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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dannyalcatraz" data-source="post: 6115210" data-attributes="member: 19675">Lots, actually.  You get a controlled environment in which to study plants over generations, for one, including hybridizing different strains.  This gives you the foundations for understanding their genomes, etc.In the case before us, a working terrestrial Martian greenhouse- a redhouse, if you will- could be the basis for that bioplastics factory mentioned above.But lets say all we find out is that wecannot sustain Martian life on Earth, even in an artificial environment, with the tech level of the day.  Then we have still learned something: it expands the depth of knowledge we would have on the difficulty of biological exploration of other worlds- terraforming and colonization, in other words.Even if, for whatever reasons, we could not have a sustainable Martian Bioplastics Industry on Earth or in orbit, you still have the potential for the basis of trade.  They have the bioplastics, we have __________.What that is, we don't know, and can't know until there is communication.  Perhaps they are affected by chemicals in cinnamon and rattlesnake venom like it was LSD, and they're secretly a planet of would-be stoners.  Or perhaps the color purple is extremely rare and hard for them to produce.Perhaps they really want to learn to surf the big waves.It doesn't matter, by sheer force of separate biospheres, there will be things- natural and created- they have that we don't and vice versa, which is the basis for any trade scenario.</blockquote>

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