
‘Tardigrades on the Moon Is Not Good’ - neom
https://news.yahoo.com/tardigrades-moon-not-good-103051545.html
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tomxor
> What you are doing is showing excitement at the long history of forcing OUR
> values, systems, and in this case, living beings on another world. That is
> not our right, and it is not our job. If we carry on with that mentality,
> even if we took away the ‘colonization’ word the premise is the same. It’s
> colonialism. It’s imperialism.

hmm, defending the rights of non existent beings from colonialism on a barren
inhospitable moon? cmon it's a frickin postage stamp load of water bears...
Let get real, if they manage to populate a single crater it will be a miracle,
and no Moon creatures are likely to be harmed since they are so elusive.

[edit]

So, it seems this person has a bit of an anti planetary colonization, anti
planetary contamination... anti planetary pretty much anything that comes in
physical contact with it agenda:

[http://astrobiology.com/2019/07/absolute-prioritization-
of-p...](http://astrobiology.com/2019/07/absolute-prioritization-of-planetary-
protection-safety-and-avoiding-imperialism-in-all-future-scienc.html)

Elon Musk is not going to like this person.

~~~
sq_
Not trying to be combative, but I find it interesting that you specifically
note that you think "Elon Musk is not going to like this person".

Is there a specific reason that you feel like that and wanted to note it? I
know he's usually known for being rather outspoken about his chosen method in
a given field of space exploration.

~~~
tomxor
> I find it interesting that you specifically note that you think "Elon Musk
> is not going to like this person". Is there a specific reason that you feel
> like that and wanted to note it?

He wants to colonize Mars, he has stated this desire in great detail publicly
on multiple occasions.

------
Causality1
If tardigrades were capable of reproducing on the moon it'd already be
colonized. There has been more than enough impact ejecta in the last 530
million years to land living tardigrades on the moon long before humans even
evolved.

------
wetpaws
Nasa gives themselves and humanity too much credit.

Universe don't care about anything of this. It births and kills billions of
stars in a blink of a second, shatter and reshape planetary systems and
obliterate entire galaxies while some scientists are thinking of
decontamination protocols and coming with pretentious ideas that anything they
do has any resemblance of importance.

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em-bee
i have a hard time believing that the first moon missions were completely
sterile and that they didn't already leave lots of potentially living matter
behind.

and don't we want to colonize the moon? and mars? if we do, i think we need to
throw out any pretense that we can control what gets sent up there.

i mean, it is worth to have a debate and consider the side effects, but it's
way to late for a "must not send living matter to the moon" stance.

the only thing not good here is that this living cargo was apparently kept
secret.

send to the moon whatever you want, but please be open about it, so that we
can observe it and have a scientific debate about the risks and effects.

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Grue3
No, it's actually good. We need to terraform the Moon and get an ecosystem
going. This will be much simpler to do than on Mars due to the distances
involved.

~~~
crgwbr
Is terraforming the moon even possible? I was under the impression it had too
little gravity to ever hold onto an atmosphere. Mars, OTOH, at least already
has a thin atmosphere to work with.

~~~
Grue3
The issue with atmosphere escaping can be solved by building transparent eco-
domes that would allow sunshine in, but prevent the air from leaking out.

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devoply
yeah there is no ethics in space. leave ethics and all the human drama on
earth and colonize space. there is nothing to protect out there. there is only
stuff to protect on earth.

~~~
sq_
Part of the reason we're going out there is to find out whether or not we're
alone in the universe and to learn more about how we ourselves might have come
to be.

I think there's a balance to be struck between planetary protection and
getting humans out there. No matter what, once we send humans somewhere, there
_will_ be contamination, but we should at least make a good effort to avoid
contamination when possible.

~~~
devoply
No we should not. We should be expedient and expansionary in space not
stiffing any opportunity with any unnecessary rules. After a thousand or few
thousand years when there are plenty of humans out there laws will
automatically follow. For instance if someone wishes to do research to create
animals that can survive on different planets to genetically engineer bacteria
to do the same we should not get in their way.

The only downside of such thinking is whether we can trust what we engineer
for out there not to contaminate our planet, which is a much bigger issue /
risk.

------
slowmovintarget
> Mary Ann Cramer : I have to ask you the same question people back home are
> asking about space these days. Is it worth it? Should we just pull back?
> Forget the whole thing as a bad idea, and take care of our own problems, at
> home.

> Cmdr. Jeffrey Sinclair : No. We have to stay here. And there's a simple
> reason why. Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population
> control, genetics, and you'll get ten different answers, but there's one
> thing every scientist on the planet agrees on. Whether it happens in a
> hundred years or a thousand years or a million years, eventually our Sun
> will grow cold and go out. When that happens, it won't just take us. It'll
> take Marilyn Monroe, and Lao-Tzu, and Einstein, and Morobuto, and Buddy
> Holly, and Aristophanes, and - all of this - all of this - was for nothing.
> Unless we go to the stars.

Space colonization == survival. So yes, we should have colonial attitudes, and
no, they're not the same as imperialism.

