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NASA Planetary Protection Policy

planetaryprotection.nasa.gov

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Re: NASA Planetary Protection Policy

#41

Post by praxulus »

politician wrote: post #18
Tuna-Fish wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Terraforming is pointless anyway. Space-based habitats are a much more efficient way to expand our living space, and most importantly, when living in one, you don't need to live at the bottom of a gravity well.

To paraphrase someone else, when planet-bound civilizations fall to barbarism, people revert to agrarian societies; when space-based habitats fall to barbarism, everybody dies . The difference being that maintaining a habitat takes a lot of technology that is constantly kept in working order.

Modern farming is also a high tech field, most people will die anyway when you revert to agrarian societies. Once you've spread across multiple planets you're no longer at (significant) risk of extinction, so the effect is pretty much the same.

Re: NASA Planetary Protection Policy

#42

Post by grecy »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #35
grecy wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am indeed. As humans, we seem to think we're the most important thing getting around. Even your comment suggests killing off humans is much worse than killing of bacteria on Mars. Back to my story, the bad-ass aliens might very well look at us just like you're looking at the bacteria on Mars. What's the difference? (nothing)

We're capable of thought, and bacteria aren't. That's a pretty sharp divider. I'd be grumpy if scientists were going to wipe out a planet of earth-plants, but it would be a travesty if they wiped out the planet of moose.

You're still not getting it.

> We're capable of thought, and bacteria aren't.

When the bad-ass aliens come along they'll say "We're capable of faster than light travel, humans aren't."

Think about this from the outside perspective for a second.

Re: NASA Planetary Protection Policy

#43

Post by MichaelSalib »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #11

Just to be clear, all of you geeks out there watching the space travel develop and dreaming of a science-fiction type future where people can visit multiple planets and space travel is common? Paging Elon Musk? Guess what? There are factions that are actively moving to make sure that doesn't happen. As it turns out, many believe that we need to be so cautious that even if we could get in a rocket tomorrow and go to M…

This sort of paranoia is really bizarre to see.

There are 7 billion people on this planet. For every absurd and stupid notion, there are millions of adherents. But people who think that humanity must never colonize other planets don't matter because:

1. They have no power

2. We're not going to colonize anything in the next few decades anyway; sending people to Mars would cost a trillion dollars and no one is interested in paying for that

I mean, you're taking something very simple, namely, a science organization takes some precautions to keep their scientific instrument from ruining the experiment it is going to conduct, and reinterpreting it as part of some vast conspiracy. That's...not healthy.

Re: NASA Planetary Protection Policy

#44

Post by pavel_lishin »

grecy wrote: post #42
Dylan16807 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're capable of thought, and bacteria aren't. That's a pretty sharp divider. I'd be grumpy if scientists were going to wipe out a planet of earth-plants, but it would be a travesty if they wiped out the planet of moose.

You're still not getting it. > We're capable of thought, and bacteria aren't. When the bad-ass aliens come along they'll say "We're capable of faster than light travel, humans aren't." Think about this from the outside perspective for a second.

1. Our decisions will not impact the decisions of aliens

2. I don't see any reason why eradicating non-sentient bacteria is immoral. Outside perspective doesn't matter on this point; see 1.

Re: NASA Planetary Protection Policy

#45

Post by MichaelSalib »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #14
tocomment wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you. This kind of stuff makes me kind of hope we don't find any signs of life on Mars. Hopefully at that point there would be nothing to protect from contamination.

I agree. But here's the conundrum: how you can you ever be sure there isn't life somewhere? From a logistics and logical standpoint, it's impossible. All you can say is "We haven't found life so far" ADD: And are we saying that separately-evolved strains of life should never have interaction with each other unless we can be sure of all of the consequences? Sure, many of the consequences will be catastrophic, but is i…

It makes me very sad to realize than many would say yes, it is.

Do you have a cite? Or are you talking about very many imaginary people?

Re: NASA Planetary Protection Policy

#46

Post by ams6110 »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #24
wkdown wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose I can understand the argument. I know if/when we find life on another planet or moon (Europa, Titan, etc) that no living matter from Earth should touch that world, for fear of mutating / polluting it. But when it comes to others we either know have no life (Mercury, Jupiter, etc) or most likely don't (Venus, Mars, etc), what is the harm in human exploration or even terraforming attempts? Even if humans "inf…

The worry isn't about "polluting the universe", it's about contaminating what's basically a big scientific petri dish - Mars. If we start tossing buckets of sludge out there, determining whether there was ever any native life becomes significantly more difficult. "There are elements trying to keep us from spreading throughout the universe" sounds incredibly paranoid.

