that is stronger than the ships they bind to, and it cures underwater. Their filaments (part of what they use to connect to ships ande such) is as strong or stronger than spider silk. We can't create either in the lab yet.


Mind you this has possiblities. Obviously we benefit everyday from bio-chemical products. However the problem is just throwing some incomplete idea isn't speculation with any weight behind it.
My speculation on what those theoretical animals can do is just as sound as your speculation of what the theoretical technology can do. Both are just speculation. However, I do know what modern technology can do, and what earth creatures can do.


Actually because technology is not saddled with having to keep a living thing alive making any other products of the process secondary where not tertiary.... yeah if it can do it then it does do it better. It can be streamlined and controlled to be more effective, so if that can be done it is done

Take ethanol, for example. Modern processing is highly cost, time, and energy intensive. Yet, bacteria can do it (yes, on a much smaller scale) for free. Free. As [i]part[i/] of what keeps them alive, not in spite of it. If they could be scaled up, which would be the better system?

Technology is great, and more advances are coming daily, but for some things, you just can't beat nature.

[lightningcat]

Animals require much less infastructure than mechines. That was the original reasoning for not using high tech in the Pern series. Its also the reason that horses are more common than spaceships in Firefly.

As long as the animal can survive in an enviroment, you can release them into the wild and come back 50, 100, a thousand years later and be relatively sure that you will still have animals. The same cannot be said for mothballed mechines.

[Morph Bark]

Actually getting to another planet strongly implies fully capable space industry and therefore the power/fuel situation is already fundamentally solved. Even if chemical fuels are still preferred for say future-Jeeps they will already be avoidable at least long enough to get things going.

More likely electric vehicles, either solar powered or tapping a shared source, will be the order of the day. Fuel is just convenient to say.

You appear to presume that advances in space travel will be accompanied by advances in many other areas as well. We could end up with solar-powered or electric spaceships or such, but let's compare it to cars. We have solar-powered cars, electrically-powered cars and fuel-powered cars, yet the latter is still the most common one by many multitudes. This is because it is cheaper to make and uphold and gives more power more easily. An electrically-powered car simply isn't as powerful, whereas a solar-powered car is heavily dependant on the weather. And sure, out in space there are no rainy days, but you do end up pretty far away from the sun and other stars. Plus, what's to say we'd end up on a world that has clear skies most of the time? Considering there's planets like Venus, we may end up with the opposite of the optimal atmosphere in some aspects.


(Mind you the prerequisite of sustainable habitation in space makes planetary colonization an entirely dubious concept anyways...)

With that in mind, I'd say we'd be more likely to end up on planets that are quite unlike Earth, whether they have life on them or not. Even on Earth there are plenty of creatures who don't function off oxygen, for instance, or who are largely non-hydrogen-based or non-carbon-based. Granted, in the case of creatures not mainly based off those elements they are all--AFAIK--microbes, but that does not have to hold true for other planets.

[Soras Teva Gee]

Military value? Probably not. Though we might get better solar energy collectors out of the deal which do have a range of uses, but not necessarily a direct military usage.

Looking at it might be helpful... except photosynthesis doesn't produce electricity. There pretty divergent processes. And well here's the problem, being able to learn something from study and then replicate it with technology is still using technology. You'd need specimens not domestication.

Relatively speaking nature being better here would be like finding photosynthetic plants with a bio-electric defense that can produce it so steadily they outperform a reactor. While you might find for example a electric eel plant, in the real world trying to tap it would run dry quickly or it would die trying to keep up.

I could go on through example after example of how what sound nice is more like a very loose possibility far from being actually economical.


Actually, I do understand the scale involved. I also understand the incredible structures that nature and animals can create. The invertebrates I mentioned have created shells that, increased a few times in thickness would actually be bulletproof now, all with only a bone-like material. That'd equate to a mouse-to-rat-sized creature that was immune to small arms fire. Scale that up to something the size of a horse or a buffalo, just using the same material, and it would shrug off heavy arms fire, at least for a time. Now, use stronger, more resilient materials in the same structure, and you have something that could, in fact, be unpenetrated by an RPG. The concussion would likely still harm it, but the shell wouldn't penetrate the creature. That's] why our scientists are looking so closely at animals. Evolution has already done millions of years of research and testing for us.

Materials don't work like that.


If an animal could do it, it would require very little energy, and only enough cost to keep the animal healthy.

Why do people think animals are cheap?

