WEBVTT - You Contaminated My Planet! 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:07.160 Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to 0:00:07.360 --> 0:00:14.880 Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the 0:00:15.040 --> 0:00:17.960 podcast that looks at the future and says, Little Green 0:00:18.040 --> 0:00:21.040 Men taught me how to do the bop. I'm Jonvin 0:00:21.079 --> 0:00:24.560 Strickland and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're gonna be 0:00:24.640 --> 0:00:28.800 talking about life beyond the bounds of yeah, which we've 0:00:28.800 --> 0:00:31.120 talked about in a couple of episodes before, but we're 0:00:31.160 --> 0:00:35.839 specifically talking about how do we search for life and 0:00:35.840 --> 0:00:39.400 and be sure that we found it and that it 0:00:39.520 --> 0:00:46.239 definitely came from capital somewhere capital else. Yeah. We're not 0:00:46.280 --> 0:00:48.519 just talking about alien life, but alien life that we 0:00:48.640 --> 0:00:54.400 definitely didn't put there. Yeah. Yeah. So this is important 0:00:54.440 --> 0:00:58.120 because of multiple things. One, we're very curious about whether 0:00:58.240 --> 0:01:01.280 or not there is life outside of our planet. The 0:01:01.360 --> 0:01:05.319 odds are pretty good, considering the vastness of the universe 0:01:05.360 --> 0:01:08.679 that life also exists somewhere else. Whether it exists somewhere 0:01:08.720 --> 0:01:13.200 within our detectable range of view is another question. And 0:01:13.240 --> 0:01:16.960 then we also are hoping to maybe even learn more 0:01:17.000 --> 0:01:21.840 about the origins of life on Earth, particularly from any 0:01:21.920 --> 0:01:26.120 indications of life on our our nearby neighboring planetary and 0:01:26.600 --> 0:01:29.560 moon bodies. Right, yeah, I mean one thing that would 0:01:29.560 --> 0:01:31.920 be interesting would be if you go to other objects 0:01:31.920 --> 0:01:34.600 in the Solar System and you find life forms there 0:01:35.160 --> 0:01:39.319 that are based in DNA. You could say, ah, this 0:01:39.440 --> 0:01:43.160 may be a piece of evidence for the theory that 0:01:43.319 --> 0:01:48.000 DNA precedes the evolution of or the origin of all life. Right. 0:01:48.040 --> 0:01:50.400 The DNA is a necessary component. You didn't have it 0:01:50.440 --> 0:01:52.240 the other way around. You didn't have life that it 0:01:52.360 --> 0:01:56.320 eventually got. DNA is a molecule. But there's another way 0:01:56.360 --> 0:01:59.840 you could read finding life with DNA, which is that 0:02:00.040 --> 0:02:03.080 what if it just came from some other DNA based life? Right? 0:02:03.160 --> 0:02:07.120 What if? What if we also thought we had discovered 0:02:07.720 --> 0:02:11.919 the smoking DNA gun on a surface such as Mars, 0:02:12.000 --> 0:02:15.160 only to find out, much to our chagrin later on, 0:02:15.680 --> 0:02:18.799 that whoops a daisy, it actually hits a ride on 0:02:18.919 --> 0:02:22.280 the very probe we sent there, and in fact came 0:02:22.360 --> 0:02:28.600 from you know, uh, dubuke, debuke, quite debuke, just random place. Well, 0:02:28.639 --> 0:02:32.880 then let's say it came from Peoria, okay, our Kalamazoo, Michigan. 0:02:33.560 --> 0:02:35.840 No matter where it comes from. That this is more 0:02:35.919 --> 0:02:40.040 than just a problem of like corrupting our data samples 0:02:40.120 --> 0:02:43.480 and our senses of childlike wonder. Uh. You know, if 0:02:43.480 --> 0:02:45.960 we bring earth life along with us to a place, 0:02:46.080 --> 0:02:48.480 how can we be sure that we won't be committing 0:02:49.320 --> 0:02:53.760 unintentional genocide on whatever life forms might happen to be 0:02:53.880 --> 0:02:56.560 native to that place to begin with? Right, So this 0:02:56.560 --> 0:02:59.440 this is sort of the problem of something like kud 0:02:59.520 --> 0:03:02.560 zoo here in the southeast. Right. Kud Zoo is not 0:03:02.760 --> 0:03:05.640 native to the southeast United States, but anyone who has 0:03:05.680 --> 0:03:09.799 spent any time, particularly north of Atlanta, is very familiar 0:03:10.080 --> 0:03:12.919 with kud zoo. It's this creeping vine. It was brought 0:03:12.960 --> 0:03:17.520 in specifically to try and help curtail erosion on hillsides. 