Likely this will be true. I would be inclined to let the professional biologists come up with a rank list of those species which are most important.

Perhaps, at the top of the list would be those species which humans need to survive (e.g. rice and beans). Next would probably be those species which are fundamental to other species (e.g. algae, a grass, a fruit tree, flowers for this or that category of animal, bees, rabbits for predators, yeast for B-12 dependent species, etc). This list wouldn’t necessarily be infinite. One type of grass can feed many types of grazers.

Then there would probably be a level of species which would be representative of whole classes (or some such level). Next might be a level of those species which are numerous in order to give the general impression that the biomes are filled. Next might come a careful choosing of animal species which might be closely enough related to others to allow some future biomedical development where one animal can gestate that of another species. At some level might be species which can conveniently be collected and stored (such as frozen bacteria as opposed to a coconut seed). And then, as time is running out before the launch, there might be a mad dash just to get swabs of DNA of even geographically close individuals of a species.

Regarding insects, especially beetles, they are just too numerous. One would have to choose examples representative of the diversity and leave the others behind. The result would be a half-way decent representation of the biosphere without necessarily having a full representation of the whole biosphere.

I would think that the real error would be not having samples of species that we don’t know about. It may be that there is some single-celled organism which produces a chemical (e.g. like a vitamin or phytochemical) which other species are dependent upon.

I personally don’t think that the natural ability to survive long periods of inactivity makes much of a difference. When a cell is frozen at liquid nitrogen temperatures, it really doesn’t matter how long they are stored (a hour or 500 years). With no thermal movement there would probably be no difference.

> have we tested our ability to bring back from frozen status, partially developed celluar beings?

I don’t know the answer to this as this is not my field. My gut feeling is that when an organism is down in it’s single cell form (all individuals have to go through this, correct?) then they can be frozen (with cryoprotectant) and revived easily enough unless their single cell form has associated packaging which would break with freezing such as a bird’s egg. The other problem are those (like humans) which can be easily frozen and revived in our single-cell stage yet need an adult mother to gestate. You may have to have females surviving sequentially in order to eventually gestate the frozen eggs. But I think that a zoo those animals closely enough related to all of the others in their genus would be practically impossible to maintain in a small colony. I hope that someone has a workable solution.

Do we yet know what those species might be? have we tested our ability to bring back from frozen status, partially developed celluar beings? If we are rebooting the biosphere do we need to consider the idea that there would no longer be anything that could be classified as an ‘introduced species’ in the way we do now as ALL of them would be introduced species.
Marcus :-)

Depends upon the definition of cheap. If that is an absolute term then yes, even a million bucks is more than I’ve got in my bank account. If it is a relative term then there’s cheaper. For example, $/kg payload to LEO is cheaper on a Chinese rocket than the Space Shuttle.

When I say “least expensive” that is a relative term in that a lunar colony would be the least expensive of the four:
— than a LEO colony because the transportation costs of water, oxygen, and regolith will be less (because they’re already there),
— than a Martian colony because teleoperated robots can develop the base prior to humans landing and because a lunar ice can provide water and hence the oxygen needed for propellant for bootstrapping, orbital, and BEO servicing,
— than an asteroid because of teleoperations and equipment being tied up with much longer transportation times.

The Spudis-Lavoie Plan is likely cheaper than Constellation. I think that there are yet cheaper architectures than that.

Which got me thinking. In lake Eyre in Australia there’s a veritable truckload of species that lay dormant for multiple decades awaiting the very rare rain fall that fills the lake. Currently it’s ‘full’ for just the third time in over a century and second time in two years — very rare event. From a species perspective, the place is going off.

So for invertebrates to add to the plant seeds and pods, we’d probably need to look at those species that can survive extreme periods of dormancy and hope that we can give them a kick off before the clock finally arises.

In fact Australia being the oldest landmass on the planet, is probably a good spot to start collections for it might be anticipated that the home species have had long periods of adjusting to decades without rain followed by short bursts of mass flooding.

Any presumption or prerequisite that is “cheap” has already failed.
There is no cheap.

Yes. Sue me too! I hope that we would be able to find a way around having to maintain a zoo of live animals so that female adults can gestate frozen embryos of their and maybe very close species. That would take too much work and payload. But a space dog and cat…I’d hope we could find room for them.

> I believe, regarding fauna, the first efforts should be toward preserving those species most vital to humans

Certainly yes, but starting to obtain samples of DNA for frozen storage isn’t something that needs to wait for years to get around to doing. I am imagining a project with many, many biologic departments signing up to obtain swab DNA samples of their local species and then mailing those samples to a central processing facility. It is something which should be done for many purposes not just a lunar biopreserve.

> It’s probably not possible to save every species, but that doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things

I would agree but from my previous comment, payload mass isn’t the limiting factor. Except for insects, there may be enough space for all species within a couple of 5,000 kg payload deliveries.

> Mars next)…surely we will have some way to gestate species artificially.

I personally think that, within reasonable budgets, we could achieve a small (e.g. 6-person) lunar colony with a biopreserve in about 15 years. If we can overcome the radiation exposure during travel problem, then I think that a similar Mars colony could be established within 10 years after that. I don’t know if we’ll be able to artificially gestate any species within 25 years. I’m guessing that that would be a bit too early.

> Otherwise, we’ll have to spend the big bucks to transport some adults of each species we mean to save.

Well, actually female babies of many species. Still, that would be an unreasonable amount of mass.

> The real question is, how will they evolve on other planets?

I don’t really care. Get them to survive first and then let any genetic variation within populations take its own path.

Bozo > the earliest versions of Moon bases will not be able to exploit in situ resources in any major way.

LCROSS showed that something like 5% of permanently shadowed regolith is ice. The Peaks of Eternal Light are near those permanently shadowed areas. If you’ve within reach of ice, why wouldn’t you distill it, drink it, break it into oxygen and breath it, and use it to irrigate plants? Why wait to do that? Why not even doing that in a precursor telerobotic phase in preparation for manned return?

> I would rather not go silently into the night thank you.

Absolutely agree. However, I think that we need to first ensure that some humans survive and continue the species. After achieving that, then we can think about transporting large numbers off-Earth so that we as individuals and our families can be safe. But first, we need at least a few to be able to survive. I believe that a small colony at a lunar pole is the least expensive, earliest achievable off-Earth place to achieve that.

Fine will, you go ahead and die then. I would rather not go silently into the night thank you.

Propagating Life beyond Earth will likely take very different forms than we now envision.

As for gestating them on other worlds (I presume you would look at Mars next), when we get around to doing this, surely we will have some way to gestate species artificially. Otherwise, we’ll have to spend the big bucks to transport some adults of each species we mean to save.

The real question is, how will they evolve on other planets?