This is not a NASA Website. You might learn something. It's YOUR space agency. Get involved. Take it back. Make it work - for YOU.
Exploration

Bill Nye Says Mars Is Not The Place To Raise Your Kids

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
November 19, 2018
Filed under , ,
Bill Nye Says Mars Is Not The Place To Raise Your Kids

Bill Nye: We are not going to live on Mars, let alone turn it into Earth, USA Today
“Sorry, Elon Musk. Bill Nye says the idea of Mars colonization and terraforming – making a planet more Earth-like by modifying its atmosphere – is “science fiction.” “This whole idea of terraforming Mars, as respectful as I can be, are you guys high?” Nye said in an interview with USA TODAY. “We can’t even take care of this planet where we live, and we’re perfectly suited for it, let alone another planet.” The famous science educator and CEO of The Planetary Society appears on National Geographic Channel’s series “MARS.” While the series explores human beings living on the Red Planet and even mining it, that doesn’t mean Nye buys into the idea.”
Keith’s note: If you are interested in the prospect of humans living on other worlds such as Mars it would seem that the Planetary Society is not the organization for you – and its not just Bill Nye who is openly hostile to the notion of humans living on Mars.
The Planetary Society Is Against Human Spaceflight, earlier post
What is Good for Pasadena Is Good For The Planetary Society, earlier post
Planetary Society’s Mars Mission Takes Longer To Do Less, earlier post
The Planetary Society Does Not Want “The Martian” To Happen, earlier post
Planetary Society Does Not Want Humans on Mars, earlier post
The Planetary Society Is Against Human Space Flight, earlier post
Planetary Society is Both For and Against Human Spaceflight, earlier post

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

59 responses to “Bill Nye Says Mars Is Not The Place To Raise Your Kids”

  1. fcrary says:
    0
    0

    When you say, “…make sure [they] do the right thing. Second, we get one chance to do it correctly.” I’m not sure what you mean. From the later comments, I guess you mean planetary protection. But if not, what do you mean and why do you think we only get one chance? If you do mean planetary protection, then I don’t agree that we only get one chance. Or, if so, we’ve already blown it. If the issue is that sensitive and that easily ruined, then all those crashed Soviet landers have already mess things up.

    As far as the Tesla goes, you should check the planetary protection rules for NASA spacecraft. Specifically ones going out beyond the orbit of Mars. Just being on a solar orbit which crosses the orbit of Mars is not a problem. The odds of eventually hitting Mars (for the Tesla, or any NASA spacecraft lost shortly after launch) are easy to calculate and very, very small. They don’t even require serious planetary protection for spacecraft doing Mars flybys. Those just have to navigate so the flyby won’t end up being a crash, even if they loose control of the spacecraft.

    • ThomasLMatula says:
      0
      0

      I wonder sometimes if the astrobiologists who are involved in planetary protection are that current on the state of DNA analysis. If DNA analysis is able to determine that the Sweet Potatos in Polynesian pre-dated European contact hundreds of years after the “contamination” events it will be simple to determine if any life found on Mars came from spacecraft in the last 50 years, or from meteorites in the last 50 million years, or originated there by itself. Indeed, they will probably even be able to determine if it came from an American or Russian spacecraft.

      https://www.techtimes.com/a

      Genetics Study Indicates Sweet Potato Arrived In Polynesia Long Before American Colonization

      13 April 2018, 9:56 pm EDT By Rubi Valdez Tech Times

      I think the Planetary Protection advocates are just using this as an excuse to monopolize Mars as a preserve for science and keep the common riff-raff away.

      That being said it is also why I advocate for a base on Phobos first, so the question of life on the surface of Mars could be settled before the planet is developed and settled. I feel this is a rational compromise. If no life is found the planet is open for development. If life is found then rules could be established to protect it from human settlement.

      • fcrary says:
        0
        0

        I can’t speak to DNA analysis and planetary protection in particular, but I suspect you’re right. At the last OPAG meeting, an astrobiologist complained that she was one of the few planetary scientists who went to conferences on terrestrial biology. I got the distinct impression she felt planetary scientists are way behind on the state of the art in terrestrial biology.

      • Paul451 says:
        0
        0

        The molecular clock method can only tell how many generations (and if you have a good calibration, roughly how many years) since a sample split from another sample. Ie, how long since their last common ancestor. (Note that the researchers were comparing the sweet potatoes with their closest known relative.)

