I’m intrigued by how we manage to make life increasingly more complicated and how our increasing complication reveals an almost daily mental dissociation from the Second Law of Thermodymanics. We’ve never learned the lesson Adam and Eve had to learn the hard way: We might be godlike in a limited way, but we aren’t God. We can impose order on Chaos to a limited extent, but that order generally decays as it rides Time’s Arrow, a flight that is never bought as a roundtrip ticket. And speaking of flights…
So, we want to go back to the moon and then on to Mars. I think we’ll achieve the former rather easily. We’ve been there, done that. And we did it before with computing power less than that of your laptop—or probably your smart phone. But going to Mars? That’s going to be a challenge: Great distance, cosmic radiation, muscle atrophy, lack of a ready supply line, planet-wide dust storms, and no doubt some unknowns thrown into the mix. Yet, it appears we’ve made up our minds. We’re going, probably on our own dime. Guess we’ll all probably have to chip in some coins to kids and adults holding buckets labeled “Team Mars” outside grocery stores: “Please, sir, would you contribute to our team’s trip to Mars?”
We’re even on the verge of solving some of the technological problems of getting people safely to Mars and back. But now we have not only the results of BIOMEX (BIOlogy and Mars Experiment) but also the discovery of microbes on the outside of the International Space Station to consider. What if we contaminate Mars? That would mean that whatever order exists on the Red Planet will undergo some corruption, some new form of chaos, possibly some extinction and evolutionary next step. Our bacterial planet will conquer Mars.
It’s that kind of consideration that led to NASA’s Office of Safety and Mission Assurance’s hiring of Lisa Pratt as its new planetary protection chief. Good luck, Lisa. I’ve been trying to eliminate microbes for years without much success. I’ve tried Lysol, bleach, and antibacterial hand wash, but they always find a way to return. It’s as though I’m carrying them myself, as though I’m more a collection of bacteria than cells. Oh! Wait. I am. And the parasites! Don’t even get me started; they’re like politicians that cover a firetruck at a local firemen’s parade.
Lisa has her work cut out for her. At some point she’ll have to okay sending organisms that carry bacteria and other microscopic life to Mars. No doubt, she’ll be careful, but then there’s that Second Law and what it implies. Some seemingly unfailing ordered system will break down. Some critter will move from the human body to the outside of a spacesuit hanging in the Mars Lander closet. And from there, when that astronaut steps outside to make that “one small step,” it will make an even smaller step that, unlike the astronaut’s, has the potential to become a planet-dominating organism in one giant leap for (or against) Marskind.
I haven’t even mentioned purposeful release of potential planet-altering life. We’re assuming that no bad astronauts will travel to Mars, or that no astronaut will act as humans have acted over the past 200-plus millennia. Every group, it seems, has its Cain, its Iago, its John Claggart. There will inevitably, sorry to say, be a breakdown of some kind. Entropy will win the day. Little critters will either intentionally or unintentionally hit the ground running, survive the unsurvivable, and proliferate at the expense of the status-quo population or non-population on Mars. Or, even more pertinent to our travel to and from Mars, tiny Martians will ride a spacesuit or astronaut or reentry vehicle into our atmosphere, find the environment tolerable, and set up little, and possibly ever expanding, communities on Earth.
But, not to worry. NASA, the ESA, and SpaceX will have all iddy biddy life-forms under control if Lisa and her colleagues can anticipate all circumstances. Eventually, we’ll all take pride in our successful conquest of another world, where we believe we can set up an Eden of our making. We’re good at making such Edens. Just look at those we created on our planet as we have fashioned our civilizations out of once chaotic natural places.
When the astronauts and Martian explorers return to us, we’ll throw them a parasitic-free parade in one of our paradisaical inner cities.** After Lisa and colleagues see to a successful Martian colonization or exploration, she or her successors should turn attention toward Earth. With just a little more effort, we can reverse Time’s Arrow, change the Second Law, and eliminate that troublesome entropy that seems to plague the universe like those up-to-now inescapable microorganisms on Earth.
*Two articles: Voosen, Paul. NASA must rework planetary protection plans, panel advises. Science. 18 Oct 2019. Online at https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/10/nasa-must-rework-planetary-protection-plans-panel-advises Accessed October 20, 2019. And de Vera et al. Limits of Life and the Habilitability of Mars: The ESA Space Experiment BIOMEX on the ISS. Astrobiology, Vol. 19, No. 2, 11 Feb 2019. https://doi.org/10.1089/ast.2018.1897 and Online at https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/ast.2018.1897 Accessed October 20, 2019.
**Chicago homicides from 1955 to 2019 (from a collation by HeyJackass! Online at https://heyjackass.com Accessed October 20, 2019):
Mayor Date Homicides
RJD 1955-1976 10,910
MB 1976-1979 2,408
JB 1979-1983 3,202
HW 1983-1987 3,295
ES 1987-1989 978
RMD 1989-2011 14,653
RE 2011-2019 4,535
LL 2019---10/19 423 (1,877 wounded)
After Lisa and colleagues see to a successful Martian colonization or exploration, she or her successors should turn attention toward Earth.