0:03:18.120 --> 0:03:19.920 I know this because the place where I grew up 0:03:20.040 --> 0:03:25.040 absolutely covered and cut zoo over one place. I very 0:03:25.120 --> 0:03:28.520 often see it, especially in my hometown of Chattanooga, Tennessee, 0:03:28.600 --> 0:03:31.959 and I go back there is in like former construction 0:03:32.080 --> 0:03:35.080 sites and digging sites, places where there have been a 0:03:35.360 --> 0:03:39.840 large large sections of earth carried away by earth movers 0:03:39.880 --> 0:03:42.440 are flattened. Then there will, you know, years later, be 0:03:42.520 --> 0:03:45.560 kud zoo all over it. I specifically remember a telephone 0:03:45.600 --> 0:03:48.240 pole outside of Oakwood, Georgia, which is where I grew 0:03:48.320 --> 0:03:51.240 up that because of the way the vines had grown 0:03:51.280 --> 0:03:53.840 up the pole and along some of the wires, it 0:03:53.920 --> 0:03:57.440 looked like Godzilla, and so we called it Cudzilla. And uh, 0:03:57.480 --> 0:03:59.920 but the point that I'm making here is that cuts 0:04:00.000 --> 0:04:05.160 do is is an invasive species that has killed a 0:04:05.240 --> 0:04:08.960 lot of the native plants by covering them up. You know, 0:04:08.960 --> 0:04:11.640 it's competing for the same resources, right, and it's a 0:04:11.680 --> 0:04:14.720 really effective and growing exactly. So the fear is that 0:04:14.760 --> 0:04:18.200 we could potentially bring something from Earth to another planet 0:04:18.520 --> 0:04:22.200 where it would be uh capable of adapting to those 0:04:22.200 --> 0:04:26.360 conditions and edging out any sort of indigenous life. Yeah, 0:04:26.360 --> 0:04:27.960 and this is the subject that we're going to be 0:04:27.960 --> 0:04:32.920 talking about today typically goes under the name interplanetary contamination 0:04:33.200 --> 0:04:35.599 exactly for the process, and we're also going to be 0:04:35.640 --> 0:04:38.720 talking about the process of trying to prevent this, which 0:04:38.839 --> 0:04:42.240 is often known as planetary protection. Yeah. It's sort of 0:04:42.240 --> 0:04:45.400 like a microbial version of the prime directive. The prime 0:04:45.440 --> 0:04:47.719 directive of course being in star trek, the thing where 0:04:48.080 --> 0:04:50.280 you say that you will do no harm, that you 0:04:50.320 --> 0:04:54.039 will not interact with with other stuff there, with other 0:04:54.080 --> 0:04:56.560 life forms out there, unless like it's really important or 0:04:56.600 --> 0:04:58.240 there's like a chick you want to get up with, 0:04:58.360 --> 0:05:02.240 or exactly unless the PLU calls for it, right, totally, totally, 0:05:02.320 --> 0:05:04.320 but but at a microbial level, you know, that's basically 0:05:04.360 --> 0:05:06.839 the same thing. Yeah, so we're not talking about bringing 0:05:07.120 --> 0:05:13.640 life forms like multicellular complex organisms like rabbits, and the 0:05:13.680 --> 0:05:16.880 probe isn't going to be having an infestation of badgers. 0:05:18.279 --> 0:05:22.720 I mean, honey badgers are are a real problem, especially 0:05:22.760 --> 0:05:26.919 in Far Cry four, but maybe water bears though, Yeah, okay, 0:05:26.960 --> 0:05:29.760 there you go. But now we're we're specifically telling about 0:05:29.800 --> 0:05:33.479 microbial life and or or things that aren't even life 0:05:33.600 --> 0:05:35.920 yet but would be very interesting if we were to 0:05:35.960 --> 0:05:39.720 find them in a place other than Earth, like what 0:05:39.800 --> 0:05:43.760 they call organic molecules, right, the building blocks that indicate 0:05:43.960 --> 0:05:49.000 perhaps the presence or uh the one, one time presence 0:05:49.040 --> 0:05:51.359 of life, and maybe that the things we discover on 0:05:51.400 --> 0:05:55.000 other planets aren't life but are rather remnants of what 0:05:55.200 --> 0:05:57.800 used to be life sure, or or you know, write 0:05:57.800 --> 0:06:00.600 all that DNA stuff that we were talking about, uh 0:06:01.080 --> 0:06:03.320 earlier in this very episode and also for a couple 