Amen, brother Alec.

Yes it will, because of the law of unintended consequences. So then we would have to reiterate, and fix the new problem. There is no turning back, and the price for refusal to move is the continuation of horrific diseases that we could easily remove or cure.

The discovery of germs and infection directly created the human population boom that is currently destroying the ecosphere as we know it. If we still didn't wash our hands when we deliver a baby, women would still die from birthbed infections whil quite young, or suffer uterine damage sufficient to prevent future impregnation. When we started cleanliness regimes, we pretty much destroyed the natural world as we've known it for the last million years or so.

Fear of future consequences must be informed by rational risk analysis - math. The question must be answered properly - what is the risk -the actual numbers- of things that do go wrong, measured against the actual numbers -people who live in misery, costs paid, family life ruined- of people who have genetic defects. Right now, we've no data and cannot have data about the first set of numbers, which is what you are demanding to know. We do know the numbers of the second question.

As for genetic modification of crops. A few points. Almost all the food we eat was genetically modified, the old fashioned way, by humans. Curious fact: corn does not exist in nature any more. Corn cannot self-fertilize - humans have to do it. We modified the genome so much that the original is lost and the artificial is all that's left. That may seem bad, esp with the misunderstanding that fructose is somehow different and more deadly than sucrose, but the GM corn we grow, along with the GM wheat we developed the old fashioned way in the 1960's, bought enough breathing room that the population bomb didn't go off in a big enough way to kill off billions of people, as would have happened if we hadn't created those strains. The bomb is STILL ticking, and the population growth is accelerating again. We cannot have survived without the corn and wheat mods, and will not survive another generation- speaking worldwide, not just the western cultures- without more GM plants that can survive the upheavals to come. To stop iterating is to kill billions. It's that simple. We are no longer under nature's control. We are under our own.

Or EDS. Or diabetes. Or spinal bifida. Or congentital blindness. So many, many things can go away. So much agony, so many lives saved, both that of the victims and their families. And the resources we spend to research "treatment" to be sold at ruinous profit. The miracle fairy has arrived, and they want to shoot it in the head, or at least make themselves a lucrative profession of judging, for us, what we can and cannot cure, because Jesus or whatever.
There ain't no discussion we can have. We either do it or we don't. "Discussion" is just a delaying tactic, as those who oppose GM will never let go of their delusions. Like abortion or birth control, those who believe it shouldn't happen will never back down, and will do anything up to and including shooting doctors in the head to stop it.

Ask people who try to download movies how effective American law can be. Doors are being kicked down all over the world - and after the new secretly negotiated treaty is slammed up our collective Terran ani, watching Dobie Gillis illegally will subject you prison time all over the planet. When Americans get Jesus about their notions, armored goons move in all over the world. Genetic modification will be no exception (except in cases of corporate profit, of course).

I once thought Bob Heinlein was a bit too cynical in "Friday", a world of the near future where designed humans - optimized for health, etc. - were considered subhuman ungodly creatures that were trained from birth to be subordinate to the point where Friday was trained to be a prostitute from birth. And once again, Grandfather knew his fellow Missourans well - and I must move my needle downwards again. A baby made in a back seat by two morons who can't find a condom is superior, "ethically" speaking, to a baby with maladapted genes removed.
I'm old enough to recall the moment where the "Genetic Ethics" profession was born. I believe it was when Dolly the sheep was born, the first mammalian clone that made it out of the chute alive. The "ethics" chair was created that week, and self-appointed experts at once popped up on TV to tell us what was right and what was wrong. The nature of journalists embraces the idea of the professional expert, so these carpetbaggers hopped up to take charge.
Most of the "ethicsists" are fundamental christian types or outright clergy, I'd guess from my Heinlein-trained cynical mind, as most media censors are. I do not take orders from them.

We perform a human genome modification every time we make a baby. The results are not spectacularly successful; we've an enormous number of genetic defects.

Time to kick the dice bag away, and let humans sort it out instead of god. Modify away. No more diabetes. No more lupus. No more EDS. Let it end. Human evolution is now in our own hands.

Some people won't identify as either man or woman, some are in transition, whatever. Whatever word one uses, a correction will follow."guys" was a gender neutral term when I was growing up, mostly because one-syllable tends to win the usage game.

Germany is halfway converted to solar. It works. QED

That and it doesn't exist. If it existed, and this goes for thorium reactors too, I'd be fine with it. Better than setting all the buried forests of the ancient world on fire.

"smaller amounts of mass with far more velocity to counter the energy of the incoming rock", I meant to say. Edit went wrong.

Hm. Wild idea, no way to do it I could see- but could you build an electromagnetic catchers mitt on the lunar surface to slow down and arrest the fall of a cargo module? Focused array to force an incoming cargo module (induced opposed magnetism) to a landing. In a deep crater? Or a dug hole? LOTS of giant coils and a huge solar power array to power the fields. Not for humans tho, as I assume the fields won't project far and so the deceleration would be damned rapid. No-rocket landing, sort of a reverse-mass-driver in a sort of cone with the base aimed at the incoming bullets of stuff. Good for cargos of liquified nitrogen and hydrogen, and solid-state cargo that doesn't mind a multi-hundred G stop.

You know - just occurred to me this might be the solution to the "catchers mitt" problem that always presents when you talk about mass-driver launching lunar soil into an escape trajectory bound for a orbital construction site such as a terraria factory- how do you stop the incoming rock without being knocked back?. Of course the mitt would have to fire mass itself to counter the kinetic energy acquired by being continually pelted by millions of pounds of rock, but that can be balanced by keeping station by firing smaller amounts of mass to counter than the incoming rock has, exchanging solar power for mass in a net gain.

The impossible will always be a bit harder than we thought. Building a self-contained world would be the hardest thing we've ever done - the first times we do it. Then it's just work.

I'm a-going with working on #2. #1 is never gonna get cheap. And someone needs to talk to Musk about electrical launches - he thinks you need to accelerate the ship to 18000 mph at the launchhead! #1 could be immeasurable improved if we eliminated stage 1 with an electrical launch up a mountainside to get the bulk of the work out of the way before ignition of the actual engines to take it all the way.

We can build terraria long, long before we will ever build an elevator.