        A spacecraft might have deposited bacteria or extremophiles on Mars 50 years ago, but a molecular clock can’t determine that unless it came from a known source. If that bacteria split from the handful of known families back near LUCA, you couldn’t distinguish a contamination 50 years ago from one 3.5 billion years ago. Given how little we’ve sequenced the possible varieties of microbes on Earth, it seems highly likely that any given square centimetre of any surface of Earth has varieties that we haven’t sequenced.

        • fcrary says:
          0
          0

          I think the problem of unsequenced bacteria is solvable. We’re talking about bacteria from a specific environment (clean rooms in Pasadena, California and Littleton, Colorado) which can survive modest sterilization procedures. That’s still a lot of species, but how much work would it take to identify them and sequence the previously unsequenced ones? That isn’t going to be 100% effective, but the current approaches to planetary protection aren’t either. This might be the most cost-effective way to be 99% effective.

          • Paul451 says:
            0
            0

            We’re talking about bacteria from a specific environment (clean rooms in Pasadena, California and Littleton, Colorado)

            Not once BFS gets going. But even for these limited cases…

            but how much work would it take to identify them and sequence the previously unsequenced ones?

            How much work is being done?

            Have continuous samples been taken over the entire Martian lander program to give us certainty that the current population of hardy bugs is the same as it was 50 years ago? Or at least a reasonable chance that we’ve sampled that 99% of the available microme from decades ago?

            Molecular clocks aren’t magic, they only compare to a known sample.

            So you get a positive result for life on Mars. You eliminate known microbes in the sample, and your molecular clock analysis says that the unknown bug split off from known populations back near LUCA.

            Modern Earth contaminant or panspermia?

            So you keep researching, thanks to improved access via the rapidly expanding SpaceX colony, but Oops, now every sample has a mix of known Earth microbes and a few unknowns. But every sample on Earth contains known/unknown mixes, so does that prove it’s not Martian life?

            Given the burden of proof of any claim of Martian life, a large contamination like that would pretty much spoil the question forever. Contamination will always be the most parsimonious explanation.

            I can accept that any bugs on prior landers should be fairly localised. But BFS cannot be put through a clean-room, cannot be isolated from mass contamination before launch. And manned habitats can’t be kept clean (inside or out). And won’t be, if SpaceX wants to make them affordable. “National parks” doesn’t cut it when you have global dust storms.

            That’s why I believe it’s urgent that every and all Mars missions from now until routine BFS landings be life-detection, all other Martian science (except water, which is part of life-detection) can wait until guys with rock-hammers are climbing out of BFSes.

            I don’t agree with human colonisation of Mars, but I don’t want SpaceX banned. The only alternative is if NASA and other space agencies and their funders take the issue seriously. This is a once and done situation and the clock is ticking.

          • Steve Pemberton says:
            0
            0

            Interesting concept, reminds me of building construction sites where archaeologists are allowed to dig prior to when construction begins, but they are only given a certain amount of time they can’t hold up construction indefinitely. Once concrete is poured the opportunity is gone. In the case of Mars they would be trying to get as many pre-contamination samples and measurements as possible.

          • Paul451 says:
            0
            0

            Now imagine how frustrating it is for me when I see the cement trucks approaching and the local university palaeontology department is acting like they have decades to decide whether to do a dig.

            And then imagine how frustrating it is to see others shrugging away the building, saying that it’ll help the palaeontologists by giving them somewhere to store their tools.

          • ThomasLMatula says:
            0
            0

            Yes, and keep in mind only portions of the DNA code from those bacteria will be different from other bacteria. So if you have the complete code for oneyou have a large portion of the code for all other existing bacteria. Indeed, this was the basis for creating the most recent “Tree of Life”.

            https://www.nytimes.com/201

            Scientists Unveil New ‘Tree of Life’

            By Carl Zimmer
            April 11, 2016

            Bacteria on Mars with either fit into it or not. If they do, where they fit in will tell you if its panspermia or contimation. If I was Elon Musk I would hire some top mocular biologists (those actually current in DNA analysis) to design the lab and train its personal on the first BFS mission. I expect they will have the question of native life on the surface Mars settled shortly after landing because if there is life on or near the surface it’s genetic traces will be everywhere.

