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from the puerile-plan-purports-to-prevent-pathogens dept.
Of late, [Robert] Zubrin has been bothered by another potential difficulty between humans and the exploration and settlement of Mars—planetary protection. This is the prime-directive-style notion that humans should not contaminate other worlds with Earth-based microbes and, on the flip side, that humans should not introduce any potentially dangerous pathogens to Earth.
[...] This is not a problem that NASA or would-be explorers should take all that seriously with regard to Mars, Zubrin argued during a characteristically fiery talk in late May. He made his remarks at the International Development and Space Conference in St. Louis, which is held by the National Space Society and dedicated to the settlement of space.
Zubrin asserted that Mars almost certainly has no life to be infected by Earth and no extant life which might eventually infect Earth. Mars has no liquid water on the surface, where temperatures are well below freezing, and an ultraviolet light would kill any new life.
[...] An overly zealous Planetary Protection community could also effectively kill human exploration on Mars, he argued, because there is no way to sterilize a crew, especially if the unthinkable happens. "If you maintain this pretense, a human expedition to Mars is impossible," he argued. "You cannot guarantee that a human mission to Mars won't crash, in which case you'll be scattering human microbes all over the surface."
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kaszz on Thursday June 08 2017, @11:22AM (4 children)
Prevent people from leaving. Kind of like what the Soviet Union USSR did.. ie "exit visa".
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 08 2017, @12:04PM
Niggers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 08 2017, @12:10PM (2 children)
I wonder how doable that is. There are enough corrupted/crazy "leaders" that would allow you to do things in their country when paid enough. Will the world attack "evil country" if someone puts up a launch platform for going to space? I hardly doubt it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 08 2017, @12:42PM (1 child)
I think the last sentence says the exact opposite of what you wanted to say (it says you are almost sure that they will; I suspect you wanted to say you are almost sure they won't).
But it is indeed quite possible that they will (assuming they don't succeed in stopping it in an earlier stage by other means). Not because of planetary protection, but because of very down-to-earth reasons.
Any rocket strong enough to transport humans into orbit is also strong enough to transport spy satellites into orbit. And the same technology can be used for long-range missiles. What do you think the space race actually was about?
But of course the officially stated attack reason will likely not be the launch station …
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday June 09 2017, @06:13AM
It could be worked around by building a base in the sky with a official purpose other than the real one, ie lying. Once all that is needed for a launch to trans Mars orbit is there. They could say "Hasta la vista Earthlies!". What are they going to do about it? ;-)
Any attempt to launch missiles will necessarily have to outpace the speed of the space ship(s) and that at a very large distance. With a lot of time for countermeasures. Building a Mars planetary defense shouldn't be that hard. Considering that any projectile will take days to reach the planet and signal surveillance may locate it days before it arrives.
The weak point is getting of the Earth. And the other is presently the need for re-supplies. But once that is solved. Such base could comparatively easily defend against Earthlings. With a industrial base on Mars the case will almost be a done one.