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"Presumably something will be worked out as the reality comes nearer." One would hope so. I must point out that private space travel was entirely out of the qu
by DanielBMarkham 11y ago
"Presumably something will be worked out as the reality comes nearer."
One would hope so. I must point out that private space travel was entirely out of the question with NASA for many years. It's only been very recently that the idea has started to catch on -- and it's not universally lauded across the agency. Gotta wonder what kind of obstacles we're currently setting up (perhaps without fully realizing it) for anything beyond LEO.
- mturmon 11y agoOK, I spent some time looking and according to the latest survey I could find (from 2014, http://mepag.nasa.gov/reports/Rummel_et_al_Astrobiology_14-SR-SAG2.pdf http://mepag.nasa.gov/reports/Rummel_et_al_Astrobiology_14-S...), here is the state of knowledge: [Sec. 6] "Strong interest exists among various countries and private industries to send humans to Mars, both for short-term exploration and long-term colonization." (and on for 3 dense pages). So, private ventures are part of their deliberations. [Sec. 8, end] "It will be impossible for all human-associated processes and operations to be conducted within entirely closed systems, so protocols need to be established so (1) human missions to Mars will not contaminate Special Regions nor be contaminated by materials (or possibly organisms) from them and (2) human activities on Mars will avoid converting Non-Special Regions to Special Regions and thus help control the spread of terrestrial microorganisms on Mars." * The basic strategy is to identify and avoid "Special Regions".