The Trip to Myrth

Bob, come here, you need to see this...

Nice. H2O....

No this...

Holy shit...

That's right, on the surface...

Liquid, most of it...

Atmosphere?

Nitrogen, methane, CO2...

Total mass, density?

Sorta like Venus...

Looks like a winner...

What should we call it?

How bout Myrth?

Works for me. How far?

3000 light years...

Looks like the one. Let's get started...

Right now?

Sure.

Didn't you hear what I said?

Right, 3000 light years. It's in range. We anticipated as much. Multi-generational voyage. We'll condition DNA along the way in the lab...modify the atmosphere gradually...

Modify the atmosphere?

On the ship. You can't start breathing methane cold turkey.

Breath methane?

For starters. Looks like we'll need some strong jaws and a more robust digestive system. We should have room for it. At three times the pressure we can skimp on lungs a bit.

Skimp on lungs?

The food will be fibrous, tree bark probably. Engineering has been working on it. Vegetation needs to be hardy with low access to soil nutrients. We have one fruit so far. It converts CO2 to Ozone...not ready for prime time.

Breath methane, eat bark? Ready for prime time?

That's right, we'll need to nudge nature a bit. We'll introduce gene therapy as the ship's atmosphere gradually adjusts to mimic Myrth's. We'll choose a moderate elevation when it's time to pick nits. Oh, and we're looking into some Koala genes. They have some mighty fine chompers for this sort of thing.

Aren't you getting a little ahead of yourself?

No time. This planet's a hot potato. If we can't find a spot with palm trees and pineapples I'm afraid we're going to have to learn how to breath methane and digest tree bark...

Can a human body run on methane?

Body? Body's secondary. We need brain fuel. Can methane work? We'll find out. After that we are stuck with the bare minimum...we'll need to find, extract, masticate tree bark, mate. You know, the basics...

Will it be human?

Oh yes, human for sure. Fully capable of learning, language, abstraction, adaptation, empathy, love, all those good things. We anticipate six legs and a rigid exoskeleton with multiple antennae - needs feelers. We hope no more than twelve eyes will be necessary given the hazy conditions and possible predators.

Predators?

Possible. We have no way of knowing. We'll direct a comet into Myrth a few hundred-thousand years before habitation to ensure the really mean ones are killed off.

Killed off?

You know, like the dinosaurs. No choice unless you want to be some Triceratop's breakfast. We're shooting for top of the food chain, here. If we can't make it, well, we'll get as high as we can, ya know.

Top of the food chain. Good. Can't we add spines or something?

Nope. Very limited resources. We'll spare no expense for neuron space. Big brain = top of food chain. All extra tissue spent on those dozen eyes.

What about the ship? We're talking about a prison for, what, 6000 years?

Peanuts.

Easy for you to say, Mr. lab rat. You volunteer.

This one's carried us longer than that. I'm already on the list.