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Do we have a moral duty to colonize other planets and other solar systems?

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION: THE EMBRYOGENESIS OF HUMANITY xi
1 THE FIRST GENETIC ASTRONAUTS 1
2 THE DUTY TO ENGINEER 15
3 PHASE 1: THE LANDSCAPE OF FUNCTIONAL GENOMICS
(2010–2020) 27
4 PHASE 2: PRELIMINARY ENGINEERING OF GENOMES
(2021–2040) 47
5 PHASE 3: LONG-TERM TRIALS OF HUMAN AND CELLULAR
ENGINEERING (2041–2100) 97
6 PHASE 4: PREPARING HUMANS FOR SPACE (2101–2150) 115
7 PHASE 5: SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY FOR NEW HOMES
(2151–2200) 133
8 PHASE 6: EXPANDING THE LIMITS OF LIFE (2201–2250) 155
9 PHASE 7: TEST A GENERATION SHIP AND SETTLE HARSH
WORLDS (2251–2350) 169
10 PHASE 8: SETTLE NEW EARTHS (2351–2400) 191
11 PHASE 9: LAUNCH TOWARD THE SECOND SUN (2401–2500) 213
12 PHASE 10: OPTIMISTIC UNKNOWNS (BEYOND 2500) 247
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 255
REFERENCES 259
INDEX 267

About the Author

Christopher E. Mason is a geneticist and computational biologist who has been a Principal Investigator and Co-investigator of seven NASA missions and projects. He is Professor at Weill Cornell Medicine, with affiliate appointments at the Meyer Cancer Center, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, the Information Society Project (ISP) at Yale Law School, and the Consortium for Space Genetics at Harvard Medical School.

Reviews

“Readers looking for science writing that sees bold possibilities in the future will be enthralled.”
– Publishers Weekly

“[This] book arrives at a fascinating moment in the history of technology, when we may, after all, be able to avert previously unavoidable catastrophes . . . Mason’s book is a genuine, timely and engaging addition to a 1000-year-old Western tradition, grounded in religious expectations and a quest for transcendence and salvation. Visionaries from Isaac Newton to Joseph Priestley to space pioneer Konstantin Tsiolkovsky have all expounded on the tenets that underpin Mason’s account: the apocalypse is imminent, but, by increasing human knowledge, we may recover the paradise we enjoyed before the flood . . . Mason puts a new layer of flesh on what have, so far, been some ardent but very sketchy dreams.”
– New Scientist

"In his new book, The Next 500 Years, geneticist Christopher Mason argues, 'It is no longer a question of ‘if’ we can engineer life—only ‘how' and that 'Engineering is humanity’s innate duty, needed to ensure the survival of life.'"
–Science

“What sets Mason’s ideas apart . . .  is that he realizes that human bodies aren’t well suited for life away from Earth, what with the radiation, toxic gases and so on. His programme for expansion comes with a detailed blueprint for the genetic improvements we will need to make to ourselves to boost our resilience off-world. Mason is well placed to write such a plan.”
– Joshua Howgego, New Scientist

“Provocative”
–  Bloomberg News

“Mason is serious. His new book, The Next 500 Years, maps out in detail how we’ll do it.”
–BBC Science Focus