Machines are cheap that's why they use them to grow, harvest, transport and then process food.




With that in mind, I'd say we'd be more likely to end up on planets that are quite unlike Earth, whether they have life on them or not. Even on Earth there are plenty of creatures who don't function off oxygen, for instance, or who are largely non-hydrogen-based or non-carbon-based. Granted, in the case of creatures not mainly based off those elements they are all--AFAIK--microbes, but that does not have to hold true for other planets.

You have to understand there is very reason to go to extrasolar planets. At all.

Actually getting to another world means we have already developed the means to harvest space and then process materials for all our requirements. Furthermore the trouble of getting to and from space will not be going anywhere. It will always be cheaper to fly in space then it will be to go in and out of planetary gravity wells.

Put these together and there's really no major demand we go to any other planets. However allowing for some degree of expansionism, well there's still no reason to bother with places we can't inhabit with minimal difficult already.

And really any means that lets us explore the universe is going to let us pick the cream of the crop.

For every fully biosphere like a modern Earth there should be easier ones where life is say just some ocean sludge first starting to crawl onto land. Leaving the Venusii of the universe to isolated research missions like we practice in Antarctica today.

[Water_Bear]

The problem with the thread, well the main one anyway, is that it assumes a planet with native life is going to be settled for industrial purposes in the first place.

If we* find a planet with indigenous life, there is literally nothing we could possibly get from that planet which is more valuable than the research data gained by studying that alien life.

A "colony" in this case would be a self-contained research lab, probably mostly robotic drones, and we would make sure to send them with any amount of transportation or industrial machinery they needed**. Cost or efficiency wouldn't be a factor; whatever we learned there would be more important than the entire sum-total of human achievement up to that point.

Also, messing with the local ecosystems there would be a big no-no. Domesticating a species has a huge effect on the landscape; domesticated animals breed in larger numbers and have different behaviors than wild animals. Even as a life-or-death issue, it would be better to scrap the mission, and send a second team later than to contaminate the research.


*Humanity, not the Giant Forums. Though that would be boss.
**Personally, the idea that we'll have interstellar flight before we crack protein folding and have the ability to manufacture pretty much anything with custom organisms of our own seems unlikely.

[Ravens_cry]

I think this could potentially be justified. After all, keeping complex machines maintained and running require pretty extensive infrastructure compared to 'oat burners', so having a creature that could live off native flora and fauna do work could be preferable for a just starting out colony.

[Forum Explorer]

The problem with the thread, well the main one anyway, is that it assumes a planet with native life is going to be settled for industrial purposes in the first place.

If we* find a planet with indigenous life, there is literally nothing we could possibly get from that planet which is more valuable than the research data gained by studying that alien life.

A "colony" in this case would be a self-contained research lab, probably mostly robotic drones, and we would make sure to send them with any amount of transportation or industrial machinery they needed**. Cost or efficiency wouldn't be a factor; whatever we learned there would be more important than the entire sum-total of human achievement up to that point.

Also, messing with the local ecosystems there would be a big no-no. Domesticating a species has a huge effect on the landscape; domesticated animals breed in larger numbers and have different behaviors than wild animals. Even as a life-or-death issue, it would be better to scrap the mission, and send a second team later than to contaminate the research.


*Humanity, not the Giant Forums. Though that would be boss.
**Personally, the idea that we'll have interstellar flight before we crack protein folding and have the ability to manufacture pretty much anything with custom organisms of our own seems unlikely.

I think if we're heading to a new planet we would be colonizing it. And we might not be choosing the cream of the crop if we can find a planet. We'd likely use a planet even if it was barely survivable.

Again just because we can reach another solar system doesn't mean we are using FTL or even if we are that FTL is easy to do.

[Water_Bear]

I think if we're heading to a new planet we would be colonizing it. And we might not be choosing the cream of the crop if we can find a planet. We'd likely use a planet even if it was barely survivable.

...did you just not read a single word I wrote?


Again just because we can reach another solar system doesn't mean we are using FTL or even if we are that FTL is easy to do.

I never mentioned FTL, for good reason. As far as we know, there is no way to break the Light-Speed Barrier; it is a physical impossibility. There might be ways to get around it (i.e. Wormholes), but it seems unlikely.

But yeah, you're absolutely right that getting to an extra-solar planet would be a huge pain in the ass. It would probably take centuries and the humans might have to be grown on-site from embryos rather than transported.