So, we want to go back to the moon and then on to Mars. I think we’ll achieve the former rather easily. We’ve been there, done that. And we did it before with computing power less than that of your laptop—or probably your smart phone. But going to Mars? That’s going to be a challenge: Great distance, cosmic radiation, muscle atrophy, lack of a ready supply line, planet-wide dust storms, and no doubt some unknowns thrown into the mix. Yet, it appears we’ve made up our minds. We’re going, probably on our own dime. Guess we’ll all probably have to chip in some coins to kids and adults holding buckets labeled “Team Mars” outside grocery stores: “Please, sir, would you contribute to our team’s trip to Mars?”
We’re even on the verge of solving some of the technological problems of getting people safely to Mars and back. But now we have not only the results of BIOMEX (BIOlogy and Mars Experiment) but also the discovery of microbes on the outside of the International Space Station to consider. What if we contaminate Mars? That would mean that whatever order exists on the Red Planet will undergo some corruption, some new form of chaos, possibly some extinction and evolutionary next step. Our bacterial planet will conquer Mars.
It’s that kind of consideration that led to NASA’s Office of Safety and Mission Assurance’s hiring of Lisa Pratt as its new planetary protection chief. Good luck, Lisa. I’ve been trying to eliminate microbes for years without much success. I’ve tried Lysol, bleach, and antibacterial hand wash, but they always find a way to return. It’s as though I’m carrying them myself, as though I’m more a collection of bacteria than cells. Oh! Wait. I am. And the parasites! Don’t even get me started; they’re like politicians that cover a firetruck at a local firemen’s parade.
Lisa has her work cut out for her. At some point she’ll have to okay sending organisms that carry bacteria and other microscopic life to Mars. No doubt, she’ll be careful, but then there’s that Second Law and what it implies. Some seemingly unfailing ordered system will break down. Some critter will move from the human body to the outside of a spacesuit hanging in the Mars Lander closet. And from there, when that astronaut steps outside to make that “one small step,” it will make an even smaller step that, unlike the astronaut’s, has the potential to become a planet-dominating organism in one giant leap for (or against) Marskind.
I haven’t even mentioned purposeful release of potential planet-altering life. We’re assuming that no bad astronauts will travel to Mars, or that no astronaut will act as humans have acted over the past 200-plus millennia. Every group, it seems, has its Cain, its Iago, its John Claggart. There will inevitably, sorry to say, be a breakdown of some kind. Entropy will win the day. Little critters will either intentionally or unintentionally hit the ground running, survive the unsurvivable, and proliferate at the expense of the status-quo population or non-population on Mars. Or, even more pertinent to our travel to and from Mars, tiny Martians will ride a spacesuit or astronaut or reentry vehicle into our atmosphere, find the environment tolerable, and set up little, and possibly ever expanding, communities on Earth.
But, not to worry. NASA, the ESA, and SpaceX will have all iddy biddy life-forms under control if Lisa and her colleagues can anticipate all circumstances. Eventually, we’ll all take pride in our successful conquest of another world, where we believe we can set up an Eden of our making. We’re good at making such Edens. Just look at those we created on our planet as we have fashioned our civilizations out of once chaotic natural places.
When the astronauts and Martian explorers return to us, we’ll throw them a parasitic-free parade in one of our paradisaical inner cities.** After Lisa and colleagues see to a successful Martian colonization or exploration, she or her successors should turn attention toward Earth. With just a little more effort, we can reverse Time’s Arrow, change the Second Law, and eliminate that troublesome entropy that seems to plague the universe like those up-to-now inescapable microorganisms on Earth.
*Two articles: Voosen, Paul. NASA must rework planetary protection plans, panel advises. Science. 18 Oct 2019. Online at https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/10/nasa-must-rework-planetary-protection-plans-panel-advises Accessed October 20, 2019. And de Vera et al. Limits of Life and the Habilitability of Mars: The ESA Space Experiment BIOMEX on the ISS. Astrobiology, Vol. 19, No. 2, 11 Feb 2019. https://doi.org/10.1089/ast.2018.1897 and Online at https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/ast.2018.1897 Accessed October 20, 2019.
**Chicago homicides from 1955 to 2019 (from a collation by HeyJackass! Online at https://heyjackass.com Accessed October 20, 2019):
Mayor Date Homicides
RJD 1955-1976 10,910
MB 1976-1979 2,408
JB 1979-1983 3,202
HW 1983-1987 3,295
ES 1987-1989 978
RMD 1989-2011 14,653
RE 2011-2019 4,535
LL 2019---10/19 423 (1,877 wounded)
After Lisa and colleagues see to a successful Martian colonization or exploration, she or her successors should turn attention toward Earth.
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