0:06:03.400 --> 0:06:06.800 episodes before this. You know, either amino acids or nucleo bases, 0:06:06.880 --> 0:06:08.920 nuclear tides, whatever you want to call them that sort 0:06:08.920 --> 0:06:11.480 of thing. Yeah, and uh, or I mean something as 0:06:11.520 --> 0:06:15.080 simple as methane, right, sure, yeah, something that that's considered 0:06:15.080 --> 0:06:19.440 an organic moloch exactly. So interplanetary contamination, it actually works 0:06:19.440 --> 0:06:22.640 both ways. We'll talk about that a little bit more 0:06:22.880 --> 0:06:26.200 later on. But there is like forward contamination and backward contamination, 0:06:26.200 --> 0:06:28.880 and that essentially means are we taking stuff to another 0:06:28.920 --> 0:06:31.960 planet or are we bringing stuff back to our planet 0:06:32.080 --> 0:06:37.680 from somewhere else. But interplanetary contamination is a big deal. 0:06:37.720 --> 0:06:40.159 I mean, it's something that lots of smart people have 0:06:40.240 --> 0:06:44.080 talked about, and in fact, there are agreements between nations 0:06:44.440 --> 0:06:48.080 not to do that thing. Uh. The Outer Space Treaty, 0:06:48.120 --> 0:06:51.920 which we have talked about multiple times on this show. Right, 0:06:51.920 --> 0:06:55.000 we've talked about Outer Space Treaty for as far as 0:06:55.000 --> 0:06:57.080 it goes with the idea of can you own property 0:06:57.120 --> 0:06:59.880 in space, the idea that the Moon is no one 0:07:00.200 --> 0:07:02.520 property you just because you put a flag there. The 0:07:02.560 --> 0:07:05.760 answer is yes, you can if you buy it from me, right, 0:07:06.120 --> 0:07:08.560 if you're, if you're not, if you're, if you're not 0:07:08.760 --> 0:07:12.520 too upset about handing money over to a total scam artist, 0:07:12.560 --> 0:07:15.600 you two can own landscape on the moon. Uh. So 0:07:15.720 --> 0:07:17.640 for The Outer Space Treaty actually has a section that 0:07:17.720 --> 0:07:22.360 covers the idea of interplanetary contamination, and its specifically reads 0:07:23.040 --> 0:07:26.760 UH that states parties to the Treaty shall pursue studies 0:07:26.800 --> 0:07:29.840 of outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, 0:07:30.080 --> 0:07:33.240 and conduct exploration of them so as to avoid their 0:07:33.240 --> 0:07:37.360 harmful contamination and also adverse changes in the environment of 0:07:37.400 --> 0:07:40.520 the Earth resulting from the introduction of extraterrestrial matter, and 0:07:40.560 --> 0:07:43.280 where necessary, shall adopt appropriate measures for this purpose. Now 0:07:43.360 --> 0:07:47.240 that's specifically backwards contamination. Well, it mentions both. It mentions 0:07:47.320 --> 0:07:51.520 forward and backward contamination. So it says that we will 0:07:51.560 --> 0:07:55.520 avoid quote they're harmful contamination. They're referring to the Moon 0:07:55.560 --> 0:07:58.640 and other celestial bodies. And then it also says, don't 0:07:58.720 --> 0:08:00.800 don't mess up Earth when you come back, which is 0:08:01.160 --> 0:08:03.360 what happens, of course in Dawn of the Dead or 0:08:03.400 --> 0:08:06.800 not neither the Living Dead. Yes, a space probe returning 0:08:06.840 --> 0:08:10.400 from Venus comes into the atmosphere and then and then 0:08:10.480 --> 0:08:14.680 hilarity ensues. Yeah, some sleepy people decided to have a party. 0:08:15.280 --> 0:08:18.960 They're coming to get you, Barbara. In addition, the Committee 0:08:18.960 --> 0:08:23.080 on Space Research, also known as Coast bar has created 0:08:23.120 --> 0:08:26.880 the Coast bar Planetary Protection Policy, using the Outer Space 0:08:26.880 --> 0:08:29.080 Treaty as sort of their starting point. And here in 0:08:29.080 --> 0:08:32.040 the United States, NASA has a division that's dedicated to 0:08:32.080 --> 0:08:36.000 this pursuit as well. It's called the Planetary Protection Office. 