[Forum Explorer]

...did you just not read a single word I wrote?



I never mentioned FTL, for good reason. As far as we know, there is no way to break the Light-Speed Barrier; it is a physical impossibility. There might be ways to get around it (i.e. Wormholes), but it seems unlikely.

But yeah, you're absolutely right that getting to an extra-solar planet would be a huge pain in the ass. It would probably take centuries and the humans might have to be grown on-site from embryos rather than transported.

Sure! But you didn't address colonization. From how your post sounded it seemed like you felt that we wouldn't colonize planets at all and only effect native life through research. Unless by industrial you included colonization in that definition (which I personally don't).

Now if we were to colonize a planet humans wouldn't feel restrained by what's necessarily harmful to the ecosystem. We might be better then we are today. (And we've improved dramatically compared to the past) but humanity will always always place it's own interests and survival above the environment.

On that note I will point out that we have domesticated animals just to see what effects domestication will have on that animal.

[Water_Bear]

Sure! But you didn't address colonization. From how your post sounded it seemed like you felt that we wouldn't colonize planets at all and only effect native life through research. Unless by industrial you included colonization in that definition (which I personally don't).

Yeah, what I meant was more that the research value of alien life is so astronomically high that research would be the primary purpose of any colony on such a world.

It's not like Star Trek where every random planet has a bunch of greenery growing; it's very likely that life is vanishingly rare in the universe, and that we might never stumble onto any alien life in the first place.


Now if we were to colonize a planet humans wouldn't feel restrained by what's necessarily harmful to the ecosystem. We might be better then we are today. (And we've improved dramatically compared to the past) but humanity will always always place it's own interests and survival above the environment.

People wouldn't preserve the local wildlife because of some enivromentalist ideology, but because their research would be the sole possible productive output of the colony.

You can't ship goods or raw materials between solar systems efficiently, and even electronic communication or probes would be preposterously expensive. So the only way the colony would be economically viable is if they can get data which is impossible to find anywhere else and is unimaginably valuable.

Without the information from the local wildlife, there is no reason for the colony to exist. The backers of the expedition would understand this and make sure that measures were in place to keep contamination from occurring, even if it meant killing the human crew in an emergency.


On that note I will point out that we have domesticated animals just to see what effects domestication will have on that animal.

True and a very good point.

[Forum Explorer]

Yeah, what I meant was more that the research value of alien life is so astronomically high that research would be the primary purpose of any colony on such a world.

It's not like Star Trek where every random planet has a bunch of greenery growing; it's very likely that life is vanishingly rare in the universe, and that we might never stumble onto any alien life in the first place.



People wouldn't preserve the local wildlife because of some enivromentalist ideology, but because their research would be the sole possible productive output of the colony.

You can't ship goods or raw materials between solar systems efficiently, and even electronic communication or probes would be preposterously expensive. So the only way the colony would be economically viable is if they can get data which is impossible to find anywhere else and is unimaginably valuable.

Without the information from the local wildlife, there is no reason for the colony to exist. The backers of the expedition would understand this and make sure that measures were in place to keep contamination from occurring, even if it meant killing the human crew in an emergency.




Okay. Well it's definatly a very real and realistic possibility on what would happen.

If the colony was formed just due to lack of space on Earth or too many restrictions living in space or on Earth would have then they would have a different attitude towards the environment around them.

[Melayl]

Looking at it might be helpful... except photosynthesis doesn't produce electricity. There pretty divergent processes. And well here's the problem, being able to learn something from study and then replicate it with technology is still using technology. You'd need specimens not domestication.
Actually, photosynthesis does produce electricity. It allows the transfer of electrons for ATP synthesis. Movement of electrons is, by definition, electricity. Scientists are looking at photosynthesis as a way to improve current solar electricity generation.


Materials don't work like that. Materials don't work like what? Please clarify this.


Why do people think animals are cheap? My point in that statement was that nature has evolved ways for animals to do things easily and with little energy investment -- like breaking down certain molecules during digestion via enzymes -- that modern science still has to spend huge amounts of money and energy to do. When comparing the cost of keeping an animal alive and healthy to do that particular job with the cost of research, materials, energy, and time needed to do the same thing with technology, an animal comes out pretty cheap.


