This whole debate assumes that the only purpose of space exploration is science. But if we want to settle space, we have to accept the fact that we are going to “contaminate” it with earthly life.
7 thoughts on “Planetary Protection”
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While I’m agreeable to the concept of avoiding contamination while we are doing early exploration, some of the comments in the article are pretty silly. Why did they put a lander down at all if they’re scared to get close to anything important?
Goodlife here. Planetary protection requires we send earth a representative Berzerker to negotiate sterilization. We negotiate with high power energy beams. Your survival is our main concern.
The ultimate extension of this “terran contaminant phobia” is the idea of sending people only as far as Phobos. And then having them tele-operate presumably sterile Mars surface rovers. As Keith Cowling wisely points out, spending serious $$ just to get people to Phobos is a non-starter. What an aptly named moon….
But what if we contaminate Phobos? Why is Phobos less important than Mars or our Moon?
For the people who can’t make good distinctions, unlike Doctor Mist below, our presence is poison and even asteroids should be off limits.
I’ve been assuming the contamination question was just that we must be very careful if we want to distinguish between “Mars evolved life” and “We brought life to Mars”. I’m perfectly happy (ultimately) contaminating and even terraforming Mars. But Great Filter concerns make me really, really interested in first finding out whether there is independent life there.
We don’t have to much trouble finding new species on earth every year and rumor has it the earth is seriously contaminated. Humans have more bugs than cells.
Since Mars is on the very short list of conveniently-settlable objects, it would be best to assume eventual settlement. In other words, preserve the xenobiology data now while it is still possible.
Unsettlable objects like Europa should be treated with highest paranoia. It has a huge water ocean and may very well have life. It would be a terrible waste to destroy that life for no gain. Even stray DNA from “dead” organisms is an excessive risk IMHO. Were the panspermia hypothesis true, Europan life could vacuum up stray genetic sequences and bring them to life.