Terraforming in the OTU

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by Malenfant

Yes, but they're not really that "infinitely various" here at all. When faced with a borderline-habitable planet, one can either:

1) Skip it and find a more habitable one further away.
2) Colonise it with environmentally sealed habitats.
3) Terraform it.

The first option is generally a viable option (especially in the OTU, with its high number of habitable worlds). We're talking about founding colonies here, so this is in a time/region where the Imperium is expanding, so there almost certainly will be a habitable world further along the exploration path.

The second option is eminently sensible. It requires minimum effort, it uses immediately available technology, can be set up very rapidly, and works to provide a habitable (if not sealed) environment for the populace. Built the enclosures large enough and you can have large parks and forests growing inside too!

The third option (given the other two) is completely crazy.

'Crazy' is relative. It depends pretty much entirely on one's frame of reference. Settling North America was crazy for the Pilgrmims, too...from the point of view of economic rationality. They had other motives.

Motives are infinitely variable.

From a cold economic POV, the existence of relatively cheap FTL technology would appear to make terraforming always too expensive to bother with. Yet human history is packed with activities that make no economic sense, yet happened anyway, because economics is subordinate to culture, religion, and politics, once you're past the hard limits of technological possibility and available resources.

And when faced with a completely uninhabitable world, the options become:

1) Skip it and settle elsewhere
2) Colonise it with environmentally sealed habitats.

Terraforming simply isn't worth even considering at all for such worlds.

'Worth' is not a meaningful concept unless you have a specific frame of reference for what is and is not valuable. This varies enormously, even amid different countries, cultures, and religions in the real world today. In a world of multiple galactic cultures, the variation would only be greater.