Stellaris: People of the Stars

by Robert E. Hampson

  There will be misfits. There will be malcontents. And we will not always be able to find a place for them. They cannot leave for different environs and different company; they cannot be failed out of basic training or graduate school; they cannot be incarcerated or otherwise sequestered. The handwavium of deep freeze may yet come to fruition, obviating this concern for the time. But our ships and colonies will have to deal with this. There is no banishment in the harshness of vacuum or the alien wilds of a distant planet. There will be people for whom there is no rehabilitation; worse, some may not be truly criminal, but simply incapable of meeting the standard of functioning as early explorers.

  COLONIZATION

  Colonists’ transition from shipboard to alien planets will mark one of the biggest moments in human history, but also will be one of our most vulnerable. The ship, while associated with its own challenges, is a highly controlled environment. A new planet hosts novel challenges: new environmental variables, from gravity to climate to light spectra and diurnal periods, all in addition to the known risks of any major infrastructural undertaking or frontier-breaking. No matter how much automation, or how sophisticated defensive measures become, there will always be an element of human risk if humans are present.

  Chronobiology

  We take days, nights and the passage of seasons for granted. Far from being incidental, our biology is indelibly linked to the passage of time, with cycles upon cycles dependent on environmental factors.

  Though easily taken for granted, adaptations to twenty-four-hour days are intimately connected to immune and endocrine functioning. Some of us are night owls, others early risers, but all of us function best on a twenty-four-hour sleep-wake cycle, polyphasic experimenters notwithstanding. Studies have proven that even in total isolation from external influence (such as clocks or sunlight) our bodies approximate a twenty-five-hour rhythm of sleeping and waking, with the extra hour thought to provide a physiologic buffer. Most are familiar with melatonin, a sleep-regulating hormone. Many are also aware that blue LEDs especially, but all lights generally, can disrupt restful sleep, partly owing to interference with hormonal determinants of sleeping and waking.

  The length of a single sleep “cycle” from shallow to deep to REM is approximately ninety minutes. And as it turns out, each of these cycles is important for growth and recovery. Deep sleep is where most of the “rebuilding” comes in. This is when our stress hormones are at their lowest, and our immune, bone, and muscle cells undergo the most recovery as growth hormone gets released in pulses. During the mid-range of sleep (including REM sleep) neurologic structures consolidate the day’s changes and refresh themselves, which is vital for optimal cognitive and emotional functioning.

  Ideally, we get five full cycles of sleep a night, some more, some fewer. What would happen on a planet with a shorter average day where we operated on fewer consecutive cycles of recovery before the stresses of the next day? How about a planet with a longer average day? This question remains unanswered, but effects on immune function, stress response, longevity, and cognitive functioning could be expected.

  While day-night cycles would occur on any planet, seasons as we know them may differ considerably with respect to variation in climate and starshine, from minimal on planets with low eccentricity and minimal deviation of rotational axis from the ecliptic, to far more drastic on other planets. Latitude of the colony would also play a role.

  Though incompletely understood, there are known impacts on seasonality and health. Certain pathogens like the influenza virus have a clearly seasonal pattern. The risk of certain disorders, including such disparate illnesses as schizophrenia and autoimmune diseases, are associated with being born in wintertime, even in our climate-controlled and artificially illuminated world.

  Environmental Considerations

  From air composition to the makeup of soil beneath our feet, alien worlds present the possibility of environmental toxicity. As previously discussed, these include gaseous compounds, such as carbon monoxide or methane. Even oxygen can be toxic if it is too highly concentrated. Beyond hermetic habitats and environmental suits, genetic engineering may prove useful here too, as many other animal species are equipped to tolerate broader ranges of atmospheric conditions.

  Here again, trace metals may be problematic, either through excess or absence depending on biological significance and concentration. (Selenium, for example is essential yet toxic at high amounts.)

  Xenobiology

  Complex life—or even simple life—has yet to be conclusively identified out amongst the stars, but it remains plausible, regardless of likelihood, that any world worth colonizing might have life of its own with which to contend.

  Some xenobiological precautions are obvious. For example, avoid being eaten by local fauna or getting injected with venom via stinger, tooth, or claw. Then there are seemingly innocuous things like touch, which anyone who has endured a jellyfish sting or the itch of poison ivy can attest. Similar experiences on an alien planet could range from uncomfortable to lethal. And some plants are best left uneaten.

  We will likely need a multipronged approach to manage exposures to biologically derived poisons, venoms, and toxic compounds. Appropriate quarantine procedures would be needed in the early stages of colonization, but as colonies mature and integrate with their new environment, the blending and eventual loss of boundaries is inevitable, and perhaps hoped for.

