Robert Zubrin's article on "Wokeist" opposition to Space exploration

Oldfart1939 · 2020-11-15 10:16:50

Here's the link to the original article; most members have possibly already seen this excellent analysis and commentary:

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/11/ … ce9cd02e34

This is Planetary Protection carried to the extreme limits!

SpaceNut · 2020-11-15 10:31:53

tahanson43206 wrote:

The focus for November 7 (Earth Calendar) is Video #5
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-pzvwx … AF&index=5
Dr. Chris McKay - Prerequisites to Human Activity on Mars - 23rd Annual Mars Society Convention
This talk includes slides.
(th)

Got only half way through Dr Chris McKay video with the big take away is that we are on the slow train to show proof that life does not exist on mars. But how can you do that for a planet size body with rovers and sample returns that only cover a really small area if the surface and beneath it as we have found life deep even within earth....
The fear to contaminate mars or to bring alien life back to earth means we will never go.....

The Dr Chris McKay video should have gotten into the content that Dr. Carol Stoker suggests for possible locations in which to weed out the chances of finding life that would make it so man could never go to mars.

Of course the presence of organics do raise the question if we do find them as to whether there is still a possibility in which life could still be present. Even the harshness of the moon showed that it could survive decades under the shielded conditions so its possible that it could still be there. Which is where it is at the 7 minute mark in the video.

Of the chemical test at 5 minutes in depending on sample content a false indication could have happened but I would think that its a real random chance that it got it just right for that to happen.

Other than the rovers to test samples scooped up we are looking with a radar system that detects hydrogen and not directly water.

The maps at about 12 minutes is the low lying areas of which atmospheric pressure would possibly allow for water but it would be a brine since it would freeze. Where mostly the northern hemisphere contained a plausible ocean from early on in maps history.

As it stands the rover missions are just not designed or cheap enough to send more to mars to do what a man could do in sheer minutes of stepping foot on the mars surface.

tahanson43206 · 2020-11-15 11:06:01

For SpaceNut ... by any chance, did your post here slip accidentally into Oldfart1939's new topic about Wokists?

(th)

Oldfart1939 · 2020-11-15 11:14:19

In the article, Dr. Zubrin is his most analytically accurate self, and writes with stunning lucidity of the utter foolishness of non-scientists trying to inhibit scientific exploration. These individuals remind me of the medieval inquisitors; taking on a moral self superiority that is very misplaced.

tahanson43206 · 2020-11-15 11:26:01

For Oldfart1939 re entire topic...

Thank you for providing the link to Dr. Zubrin's essay! I'm grateful to have seen it, and look forward to further discussion in this topic.

While the arguments against which Dr. Zubrin is raising awareness seem alarming from my perspective, I ** can ** understand (to some extent) the reasons for their having been written in the first place.

Dr. Zubrin appears to acknowledge that evil was done in past centuries on Earth, but he appears (as I read the article) to try to show that the people who committed evil deeds were violating the code of conduct of their societies. I am dubious of the power of this point, because babies raised up in any culture have the option to accept or to ignore the "rules of the game" passed down by ancestors. The power of greed would appear to be greater by orders of magnitude than discipline offered by any code of conduct.

(th)

Calliban · 2020-11-15 18:47:19

What a bunch of morons these 'woke' idiots are. Cultural vandals that hate white people and want to destroy our culture.
And what does woke mean anyway? Were these people asleep until recently? In which case, shouldn't it be 'awake'? Typical low-IQ socialist revolutionaries, funded from behind the scenes by the likes of George Soros and other wealthy Globalist and Zionist donors. This is a proxy war against white culture.

I only hope that this nonsense passes just as the socialist nonsense of early 20th century Europe disappeared into the dustbin of history. Of course that only happened after Adolf Hitler killed most of the European socialists, most of whom happened to be Jewish. Let us hope that this time round, the civilisation wreckers can be put down without having to resort to mass slaughter of the perpetrators. It was exactly this sort of socialist antagonism that led to the first 'holocaust' after the German people had finally decided they had had enough. Fast forward a century and exactly the same Socialist revolution is being inflicted on white Americans. Heaven help the likes of George Soros and Mark Zuckerburg if the American people decide that they have had enough and begin to talk about a final solution to the socialist menace.

