REM%MIT-MC@sri-unix.UUCP (02/17/84)
From: Robert Elton Maas <REM @ MIT-MC> The other day I came up with a neat idea. Let's build plants that can live on Venus, not on the solid surface under the clouds, but on the top of the clouds, with roots that extend into the clouds to suck up sulfur and other nutrients and with solar panels (leaves) that collect solar energy and radiate back microwave and far infrafed, and of course bubbles of hydrogen (which must be actively maintained) for maintaining flotation. We'd program these plants to have electronic genes and to mate and reproduce, and those which can't maintain flotation will sink and die, leaving more room at the top for those which can, and these creatures might survive long after Earth cremates itself in a nuclear war. Maybe someday the plants will consume so much of the atmospheric nutrients that it'll be thinned to where plants can touch ground and maybe even take root the way Earth plants do, being able to see the Sun from the ground and being able to do away with their flotation bulbs.