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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: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Thursday June 08 2017, @01:50PM (16 children)
No one in their right mind gives a small damn about "contaminating" a barren rock. Ain't nobody there, ain't nobody using it, it's ours by right discovery and conquest. If some body of morons starts blocking the exploration of Mars for such silly reasons, I just might become a "terrist". Firebomb their asses, then launch the next outbound rocket through the wisps of smoke coming off their dead asses.
(Score: 2) by Weasley on Thursday June 08 2017, @02:53PM (5 children)
Can I just upvote your first and second sentence?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday June 08 2017, @03:52PM (4 children)
LOL, do as you wish. The rest of the post is intended to shock people's sensibilities, and check if anyone is awake at NSA. ;^)
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 08 2017, @04:27PM (3 children)
"intended to shock people's sensibilities"
A.k.a., "being an asshole".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 08 2017, @04:32PM
How perceptive. At least a little more perceptive than most rocks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 08 2017, @07:22PM
But was he wrong?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 09 2017, @03:10AM
-nomsg
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 08 2017, @03:36PM (3 children)
That might be how some aliens perceive Earth: No intelligent life found so we can terraform and settle it...
It's easy to keep the Earth from getting any Mars life: make the trip one way only. Including items and ships.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Thursday June 08 2017, @04:00PM (2 children)
"That might be how some aliens perceive Earth: No intelligent life found so we can terraform and settle it..."
All the more reason for the greatest diaspora in the history of mankind.
"It's easy to keep the Earth from getting any Mars life: make the trip one way only. Including items and ships."
There are already a lot of volunteers for a one way trip. At any time in my own life, I would have made that choice. I would do it today, if they were recruiting old bastards who have seen their best days already.
https://www.space.com/24112-private-mars-colony-1058-martian-volunteers.html [space.com]
http://time.com/3716823/mars-one-space-travel-finalist/ [time.com]
Hell, you can pick and choose your own links from here: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=volunteers+for+one+way+mars+trip&atb=v63-6__&ia=news [duckduckgo.com]
There is no shortage of volunteers to make the one way trip now. If we ever get a simple station established, and the people in it report that "life is good", the number of volunteers will multiply a thousand times.
Besides, travelers here on earth already know that you can never go home. I takes a few thousand miles to understand that. Tomorrow's Martians will understand it before they leave earth orbit.
(Score: 2) by deadstick on Thursday June 08 2017, @09:11PM
It's already terraformed.
(Score: 1) by charon on Thursday June 08 2017, @10:48PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 08 2017, @04:03PM
I think it is an entirely reasonable restriction until at least as long as we get to where we can realistically do something about Mars. Right now and for the foreseeable future, all we can do is send some symbolic flag-planting mission, fart around on the surface for a short period of time, then come back. There will not be any sustainable situation there for many decades to come. There aren't enough rich people to keep it going with private funds, and there won't be the will to keep it going with public funds. Remember, we landed on the Moon with Apollo 11 to great excitement, it was pretty neat with 12, and it was ho-hum by 13. If it wasn't for the problems with 13, people would have largely ignored it. The program was dead by 17, and it only did that launch because everything was ready to go. Even the Apollo-Soyuz rendezvous was a grand "meh". Same thing with Mars. The most likely thing will be that we'll stay for a very short time, and biologically fuck up the area with our trash and the people we buried because they died in transit or after arrival.
(Score: 3, Touché) by DeathMonkey on Thursday June 08 2017, @06:48PM (4 children)
No one in their right mind gives a small damn about "contaminating" a barren rock.
I agree. Now for the hard part: prove it's actually barren.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 08 2017, @07:28PM (2 children)
No.
Now what? Are you going to try to kill me to stop me from going?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 08 2017, @10:06PM (1 child)
No, because your dumb ass will die from radiation exposure on the way there.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday June 09 2017, @06:24AM
Fill the space vehicle walls with moon rock or comet water. Radiation protection solved.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 09 2017, @03:15AM
100% of the proof so far says it's barren, so say varied and repeated experiments.
If you were betting money on this, there would only be one logical way to bet.