            If there is no genetic evidence for life on the surface or near it then there are no real worries about future development. If there is, then you determine how to protect the natives based on actual knowledge, not speculative theories. Same with any life found in thermal areas underground. Once you find, then work out protocals for protecting it.

  2. fcrary says:
    0
    0

    It’s interesting that someone is equating colonizing Mars with terraforming. I’m not sure who. I don’t think terraforming is necessary to have people permanently living on other worlds.

    • chuckc192000 says:
      0
      0

      They’re not worrying about terraforming. They’re worrying about contaminating Mars with Earth-based microbes before we’re able to determine if there are any indigent Mars life forms. If we’re not very careful about contamination some (many?) people will claim that any life found on Mars is Earth-based.

      • ThomasLMatula says:
        0
        0

        A claim that could very quickly be confirmed or disproven by genetic analysis of the life form. Indeed, a quick and easy way to determine the extant of Martian life, or Earth based contimation of Mars would be to do a genetic analysis of the air, soil or water.

  3. ed2291 says:
    0
    0

    I was an enthusiastic member of the Planetary Society for many years, but I eventually quit because of their strange and unremitting hostility to manned spaceflight beyond low earth orbit.

    • Michael Spencer says:
      0
      0

      Yep. Me too.

    • james w barnard says:
      0
      0

      I have just been notified that my Planetary Society membership has expired. Not sure if I will renew it, other than to keep track of what they are doing and pursuing to stop human space exploration!
      Frankly, worrying about messing up Mars with human-made colonization is a bit premature. We need to solve a bunch of problems BEFORE it will be anywhere near safe for the first human expedition. And the place to figure out low-g environment and how to develop ISRU techniques is only about 230-250K miles away. Even Bob Zubrin seems to be coming around to that conclusion!

    • Jim Rohrich says:
      0
      0

      Ditto.

  4. fcrary says:
    0
    0

    I think you are not only making big assumptions but also baseless ones. I haven’t been behind any closed door, and haven’t even had my ear near partially closed ones. But I do know NASA’s planetary protection rules and I do know what the laws of physics allow. That Tessla roadster was launched months before the launch window to Mars opened. It is physically impossible for a Falcon Heavy to have put it on a trajectory which would get within tens of millions of kilometers from Mars. Given that, it is no different from any spacecraft sends to the asteroid belt or the outer planets. And that means no Mars-related planetary protection rules would apply. Behind closed doors SpaceX should have been, and probably was, required to state that basic fact. The fact that they did not publicly announce this is not surprising. It’s checking of a box when the obvious answer is, “no, this is not an issue.”

    I’ll be submitting a proposal for NASA funding to develop a miniaturized plasma instrument tomorrow. Part of that requires me to certify that the work will not involve medical experiments on living people. I checked “no” on that, because it’s obvious. Would you expect me to issue a press release over that? If not, why would you expect SpaceX to issue a press release about how a test payload which cannot get near Mars has no risk of contaminating Mars?

  5. Jack says:
    0
    0

    I guess if Nye was around in the 1800’s he wouldn’t be in favor of settling the “Old West” either.

    • fcrary says:
      0
      0

      The phrase you’re looking for is the “great American desert.” And, in point of fact, it wasn’t really settled by Europeans for most of the 1800s, except for a few who didn’t have anywhere else to go. For most, it was a place to cross, to get somewhere else (mostly California or the Oregon territory.) It took some time before they figured out there were good things about non-coastal, western half of the continent. It might take a while for people to figure out there is something good about living on Mars.

  6. Sam S says:
    0
    0

    FWIW, as an amateur space enthusiast with a bachelor’s degree in STEM, which actually gives me about the same qualifications as Bill Nye, I partially agree – living on Mars permanently is probably not the optimal solution to space colonization.

    I think that gradually building larger and larger von Braun wheels, possibly building up to something like a Stanford Torus or O’Neill cylinder, is a natural progression. The building materials could be mined from the asteroids or moon. Make such a structure large enough, and you could forget you’re in a spaceship / space station.

    I think Blue Origin is planning something similar, but I can’t find a reference right now.

    • Paul451 says:
      0
      0

      If your materials come from the moon, wouldn’t the workers and the industries supporting those workers live on the moon?

