RE: virus: terraforming mars

From: Michelle Anderson (michelle@barrymenasherealtors.com)
Date: Tue Jan 13 2004 - 10:10:45 MST

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    [Pat] NO EXCUSES IŽLL SEND I DO NOT WANT TO BE IN YOUR & ALL OF YOUR
    LIST

    [Michelle] Interesting that this actually pissed someone off that
    much...

    I hadn't thought about the Bush-related political backside of this, I
    thought he perhaps was just trying to be some glorious Kennedy-like
    inspirational leader and thought he should round it out in science.
    With biological sciences crippled by his outlawing of most stem cell
    research and his pitifully anti-modern social goals, perhaps space was
    the only place left for a clean and non-sinful scientific breakthrough.

    The broader point of the article ("is mars ours?") made me think of how
    difficult it is to protect natural processes. We can't even all agree
    to leave the lake under antarctica alone, even though there is potential
    that merely sampling its waters could disrupt its alien (to us mammals)
    life-balance. If there is bacteria in water somewhere on mars, some
    would say that means we should take it as a sign of viability and go
    ahead and transport earth life there to seed. But what about the unique
    processes that might breed life totally unlike ours on that planet?

    So the question to me is not why are we seeing any support for this from
    such a backward administration but what kind of steps are necessary for
    truly acceptible evidence that we are not disturbing preexisting
    processes of evolution? What odds are good enough that we're not
    destroying a potential intelligence with a right to evolve? Or is that
    ridiculous, do humans belong everywhere we can exist no matter what?

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