The activities of one Elon Musk, not to mention NASA, continue to put Mars in focus as a potential human habitat. It's an idea with a long history, much explored by SF writers, Hollywood, and less speculatively by more august bodies such as the British Interplanetary Society and NASA.
But much of this thinking has focused on the challenge of simply getting a human being to the planet, and keeping them alive long enough for them to be able to come back. The emphasis is firmly on the traditional concerns of space technology - energy systems, propulsion systems, life support systems, communications systems. I get the strong impression that no one is in any doubt these are now solvable problems.
What is much less talked about are the issues with the most complex system of all - human biology.
It isn't that we know nothing about the problem. The biological, and psychological, effects of space travel have been investigated for as long as man has been able to travel in space. There is a large body of work on the topic. It seems that all studies of humans in space tend to reach a similar conclusion. Things tend to change for the worse.
They don't go wrong dramatically. They don't go wrong very quickly. They can be mitigated to a degree, and humans are very adaptable in meeting environmental challenges. But they go wrong inexorably.
Unfortunately, the things that go wrong are not inconsequential for explorers who must deal with dauntingly complex engineering, physically challenging environments, and a lack of medical facilities. There are mental ( cognitive ) changes as well as physical changes. Just by means of example, there are changes to blood cell creation which tend to make astronauts anaemic. There are changes to lenses in the eye. There are changes to gut bacteria too, which play an important role in both our physical and mental health.
Up until now, the selection process for spacefarers has been rigorous. We send into space only the fittest and smartest of people, both because being fit and smart might help them to do their job, and because there is ample competition. And we train them very thoroughly. Although I'm not sure the effect is deliberate, this policy also provides a certain degree of mental and physical excess capacity, thereby reducing the impact of slow moving deterioration.
Over the course of the last 30 or so years, our knowledge of, and ability to manipulate, genetic material has grown tremendously. Already the concept and practice of 'genetic medicine', in which treatments can be crafted to match particular genetic traits, is a practical reality for small numbers of people.
The human genome, and it's attendant regulatory mechanisms, is certainly still a complex area of study, not least because of the ethical concerns and attendant constraints on experimentation. However, we have reached a threshold where it is now possible to imagine with some degree of confidence that we will be able to make targeted alterations to genes and gene systems which do more than simply fix a damaging point mutation.
We're not quite there yet - even advances like CRISPR-CAS9 are not sufficiently precise and controllable to be a complete answer for modifying human DNA. An array of tools will probably be needed. We will also need tools to manipulate the epigenetic aspects of the problem. And we need more than just tools - we need an understanding of how best to use them. That means protein design and the dynamics of metabolic pathways. But the leaps and bounds in knowledge, and advancements in techniques for applying that knowledge, that have happened just since the turn of the century make it clear that soon these things will be within our reach.
Of course, as has historically been the case in other domains, the rate of advancement of our knowledge and technologies has outstripped our ethical development. I offer 'social media' as a case in point. As a society we are only now, over a decade after social media became a thing, beginning to ask pointed questions and explore the ethical ramifications. It's by no means certain that social media will survive this examination in it's current form.
But to return to the plot, the point is that should we so wish ( and possibly even if we don't ) we will shortly have the capability to seriously consider designing humans who are less susceptible to the various space related problems suffered by Homo Sapiens Mk1. So the question changes. The question is no longer can we make Homo Sapiens Mk2, but should we ?
Eugenics is a concept from the late C19/early C20, and envisages controlling the genetic makeup of humans via restrictions or requirements imposed on breeding. In fact, describing eugenics in terms of genetic effects is not how eugenics was conceived - the emphasis was very much on promoting 'desirable' phenotypes, genetics just came along for the ride. Of course, the practice of eugenics requires that there be a class of people who decide what breeding other people should do. This has generally been regarded as a difficult position to justify morally, and a practically impossible system to enforce without creating a plethora of moral issues.
That didn't actually stop people - the US was very active in defining and implementing 'eugenic' concepts in the early C20, though it was often a cover for racism and other things that today we would consider discrimination. Robert Heinlein leans on this history in his novel Time Enough for Love, where he imagines breeding for longevity.
The culmination, not to say denouement, of eugenics in C20 was of course the Nazi regime, which decided that the best way to advance the master race was to just kill people you didn't approve of in horrible ways. This did not advance the cause of eugenics.