      Likewise if your materials came from, say, asteroid mining, then wouldn’t the workers and the industries supporting those workers live in, or on, or near the asteroids being mined?

      And then wouldn’t the secondary industries (like refining, and then bulk manufacturing (like steel/beams/bars/tubes)) set up at the same location. And then tertiary industries, like ship/hab building. Because that’s where the skilled workers are.

      • Sam S says:
        0
        0

        Sorry, I wasn’t clear about why I thought the rotating space station was the optimal choice – gravity. Spin it up to at least 0.8 g and all your biological bits feel pretty normal.

        No reason those spinning habitats wouldn’t be located in close proximity to wherever the building materials were located, I would just not want to actually live permanently in an environment with less than 0.5 g (moon is ~0.16g, Mars is ~0.4g, many asteroids are less than 0.01g).

        • Paul451 says:
          0
          0

          Sorry, O’Neill cylinders/etc are associated with the Earth-orbit proposals of their creators, I went from there.

          But you can not only have rotating habitats near an asteroid mine, IMO the logical place for such stations is inside the asteroid that is being mining.

          If you move the mining inside the asteroid (single entrance rather than digging all over the surface) and you control the dust. That means you are excavating internal tunnels and cavities. Move the habs inside of those excavated and cleared cavities and you have a huge amount of radiation and meteorite shielding, plus thermal regulation, for free.

          • ThomasLMatula says:
            0
            0

            Yes, Danridge Cole’s original proposal in his book, “Islands in Space: The Challenge of the Planetoids”.

            http://space.nss.org/island

            But he went one step further. Put engines on those asteriods and move them to where you want them to be 🙂

  7. Michael Spencer says:
    0
    0

    Lots of my left-leaning friends take the view that people are some sort of environmental scourge and should be eradicated.

    An overstatement, to be sure, but close to the point, so it’s easy to see an attitude of wanting to very tightly control any sort of Martian presence lest we f**k up the place.

    It’s an attitude derived of observation. We suffer from serious industrial pollution in this country, a result of uncontrolled capitalism, the same forces that painted, for instance, both London and Pittsburgh black. The same sort of wanton dollar seeking that killed the streams of our great country in the name of “jobs”.

    Let’s learn from that odious path. There’s lots of money to be made, here, folks, [one hopes, with a sufficiently long view], without the continual fouling of the home nest. And really that’s the role of government, isn’t it, in some larger sense? To be certain that the playing field is level, allowing whoever wants to enter the field of battle the same restraints as anyone else, restraints that protect the rest of us? Design whatever seat belts you want, as long as you proved them in every car. Do whatever you want under the hood but keep the nitrates at an acceptable level. And so on.

    Or open all the dry cleaning establishments you want, for instance, but do not ever dump chemicals. Design air conditioning systems as you see fit, but do not use ozone-killing gasses.

    This is not complicated.

    Actually, it IS complicated. But it’s conceptually straightforward.

    • ThomasLMatula says:
      0
      0

      Actually the free markets that are a part of capitalism helped clean up the pollution. Folks vote with their dollars in the market place, and firms that have bad reputations for pollution lose customers and market share.

      You also forget that is a capitalist economy the government is separation from industry and so is able to regulate it when its needed, as have been the case in the Western capitalist nations. Supporters of capitalistism are not opposed to rational regulation, but only to irrational extreme regulation.

      Now if you want to see REAL pollution and environmental destruction, just look at the socialist nations of the world. You know, the nations whose economies were not built on the free market profit principles, but on “sharing”.

      https://www.huffingtonpost….

      The Grim Pollution Picture in the Former Soviet Union

      “Sochi’s water is an example of the massive environmental degradation in the former Soviet Union that began in the 1920s when Josef Stalin ordered industrialization at all costs to catch up with the West.

      An irony is that although the USSR took hundreds of thousands of environmental shortcuts while industrializing, it never did catch up.”

      • fcrary says:
        0
        0

        I don’t think it’s fair to blame that on socialism. There are plenty of socialist countries (or what Americans would call socialist, Sweden for example) with excellent environmental policies and records. There are also some non-socialist dictatorships which have trashed their countries. I think what you’re talking about is a centralized, government-directed economy.

