Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to re: To Boldly Go...

re: To Go like a real Fool...
Joe2700 — (archived)

Your key statement is "We know how to handle highly hazardous infectious agents on Earth". Mars is not Earth and who knows how life evolved there. Life is always full of surprises in how it adapts.

As for your red herring about meteorites, there is a big difference to something that has been blasted by the Sun's radiation for millions of years versus a sample being set in a protective environment.

Your are the luddite, still believing in the old philosophy of not taking reasonable precautions to protect humans and ecosytems before hand, just trusting in luck that nothing bad will happen. The old pionners didn't know how invasive species could destroy an ecosystem and really didn't care about it. Folks do now except for fools which never learn...

As for nuclear material in space, that is not something I worry about and maybe that is one way to make samples sterile, placing a high energy radioactive power source near the sample to kill any bacteria that might survive the flight - simulating a million years exposure to the Sun's radiation. A year or so near a high energy source should do the job to make it as safe as a meteorite and it wouldn't be any riskier then any other radioacitve source returning to Earth. Might be the easiest way to ensure the safety of Earth's ecosystems.

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