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I didn't think it required a thorough reading. The Planetary Protection Office is a farce, in my opinion. Even if there were species on Mars to protect, they're going to have to fend for themselves against potentially superior Earth organisms. That's how life works; red in tooth and claw. I am actually of the opinion that we should intentionally infect all of our space probes with as many extremophiles as we can before sending them up, on the off chance that if Earth were destroyed tomorrow, that one lonely surviving bacterium might give the next planet a head start on DNA-based life. And I was referring to the eventual destruction of Earth itself by the expansion of the sun. Or any other mass-extinction event, really, but that's the nearly guaranteed, almost inevitable one. If humans do not transplant Earth life to other planets as quickly and cheaply as possible, out of fear of potentially destroying any native xenospecies that may exist, the gap in expenses and technical requirements may prevent that transplantation from ever occurring on a grand enough scale to matter. Earth life will then be destroyed when Earth is destroyed. I'm not going to doom trillions of organisms on the possibility that they might infect other planets. Colonizing other planets is the biggest point in favor of having a space program! -- In the US, a treaty requires implementing legislation to be binding on the subjects rather than just the government. Any such law would only be de facto applicable to American or Russian [0] subjects returning to Earth (and specifically the US or Russia) from Mars. Anyone remaining on Mars could simply renounce citizenship and thumb his or her nose at the blue planet. Without such a law, the US would be responsible for breach of the treaty, and the person doing the act that triggered the breach would be blameless. It would be analogous to attempting to enforce English colonial laws in Boston after 1783, except it would take the cops 2.5 years to get there before they could even begin to try to arrest you. [0] I think Russia is the designated successor state to most, if not all, USSR treaties. |
I guess you missed the part where Conley talked about how short her time-frame is for observing any (potentially) undisturbed aliens, because she assumes we'll be sending humans to Mars in the next few decades.
She also didn't discuss the ethics of killing aliens. Instead the article explained the scientific benefits of analyzing alien life.