        • ThomasLMatula says:
          0
          0

          Yes, the more centralized it is the less likely it will care about the pollution. But technically in economics socializism is government ownership of business and so Sweden is really a highly regulated capitalist economy.

          https://www.forbes.com/site

          Sorry Bernie Bros But Nordic Countries Are Not Socialist

          Jeffrey Dorfman Contributor
          Jul 8, 2018, 12:00pm

      • Michael Spencer says:
        0
        0

        “Actually the free markets that are a part of capitalism helped clean up the pollution. Folks vote with their dollars in the market place, and firms that have bad reputations for pollution lose customers and market share.”

        Professor, I don’t know where to start with this, except to point out that to conclude thus takes a very special set of glasses indeed.

        “Supporters of capitalistism are not opposed to rational regulation, but only to irrational extreme regulation.”

        Well, there’s the rub, as they say. Without testing our host’s forbearance with a lengthy response, I’d simply posit that business decisions and broader social welfare must be congruent; and that the mechanism here for testing congruence is what we call regulation.

        The road to improvement lies therefore in improving a regulatory process that is imperfect as hell, often shoddy, riven with classism, sometimes administered by the inept.

        Still: social policy must be set by the electorate, and not in the boardroom.

        • ThomasLMatula says:
          0
          0

          Really, to see the free market response you don’t need to go further than your local supermarket where you see selections of organic foods, cage free eggs, free range beef etc. Indeed, you have entire brands like Starbucks, Whole Foods, etc. dedicated to products that are environmentally sustainable and produce less pollution. And then there are free market solutions like Tesla, Solar City, and where states allow a free market in energy, firms like Green Mountain Energy.

          Because of the public’s interest in reducing pollution almost every firm now in Western market economies discusses how they are working to make their products sustainable. Just search for their social responsibility policies.

          Unlike command market economies free market economies respond to what individuals are worried about, both in terms of how those individuals vote with their dollars and vote at the ballot box. By contrast command economies, including the various degree of socialist economics, don’t really need to listen to their consumers/citizens because they have government approved monopolies and the power of the government to deal with those who object. That is why nations with command economies like Russia, China, Venezuela, etc. are environmental nightmares.

          And to return to the blog topic space, you have NASA, a government agency which ignores what their market, tax paying space advocates want, rejecting goals like Space Settlement, SBSP, etc. to focus on things like SLS, Orion, Gateway, and it seems a never ending series of missions to determine has an environment that might support life while somehow always avoiding to actually looking for it. Really the Martian soul could be full of microbes, DNA or the Martian version, but since NASA isn’t testing for it we are still arguing the point.

    • fcrary says:
      0
      0

      One potential result of living in an artificial environment may be paying more attention to environments in general. I suspect living in space would make people habitually used to thinking about the carbon dioxide and particulate concentrations in the air.

      Here on Earth, just a few weeks ago, a city had a major smog event the day after an holiday was celebrated with lots of people lighting bonfires and setting off fireworks. From the news story I read, only a small fraction of the people made a connection (although they were very unhappy that others didn’t put two and two together.) I think someone who grew up depending on the filters in the life support system wouldn’t make that mistake.

      • ThomasLMatula says:
        0
        0

        Yes, and it is also something folks need to start work on. Space settlements are no going to emerge from nothing, and neither will the technology for them.

  8. ThomasLMatula says:
    0
    0

    This is why frontiers are always settled by a small percentage of the population. In the 1600’s emigration to New England, even at the height of the English Civil War, was never more than a couple thousand a year and I am sure the “stay at homes” said the same thing to their relatives leaving for the New World. This is why colonization, at least in terms of the New World, was mostly a private venture, not a government one.

    • fcrary says:
      0
      0

      Actually, quite a few of those emigrants during the 1650s, and a sizable fraction of those from Scotland, were basically war refugees. It wasn’t so much that New England was an attractive place to live; it was that living in a war zone was less attractive.

      • ThomasLMatula says:
        0
        0

        True, but compared to the millions who stayed behind it was only a small percentage. But New England wasn’t exactly peaceful during that era either.

  9. ThomasLMatula says:
    0
    0

    The Falcon Heavy launch was licensed by the FAA CST office. If NASA had planetary protection issues they needed to follow the legal process and raise it with the FAA CST. If the Planetary Protection Office didn’t, they have nothing to complain about.

