[phizy]

A decade out of date? It'll take you 30,000 years to reach the nearest star at the rate of the fastest moving object ever constructed by man. If anything any of us are talking about are able to be out-of-date in a mere decade, the whole premise of this discussion is flawed beyond measure.

All of the resiliency that you've seen in life is due to the fact that the environments to which we're adapted are uniform. Oceans everywhere are nontoxic and water. Air everywhere is mostly clean and breathable. There is no example of life being resilient under conditions as varied as other planets. We are only able to adapt within the confines of our clean-room Earth. We can't even adapt to the bottom of the ocean or Antarctica.

Optimism isn't going to overcome 6 orders of magnitude of error.

[JoeAltmaier]

Not a single correct thing in that, I believe! Life on Earth has evolved to live in hundreds of dissimilar environments. Heavy salt is toxic, yet fish manage the ocean. Yellowstone has life in mud pots at hundreds of degrees. Air doesn't exist underground yet bacteria thrive there. Hell, there are living things on the surface of the space station.

To get people to tolerate more salt, we'd have to have a fish's ability to regulate it. Ok, genes for that. Air issues? Filters, microstructures to migrate particulates out, baffles (like many creates already have). Deep-ocean pressure? Only a couple of issues there, and certainly life thrives at the bottom of the ocean.

It's not optimism; its simple observation of what we have already on Earth in existing life forms.

And 30,000 years changes not a thing. The log of 1 Trillion base 2 is 39. In 40 generations of space colonization, that's 40 times 30,000 times however long it takes to rebuild the capability on each colony. In a dozen million years the galaxy would be covered. Its 20B years old. So, nobody's tried it yet.

[phizy]

>In 40 generations of space colonization, that's 40 times 30,000 times however long it takes to rebuild the capability on each colony.

Assuming each generation survives. Stop making that assumption, and see how many ways there are for you to reach a similarly empty universe.

>It's not optimism; its simple observation of what we have already on Earth in existing life forms.

I wish you'd observe that none of Earth's lifeforms have colonies on other planets. Goldfish didn't colonize other worlds, is that then a strong argument that Goldfish don't exist?

What you're saying makes no sense: just because animals can colonize a single planet over many generations does not mean they will be able to colonize an entire galaxy in even less time.

[m4rtink]

>I wish you'd observe that none of Earth's lifeforms have colonies on other planets. Goldfish didn't colonize other worlds, is that then a strong argument that Goldfish don't exist?

I would not be so sure about dolphins. ;-)

[JoeAltmaier]

Again, not true. Geometric growth can't be dismissed. Even if 90% didn't survive, it just takes (a little) longer.

[phizy]

How the hell is a 10% survival rate "not optimism?" Try a trillionth of a percent. It makes an astronomical time difference.