Hard to imagine that any life that formed independently on Mars would ever be confused with life tranplanted there from Earth...... unless life on Earth came from Mars to begin with?

Re: NASA Planetary Protection Policy

#47

Post by anigbrowl »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #11

Just to be clear, all of you geeks out there watching the space travel develop and dreaming of a science-fiction type future where people can visit multiple planets and space travel is common? Paging Elon Musk? Guess what? There are factions that are actively moving to make sure that doesn't happen. As it turns out, many believe that we need to be so cautious that even if we could get in a rocket tomorrow and go to M…

Some, I'm willing to believe, already feel very adamantly that mankind is a pestilence and should be prevented from spreading.

Oh rubbish. It's basic lab protocol that you don't contaminate your samples, and we're at the very early stages of sample-gathering. We're just at the stage of figuring out whether Mars has ever had liquid water or not, so your worries about budget interplanetary travel being held up by interfering bureaucrats are almost comically premature.

Re: NASA Planetary Protection Policy

#48

Post by MichaelSalib »

ams6110 wrote: post #46
pavel_lishin wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worry isn't about "polluting the universe", it's about contaminating what's basically a big scientific petri dish - Mars. If we start tossing buckets of sludge out there, determining whether there was ever any native life becomes significantly more difficult. "There are elements trying to keep us from spreading throughout the universe" sounds incredibly paranoid.

Hard to imagine that any life that formed independently on Mars would ever be confused with life tranplanted there from Earth...... unless life on Earth came from Mars to begin with?

Perhaps given a full blown xenobiology laboratory staffed with hundreds of the world's top scientists and every instrument money can buy, it would be easy to distinguish earth-borne bacteria from non-earth-borne bacteria. But since we've only got a car-sized rover with a handful of instruments and no scientists on site, we need to be more careful.

In any event, how exactly do you differentiate earth-borne bacteria from non-earth-borne bacteria? What's your rubric?

Re: NASA Planetary Protection Policy

#49

Post by nateabele »

_delirium wrote: post #40
colkassad wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Guess what? There are factions that are actively moving to make sure that doesn't happen. Do you have any examples? This is interesting. Reminds me of the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson.

It's not exactly a recent one so more of historical interest, but back when people thought interplanetary colonization was actually plausible in the near term, C.S. Lewis was an advocate against it. He wrote a dystopian sci-fi trilogy containing a good amount of satire on the subject [1], which sparked an on-again-off-again correspondence, cordial but without much agreement, with Arthur C. Clarke, initiated when Clar…

Based on the above, I'm pretty sure you've never actually read the Space Trilogy. Lewis isn't advocating for or against anything. The stories are allegorical.

Setting them on planets other than Earth (although the third book takes place exclusively on Earth) provides an opportunity to examine closely-held beliefs commonly taken for granted.

Re: NASA Planetary Protection Policy

#50

Post by _delirium »

nateabele wrote: post #49
_delirium wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not exactly a recent one so more of historical interest, but back when people thought interplanetary colonization was actually plausible in the near term, C.S. Lewis was an advocate against it. He wrote a dystopian sci-fi trilogy containing a good amount of satire on the subject [1], which sparked an on-again-off-again correspondence, cordial but without much agreement, with Arthur C. Clarke, initiated when Clar…

Based on the above, I'm pretty sure you've never actually read the Space Trilogy. Lewis isn't advocating for or against anything. The stories are allegorical. Setting them on planets other than Earth (although the third book takes place exclusively on Earth) provides an opportunity to examine closely-held beliefs commonly taken for granted.

Clarke may have been reading too much into Perelandra by interpreting it that way, but Lewis didn't seem to object to that reading in the correspondence, and defended a view that Weston really was an accurate portrayal of what what Lewis saw as a likely future outcome of space-travel, an arrogant war of conquest to dominate the galaxy and subjugate any other worlds that might exist, in pursuit of technology and power.

Among other comments from his letters:

I don't of course think at the moment many scientists are budding Westons: but I do think (hang it all, I live among scientists!) that a point of view not unlike Weston's is on the way ... a race devoted to the increase of its own power by technology with complete indifference to ethics does seem to me a cancer in the Universe.

He also liked to sign off his letters to Clarke with comments like, "I wish you every success except a practical realization of space travel".

edit: A bit more in the section "Lewis and space exploration" here: http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1754/1

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