  10. tesh says:
    0
    0

    It is not that SpaceX should proceed unquestioned, it is the “who is asking the questions part” that doesn’t at all sit well with me. The government, the elected officials, are not qualified to ask the appropriate questions (or have the ability to interrupt the answers) and the “team” they may take counsel from are likely to be anything but impartial.

    The downside of time is time, unfortunately. The more delay there is the more time people have to delay SpaceX’s goals. The whole “terraforming” question aside (as it is an aspiration’al aspiration – if that), the longer the delay the less likely it is that SpaceX will be able to prosecute even the initial phase of their plans – getting people to Mars, which at least for me, is beginning of our journey to everywhere.

  11. mfwright says:
    0
    0

    I see this Mars thing as a non-starter. Sending people to Mars will always be 20 years away. Besides there is no land rush to settle places like the Gobi Desert even though 1000 times easier to settle Mars because it is obvious there is no reason to live there. We romanticize about Mars because it is so far away.

    • BigTedd says:
      0
      0

      I don’t think I would be willing to bet against Musk or Bezo’s to be honest so i think you might find your non starter started a lot sooner than you are able to blink !

    • ThomasLMatula says:
      0
      0

      The Chinese and Mongolians would probably be displeased if large numbers of westerners started colonizing within their borders.

      • fcrary says:
        0
        0

        The other example is Antarctica and the fact that no one has settled there. In reality, setting in Antarctica would be either illegal or hopeless impractical under the Antarctic Treaty. And that’s been in place since before any thought of permanent settlement was possible. (O.k. Byrd thought or at least talked about it before then, but the technology just wasn’t there.)

        • Paul451 says:
          0
          0

          In reality, setting in Antarctica would be either illegal or hopeless impractical under the Antarctic Treaty.

          There are plenty of nations who aren’t signatories. You would have to flag your operation (The East Antarctic Company) in one of those.

          However, the best place to settle (the Antarctic Peninsula) is claimed by multiple nations (in competition). You would have to go to somewhere like Marie Byrd Land to find unclaimed territory. (And I’m not sure technology is up the job even now. But still easier than living on Mars. And 1.6 million square km gives you room to expand.)

          There’s a small unclaimed piece of desert between Egypt and Sudan which was left out of each country’s claimed borders. If’n you’re so inclined.

          • ThomasLMatula says:
            0
            0

            The Antarctic Treaty system is different than the OST as the member nations are expected to actively enforce it. By contrast the key foundation of the OST is to live and let live – i.e. None interference.

            That said, both Argentina and Chile have government sponsored settlements on islands just off the Antarctic Peninsula. Real settlements with kids, schools, etc. Imagine growing up in one of them 🙂

  12. DJE51 says:
    0
    0

    Bill Nye, the Science Guy (TM), should stick to what he knows best, and that is to teach Grade 5 level science (other than self promotion, that is). Even his ability to do that should be questioned by his views expressed in this interview, as Grade 5 level kids need inspiration, not nay-saying. What greater inspiration than the grand objective of establishing a second home for humanity?

  13. fcrary says:
    0
    0

    I certainly wouldn’t say SpaceX, or whoever else, should be allowed to do whatever they want. But I’d also say I wouldn’t mind a commercial company getting close to an Apollo landing site. Disturbing it would be a different matter, but driving a rover around and taking pictures wouldn’t bother me (but please don’t drive over the footprints…) I also don’t think scientific missions should get an easier time because “they are doing science.” InSight had to do all the things expected of a Mars lander, even though it won’t be doing anything related to astrobiology. (Yes, I know astrobiology missions have to do even more.)

    What does bother me is all the complaints about that Tesla. It isn’t a planetary protection risk, and it couldn’t hit Mars any more than a failed asteroid mission could (e.g. if the spacecraft’s electronics were burned out by a solar energetic particle event just after launch?) Just because its orbit crosses that of Mars and it can’t maneuver doesn’t mean it’s going to hit any time soon. Actually, there is a paper on the subject, and it’s got a 50% chance of hitting anything in the next 15 million years. In that time, the odds are on the Earth, the Sun or Venus. The odds of it hitting Mars in that time are basically zero. [“The random walk of cars and their collision probabilities with planets”, Rein, Tamayo and Vokrouhlicky, Aerospace. 2018; 5(2):57.] The problem is some people, who ought to know better, just didn’t like the whole idea of flying a Tesla, as a joke, instead of the serious and professional dead weight for a test payload. And they said a bunch of nonsense about planetary protection to the media.