0:08:36.360 --> 0:08:39.800 Its slogan is all of the planets, all of the time, 0:08:41.640 --> 0:08:43.679 which you know is an ambitious at all. You know, like, 0:08:43.679 --> 0:08:46.360 no no pressure there, NASA. You can fool all of 0:08:46.400 --> 0:08:49.280 the planets some of the time, some of the planets 0:08:49.320 --> 0:08:51.480 all the time, but you can't fool all the planets 0:08:51.520 --> 0:08:53.960 all the time. Also, it just reminds me of that 0:08:54.080 --> 0:08:57.880 of that hyperbole and a half quote to clean all 0:08:57.960 --> 0:09:02.040 the things, like clean all the planets. Yes, but so 0:09:02.080 --> 0:09:04.839 we mentioned there are two main types of planetary contamination. 0:09:04.880 --> 0:09:07.360 It can be either going out or coming in. Yeah, 0:09:07.440 --> 0:09:11.080 So the going out part we'll talk about more detail soon. 0:09:11.160 --> 0:09:15.679 The coming back part, Uh, that's that's something that's already happened, right, 0:09:15.720 --> 0:09:18.839 We brought samples back from the Moon. Sure. I mean, 0:09:18.880 --> 0:09:22.320 if you believe NASA that we've been there, well, I 0:09:22.320 --> 0:09:24.560 mean I want to put you in a very uh, 0:09:25.160 --> 0:09:28.400 very frustrating scenario. Imagine you have just been to outer 0:09:28.520 --> 0:09:31.840 space and you made it back to Earth safely, and 0:09:31.880 --> 0:09:38.040 you're like, oh my god, I went to outer space. Yeah, 0:09:38.080 --> 0:09:39.520 Like I want some mac and cheese. I want to 0:09:39.600 --> 0:09:43.240 hug my dog. Like no, nope, you are going to 0:09:43.360 --> 0:09:46.640 sit in a container and wait for a long time, 0:09:46.720 --> 0:09:50.120 for like a month. Yeah. So in the Apollo missions, uh, 0:09:50.240 --> 0:09:53.920 the returning equipment and astronauts had to undergo a thirty 0:09:54.000 --> 0:09:58.400 day quarantine period after each time, after each mission, just 0:09:58.480 --> 0:10:01.400 to make certain that nothing brought back would be harmful 0:10:01.600 --> 0:10:04.360 to life here on Earth, because he can't be too careful. 0:10:04.640 --> 0:10:08.880 You know, it's pretty people were pretty sure that there 0:10:08.880 --> 0:10:12.200 wouldn't be anything incredibly dangerous, but you don't know. It 0:10:12.280 --> 0:10:14.520 may be that the soils would have contained some sort 0:10:14.559 --> 0:10:20.120 of highly dangerous carcinogen or something. Yeah, better safe than sorry. 0:10:20.160 --> 0:10:22.120 This is funny. I mean I what I just said 0:10:22.240 --> 0:10:24.720 was based on what the Apollo astronauts had to do. 0:10:24.960 --> 0:10:27.080 What what is the process? Now? So let's say you 0:10:27.120 --> 0:10:28.800 return from the I S. S. Do you have to 0:10:28.800 --> 0:10:32.000 go through quarantine today? I'm sure there's I know there's 0:10:32.000 --> 0:10:34.960 a period of observation, but it's like a couple of days. 0:10:35.840 --> 0:10:38.080 I don't think it's as long as thirty days because 0:10:38.080 --> 0:10:41.760 you're not typically bringing anything back with you that's extraterrestrial 0:10:41.760 --> 0:10:44.360 in nature, right, you are aboard the I S S. Now, 0:10:44.360 --> 0:10:47.080 there might be some some pretty far out people on 0:10:47.160 --> 0:10:49.000 the I S S. But they aren't so far out 0:10:49.000 --> 0:10:52.559 as to be not of this Earth. Yeah, well yeah, 0:10:52.720 --> 0:10:55.120 uh and and as long as you're not demonstrating like 0:10:55.160 --> 0:11:01.800 a clear case of space madness, it just takes me 0:11:01.840 --> 0:11:05.520 back to ren and stimpy with the creamy new Guta Center. 0:11:06.520 --> 0:11:13.040 So uh so the obviously creepy pasta obviously. Uh we'd 0:11:13.040 --> 0:11:15.440 also love to get our hands on any kind of 0:11:15.480 --> 0:11:19.120 life that originated from outside of the Earth. But if 0:11:19.160 --> 0:11:22.880 we were to do so, our hands, grimy, grimy hands 0:11:23.280 --> 0:11:30.160 are metaphorical hands, literal complex instrumentation hands, right, So we'd 0:11:30.160 --> 0:11:33.960 love to be able to take possession of life that 0:11:34.040 --> 0:11:39.520 originated from outside of our our own planetary home, right, 0:11:40.000 --> 0:11:44.080 but that obviously could come with a substantial risk, lots 0:11:44.080 --> 0:11:48.520 of different risks. We could in fact have the opposite 0:11:48.520 --> 0:11:50.640 of what we were talking about earlier, where you know, 