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Genesis-Wildfire
"Based on the Genesis experience, the space agency's planetary protection
officer advised, "NASA will gain knowledge that will greatly aid in an eventual sample return from Mars or some other location that might have more interest from a potentially biological perspective." -space.com, 8-30-4 Imagine if this payload contained a viable pathogen from Mars. Would we have had to nuke the valley in a cheap remake of The Andromeda Strain? Dugway's containments are useless if the capsule ruptures BEFORE getting there. As a helicopter pilot I can tell you that entire scenario is UNSAFE for biopotential sample returns. What NASA has demonstrated is that biopotential sample return missions should be delivered NO CLOSER THAN LEO to quarantine in the International Space Station. We are playing with Wildfire, and this time we dodged the bullet. |
#2
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"Gallery Neolithica" wrote in message . com... "Based on the Genesis experience, the space agency's planetary protection officer advised, "NASA will gain knowledge that will greatly aid in an eventual sample return from Mars or some other location that might have more interest from a potentially biological perspective." -space.com, 8-30-4 Imagine if this payload contained a viable pathogen from Mars. Would we have had to nuke the valley in a cheap remake of The Andromeda Strain? Dugway's containments are useless if the capsule ruptures BEFORE getting there. As a helicopter pilot I can tell you that entire scenario is UNSAFE for biopotential sample returns. What NASA has demonstrated is that biopotential sample return missions should be delivered NO CLOSER THAN LEO to quarantine in the International Space Station. We are playing with Wildfire, and this time we dodged the bullet. This has been considered before. For one thing, consider lifeforms on earth. Very few infectious agents are effective outside of their host species. Rabies, the flu and leprosy are three of the few that come to mind and leprosy isn't lethal (I think) in armidillos. And they all have DNA or RNA in common. So far we haven't seen any lifeforms that don't contain DNA or RNA. So now the big question is... is RNA/DNA unique to Earth or not? If so, it's doubtful that any other lifeforms could infect us. If not, then it's more likely. However, as they've been evolved in the absence of human hosts, it's again unlikely that they can successfully be infectious to humans. And as 6 Apollo landing missions have shown, there's most likely nothing on the Moon or in between. So, is it possible, but odds are against it and it has been considered. |
#3
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What NASA has demonstrated is that biopotential sample return missions
should be delivered NO CLOSER THAN LEO to quarantine in the International Space Station. Doesn't make you safer. ISS delivery will require aerobraking, which means there is a substantial chance the thing will plunge to Earth, anyway. And would you quarantine the ISS crew up there as well? |
#4
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Use active braking. No heatshield. Burn it up if it blows the orbital
insertion. No need to quarantine the ISS crew as long as containment is maintained. Any crewdog worth his/her salt would accept these parameters to prevent potential disaster. Absolutely safer. |
#5
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In article ,
Gallery Neolithica wrote: Imagine if this payload contained a viable pathogen from Mars. Would we have had to nuke the valley in a cheap remake of The Andromeda Strain? Dugway's containments are useless if the capsule ruptures BEFORE getting there. As a helicopter pilot I can tell you that entire scenario is UNSAFE for biopotential sample returns. This was obvious from the start, and the mission planners don't need you to tell them so. There was never any intention of using this method for sample returns in general. Different requirements yield different solutions. The recent concepts I've seen for Mars sample capsules simply don't *have* a parachute. They have relatively high-drag shapes that will have fairly low terminal velocities, and they just do a hard landing. When you start with a non-negotiable requirement that the sample container must remain intact and sealed despite a parachute failure, you quickly conclude that there's little point in bothering with the parachute at all... -- "Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer -- George Herbert | |
#6
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Keep it off my planet, Henry. And as a matter of fact, the mission planners
do need our input. They (Challenger, Columbia, Genesis, Grissom's Mercury, etc) are quite fallible and in need of supervision by the people that run this place. THE TAXPAYERS. The ones who might die if they get this one wrong. Parrotheads need pilots to prevent production of poop. Henry Spencer wrote: "When you start with a non-negotiable requirement that the sample container must remain intact and sealed despite a parachute failure, you quickly conclude that there's little point in bothering with the parachute at all..." |
#7
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Gallery Neolithica wrote:
