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Old 30-May-2008, 03:30 AM
dodecahedron dodecahedron is offline
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Default specious reasoning?

I'm pretty certain that there isn't a real-world analogue to this little idea. Yet I'll post it and await the responses.
The sewage system of a multi-species space station would have to be one of the most sterile places because it's full of bugs from countless worlds which may or may not have biologies based upon different chiralities, harsh environments and just basically being a stew of alien offal. All this horrible stuff combined would be effectively sterile since one bug would cancel out another bug and so forth.
Doesn't mean the ship's doctor will be washing his tools in this sludge.
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Old 30-May-2008, 03:39 AM
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Or maybe it would be one of the most virile. Each bug, in a completely new environment, with many new competitors and predators, all struggling to survive. Who knows what could evolve?
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Old 30-May-2008, 04:08 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dodecahedron View Post
All this horrible stuff combined would be effectively sterile since one bug would cancel out another bug and so forth.
Please explain your reasoning. Your assumptions are not persuasive to me.
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Old 30-May-2008, 06:46 PM
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I think mostly it's the opposite--two bugs, being mutually alien, do not interact, so either planets' inhabitants could be infected by the sewage. On the other hand, if some bug excretes lots and lots of benzine, it may quickly become a monoculture that can poison, if not infect, anything (sort of like the first life forms that produced oxygen basically poisoning the planet).

Actually, a ship with multiple alien species might just need to have multiple separated compartments, or better still, separate ships.
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