One of the saddest parts of the science fiction novel _Aurora_ is that natural born human populations will have serious problems permanently separated from the larger ecosystem they're evolved for.<p>It's a valid hypothesis. Humanity would need to have an entire engineered biosphere to replace the biome living in our guts, our eyes, our . . everywhere. And anywhere we find that's close enough to Earth to live in, will have . . <i>something</i> else . . almost certainly[1] already there.<p>Kim Stanley Robinson isn't an easy read if you're on the other side of the political spectrum, but Aurora is comparatively free of his standard preachiness, at least in my ears. I actually disagree with his primary thesis of Aurora, and the novel suffers from some fundamental problems as a story, but the point is still salient. Humans will have to build their own Earth, wherever they end up, either out there or back here. I have a funny feeling we won't learn to treasure our own planet until we find out how much work it is to live on another.<p>[1] Particularly given the extraordinarily early date of the first Terran lifeforms. It doesn't seem to take too much to get the ball rolling, unless the panspermia theories actually turn out to hold some water.