0:11:51.040 --> 0:11:53.319 if we were to bring something from Earth to another 0:11:53.360 --> 0:11:56.840 planet and it were to uh to to really multiply 0:11:57.320 --> 0:12:00.480 in an uncontrollable fashion, the same thing could put ventually 0:12:00.520 --> 0:12:03.120 happened bringing something from another planet back here on Earth, 0:12:03.440 --> 0:12:08.080 and that could be bad. So uh, most people say 0:12:08.120 --> 0:12:12.239 that the obvious solution for that is to use a 0:12:12.280 --> 0:12:16.120 system of containment that you never allow whatever it was 0:12:16.200 --> 0:12:21.120 you brought back from another planet to escape a controlled, contained, 0:12:21.880 --> 0:12:26.640 you know, uh facility, So which makes perfect sense. You know, 0:12:26.679 --> 0:12:30.880 you wouldn't be like, hey, we found martian daisies, let's 0:12:30.960 --> 0:12:34.400 plant it on Earth and see what happens next to 0:12:34.400 --> 0:12:37.280 all of our major food crops. There's a school right 0:12:37.280 --> 0:12:42.360 down the road that would really use some some beautifications. Oh, 0:12:42.559 --> 0:12:46.320 the Martian daisies are eating all the small animals. That's 0:12:46.320 --> 0:12:48.760 probably not anything to worry about, you know. And then 0:12:48.960 --> 0:12:52.560 you get some horrible science fiction film, and there are 0:12:52.559 --> 0:12:55.440 a couple of different scenarios we sort of mentioned the 0:12:55.480 --> 0:12:58.720 different ideas. One is that we send a probe out 0:12:58.800 --> 0:13:02.960 to uh, another celestial body, and we end up getting 0:13:03.080 --> 0:13:07.559 some sort of result that suggests that yes, we've found life, 0:13:07.640 --> 0:13:10.880 or we found organic compounds that suggest the presence of life, 0:13:11.360 --> 0:13:14.040 only to find out that whoops, we may have brought 0:13:14.120 --> 0:13:18.920 that with us. So that's one of the really frustrating uncertainty. Yeah, 0:13:19.000 --> 0:13:21.200 and it's something that's happened. It's not like this is 0:13:21.400 --> 0:13:25.880 this is new this or or or just a theory orhypothetic. Yeah. 0:13:25.920 --> 0:13:29.640 Then there's also the scenario that we've we mentioned before. 0:13:29.679 --> 0:13:31.800 We send a probe there, it brings some sort of 0:13:31.920 --> 0:13:35.760 organic material life forms to a distant body, and then 0:13:36.080 --> 0:13:40.439 they flourish there and edge out any life or eradicate 0:13:40.480 --> 0:13:42.920 any signs of life on that planet, and then we 0:13:43.000 --> 0:13:46.160 never know if life was there or not. Yeah, maybe 0:13:46.240 --> 0:13:52.000 our microbes are like the europa version of the alien xenomorphs. 0:13:52.000 --> 0:13:55.240 Maybe like everything that they exhale it's just acid and 0:13:55.480 --> 0:13:58.679 it's terrible. Yeah, but I mean, wouldn't it be fun 0:13:58.720 --> 0:14:02.120 to find out? Uh? Then scenario three, of course, is 0:14:02.160 --> 0:14:04.720 that we send some sort of probe or mission someplace, 0:14:04.760 --> 0:14:08.559 it comes back and then we get space Mono and 0:14:08.600 --> 0:14:12.240 there's a George Romero film that breaks out as a result, which, 0:14:12.240 --> 0:14:14.960 while it sounds groovy, is probably not something you actually 0:14:14.960 --> 0:14:17.440 want to live through. I mean, you want to live 0:14:17.440 --> 0:14:19.560 through it, but you don't want to experience it. Right, 0:14:19.640 --> 0:14:22.160 It's preferable overall if it's going to happen. If it's 0:14:22.160 --> 0:14:25.040 going to happen, you want to live through through it. 0:14:25.080 --> 0:14:27.040 I don't know. I mean it really depends. I mean, 0:14:27.240 --> 0:14:29.880 season two of Walking Dead, you probably just wanted to 0:14:29.880 --> 0:14:33.160 be like, just ended. I didn't want to live through that. Yeah. Okay, 0:14:33.160 --> 0:14:36.520 So we've got this concern that we've articulated now that 0:14:36.840 --> 0:14:39.520 there are multiple reasons we might want to be concerned 0:14:39.520 --> 0:14:43.840 about microbial life being transported from one planetary body or 0:14:43.840 --> 0:14:47.200 solar system object to another um and we