SpaceNut · 2020-11-15 20:18:15

Had to go search for a better article about the topic rather than the original to make sense of where the conversation is going.
Wokeists Assault Space Exploration

Its the manifesto which was submitted by Nasa personnel that is the issue...supported by a list of 109 signatories
https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2010/2010.08344.pdf

“Ethical Exploration and the Role of Planetary Protection in Disrupting Colonial Practices”

“Planetary protection” was originally proposed for two purposes. One was to assure that life-detection experiments sent to other worlds did not return false positives resulting from the transport of terrestrial microbes along with the spacecraft. The other was to avert the possibility that dangerous microbes from other worlds might be transported back to Earth. These two contingencies are known as forward and back contamination, respectively.
The risk of back contamination — by disease organisms returned by Mars missions in particular — is the planetary-protection concern that generates most of the coverage in popular journalism and entertainment media. However, it has no rational scientific basis. There cannot be pathogens on Mars because there are no plants or animals there for them to infect. As for free living microorganisms that might conceivably exist on Mars, we know that these cannot be a threat to the Earth’s biosphere because there has been natural transport of billions of tons of Martian materials to Earth for the past 4 billion years. In fact, it is estimated that every year, approximately 500 kilograms of rocks ejected from Mars via meteoric impact land on our planet. Close examination of these rocks has shown that large portions of them were never raised above 40 degrees Celsius during their entire career of ejection from Mars, flight through space, and reentry and landing on Earth. They were therefore never sterilized, and if any microbes had existed in them when they left the Red Planet, they readily could have survived the trip. If there are, or ever were, microbes on the Martian surface, they have long since arrived here in large numbers, and continue to do so today. So the very expensive alterations to Mars sample-return mission designs demanded by the NASA Planetary Protection Office to preclude release of Martian microbes on earth are as nonsensical as ordering the border patrol to search all cars crossing our northern border to make sure that no one is importing Canada geese.

https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments … ploration/

Void · 2020-11-16 19:18:04

The people spoken of seem to think they own everything. The Earth, the Universe, and the unfolding of events in time.

America is a representative republic, and NASA is answerable to the elected government, and we the people will insist that NASA may not try to try to hold us as slaves. Not us or other nations.

Done.

Terraformer · 2020-11-17 10:52:00

Crab mentality, except in this case the crabs trying to pull the others back in do not even want to leave the bucket. It's not "I can't go so you shouldn't", it's "I don't want to go so you shouldn't either".

They probably don't even realise that, potential trillion dollar Greenland asteroid notwithstanding, space mining is the only way we can get enough nickel to build the nickel-iron batteries to go fully solar.

kbd512 · 2020-11-17 11:34:59

Terraformer,

Alternatively, we use solar thermal with abundant molten salt or molten Silicon and SCCO2 gas turbines. That way, we don't need ridiculous quantities of batteries that rapidly degrade over time and have to be continually refurbished or replaced. Given that the molten Silicon is in the 500Wh/kg range, that seems far more practical than 100Wh/kg batteries that require asteroid mining to obtain the necessary materials. I still think we should go there to retrieve those metals for other uses, but energy production should use cheap / readily available / easily recyclable materials like high temperature ceramics, high grade steels, salt / sand / CO2 for heat storage / power transfer, etc. We're never going to run out of that stuff, on Earth or most other places, for that matter.

Mars_B4_Moon · 2021-07-04 05:38:14

This idea came up again in a tv show, Chasing the Moon television documentary series about the race to land a man on the Moon.

There was a fear the US Landing Astronauts from Apollo could possibly infected Earth with space germs. NASA kept mice and Astronauts locked up, they had procedures in place to address any possible spread of bacteria from space to our home planet, astronauts were instructed to don isolation garments. US Astronauts were scrubbed down and transported to a quarantine facility. Some think the idea of total Planetary protection is pointless and impractical? Asteroid, Comet and Solar System samples already crashing into our planet, alien material touch down on Earth. The Corona virus and Covid has given the world a phobia and now the fear of a war of the Worlds plague from a cold, almost airless, radiation-beleaguered rock???

NASA and other space agency support protection, NASA doesnt want human bugs on Mars or a Mars virus coming back on Earth.

Protecting Mars from Earth Bacteria
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/ … -bacteria/

some of the headlines from last year

'Is there life on Mars? Not if we destroy it with poor space hygiene'
https://www.theguardian.com/science/202 … D=ref_fark
NASA is updating its guidelines on how to prevent contamination of the Solar System
https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/9/21318 … xploration

Oldfart1939 · 2021-07-04 10:29:25

The idea that any form of Martian life will be life-threatening is absurd. Dr. Zubrin discusses this concept several times in his various books, but Entering Space has possibly his most lucid commentary.
Humans and mammals are subject to bacterial diseases that have taken eons to develop in a parasite-host type of relationship. Plants have their own diseases but aren't a general problem. Robert's favorite one liner is that humans don't get Dutch Elm Disease, and trees don't get pneumonia.

