Abstract
The question of whether or not earthlings should colonize Mars is exacerbated by the hostile conditions space travelers will confront: radiation exposure that threatens life; diminished gravity causing loss of bone strength; an alien surface atmosphere requiring cocoon living; and isolation from ongoing Earth history. If planners of a permanent Mars colony elect to create a posthuman species to populate the Red Planet, could CRISPR gene editing speed up adaptive evolution? To prevent interplanetary sin transfer, could genetic engineering pre-program virtue and altruism into the future Martian community? This essay concludes: if a biosphere already exists on Mars, we should treat it as having intrinsic value; but if Mars is currently lifeless, then, despite interplanetary sin transfer, we should take advantage of the opportunity to seed the Red Planet with life borrowed from Earth.
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Notes
- 1.
The term, posthuman, here refers to a successor species to the current human, even if the present generation witnesses the transition from the human to the posthuman in a short span of time. This provocative term has garnered varying meanings in other discourses. In discussions surrounding transhumanism, for example, it refers to the evolution of superintelligence. In postmodern deconstructionist philosophy, this term destabilizes what we've assumed to be human. “Posthumanism is inextricably related to the studies of the differences, referring to the fields of research which developed out of the deconstruction of the ‘neutral subject’ of Western onto-epistemologies. The deconstruction enacted within the historical and philosophical frame of Postmodernism, by feminist, black, gay and lesbian, postcolonial, and chicana theorists, together with differently abled activists and other outsiders, pointed out the partiality of the construction of the Discourse…of the self-claimed objectivity of hegemonic accounts” Ferrando 2019, 24–25).
- 2.
There is some mystery attached to the Martian atmosphere. It changes seasonally. “The values logged by the SAM instrument for carbon dioxide (CO2) at Gale were 95% by volume; molecular nitrogen (N2), 2.6%; argon (Ar), 1.9%; molecular O2, 0.16%; and carbon monoxide, 0.06%. The constituents were found to mix and circulate in response to seasonal changes in the Martian air pressure. The changes in pressure occur as CO2 freezes over the Martian poles in winter, leading the pressure to fall globally.” (Carreau 2019).
- 3.
- 4.
Deconstructionist Francesca Ferrando reminds us that the concept of the human is fluid, not fixed. “…radical deconstruction of the human as a fixed notion, emphasizing instead its dynamic and constantly evolving side and celebrating the differences that inhabit the human species itself” (Ferrando 2019, 187).
- 5.
Martin Luther champions the passive reception of divine grace. “No human being can be thoroughly humbled until knowing that one's salvation is utterly beyond one's own powers, devices, endeavors, will, and works, and depends entirely on the choice, will, and work of another, namely, of God” (Luther 2016, 178).
- 6.
Astrobiologist Chris Impey distinguishes European expansionism from Mars colonization. “The historical example of manifest destiny is misleading in the context of space colonization. Countries have grown and gained resources on Earth by seizing territory and displacing or subjugating the original inhabitants. Even in the twenty-first century, the stains of this brutal history persist. Space is a new resource. The people who leave Earth won’t be taking land from anyone” (Impey 2019, 107). Still, there is a debate regarding microbial life on Mars. “NASA allegedly found strong evidence of life on Mars way back in July 1976” (Axe 2019).
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Peters, T. (2020). Evolving from Earthlings into Martians?. In: Szocik, K. (eds) Human Enhancements for Space Missions. Space and Society. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42036-9_16
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