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Mundaka

Banned

Registered: 2004-01-11

Posts: 322

Re: Are there people against contamination of Mars?

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Macte nova virtute, sic itur ad astra

Cobra Commander

Member

From: The outskirts of Detroit.

Registered: 2002-04-09

Posts: 3,039

Re: Are there people against contamination of Mars?

On the other hand, IF a form of life were found that could be reasonably assumed to be non terrestrial, the implication would be that life was everywhere in the Universe. In that case our ability to grow and expand into space might be a requirment for survival: after all, some of those other forms might be just as expansive and nasty as we are.

And such is the nature of life. While we may not want to, we'd better be prepared to find new life and kill it or we have no business being out there.

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Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.

Shaun Barrett

Member

From: Cairns, Queensland, Australia

Registered: 2001-12-28

Posts: 2,843

Re: Are there people against contamination of Mars?

It seems there's not much point in stressing over the ethical implications of introducing terrestrial life into the martian air and soil and thus destroying indigenous life forms. It's probably much too late for should we or shouldn't we? and it's looking more and more likely that we already have!

    I came across an article from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution called "Space probes let earthly germs make themselves at home on Mars."
    For the full story, take a look at [http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opin … sbugs.html]THIS SITE.

    But some of the main points are:-

NASA guidelines permit up to 300 bacterial spores per square metre of a spacecraft's surface - cleaner than most surgical instruments. But many more organisms go along for the ride inside electronic components which, under ordinary circumstances, would never escape into the Martian environment.
     When a spacecraft crashes, however, the chances of contamination go up. NASA engineers say the crash of its 1999 lander somewhere near Mars' South Pole could have released up to 700 million terrestrial spores.

    700,000,000 terrestrial spores!! And that's on a craft deliberately and carefully 'sterilised' by U.S. scientists in 1999.
    What of the Soviet-era probes which crashed on Mars in the 1960s and which weren't 'sterilised' at all?   ???

    Any apocalyptic battle for survival between terrestrial bacteria and truly indigenous martian bacteria, if such a battle were ever to be, must surely have occurred already! It may well have been raging for 40 years.
                                                     

    Naahhh!!! Just kidding. The above article and its scenario ignore impact transfer completely, as do most of them. The chances of Mars having remained quarantined from Earth, and vice versa, for 4.5 billion years are effectively zero. The frequent mass transfer of viable spores in both directions by impact ejecta has surely seen to that.
    Any life found on Mars will be built from the same basic building blocks as you and me. The only question will be: Did it start here and go there, or did it start there and come here?
                                               

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The word 'aerobics' came about when the gym instructors got together and said: If we're going to charge $10 an hour, we can't call it Jumping Up and Down.   - Rita Rudner