Therefore, a key challenge for Homo Sapiens Mk2 is to avoid the eugenics 'trap'. Eugenics was born before we even understood the nature of genetic material, let alone how to make narrowly targetted changes. But there has been a tendency to regard any form of genetic manipulation of humans as tantamount to eugenics. Human genetic engineering has even been referred to as 'modern eugenics', with all the negative baggage that implies. There's a great discussion article about this here.
However, it's indisputable that one of the key elements of eugenics is still there in the case of Homo Sapiens Mk2 - someone, or some class of people, decides on changes that will affect others. A majority of people appear to feel comfortable with leaving things to 'chance' in the normal breeding process, even knowing that this will sometimes produce bad results. Doing otherwise means taking significant responsibility. Humans do not have a strong appetite for responsibility.
But there's also something missing from this picture. Traditional eugenics involved making essentially moral judgements to determine which phenotypes should and should not be promoted. One can certainly understand that modern human genetic engineering techniques could also be used to this end.
However, the picture is much more complicated in the case of Homo Sapiens Mk2. In this case, two things are required from a phenotypic perspective. Firstly, there is the preservation of existing phenotypic characteristics, and secondly there is the introduction of new phenotypic characteristics. More importantly still, the stimulus for doing this is to enhance the likelihood that the individual will remain healthy, and so the decisions about desirable changes emerge from medical science as opposed to moral philosophy.
We will create Homo Sapiens Mk2 on Earth, because that's where the necessary skills and technology are, at least initially. But the changes we will make to them are intended to help them thrive elsewhere. This raises a host of issues.
The essence of the problem is a question. If we create Homo Sapiens Mk2 with characteristics that adapt them for some sort of low-gee, hi rad environment, do we necessarily create them in a form that is ill adapted to Earth ?
If the answer to this is 'no, they will survive on Earth just fine' then we're good. But if the answer is 'yes, they will suffer unless or until they are located in a low gee, hi rad environment', then we have a moral dilemma.
If the process of creation involves altering adults capable of informed consent, then the dilemma is diminished - the delay between treatment and transfer to their new 'native' environment can be made small, and these adults would understand the reason for any temporary diminution in capabilities.
However, if the process of creation involves making germline changes to adults who must then breed in order to give rise to adapted children, then we may have a serious problem.
No child has ever consented to be conceived, or subsequently to be born. And we normally deem children to be incapable of informed consent before their early teens. So lack of consent from the child is not the key moral peril here - children are created all the time whether they like it or not.
One moral peril stems from the fact that these children may suffer some impairment until such time as they are in their intended environment. This might take a long time if they grow up with their parents on Earth, and are educated and trained on Earth, although this may be mitigated if they leave Earth with their parents as infants.
In this case one may also ask 'why not mandate that they should be born in their intended environment ?'. It would be a relatively minor problem to make germline changes on Earth, but to make babies on Mars. The moral peril here however is whether we could be sufficiently certain that prenatal development would occur without complication. Of course, if we ultimately intend that Mars be colonised, this is a necessary experiment, no matter whether the children are Home Sapiens Mk2 or not.
Another complication relates to the quality of care and education available to children in their birth environment, and whether this can be - or should be - made similar to that which they would receive on Earth. It's worth noting that throughout history ( and even today ) children have adapted to, and subsequently thrived in, a huge variety of more or less stressful situations - there is no 'one right way' or 'one right place' to raise children. Since in this case much thought and effort would surely be expended to address this problem, it does not appear to represent an insurmountable moral concern.
Another peril, in the case where the child is brought up initially on Earth, is that they may not wish to leave despite the assumed impairment. This is not easy to mitigate post-facto, but mitigations for the previous case would also apply here ( i.e. avoid the problem entirely ).
One phrase that has often been bandied around in the context of genetic manipulation is 'playing God'. This can only carry any real weight for a theist, since otherwise it's a bit like saying 'playing fairies'.
But it's certain that a significant number of people seem to take a view on what activities are 'fair game' for mere humans, and which cross some sort of line into an ethical space reserved for the unknowable.
I'm restricted here to discussing religion from the outside, since I have no religious beliefs.
< TBD >
© Mark de Roussier 2021, all rights reserved.