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Notable Gene Modifications

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Re: Notable Gene Modifications
Post by Kytheros   » Tue Apr 28, 2015 11:34 pm

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HB of CJ wrote:Well, considering that it is Science Fiction Space Opera and the timeline is about 2200+- years from today and about a zillion miles that a way, it would also still seem to reason that gene mods would be a given for just about any type of habitable planet.

Good planets are hard to find. And the story line may have too many of them too close together, but that is just me. None of the aforementioned colony planets would be exactly like Earth. Therefore it seems logical that extensive gene mods are very necessary.

HB of CJ (old coot) My nephew when he played American College Football was 6"6" tall and stripped weighed about 310 pounds. Size 17 American shoes. Now he is down to around 250 pounds and looks skinny. I am 6"1" and only come up to about his shoulder. Yikes!

Terraforming is a viable technology in the Honorverse.

Also, genemods to suit the planet being colonized is part of what Detweiler(the original) was pushing - and did, in the case of Mesa.

Besides, as a general rule ... if you need extensive gene mods to live on a planet, you run the risk of diverging too far from human norms. And you're probably better off looking for somewhere with less extreme environmental conditions and/or more readily terraformable. IIRC, Nbdele and Mfecane were said to have been almost too far divergent for compatibility with normal human genetics when they were rediscovered.
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Re: Notable Gene Modifications
Post by Greentea   » Wed Apr 29, 2015 1:16 am

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Yes. I believe the Meyerdahl mods (what the Harrington family have) were considered special among the various mods for survival on heavy worlds because they didn't have any obvious phenotypic differences from normal humans and could cross-breed easily with normal humans. At first glance, someone with the Meyerdahl mods looks normal. What they have are some subtle changes to muscle efficiency, skeletal strength, and metabolism (and in the case of Meyerdahl betas, intelligence). Other heavy world modifications cause unusual skin pigments or builds that are obvious at first glance. Mind you, I think it is mentioned in Beauty and the Beast that the Meyerdahl isn't the only subtle heavy world mod, but it is one of the few.

saber964 wrote: Greentea: I believe there was some settlement from other heavy worlds, but most of the San Martin was settled by people with a very specific gene modification that has a specific phenotype. (I think it came up in Beauty and the Beast). You can usually recognize a San Martino (one bearing the mod at least) at a glance.

Fox2! wrote:Was San Marino settled by migration from other heavy worlds, or was there a unique modification a laMeyerdahl?


Very recognizable IIRC Thomas Jesus and Mateo are described as huge basically standing 170-180cm (5'8"-6') in height and weighing 200kg (440lbs) also Thandi is supposed to weigh 100kg (220lbs). This is compared to modern day American football linemen who weigh 1/4 to 1/2 of what a San Martino would weigh.
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Re: Notable Gene Modifications
Post by Guardiandashi   » Wed Apr 29, 2015 9:58 am

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[quote="Greentea"]Yes. I believe the Meyerdahl mods (what the Harrington family have) were considered special among the various mods for survival on heavy worlds because they didn't have any obvious phenotypic differences from normal humans and could cross-breed easily with normal humans. At first glance, someone with the Meyerdahl mods looks normal. What they have are some subtle changes to muscle efficiency, skeletal strength, and metabolism (and in the case of Meyerdahl betas, intelligence). Other heavy world modifications cause unusual skin pigments or builds that are obvious at first glance. Mind you, I think it is mentioned in Beauty and the Beast that the Meyerdahl isn't the only subtle heavy world mod, but it is one of the few.

[quote="saber964"] Greentea: I believe there was some settlement from other heavy worlds, but most of the San Martin was settled by people with a very specific gene modification that has a specific phenotype. (I think it came up in Beauty and the Beast). You can usually recognize a San Martino (one bearing the mod at least) at a glance.

quote]

its going to sound bad in a way but my thought is that a lot of the genetic tinkering teams were essentially either "lazy" or guilty of "branding"

what I mean by that is that the Meyerdahl team essentially took the time to consider ALL (or a lot more) ramifications of the consequences of their tinkering than a lot of teams did. On the other hand Mesa, and /or Manpower go heavy for "branding" so they deliberately incorporate visual effects into their mods because as far as they are concerned the engineered outcomes are "products" not "people" and so make them easy to identify. much like a lot of apple computers products are rather easily identifiable as opposed to the more "generic" products many other companies put out.
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Re: Notable Gene Modifications
Post by SWM   » Wed Apr 29, 2015 12:17 pm

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Guardiandashi wrote:its going to sound bad in a way but my thought is that a lot of the genetic tinkering teams were essentially either "lazy" or guilty of "branding"

what I mean by that is that the Meyerdahl team essentially took the time to consider ALL (or a lot more) ramifications of the consequences of their tinkering than a lot of teams did. On the other hand Mesa, and /or Manpower go heavy for "branding" so they deliberately incorporate visual effects into their mods because as far as they are concerned the engineered outcomes are "products" not "people" and so make them easy to identify. much like a lot of apple computers products are rather easily identifiable as opposed to the more "generic" products many other companies put out.

You should probably remember that most of those extreme genemods were created at a time when interstellar flight was rare, expensive, and long. They generally pre-date reliable hyperspace travel. It was unlikely that anyone on a heavy grav planet would ever leave their new home, and unlikely that anyone else would ever meet someone from a heavy grav planet.