can all 0:14:47.240 --> 0:14:49.720 pretty much agree that that's something that could possibly happen 0:14:49.960 --> 0:14:54.240 and that we should be concerned about. But how concerned 0:14:54.280 --> 0:14:57.320 about it should we be? Well, I mean we've already 0:14:57.880 --> 0:15:02.480 seeing people say we can allow something like the Curiosity 0:15:02.600 --> 0:15:05.480 rover to make its way over to locations that are 0:15:05.680 --> 0:15:09.480 theoretically at least within its its range of roving to 0:15:09.600 --> 0:15:14.600 check out potential water because of these very concerns, right, 0:15:14.680 --> 0:15:17.280 because we know that there's stuff on the Curiosity and 0:15:17.440 --> 0:15:20.200 that we we don't want. Yeah, that the Curiosity wasn't 0:15:20.600 --> 0:15:26.080 completely sterile. So because of that, we cannot allow the 0:15:26.080 --> 0:15:28.600 Curiosity Rover to come in contact with the water supply 0:15:28.680 --> 0:15:33.320 and potentially contaminate it. So it's very frustrating because you 0:15:33.360 --> 0:15:35.720 can see where the water is and the rover is 0:15:35.760 --> 0:15:38.040 within range of it, and if you could just get 0:15:38.120 --> 0:15:41.680 over there and and do some measurements, legally speaking, you 0:15:41.760 --> 0:15:44.320 might even be able to tell if there is life 0:15:44.480 --> 0:15:48.560 or or evidence of past life within that area where 0:15:48.560 --> 0:15:50.440 there's water. I mean, that seems like that's gonna be 0:15:50.520 --> 0:15:55.640 our best, our best option of finding something close to 0:15:55.680 --> 0:15:58.440 the surface of Mars, but we can't do it. So 0:15:58.880 --> 0:16:01.720 that's one reason people concerned about it, because we've already 0:16:01.960 --> 0:16:04.000 kind of seen the limitation of what we're able to 0:16:04.040 --> 0:16:07.040 do with the tools that are on Mars right now. 0:16:07.800 --> 0:16:11.000 There's also a pressing concern that the agreements we talked about, 0:16:11.000 --> 0:16:14.720 that official Space treaty, that's an agreement between nations, between governments. 0:16:15.280 --> 0:16:19.800 It's not an agreement between private industries, as many want 0:16:19.800 --> 0:16:23.360 to be. Asteroid miners have frequently reminded us. Yeah, so 0:16:23.520 --> 0:16:28.200 private industry isn't beholden to those same restrictions and could 0:16:28.280 --> 0:16:34.040 potentially go and muck everything up for everybody. Yeah, the 0:16:34.040 --> 0:16:37.360 private space industry, by the way, is poised to get 0:16:37.440 --> 0:16:41.040 huge or huger like soon. Um. You know, we've talked 0:16:41.080 --> 0:16:44.520 about that asteroid exploration thing before and about Mars one before, 0:16:44.560 --> 0:16:47.560 and I'm pretty sure that Mars one is super defunct 0:16:47.760 --> 0:16:51.200 at this point, um, But an announcement from SpaceX this 0:16:51.400 --> 0:16:55.760 very week, the last week of April, indicates that private 0:16:55.760 --> 0:16:59.840 Mars exploration in general is certainly not dead. Elad Musk 0:17:00.400 --> 0:17:03.920 really wants to send an unpersoned Dragon to spacecraft, which 0:17:03.960 --> 0:17:07.200 is the upcoming descendant of the Dragon one spacecraft two 0:17:07.240 --> 0:17:13.439 Mars in eighteen eighteen. Y'all. That's like so soon, um, 0:17:14.080 --> 0:17:17.080 And he's he's putting the pressure on because in teen 0:17:17.160 --> 0:17:20.160 Mars will be just thirty five point eight million miles 0:17:20.200 --> 0:17:22.640 away from Earth and that is the closest we will 0:17:22.640 --> 0:17:28.920 be to the Red planet between now and so. So yeah, 0:17:29.000 --> 0:17:33.919 so soeen might be when private spacecraft touches down on Mars. 0:17:34.040 --> 0:17:35.800 Hat to it, by the way, to Robert Lamb and 0:17:35.840 --> 0:17:38.840 How Stuff Works Now a new video and podcast series 0:17:38.880 --> 0:17:42.320 from How Stuff Works for for for covering that particular topic. 