Dear Sir

A thought for the future?

A thought has occurred to me and I would like to know if any other readers have views as to its cogency.

Galton tells us that one of the worthy qualities in man is "fine stature".

We now live in a world in which man has begun the first tentative steps of his expansion into space. The MIR space station has proved that we can already sustain human life in space for long periods. When one considers where we were seventy years ago, one can only hope to guess where we will be five hundred years from now.

The practical implications of putting men in space are many, the cost of such operations is astronomical (no pun intended), and the size of the new frontiersfolk is an important factor. Smaller people need less food, less oxygen and produce correspondingly less waste of all types. Another important factor is that they need less big constructions around them. Ceilings can be lower, bunk space less, doorways, airlocks etc. If the whole thing has to be scaled up to accommodate six footers, the economics not just of constructing, but of launching the increased payload must increase as well. Moreover, sustaining an environment is not a science that has yet been perfected. Perhaps, if there are to be finely balanced ecosystems, it will be more viable for those who naturally consume and excrete less.

Imagine a future five hundred years from now in which human activity has continued to produce chemical pollution and low level radiation emissions, combined with a couple of small scale nuclear confrontations. The damage to the gene pool would be untold. Those wishing to escape ravaged mother earth must of course undergo a screening program. Anyone with a more than 1% chance of having children whose adult height will be more than 1.5Gglus (Global government length units) need not apply for selection.

The point is that the new frontiersfolk will have to use every scientific expertise available in order to maximise their chance of successfully surviving. Genetics will be a part of that. Those selected to colonise space may not be what Galton would have considered the finest. The Japanese have an advanced space program and as well as being the richest per capita nation on the planet are not renowned for their large physical size; they might be a race worth keeping an eye on.

Philip Mellish