I don't see the old thread about plans to safely bring life to an end, so I'll post this here. I would like to make everyone fully aware of the space colonization Pandora's Boxes that are already being opened and need to be addressed during our lifetimes.
In 2019, Israelis launched the first private spacecraft to land on the moon. In addition to polluting the moon with Israeli flags and other identitarian iconography, they launched human DNA samples and micro-organisms called tardigrades.Let me say that again, there are micro-organisms currently living on the moon. They may have been killed by solar radiation, but it is impossible to know.
https://www.wired.com/story/a-crashed-israeli-lunar-lander-spilled-tardigrades-on-the-moon/"When Israel's private lunar lander Beresheet crashed onto the lunar surface, it was carrying a box full of tardigrades—microscopic creatures that are the only known living thing capable of surviving the extreme vacuum of outer space.
And Nova Spivack, founder of the Arch Mission Foundation, who paid to have the tardigrades on the spacecraft, has now told Wired magazine that he believes they survived.
The tardigrades were part of a "lunar library" that Spivack's foundation had put together. According to Wired, the package was about the size of a DVD and contained human DNA—including Spivack's own—as well as 30 million pages of information on mankind's knowledge and thousands of dehydrated tardigrades.
[...]
Arch Mission Foundation is a private non-profit that wants to develop a "backup of planet Earth" by "preserving the knowledge and biology of our planet in a solar system wide project called The Billion Year Archive," a statement from the company says.
https://www.newsweek.com/tardigrade-living-moon-israel-spaceship-crash-1452728"On board was a "lunar library" created by the Arch Mission Foundation as kind of time capsule for the combined knowledge of human civilization. The library contained samples of human DNA and 30 million pages of digital and analog data, including a full copy of Wikipedia, an Israeli flag, a Torah and a copy of the Israeli Declaration of Independence.
[...]
NASA's Office of Planetary Protection (OPP) has established guidelines for how sterile planetary missions need to be. "Uncontrolled biological contamination of the Moon's surface is not scientifically ideal," said OPP director Dr. Lisa Pratt in a statement after the crash.
Other scientists were more upset: Astrobiologist Monica Vidaurri posted a Twitter thread in which she detailed the potential ramifications of letting private organizations dump whatever they want on the Moon's surface.
"Tardigrades on the Moon is not good," wrote Vidaurri, who works as a science consultant at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. "It is not exciting. It is not cute. It is the result of a major gap in accountability for planetary protection and ethics between public and private science, and we have no idea what can happen as a result.""
https://www.newsweek.com/tardigrades-moon-scientists-1454019I think cremated remains are basically just charred carbon and don't really have ecoverable DNA. Nevertheless, Homo hubris is reaching the point where it can no longer be contained on Earth:
"NASA sending human remains to the moon in summer 2021
People’s cremated ashes are to be sent to the Moon next year as part of a commercial burial service piggybacking on a NASA lunar mission.
Texas space memorial firm Celestis will provide more than a dozen capsules carrying human remains and DNA for the flight.
Dubbed Luna 2, the mission will launch on a July 2021 NASA flight to a region of the Moon called Lacus Mortis, Space.com reports.
To date, only one person – revolutionary planetary scientist Eugene Shoemaker – has been buried on the lunar surface.
[...]
“The Celestis memorial capsules … will remain on the Moon as a permanent tribute to the intrepid souls who never stopped reaching for the stars,” the firm writes on its website.
“Each time you view the Moon you’ll know your loved one is in a place few have ever gone.”"
https://nypost.com/2020/11/18/nasa-sending-human-remains-to-the-moon-summer-2021/This sounds like the DNA is completely extracted from cells and is not capable of reproducing on its own. Nevertheless, a very dangerous development. Note the usual suspects, Arch Mission and SpaceX.
"How does my DNA get to the Moon?
