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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 7766443" data-attributes="member: 22779">Your body dies in a handful of decades, with all that replication.  If those errors were so trivial, why do natural humans (i.e. humans without advanced medicines) die in about 40 years and even with the best of care, only live about 80 years for the most part?Because you don't have a broad enough biodiversity.  Because you cannot bring enough different species out of the gravity well of Earth, then modify them all enough to live on Mars.  So the first bacterial mutation wipes out your entire species.All you have to do to see that happening now is look at bananas.  We've already wiped out one species of bananas and it looks like our current crops will be gone within a few decades.Because you only have so few strains of bees (as well as EVERY other living thing on the planet), your massively impoverished biosphere will not survive on the long term.So, now we're positing that our putative colonists will have the ability to genetically manipulate entire species on a global scale every time a new blight shows up?  Every new disease, blight, whatever will just get magically resolved by the power of genetic manipulation?  Well, yes, those are big problems too.  But the fact that you have to manufacture arable soil for an entire planet is a HUGE issue.  We're not talking about soil here.  Mars has no biosphere at all.  Every ton of soil you need to grow food will have to be manufactured, on site, using various species that will need to be brought from Earth, as well as means to control those species and keep them in balance, in the wild, without constant intervention from people.Because if you don't do that, you're stuck living in domes forever.</blockquote>

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