Calliban · 2021-07-04 11:08:33

Oldfart1939 wrote:

The idea that any form of Martian life will be life-threatening is absurd. Dr. Zubrin discusses this concept several times in his various books, but Entering Space has possibly his most lucid commentary.
Humans and mammals are subject to bacterial diseases that have taken eons to develop in a parasite-host type of relationship. Plants have their own diseases but aren't a general problem. Robert's favorite one liner is that humans don't get Dutch Elm Disease, and trees don't get pneumonia.

It would seem unlikely, though is not impossible. Given the enormous number of Earth based bacteria, protozoa, fungi and viruses; it is very unlikely that we would find anything uniquely dangerous on Mars that does have an Earth analogue already. We already have cold and hot water extremophile bacteria on Earth. There is no more reason to suppose that Martian bacteria will be any more dangerous to us than those Earth based bacteria. A Martian bacterium presents no more risk than a randomly chosen bacterium from Earth. So there is no reason to take precautions that are over and above what would be taken on Earth when dealing with these lifeforms. Also note, that just because your immune system can produce antibodies against a pathogen, does not mean that it won't make you sick whilst your immune system reacts against it. Diarrhoea would be even less fun than it usually is in a 20' wide tin can with a fully recirculating air system.

A bigger problem in my mind is the potential for Earthly microbes to contaminate the Martian biome. The burden of proof for any positive detection of life on Mars will be high and there will be plenty of doubters pointing to the possibility of Earthly contamination of samples. You will get the same sort of cranks that claim that the moon landings were faked.

Last edited by Calliban (2021-07-04 11:11:17)

SpaceNut · 2021-07-04 13:29:44

The life start and assumptions to be made that we started out as raw elements that over time assembled then we have had 13 billion years that it has happened over and over again. The earth has been pummeled meteorites carrying those parts and pieces that make up life and possibly as well that very start of life in single and multi celled organisms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_i … _molecules

The organic universe

Key Building Block for Organic Molecules Discovered in Meteorites

Complex organic molecule found in interstellar space

louis · 2021-07-04 14:43:22

The real threat to human colonisation is the "planetary protection" dogma. That says we should totally minimise our impact on Mars - even on dead rocks and regolith. For me, that's absurd.

If we find life on Mars it will be a double edged sword. On the one hand there will a huge scientific "gold rush" to get to the planet and study these new life forms which will kick start the indigenous Mars economy. On the other hand it will boost the planetary protectionists and probably lead to restrictive legislation.

It is clear to me at least that there must have been a huge exchange of life forms between Mars and Earth over billions of years - probably why we have extremophiles on planet Earth. Mars will frequently have been bombarded by chunks of Earth rock and ice containing Earth life forms. Whether they survived is anyone's guess, but my point is a well ordered colonisation effort is not going to do any more damage.

When the time comes to terraform there will certainly be ethical issues to consider. However, if all the life forms on Mars are small organisms, we can simply preserve the life in specialist environments and proceed with terraformation. Real ethical issues would only present themselves if we were faced with complex ecosystems and much larger organisms. There is not a lot of evidence for the latter as yet.

kbd512 · 2021-07-04 21:48:03

Calliban wrote:

Diarrhoea would be even less fun than it usually is in a 20' wide tin can with a fully recirculating air system.

Words to live by.

Calliban wrote:

You will get the same sort of cranks that claim that the moon landings were faked.

You'll get those no matter what you do. Guaranteed.

Oldfart1939 · 2021-07-05 10:43:07

Differentiating any native Mars based life forms with those from Earth originated forms would be quite simple today due to the sophistication of nucleic acid analysis of the DNA contained in what is discovered. This assumes that life forms are universally DNA/protein based organisms. One of the instruments I neglected to include in my laboratory would be (should be) a DNA analyzer.

The entire argument that planetary protection of Mar should preclude travel there is ridiculous.
As Louis stated, protection of sand, rocks, and a barren planet is absurd.

P.S. I really don't think that the CCP gives a tinkers damn about what the planetary protection people think! That will not stop or even incrementally slow down the Chinese.

Last edited by Oldfart1939 (2021-07-05 10:47:48)

louis · 2021-07-05 17:14:36

There was faecal matter floating around on some of the Apollo Missions, I recall reading. I expect things are more hygienic on the ISS now!

kbd512 wrote:

Calliban wrote:
Diarrhoea would be even less fun than it usually is in a 20' wide tin can with a fully recirculating air system.
Words to live by.
Calliban wrote:
You will get the same sort of cranks that claim that the moon landings were faked.
You'll get those no matter what you do. Guaranteed.

louis · 2021-07-05 17:16:34

Absolutely not! They will play their usual self-serving double game. They will be pushing planetary protection now to slow down Space X but as soon as they are ready to take the lead the concern will be jettisoned.

