Let me start off by saying that this can very easily be discussed without the slightest mention of religion. This is meant to be an intelligent discussion, and religion has no place here. Discussing religion can and will get this topic locked, so don't do it.

Now then:

Currently, the goal of most space agencies around the world is to colonize Mars. The surface of Mars, as far as we can tell, is an arid wasteland devoid of life, ripe for colonization by Humans. There may be water underground, but right now we think it's safe to assume that there's no life there.

In the solar system, there are a few moons that are considered prime candidates for life. There are the moons that are believed to have sub-surface oceans; Ganymede, Callisto, Europa, and Enceladus, and then there's Titan, the only moon in the solar system with a thick atmosphere.

Now, according to NASA, the next best place to colonize after Mars would be Callisto. But before that, we will likely send a probe there to explore it's theorized ocean like we want to do with Europa. My question for you all is, if we find life there, should humans colonize it, or should we be forbidden from doing so? Lets face facts, if we don't destroy ourselves, eventually humans will develop the means to travel between worlds in a small amount of time. If we find life anywhere in the solar system, do you think humans should make that moon or planet a protected zone where nobody can land, or should we disregard the alien life and colonize it? Mars wont be able to satisfy us forever, after all.

Locked because of cookies!

Wait a minute, these are the Bethesda forums... Reopened.

Anyways, I think it really depends on what you call life. I mean, sure, microbes are life, but what about self replicating molecules?

I'm looking forward to the day when reality will become something like a game of Mass Effect.

I'm quite certain that we export our destructive ways into space as well. If the said life doesn't have big boomsticks or appear to be giant bugs who can cut thru space marines in seconds, I don't think anything's going to stop us from grabbing the resources of the said life forms, bacterial or no.

Also, Terran Union.

+1

Nice choice of words.

Anyway, if we do find any form of life on a planet or a moon we planned to colonise, we shouldn't mess with it (i.e. we shouldn't colonise that planet/moon, IMHO). It may be a bit primedirectivish, but I think every life should get a chance to develop on its own without us screwing up its chances to become intelligent/sapient/sentient/whatever one day. Or the least we could do is try to colonise the place in such a manner that we disturb the native life-forms as little as possible.

Of course if somehow for whatever reason the situation is royally screwed up and the survival of our species depends on immediately colonising a planet or a moon that does contain native life forms, I'd say [censored] it but we should still see to it that the native life remains as undisturbed as possible.

If it is intelligent life then we shouldn't mess with it. If it isn't, we should do our best to avoid messing with it but make no promises that we won't PURGE THE UNCLEAN.

This, although I believe we should examine said life from afar and learn what we can without interfering.

Definitely a question of ethics. Now, I don't want to get political in any way but I think we'd probably love to lord over some alien scum on some moon. Therefore, it's probably best that we don't colonize their happy moon with the likely intent to take it from them permanently.

Intelligent life? No.

Otherwise... it is debatable on just how sustainable it is. If we remain at our current ineptness at being able to care for a planet. I would say no, but that would probably fall on deaf ears. lol.

Be cool to encounter a sentient, intelligent species declaring themselves the faithful of varying alien religions though, eh? Be a bag of awesome if one of theirs was identical to the last letter of doctrine to one of ours. How psyched would they be!? Human and alien alike coming together to form a super religion, they'd call it 'the right one' with the majority vote of cross-species worship.

Then we'd make war on them and leech the resources of their homeworld. Awesome.

It never stopped us from colonizing new lands and islands where there was obviously life, or crossing oceans and deserts to set up shop where there were already other humans first. I don't think moving in alongside other life in space is inherently any more wrong than the many times we've done it on Earth. It should be done with care and respect, but unfortunately that didn't happen much in the past and probably won't in the future. Oh well.

Meh, we will probably kill them with diseases from earth and we would probably die from their diseases.

Me gotz meeeeez a greatz wayz to dooz thatz. Weeeee shood nook teh planit 2 maik surz teh aleinz dont spreadz teir dizezez.

That sounds like the modern thought process.

That would really depend on how close we are physiologically.

colonization would only happen after a lot of study anyway.

Somewhere out there, there is a world full of intelligent life, lonely, looking up at the sky, wondering, and waiting for contact....

Been watching Avatar, Antibody? Humanity should learn a lesson from that movie. Don't mess with aliens.

i'd say minimal contact, but we should make ourselves known to them, and prehaps accelerate their evolution, but mainly to stop them making the smae mistakes we have.

But i believe as long as life on the planets is no smarter then the average animal here human's wouldnt have a second thought of colinising it.

I would be afraid of any planet that had even microbial life on it. There is no telling how my body will react to these alien lifeforms and I would have absolutely no specific defenses against them. Cohabitation of a planet wouldn't work even with microbes without extensive testing to guarantee our safety.

we can't even manage to police ourselves on a single planet, colonization of other worlds would only lead to more bickering

The only thing humanity should learn from that film is that http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dIOw2sffHI&fmt=18.

Just take all the aliens and experiment on them, maybe we'll find the cure for cancer? If these aliens aren't civilised (e.g. Have a leader, a rule system, live indoors) then they are less than human and should be treated like animals. We already experiment with animals, why not aliens? They'd also make great tourist attractions for the massive "Teehee's Resort and Casino" I'm planning to build there.

war never changes~

there's a terribly fascinating thread on something awful wherein a physics/space sciences major answers all sorts of questions about space development/colonization and i'd totally love to link it here because it's really quite interesting if you're into this sort of thing but something awful has kind of a bad rep and i don't know if there's rules against it or even if something awful will be filtered out of my post! truly, this is something awful.

i'll totally link it if i can. pretty much he explains why planetary colonization/terraformation is inefficient and it's a better idea to build stuff like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernal_sphere and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_Three, which are both a thousand times cooler than dome-cities on the moon.

i think we should let sleeping microbes lie, though, personally.



i honestly can't tell if you're trolling, but i really hope you are because this is a pretty terrible opinion.

I'd hate to live in one of those, they look very uncomfortable/