0:17:42.800 --> 0:17:44.920 Uh yeah, I've actually heard that. Uh. And I don't 0:17:44.960 --> 0:17:46.480 know if this was a joke or not, but someone 0:17:46.520 --> 0:17:48.600 on Twitter said, did you know Elon Musk wants to 0:17:48.640 --> 0:17:52.160 retire on Mars? And I was thinking, is this real? 0:17:52.480 --> 0:17:54.639 And I never bothered to actually check, but it totally 0:17:54.720 --> 0:17:56.679 sounds like something he would say, even if it were 0:17:56.720 --> 0:17:59.680 just in Jennifer kind of a joke. Yeah, absolutely so. Yeah. 0:17:59.680 --> 0:18:01.840 So the the point here is that if we are 0:18:02.119 --> 0:18:06.080 going to legislate private companies about this kind of stuff, 0:18:06.119 --> 0:18:09.320 we should probably get on that like yesterday. Yeah, because 0:18:09.560 --> 0:18:12.639 obviously these concerns we're talking about if you want to 0:18:12.680 --> 0:18:16.399 answer some pretty big questions like was there ever life 0:18:16.400 --> 0:18:19.040 on Mars? Is there still life on Mars? And other 0:18:19.200 --> 0:18:21.840 celestial bodies. We're using Mars because that's probably the one 0:18:21.880 --> 0:18:24.639 that we're going to be hitting first, but there are 0:18:24.640 --> 0:18:27.760 other like there are there are certain other moons in 0:18:27.760 --> 0:18:31.640 the Solar system that are also potential uh targets for 0:18:31.640 --> 0:18:35.240 for where we think life is most likely to exist 0:18:35.320 --> 0:18:38.800 if it exists elsewhere in our solar system. Um, but 0:18:39.720 --> 0:18:42.679 can we get some legislation in there so that we 0:18:42.720 --> 0:18:44.920 make sure we don't destroy that evidence before we have 0:18:44.960 --> 0:18:47.840 a chance to actually look for it. Well, this sort 0:18:47.840 --> 0:18:50.200 of leads us to the question of what we can 0:18:50.240 --> 0:18:52.760 actually do to prevent it. I mean, just short of 0:18:52.840 --> 0:18:57.320 not ever going to other objects if we're if we're 0:18:57.320 --> 0:18:59.639 going to be right, yeah, if we're going to be 0:18:59.720 --> 0:19:04.280 conjugating with other objects in our Solar system, exploring them 0:19:04.359 --> 0:19:07.679 or even colonizing them. Is it just inevitable that we're 0:19:07.680 --> 0:19:10.960 going to contaminate them with our microbes or are there 0:19:10.960 --> 0:19:16.400 steps we can take to reasonably uh two, with reasonable 0:19:16.400 --> 0:19:19.120 confidence say that we're not doing that right because because 0:19:19.200 --> 0:19:22.440 legislation is lovely, but the practical scientific end has to 0:19:22.480 --> 0:19:26.080 come up with a practical scientific way of making that go. Yeah, 0:19:26.119 --> 0:19:28.280 and here's the thing, spoiler alert folks, because I'm just 0:19:28.280 --> 0:19:30.000 gonna go ahead and tell you right now, there is 0:19:30.160 --> 0:19:34.280 no way that we can be certain that we can 0:19:34.320 --> 0:19:38.480 explore and certainly not colonize another planet or moon without 0:19:38.640 --> 0:19:42.439 contaminating it to some degree. The other real question is 0:19:42.880 --> 0:19:46.000 how bad would it be. We don't know. But if 0:19:46.000 --> 0:19:49.200 you're gonna be bringing, like especially for colonization, if you're 0:19:49.200 --> 0:19:51.760 gonna be bringing a whole bunch of stuff with you 0:19:51.800 --> 0:19:55.760 that has organic material involved in it, like food, and 0:19:55.880 --> 0:19:59.200 you know us, then not us in this room, I'm 0:19:59.200 --> 0:20:02.880 not going but you know human beings, Well, that's colonization. 0:20:02.920 --> 0:20:05.000 Maybe we should take a step back first and look 0:20:05.040 --> 0:20:07.800 at exploration. Yeah, I mean, even even just a rover 0:20:08.720 --> 0:20:11.480 as we are apt to send out to places we 0:20:11.520 --> 0:20:14.040 have not been before. Um and and and you know, 0:20:14.359 --> 0:20:17.879 so when when we want things to not have bacteria 0:20:18.000 --> 0:20:20.639 on them, we usually sterilize them. And that seems like 0:20:20.640 --> 0:20:22.359 a pretty good thing. Like every time I go in 0:20:22.359 --> 0:20:24.920 to get another facial tattoo, like, you know, there's there's 0:20:24.960 --> 0:20:28.720 some kind of sterilization system in place, right, we can 0:20:29.040 --> 0:20:31.960 blows the cockroach parts off of the needle, Yeah, yeah, 