Terraforming in the OTU

[Malenfant]

(reposted from the other thread) Here's an interesting article that may provide food for thought:

http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/print/1645

"The hubris involved in genetic engineering is several orders of magnitude smaller than that involved in terraforming. At least we’re good at the former, as the variety and quality of our foodstuffs and pharmaceuticals attest. Nor would we be condemning entire worlds or species to destruction. Terraforming is a battering ram, genetic engineering is a scalpel. Which one would you prefer for a delicate, complex operation — whether this is repairing a watch, performing a heart bypass or fine-tuning a new world?"

(the quote in bold also showed up at NASA's recent "100 year starship" study).

This also illustrates some more Ancient craziness - they expended a lot of effort in genetically engineering pre-human stock from Earth to various other planets, and yet they also apparently wasted a lot of time terraforming worlds? And also they didn't do much genetic engineering on themselves apparently (not sure if the introduction of "coyns" really counts, since that's a psionic thing).