Why can't we do both . At least smelting until we have enough energy to reverse engineer and then keep smelting space rocks. I think that's actually what we are doing, birds eye view.
Once a species is gone it is gone. Lots and lots of species disappear now and many of them we are not even aware about, let alone any DNA samples taken or research done (e.g. burn down rainforest). So you can't "have both".
Re:The Weirdness of CRISPR
by nylonstrung on Monday April 03, 2017 @12:10PM
(#14023984)
Brilliant metaphor- you should flesh this out
Ironic example, since iPhone is the only flagship smartphone that doesn't have wireless charging.
It's a sci-fi novel ;)
Wireless charging in iPhone? Definitely not hard sci-fi. More like fantasy perhaps :)
If in a sci-fi novel an alien handed a character their 'magic rock' (iPhone) and they smelted it for its gold content rather than reverse-engineered it's wireless charging, communication, and computation capabilities you would scream at the character for being horribly short-sighted. Such a waste of sophisticated technology laid right in front of them for such little temporary gain.