  Preventing overwhelming, potentially fatal allergic/immune responses to nontoxic substances would be important since allergic response is often based on inadequate exposure to specific potential allergens early in life (see Cathe Smith’s story “The Smallest of Things”). Inhibiting cells implicated in allergic response is a nonviable solution, as those same cells are crucial players in wound repair and defense against multicellular parasites. We can teach our immune systems to ignore benign allergens through immunotherapy, although this process currently takes months to years. A more rapid system involving direct epigenetic modification of the cells that eventually give rise to allergic response might be possible in lab settings via artificial cells specifically designed to upregulate this response, or through direct gene editing of specific immune genes on a case-by-case basis.

  Poisons and venoms, unlike allergens, cause direct physical harm through numerous processes which can include inflammation cascades or clotting pathways (both of which are seen in spider and snake bites). Many plant-derived poisons work by binding proteins responsible for biochemical functioning, rendering them inert. For toxins that work via cascade induction (e.g. rattlesnake bites), antibodies specifically targeting the individual compounds have been successful. Antidotes to enzymatic poisons, on the other hand, work by degrading the poison directly, or literally pushing it off the protein to which it is bound. These strategies are too toxin-specific for generalized application. Neither can be made prior to the existence of a known toxin.

  If the panspermia hypothesis is correct—if cellular life on other planets is similar enough to our own, or if they are simply rugged and versatile enough—potential for xenoinfection likewise exists. Viruses rely heavily on a cell’s own “machinery” to continue their infectious cycles. The likelihood of a xenovirus, even with reliance on DNA, RNA, and similar amino acids, to effectively hijack a cell that uses different genetic code is biologically improbable. Bacteria, conversely, simply digest and reproduce, regardless of environment (be it a hydrothermal vent or within brain tissue). The damage bacterial infection causes is secondary to this. Thus, xenobacteria, or whatever single-celled alien analogs may exist, if tenacious enough, pose real risks.

  What these situations share is that any technical solution must inevitably be reactive, rather than proactive, by nature. Biological mechanisms to prevent susceptibility require either hardcoded genes, or the adaptive immunity of exposure and response (the mechanism behind vaccines). So how do we react to unknown biological risks without major consequence at every turn? That first small step could be someone else
’s last, as would every individual’s after for untold thousands of steps (see Sarah Hoyt’s story “Burn the Boats”). Science offers a tantalizing, if morbid, solution in the form of chimeras. Like the mythological creature of legend composed of parts of disparate animals, the scientific, modern chimera is a cell or other organism containing DNA of two species. We use simple chimeras in several important medical therapies. Bacteria modified to contain the human insulin gene allow mass-production of medical insulin, keeping diabetics alive. Rituximab, an artificial antibody produced by mice transfected with human genes, treats certain cancers and autoimmune diseases. And, for the last thirty years, we have used human/mouse, human/pig, and human/monkey chimeras in biomedical research.

  We could test our environmental exposure risks in a more sophisticated version of the canary in the coal mine, although mice or another mammal would be a better substrate for chimerism. Ideally, such chimeras would have human immune systems, detoxification systems (livers and kidneys), and digestive intricacies and limitations in a smaller, low-maintenance, and ethically only marginally problematic package. These chimeras could be exposed to pathogens one by one, with each exposure informing a new genetic or protein modification to develop.

  The task is daunting, but the seeds of technical solutions lie within our grasp.

  Colony Growth and Mental Health

  The children of Homo stellaris will be protected as much as we are able. We will do our best to give them safety and belonging along with freedom to explore themselves and the world. But that selfsame world is more dire than the one their parents left, and in order to meet the challenges of their new worlds, become inured to them, and build their place, our children will inevitably have to face the threats.

  The stories we once told children echoed the world around us and were intended to help prepare them for the things they saw glimpses of with little understanding: from sins to struggles to tragic deaths. Nothing can change the nature of pain or of loss. The original children’s fables and fairy tales have been remarkably sanitized in their current pop culture incarnations. Historically, these stories were full of violence and greed and death. Good guys won because they were stronger or smarter. And lost when they were arrogant, were betrayed, or were simply unlucky. These things will always hurt. Yet the attitude with which we face them can make all the difference.

  Global mental health research has yielded some interesting findings: The rates of depression and anxiety are rising in the West and are considerably lower in Asia and Africa. Furthermore, as Asia and Africa modernize, their rates in turn grow. The rate of psychopathology in many ways has an inverse link to the safety and standard of living of the culture in which an individual resides. While at first counterintuitive, the argument is threefold:

  1. The modern world carries with it an expectation of safety and comfort, and the failure of this unattainable ideal causes pain.

  2. Much of our vocational time is spent avoiding negative consequences instead of attaining rewards.

  3. The typical work day in the modern world leaves behind little sense of accomplishment.

  These are all things that can and will be different for our descendants on distant planets. Their lives will in many ways be harder than ours. But we can make sure that they take pride in their work and in each other. They can grieve their losses not out of a sense of unfairness, but in recognition that life is all the more precious for it. They can marvel under old stars in new constellations. We can direct them toward a new culture, not so different from the old one, in which risk and pain are the accepted costs of creating a new future.