Keep it off my planet, Henry. And as a matter of fact, the mission planners do need our input. They (Challenger, Columbia, Genesis, Grissom's Mercury, etc) are quite fallible and in need of supervision by the people that run this place. THE TAXPAYERS. The ones who might die if they get this one wrong. Parrotheads need pilots to prevent production of poop. Everyone's input is welcomed. However, the vast majority of the public are not paranoid loons, and therefore you're almost certainly going to get outvoted. Claiming the one true right to stake a position on behalf of all taxpayers/members of the general public/any large group is always a sign of fringe extremists. -george william herbert |
#8
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"Gallery Neolithica" writes:
Keep it off my planet, Henry. And as a matter of fact, the mission planners do need our input. They (Challenger, Columbia, Genesis, Grissom's Mercury, etc) are quite fallible and in need of supervision by the people that run this place. THE TAXPAYERS. The ones who might die if they get this one wrong. Parrotheads need pilots to prevent production of poop. I fully agree that the design, and all calculations, should be fully public, and the mission should not proceed until it can be shown that beyond any *reasonable* doubt, the mission will not contaminate Earth. However, this goal can be achieved in many ways. Ruling out any sample return to Earth, without doing detailed analysis, is way too early. If in fact there is no way to do so safely, it should come out as a result of the analysis, not as an initial condition. Note that the engineering goal can be approached in many ways. For example, you could demonstrate that a leak would probably not be catastrophic by sending a few plants, mice, etc. to Mars and exposing them to a portion of the samples you intend to send back. If nothing happens to them, then you can accept a larger chance of a leak upon re-entry. Likewise if mass spectroscopy shows no large molecules, the odds go down, and so on. Also, any reasonable analysis has to look at the proposed risk in relation to existing risks. Given that there are thousands of labs, all over the world, working with organisms we *know* are infectious, the background risk is far from negligable. All we can rationally demand from a Mars sample return is that it be small compared to these known existing risks. So, overall, it's way to early to say "Mars sample returns should not land on Earth". Lou Scheffer .. |
#9
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JRS: In article , dated Fri, 10 Sep 2004
19:20:09, seen in news:sci.space.policy, Henry Spencer posted : The recent concepts I've seen for Mars sample capsules simply don't *have* a parachute. They have relatively high-drag shapes that will have fairly low terminal velocities, and they just do a hard landing. When you start with a non-negotiable requirement that the sample container must remain intact and sealed despite a parachute failure, you quickly conclude that there's little point in bothering with the parachute at all... If the exact state of Genesis' re-entry systems had been known a year or so in advance, it would I suppose have been possible to make it re-enter at a choice of location (and angle). Where, then, should it have been sent? The sea? A large lake? An area covered by tough yet springy vegetation? A snowfield? Marshland? White Sands, for capture by a truck with outriggers all covered in mattresses? Morecambe Bay, at high/low tide? -- © John Stockton, Surrey, UK. Turnpike v4.00 MIME. © Web URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/ - FAQqish topics, acronyms & links; some Astro stuff via astro.htm, gravity0.htm; quotes.htm; pascal.htm; &c, &c. No Encoding. Quotes before replies. Snip well. Write clearly. Don't Mail News. |
#10
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In article ,
Dr John Stockton wrote: If the exact state of Genesis' re-entry systems had been known a year or so in advance, it would I suppose have been possible to make it re-enter at a choice of location (and angle). Some choice of site would have been possible, although the general direction of its approach to Earth was largely fixed and that limits the choices. Where, then, should it have been sent? The sea? A large lake? An area covered by tough yet springy vegetation? A snowfield? Marshland? White Sands, for capture by a truck with outriggers all covered in mattresses? Morecambe Bay, at high/low tide? Water can be very hard if you hit it at the wrong angle, plus if the sample container does get ruptured, water quickly adds severe contamination, in addition to making it hard to gather up the pieces. You'd still want to bring it down on dry land. The truck with mattresses is not a bad idea, except that the reentry wasn't very precise and it might be hard to get the truck to exactly the right place in a hurry. (And you wouldn't use mattresses, but rather something crushable, maybe styrofoam.) Probably the best choice of location, assuming full freedom to pick a site, would be dense coniferous forest. (Deciduous forests tend to have a lot of empty air under their canopy, while conifers are often dense foliage most of the way down.) -- "Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer -- George Herbert | |
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