Machines are cheap that's why they use them to grow, harvest, transport and then process food. No, we use them to grow, harvest, transport and process food because they are more reliable and powerful and can do more physical work in a broader range of conditions more quickly than an animal can. You've never priced a new tractor, have you? Roughly $100,000 US. A new combine would be anywhere from $350,000 to $500,000 US. That's just the up-front cost. You also need to figure in the cost of fuel, attachments, and maintainance. They are most certainly not cheap.

I've never priced industrial machines for a factory, but I'm betting they aren't anywhere close to cheap, either, both for up-front and maintainance costs. They're just more convenient than animals (or humans) to do certain things.

[The Succubus]

*smacks every single person in here on the back of the head*

Every single one of you missed a crucial piece of sci-fi here: Dune.

Those sandworms running around beneath the surface of the desert aren't just of critical importance to the planet -the whole of human civilisation depends on them and the Spice they produce. No spice, no longevity, no Bene Gesseret witches, no Mentants and critically, no space travel.

And before people get too enthused about great and powerful technology, it's worth remembering that Paul and the Fremen rode a few of these things and they tore appart legions of Sardukar, the best equipped and powerful military force in the Empire.

So don't underestimate the value of taming planetary beasties. :smallsmile:

[Karoht]

You've never priced a new tractor, have you? Roughly $100,000 US. A new combine would be anywhere from $350,000 to $500,000 US. That's just the up-front cost. You also need to figure in the cost of fuel, attachments, and maintainance. They are most certainly not cheap.A tractor will do the work much faster than the horse, to the point where such and investment will actually pay off in a reasonable amount of time.

A horse that I spend less than 5 grand to purchase and then use it to plow my fields? You're looking at probably 3 seasons + a load of backbreaking work of my own before the investment see's a dividend.



I've never priced industrial machines for a factory, but I'm betting they aren't anywhere close to cheap, either, both for up-front and maintainance costs. They're just more convenient than animals (or humans) to do certain things.Price out a labor force VS machines. Labor force is low up front, and depending on the level of automative capability, the machines might be prohibitively expensive or reasonably priced. On the other hand, the efficiency just doesn't compair. Much like the horse VS tractor analysis. The machines win by virtue of the fact that they can typically be in full production mode 24/7 so long as the maintainence supports it. A horse or a human needs rest breaks, their productivity is not typically consistant between other members of the species (Joe is lazy and works slower, Bob is industrious and efficient and works faster). Machines can be scaled up or retooled to make a new product overnight (prohibitively expensive, but it can be done), biologicals need retraining and adjustment time.

[Water_Bear]

If the colony was formed just due to lack of space on Earth or too many restrictions living in space or on Earth would have then they would have a different attitude towards the environment around them.

If there isn't enough room in the solar system, it wouldn't make sense to send groups of (at most) a few thousand people out to other solar systems, especially considering how expensive it would be. You wouldn't release the population pressure back home and you would have squandered valuable resources you would need to implement a real population solution.


Those sandworms running around beneath the surface of the desert aren't just of critical importance to the planet -the whole of human civilisation depends on them and the Spice they produce. No spice, no longevity, no Bene Gesseret witches, no Mentants and critically, no space travel.

And before people get too enthused about great and powerful technology, it's worth remembering that Paul and the Fremen rode a few of these things and they tore appart legions of Sardukar, the best equipped and powerful military force in the Empire.

So don't underestimate the value of taming planetary beasties. :smallsmile:

Dune is an awesome novel (the sequels are okay too, I guess) but there are serious issues of scale.

No matter how much Spice the Sandworms normally produced, the nomadic and fairly low-tech Fremen couldn't possibly have harvested enough to meet the needs of a massive galaxy-spanning empire, especially when it is the only way to run spaceships. On top of that, the excuses for why Sandworms couldn't be exported or Spice synthesized were pretty pathetic.

With Sandworms as beasts of war, that really can't work outside of the weird way war works in the Dune-verse. The armies used never number more than a few million, even when entire planets are at stake, and seem to be mostly infantry with little airpower or armor. The tactics are also pretty questionable; despite having complete control of planet's orbits, they hardly ever use bombing. Laser weapons, while not ideal at close range because of how they interact with Shields, would be perfect for sniping from low-orbit and taking out large targets like Sandworms when they came up from under the sand.

Plus, they weren't ever really domesticated or "tamed". Unless you count the weird Emperor Leto stuff.

[Forum Explorer]

If there isn't enough room in the solar system, it wouldn't make sense to send groups of (at most) a few thousand people out to other solar systems, especially considering how expensive it would be. You wouldn't release the population pressure back home and you would have squandered valuable resources you would need to implement a real population solution.


