Quote Originally Posted by Wraith View Post
I don't care what future lewkowski thinks, I want to know what you think. Should we eternally avoid something like terraforming mars, just take it off the table completely, in case we destroy some non-earth flatworm fossils? I think the answer's fairly easy when there's complex life currently around someplace, but what about extremely primitive life, or just fossils?
Since I'm more about maximizing human knowledge, capabilities, and technology rather than number of humans, I would like to take a wait and see approach. For instance, in your last reply, we don't start terraforming Mars until we've combed over the place and made sure that its essentially always been a lifeless rock, and we're learned as much as possible about its history as a planet. If it has bacteria, assess the likelyhood that they'll evolve into more complex things before proceeding, and if there are already more complex things, we skip over it entirely, other than research purposes.