Oldfart1939 wrote:

Differentiating any native Mars based life forms with those from Earth originated forms would be quite simple today due to the sophistication of nucleic acid analysis of the DNA contained in what is discovered. This assumes that life forms are universally DNA/protein based organisms. One of the instruments I neglected to include in my laboratory would be (should be) a DNA analyzer.
The entire argument that planetary protection of Mar should preclude travel there is ridiculous.
As Louis stated, protection of sand, rocks, and a barren planet is absurd.
P.S. I really don't think that the CCP gives a tinkers damn about what the planetary protection people think! That will not stop or even incrementally slow down the Chinese.

kbd512 · 2021-07-05 22:36:38

louis wrote:

Absolutely not! They will play their usual self-serving double game. They will be pushing planetary protection now to slow down Space X but as soon as they are ready to take the lead the concern will be jettisoned.

I agree 100%. I've yet to hear a convincing argument as to why we need protect Mars from Earth or vice versa. These people have seen one too many Hollyweird movies.

Oldfart1939 · 2021-07-05 23:33:49

"These people have seen one too many Hollyweird movies."

No. They are the ones writing the scripts. Vivid imaginations.

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-08-14 09:44:25

WION has more Hindu India English breaking news from South Asia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka...they fear the Mars Doomsday virus?

Elon Musk uses ‘laughing in British’ meme to mock Biden plan to hire more tax collectors

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worl … 44229.html

Mars sample collection risks bringing to Earth deadly alien virus

https://www.wionews.com/science/mars-sa … now-478730

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2022-08-14 09:49:13)

SpaceNut · 2022-08-14 10:27:55

The adding of IRS was to cover the paper mound that is still not getting processed as caused by electronic identity theft and much more.

New Mars Forums

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#1 2020-11-15 10:16:50

Robert Zubrin's article on "Wokeist" opposition to Space exploration

#2 2020-11-15 10:31:53

Re: Robert Zubrin's article on "Wokeist" opposition to Space exploration

#3 2020-11-15 11:06:01

Re: Robert Zubrin's article on "Wokeist" opposition to Space exploration

#4 2020-11-15 11:14:19

Re: Robert Zubrin's article on "Wokeist" opposition to Space exploration

#5 2020-11-15 11:26:01

Re: Robert Zubrin's article on "Wokeist" opposition to Space exploration

#6 2020-11-15 18:47:19

Re: Robert Zubrin's article on "Wokeist" opposition to Space exploration

#7 2020-11-15 20:18:15

Re: Robert Zubrin's article on "Wokeist" opposition to Space exploration

#8 2020-11-16 19:18:04

Re: Robert Zubrin's article on "Wokeist" opposition to Space exploration

#9 2020-11-17 10:52:00

Re: Robert Zubrin's article on "Wokeist" opposition to Space exploration

#10 2020-11-17 11:34:59

Re: Robert Zubrin's article on "Wokeist" opposition to Space exploration

#11 2021-07-04 05:38:14

Re: Robert Zubrin's article on "Wokeist" opposition to Space exploration

#12 2021-07-04 10:29:25

Re: Robert Zubrin's article on "Wokeist" opposition to Space exploration

#13 2021-07-04 11:08:33

Re: Robert Zubrin's article on "Wokeist" opposition to Space exploration

#14 2021-07-04 13:29:44

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#15 2021-07-04 14:43:22

Re: Robert Zubrin's article on "Wokeist" opposition to Space exploration

#16 2021-07-04 21:48:03

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#17 2021-07-05 10:43:07

Re: Robert Zubrin's article on "Wokeist" opposition to Space exploration

#18 2021-07-05 17:14:36

Re: Robert Zubrin's article on "Wokeist" opposition to Space exploration

#19 2021-07-05 17:16:34

Re: Robert Zubrin's article on "Wokeist" opposition to Space exploration

#20 2021-07-05 22:36:38

Re: Robert Zubrin's article on "Wokeist" opposition to Space exploration

#21 2021-07-05 23:33:49

Re: Robert Zubrin's article on "Wokeist" opposition to Space exploration

#22 2022-08-14 09:44:25

Re: Robert Zubrin's article on "Wokeist" opposition to Space exploration

#23 2022-08-14 10:27:55

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