Your DNA gets preserved in a capsule and launched on a rocket. The capsule, made by our partners at Arch Mission, shares a commercial lunar lander along with other payloads and NASA missions. The rocket launches into orbit and then does a few laps around the Earth to gain altitude before slinging the lander into a lunar capture orbit. Once the lander lands on the Moon, it stays there forever. Holding the capsule and you on the Moon forever.
The next mission launches on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in the fourth quarter of 2021.
[...]
What could my DNA be used for?
None of us will know. This capsule is designed for the far future. Perhaps it will be found by a future civilization and used recreate Earth as it is today. Our descendants could carry your code to the stars to seed a new world. We just won’t know. However, we believe it is worth saving our genetic blueprints for the future.
Why go on the LifeShip?
You get to go on a space mission and send a piece of you where few have been. You save your family’s genes for the future and leave a forever legacy among the stars. You'll look at the Moon for the rest of your life with a new sense of wonder. Your loved ones get a connection to you through the Moon."
https://lifeship.com/pages/faqsOf course, astronauts already left literal
**** on the moon, which is teeming with bacterial life:
"But the bigger human footprint on the moon is, arguably, the 96 bags of human waste left behind by the six Apollo missions that landed there.
Yes, our brave astronauts took dumps on their way to the moon, perhaps even on the moon, and they left behind their diapers in baggies, on humanity’s doorstep to the greater cosmos.
The bags have lingered there, and no one knows what has become of them. Now scientists want to go back, and answer a question that has profound implications for our future explorations of Mars: Is anything alive in them?
[...]
With the Apollo 11 moon landing, we took microbial life on Earth to the most extreme environment it has ever been in. Which means the human feces — along with bags of urine, food waste, vomit, and other waste in the bags, which also might contain microbial life — on the moon represents a natural, though unintended, experiment.
The question the experiment will answer: How resilient is life in the face of the brutal environment of the moon? And for that matter, if microbes can survive on the moon, can they survive interstellar travel, making them capable of seeding life across the universe, including on places like Mars?
[...]
Apollo 16 astronaut Charlie Duke spent 71 hours on the moon in 1972. On a recent phone call, he confirmed that the crew left human waste behind.
[...]
Even so, he says, they threw out the garbage thinking everything would be sanitized by the solar radiation. “I’d be really really surprised if anything survived,” he says. Plus, taking it back with them wasn’t really an option."
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2019/3/22/18236125/apollo-moon-poop-mars-science5 spacecraft have already left the solar system. It may be too late to retrieve them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_objects_leaving_the_Solar_Systemhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_programhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_RecordTrump established funding for the
Artemis program, which is set to put more humans on the moon in 2024 and establish a
semi-permanent Moon base by the end of the decade, to serve as a research camp for future Mars missions.https://www.space.com/nasa-plans-artemis-moon-base-beyond-2024.htmlhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program#Artemis_Base_CampAnd I'm sure you've heard of Elon Musk's obsession with colonizing Mars. We're at the point where billionaires can launch cars and junk into space for fun and are at real risk of doing whatever the hell they want in space...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk%27s_Tesla_RoadsterSpaceX Mars program is a development program initiated by Elon Musk and SpaceX in order to facilitate the eventual colonization of Mars. The program includes fully reusable launch vehicles, human-rated spacecraft, on-orbit propellant tankers, rapid-turnaround launch/landing mounts, and local production of rocket fuel on Mars via in situ resource utilization (ISRU). SpaceX's aspirational goal has been to land the first humans on Mars by 2024,[1][2] but in October 2020 Elon Musk named 2024 as goal for an uncrewed mission.[3] At the Axel Springer Award 2020 Elon Musk said that he is highly confident that the first crewed flights to Mars will happen in 2026.[4]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Mars_programAnd this isn't even considering all the space colonization ideas that haven't yet left the drawing board. Some are very dangerous and would be able to accelerate spacecraft at speeds much higher than Voyager. I've read plans where people want to basically put a packet of cells/DNA into a very small container and then accelerate it into deep space using this laser method.
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