  NEW WAVES OF IMMIGRATION

  Colonies are likely to be founded by a few hundred individuals. Certain traits might be more common in these groups. Individuals with rare or novel mutations are likely to be over- or under-represented. And those rare mutations are more likely to take over and dominate the genetic makeup of the population during the early period of rapid expansion. This could lead to a population of colonists that is more homogenous or overrepresented in certain aspects, which may or may not be of any relevance. One could imagine a colony in which red hair predominated, or curly hair, so that they viewed those without such otherwise relatively unimportant attributes with suspicion.

  Genetic Bottlenecks

  Genetic drift occurs when a population is isolated from the rest of the species—most often by geography. The isolated population will begin to change independent of the other population. Some of these shifts will be adaptive in nature, in response to the different conditions they face. This will no doubt be augmented by our colonists’ vital need to tinker with their own biological functioning and may lead to a situation in which they contain alleles, or, in fact, whole genes that the Earth population does not have.

  Our colonists will have spent generations out of contact with the rest of humanity. For context, our first colony ships are not likely to leave within the next century, and any journey they take will last at least another century, if not many more. In the last century, change has been incalculable on many fronts. In essence, the colonists’ separation may rival the length of time between now and when Shakespeare’s first play was performed on the banks of the Thames, or even the fall of Rome.

  Imagine the first colony ship to land on a planet circling the Alpha Centauri system, setting up base camp and signaling home, after a few centuries, that they will be ready for more colonists. The next colony ship arrives the better part of two centuries later: The initial colonists and those that follow will have been separated by time, by science, and by biology. The initial colonists will likely have undertaken numerous genomic editing projects, which may not be the same solutions the new colonists prefer. Those new colonists would have experienced scientific innovations and breakthroughs on Earth and may have unrecognizably different genetic baselines or otherwise have faced the same problems with different solutions (see William Ledbetter’s story “Bridging”).

  Infection

  And then we have the fact that pathogens will have continued to evolve on Earth, and humans will continue to respond to them, often without technological or medical notice (after all, who goes to their physician for a common cold?) while alien pathogens will have done the same amongst the colonists. Two different cold wars, two different responses, and ultimately two very different looking pathogens that were indistinguishable centuries prior.

  As it stands in the current day, individuals from the same general geographic area at the same time with certain disease compromising the immune system are told never to be in the same room as each other (cystic fibrosis). Their microenvironments result in pathogen mutations that mean the same bacterial population that lives peacefully in one individual’s lungs can quickly become an insurmountable infection in another individual’s. A hospital three hundred miles away from another will note that the same diseases are susceptible to different antibiotics. These differences will be even greater across stars and centuries. And a prospective mechanism of avoidance is not clear. It is not unthinkable to imagine first contact between two groups of colonists involving the timid introduction of comingling rodents from each habitat as they pare away, death by death, at the potentially deadly infections they harbor.

  Phenotypic Change

  Phenotype, or physical characteristic, is a combination of genetics, environment, our choice in how we interact with environment, and even our parents’ interactions with the environment. Human genotype has changed in few ways in ten thousand years, while phenotype has changed and been more variable far more drastically. From average height, to the shape of the nose, to our ability to digest or tolerate various compounds, these changes can occur with astonishing rapidity.

  What changes might colonists see over just a few generations? Changes in skeletal mass or structure go almost without saying. Average human height and skeletal robustness respond quickly to food source, modes of living, and other factors even within relatively stable lineages. Pre-agricultural Homo sapiens was rem
arkably tall and muscular on average, standing five foot ten inches and approximately two hundred pounds for males, which by the early to late agricultural periods had decreased to five foot six inches and approximately one hundred forty pounds, then began increasing sharply in height but not skeletal robustness during the industrial period. Cranial volumes (and thus brain size) were larger for primitive hominids than early industrial hominids. Interestingly, there is little evidence to support that any of these major changes had much to do with genetic mutation.

  Reproduction

  True genetic incompatibility is thankfully rare amongst humans even between areas with exceedingly low gene flow. Even populations that have been isolated from others for thousands of years can generally intermingle with little consequence. However, when we begin tinkering with our own DNA the prospect of incompatibility becomes far greater. A peculiar aspect of genetics is the concept of pleiotropy: that one gene, through the different ways it can be spliced and read, can produce multiple proteins, each of which can have multiple activities on multiple cell tissues. This multiplicative effect means that if we take one population that has edited one gene, and one population that has edited another, the effects might be somewhere between difficult and impossible to predict. The results might be simple infertility, or they might be deleterious consequences to the progeny.

  INTERSTELLAR REINTEGRATION

  The goal of colonizing the stars, one would hope, is that our daughter colonies, someday far in the future, will reestablish communication, if not physical interchange of material and individuals. Each colony ship will have left the planet at a different time in history, with a small group of people for whom certain traits previously deemed unimportant will be more or less represented, and who have chosen a different set of biological and technological solutions to interstellar travel.