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Robert Walker

Hard to see how that could be possible. Problems are

  • Vacuum, so any creature with lungs exposed to the air would be unable to breathe - would have to evolve some other breathing apparatus that doesn't connect directly to the atmosphere - but how would that work? Gills won't work because it's the same problem, if they are surrounded by water, that water will evaporate also
  • No oxygen in the atmosphere anyway - we need oxygen to breathe
  • Night time temperatures are so cold that it goes below the temperatures of dry ice at night even at the equator
  • Solar storms - no protection so need to be able to withstand high levels of radiation

The nearest to it is this idea of a vacuumorph which is a fictional genetically engineered human that has an extra lung as an oxygen store - it would be able to survive in the vacuum of space but like a human in a spacesuit has to keep coming back to oxygen stores to get more oxygen.

Vacuumorph

Basically it's the idea you could perhaps bio-engineer a spacesuit. Whether that's possible or not, it's not really surviving in a vacuum. It still needs a supply of oxygen, and where does that come from?

To get any further I think you have to go into the realms of total fantasy. In some sci. fi. novel you could try to invent a creature that works like the vacuumorph. but somehow gets its oxygen by extracting it from perchlorates or from hydrogen peroxide. I.e. it eats salts that are toxic to us in order to get oxygen to breath.

You could then make it perhaps cold blooded to reduce the amount of oxygen it needs,...

Or alternatively, a creature that is basically an intelligent lichen. Lichens can survive in Mars simulation conditions. They include a fungus component that needs oxygen which it gets from the algae component. Only tiny amounts of oxygen but some.

So now again science fiction, this future "human" consists of maybe an acre of lichen which somehow is able to support intelligence through a network of neurons spread through the lichen. Or some such. Just throwing out a few ideas for brainstorming, could be useful in very speculative Sci. Fi.

Of course it is vastly stretching the concept of “human”, assuming we can be genetically modified in ways that we can’t even begin to sketch out at present.

About the Author

Robert Walker

Robert Walker

Writer of articles on Mars and Space issues - Software Developer of Tune Smithy, Bounce Metronome etc.
Studied at Wolfson College, Oxford
Lives in Isle of Mull
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