  14. fcrary says:
    0
    0

    The problem is that you are asking for something completely open ended, and there are people who just philosophically object to both private spaceflight and human colonies. They will use “taking some time” to “make sure” an excuse to just ban all whole idea. Clear, tangible and uniformly-applied rules about what can and can not be done are fine with me. If we don’t know enough to make those rules, I’d also be fine with a specific list of things we need to find out and a schedule for when we’ll find them out. I’m just not comfortable with something as vague as “we don’t know enough, let’s wait until we do.”

  15. BigTedd says:
    0
    0

    Actually the USA / any country is not obligated to do anything under the Outer Space Treaty. No Law was instilled in this document to cover Commercial space at all

    • fcrary says:
      0
      0

      That’s not quite right. The treaty doesn’t mention commercial activities but it does make the signatory nations responsible for anything launched from their national territory.

      • Paul451 says:
        0
        0

        responsible for anything launched from their national territory.

        Technically “on their registry” (article 8). After launch you could transfer the registration to another nation. Similar to “flagging” ships. Luxembourg recently tried to set itself up as a flag-of-convenience nation for space activities. Like Belize and Cyprus in international shipping.

  16. Crystal+Entropy says:
    0
    0

    Does NASA have any actual authority over the FAA CST? seems like they’d be the technical minority in such a decision to not launch due to planetary protection reasons.

    Also, if NASA has too little technical info (sounds like they might have had very little time and information), they may not have been able to say much beyond “there’s nothing obviously egrigious.”

    It doesn’t sound like Space X did a 50 year trajectory propagation to show that they would avoid Mars. I am reading between a lot of lines in that writeup-it is carefully written and has a tone of cautious vs confident writing.

    The last paragraph in that National Academies Appendix reference tells an interesting story about an asteroid spotted
    2002 that was determined to be part of an Apollo stage:
    https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/

    Perhaps the story was added to show why propagation matters (though it was not done?)

    • ThomasLMatula says:
      0
      0

      The FAA CST seeks out the appropriate government agencies to provide expert input to any issues raised by the license request. But technically they are only suppose to worry about the risks directly related to the launch itself so they could probably be challenged if they go too far in restricting post launch activities. That is why the National Space Council has made developing process and procedures for regulating the entire mission by the Department of Commerce a priority activity.

  17. ThomasLMatula says:
    0
    0

    Seems that both NASA and Russian have already started the process of trashing it given the many wrecked and abandon spacecraft on Mars, along with old parachutes, heat shields, etc. But let some private firm try to do something and its alll of a sudden “pollution”.

  18. ThomasLMatula says:
    0
    0

    So basically the regulation you want is already in place. The problem seems to be the Planetary Protection Office is just not use to the idea that the NASA/Russian monopoly era on space exploration is coming to an end and it scares them.

    i.e. What are they going to do when dozens of kids are running around on Mars collecting rocks for their science class at Mars High?

    • fcrary says:
      0
      0

      When the kids at the Mars colony go out rock collecting? I should think NASA’s planetary protection office (or its successor) would do the same thing the National Park Service does today. Make sure there are places the kids leave alone. Just north and west of me, what people can do in Rocky Mountain National Park is fairly well regulated to make sure people don’t ruin it (to the extent that that’s possible when you allow roads and tourists.) Just south of there, in the Roosevelt National Forest, it’s much less regulated. Of course, given the limited number of roads, it isn’t clear to me which is better preserved.

  19. fcrary says:
    0
    0

    Probably more like the Specially Protected Areas under the Antarctic Treaty. They are much more strenuously protected than National Parks.

  20. ThomasLMatula says:
    0
    0

    Its already being done in terms of searching for life on Mars.

    https://curiosity.com/topic

    The Most Earth-Friendly Parts Of Mars Are Off-Limits To Earthlings

    August 21, 2017

    Written by

    Reuben Westmaas

    Indeed, one of the reasons NASA spacecraft don’t seek current life is because they are not allowed to operate where the conditions are best for that life existing.

  21. ThomasLMatula says:
    0
    0

    Which is exactly how the process is suppose to work. The FAA CST consults with other agencies before licensing a flight. It’s up to them to make their issues known.