Once reliable hyperspace travel became available, it was unnecessary to settle for a heavy grav planet. The number of available planets grew enormously. I suspect that after hyperspace was opened, heavy grav planets were seldom settled unless it was by those who already had the right genemods.

It wasn't branding or laziness. The altered phenotype just didn't matter, because they were never expected to interact with unmodified humans.
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Re: Notable Gene Modifications
Post by JeffEngel   » Wed Apr 29, 2015 12:35 pm

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SWM wrote:
Guardiandashi wrote:its going to sound bad in a way but my thought is that a lot of the genetic tinkering teams were essentially either "lazy" or guilty of "branding"

what I mean by that is that the Meyerdahl team essentially took the time to consider ALL (or a lot more) ramifications of the consequences of their tinkering than a lot of teams did. On the other hand Mesa, and /or Manpower go heavy for "branding" so they deliberately incorporate visual effects into their mods because as far as they are concerned the engineered outcomes are "products" not "people" and so make them easy to identify. much like a lot of apple computers products are rather easily identifiable as opposed to the more "generic" products many other companies put out.

You should probably remember that most of those extreme genemods were created at a time when interstellar flight was rare, expensive, and long. They generally pre-date reliable hyperspace travel. It was unlikely that anyone on a heavy grav planet would ever leave their new home, and unlikely that anyone else would ever meet someone from a heavy grav planet.

Once reliable hyperspace travel became available, it was unnecessary to settle for a heavy grav planet. The number of available planets grew enormously. I suspect that after hyperspace was opened, heavy grav planets were seldom settled unless it was by those who already had the right genemods.

It wasn't branding or laziness. The altered phenotype just didn't matter, because they were never expected to interact with unmodified humans.

It may well be a complicated mix.

The Mfecane worlds were settled with radical separatism in mind - diverging from the rest of humanity was entirely acceptable, however hard or easy interstellar travel was or would be expected to become.

Similarly, settling a place that demanded extensive "Mesa-forming" the colonists was a statement for Detweiler, and an excuse for all the tinkering they'd continue to do. Interaction was entirely expected then, but going radical was also both expected and desired for a number of reasons.

For other heavy grav worlds (to take one of our better sets of examples), if you weren't expecting much off-world interbreeding, then taking steps to make sure it was possible would be pointless. As to looking or behaving differently, that could be branding, laziness, unavoidable given current resources, unavoidable due to other constraints (such as how else the target environment differs from terrestrial norms) - or positively avoided because you could and wanted to preserve your human identity even off on your own.

And once routine interaction became something to expect or reasonably plan ahead for, you could still have mods that display genetic or obvious phenotypic divergence because the world demanded it, or branding, laziness, low-budget, or ideological reasons.

Thousands of human worlds out there. Every one of them was settled for some slightly different reasons, and every one of them makes slightly different demands on its settlers. There will be all sorts of variety.
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Re: Notable Gene Modifications
Post by SWM   » Wed Apr 29, 2015 1:06 pm

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JeffEngel wrote:It may well be a complicated mix.

The Mfecane worlds were settled with radical separatism in mind - diverging from the rest of humanity was entirely acceptable, however hard or easy interstellar travel was or would be expected to become.

Similarly, settling a place that demanded extensive "Mesa-forming" the colonists was a statement for Detweiler, and an excuse for all the tinkering they'd continue to do. Interaction was entirely expected then, but going radical was also both expected and desired for a number of reasons.

For other heavy grav worlds (to take one of our better sets of examples), if you weren't expecting much off-world interbreeding, then taking steps to make sure it was possible would be pointless. As to looking or behaving differently, that could be branding, laziness, unavoidable given current resources, unavoidable due to other constraints (such as how else the target environment differs from terrestrial norms) - or positively avoided because you could and wanted to preserve your human identity even off on your own.

And once routine interaction became something to expect or reasonably plan ahead for, you could still have mods that display genetic or obvious phenotypic divergence because the world demanded it, or branding, laziness, low-budget, or ideological reasons.

Thousands of human worlds out there. Every one of them was settled for some slightly different reasons, and every one of them makes slightly different demands on its settlers. There will be all sorts of variety.

Good points--there are definitely some worlds where differentiation may have been deliberate. And low budget is almost certainly one factor.
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Re: Notable Gene Modifications
Post by Rob the Fiend   » Thu Apr 30, 2015 4:05 pm

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Wasn't the San Martino's large size because they DIDN'T have
genetic mods? Their bodys were adapting to a heavy grav planet with massive muscle buildup, not more efficient muscle mass?
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Re: Notable Gene Modifications
Post by Greentea   » Thu Apr 30, 2015 6:04 pm

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It's hypothesized that on a high-gravity world, normal humans will slowly trend to shorter, denser frames and more muscles. However, typical San Martinos are normal height if not on the tall side and very heavily bulked. That points to a gene mod tweaking muscle bulk and skeletal strength. Not all heavy world mods are identical. The Meyerdahl mod affected muscle efficiency, metabolism, and skeletal strength. The San Martino mod affected muscle bulk, skeletal strength, and potentially some other things that are not obvious.

Rob the Fiend wrote:Wasn't the San Martino's large size because they DIDN'T have
genetic mods? Their bodys were adapting to a heavy grav planet with massive muscle buildup, not more efficient muscle mass?
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