0:20:32.000 --> 0:20:33.600 and we can we can do we can blow the 0:20:33.600 --> 0:20:36.800 cockroach parts off of rovers as well. Yeah yeah, and 0:20:37.119 --> 0:20:40.639 remind me not to go to your tattoo artist. So 0:20:40.720 --> 0:20:43.320 I was wondering how space agencies do this, and I 0:20:43.359 --> 0:20:46.119 looked it up. Actually, NASA has a page that's pretty 0:20:46.119 --> 0:20:51.000 interesting where it explains its own strategies before for sterilizing 0:20:51.000 --> 0:20:55.360 equipment specifically bound for Mars through the Mars Exploration rover programs, 0:20:55.400 --> 0:20:59.359 and that would include Spirit and opportunity. So objects we 0:20:59.359 --> 0:21:02.000 put on Mars, we had to sterilize them before they went. 0:21:02.080 --> 0:21:05.000 How did we do that? Uh? So this is funny. 0:21:05.040 --> 0:21:07.920 They had a mandate to carry quote no more than 0:21:08.000 --> 0:21:11.480 three hundred thousand bacterial spores on any surface from which 0:21:11.520 --> 0:21:14.439 the spores could get into the Martian environment. I just 0:21:14.520 --> 0:21:22.160 imagine that some poor schmooze job. Who's got a count? Man? 0:21:22.359 --> 0:21:26.280 But come on, that's interesting. The mandate is not perfectly sterile. 0:21:26.359 --> 0:21:29.320 It's no more than three hundred thousand spores. It's just like, 0:21:29.480 --> 0:21:36.160 you know, no box of cereal is completely without rat hair. Yeah, 0:21:36.200 --> 0:21:38.080 you gotta have a little you know, one part pavilion. 0:21:38.160 --> 0:21:40.800 That's not so bad. So they've got that mandate, But 0:21:40.880 --> 0:21:44.119 how do they actually accomplish it? Well? While the spacecraft 0:21:44.119 --> 0:21:46.600 are being assembled, First of all, technicians are going to 0:21:46.640 --> 0:21:50.919 be constantly wiping down surfaces with alcohol solution. Uh. This 0:21:51.000 --> 0:21:54.280 is sort of stage one. You just you're constantly wiping 0:21:54.320 --> 0:21:58.960 alcohol on them to sterilize the surfaces, kill whatever microbs 0:21:59.000 --> 0:22:03.879 are there. Uh. And they also conduct microbiology samples to 0:22:03.920 --> 0:22:06.480 make sure there aren't too many organisms present on the 0:22:06.480 --> 0:22:11.480 surfaces at multiple stages along the construction of these spacecraft. 0:22:12.240 --> 0:22:15.320 And then they take all of the heat tolerant components, 0:22:15.400 --> 0:22:18.639 which aren't all of the components, but it's you know, 0:22:18.720 --> 0:22:21.879 a lot of the outer ones. They heat tolerant components, 0:22:21.960 --> 0:22:24.680 and they heat them to a hundred ten degrees celsius 0:22:24.760 --> 0:22:27.840 or two and thirty degrees fahrenheit. And then they've also 0:22:27.880 --> 0:22:31.760 got a central box containing the roverse computer and main 0:22:31.840 --> 0:22:35.840 electronic components, and that's kept sealed and all the ventilated 0:22:35.880 --> 0:22:38.880 air that goes through it is heavily filtered to make 0:22:38.920 --> 0:22:42.760 sure that if you've got any microorganisms inside the electronics box, 0:22:42.880 --> 0:22:45.000 they don't get out once they're on the other a 0:22:45.160 --> 0:22:52.160 little little microbe jail, MicroB jail forever. And then they 0:22:52.200 --> 0:22:54.600 also say that on this mission they went out of 0:22:54.600 --> 0:22:56.960 the way to prevent any non sterilized part of the 0:22:57.040 --> 0:23:01.120 launch vehicle from accidentally getting to Mars, which I thought 0:23:01.160 --> 0:23:03.359 was interesting that this is something you do actually have 0:23:03.400 --> 0:23:05.440 to worry about, but they did because so think about 0:23:05.480 --> 0:23:09.600 it like this. As the rocket launches, it frequently it 0:23:10.000 --> 0:23:13.040 at several stages has to separate from a stage of 0:23:13.040 --> 0:23:15.320 its launch vehicle. You know, it discards part of the 0:23:15.400 --> 0:23:18.800 rocket and throws it away, and the last part of 0:23:18.880 --> 0:23:21.840 the rocket that it discards, the third stage of the 0:23:21.880 --> 0:23:24.760 Delta launch vehicle, is going to be on the trajectory 0:23:24.800 --> 0:23:28.399