jacob navia wrote:

Le 02/05/2017 à 02:47, Fred J. McCall a écrit :
No, I'm the one making the claim that there is so little risk that
going nuts and quarantining Mars forever because it's somehow
different than the Moon makes little sense.

Agreed. Going nuts is a bad thing, and quarantining Mars forever is also
stupid.


If going nuts is a bad thing, you should probably resist doing it so
frequently.


I was saying that before bringing any marsian biological material here,
we should find out "in situ" i.e. in Mars, what kind of life exists there.


And when you don't find any, how long do you look? The range and
scope of toasters is limited.


There are no technical barriers for studying marsian life remotely.
Actually, that was what Viking did already.


Well, other than the "have the right instruments and cover enough
ground" 'barriers'.


Taking care of bio hazards with first contact is just taking elementary
precautions. After we have analized marsian life and its behavior we can
make a better judgement about its potential danger.


What Martian life? So far as we can tell right now, there isn't any.


Marsian life is adapted to mars, i.e. underground life, probably
bacteria, and maybe higher forms. It could be dangerous in earth
conditions, and anyway, if it exists we should not send people to mars.


What Martian life? So far as we can tell right now, there isn't any.


And here is the reason why you seem to ignore marsian life. It would
make all the plans of sending people to mars impossible.


How's that again?


Since humans can't be sterilized, and making a 100% containment for
earth bacteria on mars is impossible, all landing plans would have to be
scrapped.


Why? You think we're going to find spotted owls or something?


We can then conduct experiments (aboard a space station around mars, for
instance) to see how earth life forms interact with marsian forms.

If we see no problems we can go a step further and send a few people
that would not be allowed to come back until several years have passed
and we know that there is no immediate risk.

First contact is not to be taken lightly.


So how many centuries do you want to sit and spin with toasters?


--
"Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar
territory."
--G. Behn