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It has been thought that we infested each planet on which we dropped a probe with tardigrades, especially the earlier missions. Inadvertently infecting the Sol
by onecommentman 6y ago
It has been thought that we infested each planet on which we dropped a probe with tardigrades, especially the earlier missions. Inadvertently infecting the Solar System is one argument against space exploration...humans are just too dumb and clumsy at this point.
- hobby-coder-guy 6y agoIt has been thought? By who?
- mrlala 6y agoOne might say, if we are the only life to enjoy the solar system (in any reasonable proximity), then does it really matter?
- aeternum 6y agoWhy is spreading life seen as a negative? There are still an unfathomable number of planets without life. Isn't spreading life a good thing?
- JauntTrooper 6y agoIt would be poetic if tardigrades end up colonizing other worlds hundreds of years before we do.
- aeternum 6y agoPerhaps they already have!
- dyingkneepad 6y agoThe danger is if there is already some life that we're not aware of, then our tardrigades screw up their environment, eventually killing them. We don't want our tiny bacteria killing their tiny bacteria.
- temp0826 6y agoIt is illogical to have such disregard for the prime directive.
- bpodgursky 6y agoThe Prime Directive prohibits contact with intelligent pre-warp civilizations. Starfleet colonized quite a few planets without existing intelligent life.
- gmuslera 6y agoConsidering recent events, I'm not so sure if there is intelligent life on Earth. We are ripe for being colonized by what would be the Starfleet of a different star system, even if they have a Prime Directive.
- WalterBright 6y agoStar Trek violated the Prime Directive in just about every episode. (They wouldn't have had any plots if they didn't.)
- benibela 6y agoAnd they discovered that Tardigrades are probably already everywhere, since they can travel through the mycelial network
- Traubenfuchs 6y agoIt's illogical to keep ecosystems alive that could potentially harm us and it's illogical not to spread ecosystems that are habitable for us.
- antonvs 6y agoDoes morality come into this?
- mlyle 6y agoTo the extent that we accidentally contaminate the moon -- with life, radioactive material, etc -- we screw up some of our ability to study the origins of life, the solar system, etc. And we don't materially seed the universe with more life in the process. But then again, astronauts have been there, and the practices that were used were not (could not be) completely sterile. Still, this is probably a bit worse.
- aeternum 6y agoThere 200+ moons in our solar system alone and an uncountable number outside it. Each second we delay space travel, millions of moons are consumed by black holes or obliterated by asteroid collisions. If humanity became space-fairing earlier, perhaps we could save some of them. We're probably committing more alien genocide by delaying space travel than we ever would through contamination.
- mlyle 6y agoI never said to delay space travel. But that doesn't mean "seed the moon with Tardigrades" either.
- aeternum 6y agoEnsuring that our spacecraft are 100% sterile costs significant money and time. Maybe there are some things we can do that provide high ROI, but my inclination is that building bases and having humans basically live on the moon is going to require giving up its sterility.
- mlyle 6y agoSure... AGAIN, the horse is already somewhat out of the barn on the Moon in particular (human spaceflight already went there, I think), but this tardigrade thing, in retrospect, was extremely stupid.
- noizejoy 6y ago> delaying space travel In the context of space and time in the universe delaying things by a century or two is like delaying something in our life by a blink of an eye.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jrochkind1 6y agoI'm honestly not sure. Why would it be?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- petre 6y agoBecause one could end up with invasive life brought from Earth, just like it happened with cats brought to isolated islands that had endemic species of birds with no predators.
- thesuitonym 6y agoThe counter argument is that if the life we inadvertently leave throughout the solar system thrives, that's an interesting result too. This only really becomes a problem if there was other life to begin with.
- tessierashpool 6y agoit's not impossible, but this could be how Earth got tardigrades in the first place. (it's a stretch, of course.)
- BitwiseFool 6y agoWhat would the tartigrades eat? Surely they would die off eventually due to a lack of an ecosystem - no matter how hardy they are.
- PeterisP 6y agoThey don't eat, they're dehydrated and passive without any metabolism until (if) they are rehydrated.
- zepto 6y agoWhat would they eat if they were rehydrated?
- p1mrx 6y agoPresumably whatever food people provide with the water.
- airesearcher 6y agoCheese
- dumpsterdiver 6y agoFor awhile they could survive on a carnivorous diet by eating eachother, but they would eventually need a source of algae/plant matter to thrive.
- booleandilemma 6y agoLike trisolarans then.
- cgriswald 6y agoFacing the choice of whether to explore space, consider the worst case scenario. If we explore space, we could potentially destroy the evidence of non-Earth life that we are trying to find. The worst-case scenario from a anthropocentric point of view is that we don't get evidence of non-Earth life. If we do not explore space, we guarantee that worst case scenario. And, ultimately, we doom all Earth-life to extinction in a billion or so years; an extinction we may be able to prevent.
- antonvs 6y agoThe morality of destroying non-Earth life doesn't seem to enter into your analysis.
- cgriswald 6y agoThis is a simplified analysis. On balance, I don't think there is any consistent moral basis for objecting to space travel that is based on not accidentally destroying non-Earth life. Did you have a specific objection in mind? Saying, "It is immoral to risk destroying non-Earth life," would not be enough. One argument is a sort of recursive argument that humans are the best hope for Earth life in the long term, they are also the best hope for solar system life in general. All solar system life is equally doomed—albeit at potentially longer timescales than Earth life.
- dr_orpheus 6y agoWhat makes you say this? The potential to contaminate other planets with life from Earth has been a concern ever since we started planning to put something on a different planet or the moon. This originally got its start in 1958 with the draft of a Planetary Protection Policy [1]. This was prior to the first landing of anything on a body in outer space with Luna 2 in 1959 [2]. This was by the USSR and granted there is not great documentation for anything they actually did, the USSR said they took precautions to prevent biological contamination. For NASA they have been using the planetary protection guidelines since the first lunar lander which was the Ranger mission [3]. Every NASA mission that goes to another planet is required to undergo sterilization using the "Dry Heat Microbial Reduction" [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_on_Space_Research#Planetary_Protection_Policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_on_Space_Research#Pl... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_2#Payload https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_2#Payload [3] https://sma.nasa.gov/sma-disciplines/planetary-protection# https://sma.nasa.gov/sma-disciplines/planetary-protection# Edit: Spelling
- airesearcher 6y agoThe Moon is not a protected environment under Planetary Protection guidelines. Also the rules apply to much larger payloads. Don’t forget the Apollo astronauts left nearly 100 bags of excrement on the Moon.
- beervirus 6y agoUntil we explore and colonize space, we are one random asteroid away from human extinction. The odds in any given year or small, but it's nevertheless an unacceptable risk. We should do everything we can to spread our eggs into other baskets.
- lupire 6y agoHow would an asteroid cause human extinction? We're far more adaptable than dinosaurs.
- mr_toad 6y agoThe asteroid that caused the KT extinction burned every exposed life form, including all the land plants. The atmosphere became incandescent. Anything that survived the inferno would have then had to deal with the clouds of ash blocking out the sun for years. It’s possible some small groups of humans could survive that, if they were survivalist types with bunkers and years of food, but it would be dicey.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- zhte415 6y agoDinosaurs were around for a fair amount of time.. as were and still are, perhaps, cockroaches and dragon flies.