Why do you assume that we could only send a few thousand people at a time? If we could find a cheaper way into orbit (and we do have some actually reasonable theories on how) then it would get much cheaper to bring masses of people up. That combined with some sort of stasis technology gives a reasonable means to launch millions of humans to a planet that we had discovered as capable of supporting human life.

This is going under the assumption that terraforming will be too slow to wait for instead. Resources however aren't a problem since we can harvest the other planets for minerals. It's just the whole too many people on Earth.

Thirdly it could be a group willing to invest their life savings in order to go someplace new to create a new society free of any of the baggage on Earth. Sure it can just be a few thousand people but they would still leave Earth.

[Water_Bear]

Why do you assume that we could only send a few thousand people at a time? If we could find a cheaper way into orbit (and we do have some actually reasonable theories on how) then it would get much cheaper to bring masses of people up. That combined with some sort of stasis technology gives a reasonable means to launch millions of humans to a planet that we had discovered as capable of supporting human life.

Because a human weighs about 50kg, so even with minimal life support engines and cargo sending a million people to another solar system means accelerating somewhere in the neighborhood of a couple hundred thousand tonnes up to (and down from) relativistic speeds. Even with antimatter fuel, that's a pretty herculean task.

Why even bother making colonies at all unless there is an existential threat to humanity here, or we find something of scientific value (i.e. Aliens) out there? And even then, there's no need for millions of people to go when a colony of thousands can still have a sustainable breeding population and maintain the continuity of our civilization.

[Forum Explorer]

Because a human weighs about 50kg, so even with minimal life support engines and cargo sending a million people to another solar system means accelerating somewhere in the neighborhood of a couple hundred thousand tonnes up to (and down from) relativistic speeds. Even with antimatter fuel, that's a pretty herculean task.

Why even bother making colonies at all unless there is an existential threat to humanity here, or we find something of scientific value (i.e. Aliens) out there? And even then, there's no need for millions of people to go when a colony of thousands can still have a sustainable breeding population and maintain the continuity of our civilization.

Not necessarily. We aren't expecting these people back so you don't have to get to FTL or even anywhere close to it. As long as the stasis tech is stable it won't matter if the trip takes thousands of years or more.

The reason is to remove the excess millions of people so that the population of Earth doesn't crash while not being cruel enough to simply murder the millions of people.

[The Succubus]

#Dune is an awesome novel (the sequels are okay too, I guess) but there are serious issues of scale.

No matter how much Spice the Sandworms normally produced, the nomadic and fairly low-tech Fremen couldn't possibly have harvested enough to meet the needs of a massive galaxy-spanning empire, especially when it is the only way to run spaceships. On top of that, the excuses for why Sandworms couldn't be exported or Spice synthesized were pretty pathetic.

With Sandworms as beasts of war, that really can't work outside of the weird way war works in the Dune-verse. The armies used never number more than a few million, even when entire planets are at stake, and seem to be mostly infantry with little airpower or armor. The tactics are also pretty questionable; despite having complete control of planet's orbits, they hardly ever use bombing. Laser weapons, while not ideal at close range because of how they interact with Shields, would be perfect for sniping from low-orbit and taking out large targets like Sandworms when they came up from under the sand.

Plus, they weren't ever really domesticated or "tamed". Unless you count the weird Emperor Leto stuff.

I admit I only really know the first novel reasonably well but atomics were banned across the Empire, along with bioweapons and advanced AIs. I'd also be willing to believe that folks were not ready to risk using high powered aerial weapons on Arrakis for fear of disturpting the eco system that produces the Spice.

Also, the Fremen are a semi-indiginous people and rarely extracted much Spice for their own use. It was the arrival of House Harkonnen that brought the large scale spice harvesting methods.

Another thought crosses my mind - the Spacing Guild is a strictly neutral organisation and the huge space vessels were exclusively theirs under patent. Anyone that risked even the merest scratch on a Spacing Guild ship would be effectively stranded on their own planet with no means of ever leaving.

[pffh]

Why even bother making colonies at all unless there is an existential threat to humanity here, or we find something of scientific value (i.e. Aliens) out there? And even then, there's no need for millions of people to go when a colony of thousands can still have a sustainable breeding population and maintain the continuity of our civilization.

Because as long as we live on one planet, in one solar system, in one galaxy, in one galactic cluster and in one universe we live under the threat of extinction.