How wrong are scientists to "decontaminate" probes, The folley of keeping life on earth

Why is it that scientists are so sure that we should "de-contaminate" space probes before sending them into space? It is as if they think we are infected with something that "others" would not want.

What if we are the only life "out there"? Don't you think it would be good to take every opportunity to spread the "good stuff" around??? We believe that we will continue to explore space, but who knows? Politics, wars, etc. could shut this down at any time.

I just think it is a joke, and the worst way possible to go about this.

I do understand the "idea" of keeping Mars pristene, but that is small compared to what we can give to Mars.

Am I alone on this??? I personally think life as we know it is the one most terrific thing that has ever been "discovered" in the whole universe. It is not "contamination."

Why would we be the "good stuff" as opposed to an alien? Right now the human race is acting more like a virus than an intelligent life form that deserves to be disseminated!

An analogy: The United States is a horrible form of government. It has so many faults and inconsistencies. But...It is by far the best available form of government IMO. This is proven out by the results, not by the theory. (Hey, lets not get into a political debate here please. Its just my opinion.)

In the same way, life on earth has many major short-comings, but it is by far better than anything out there that we know of so far. What makes anyone think that there is something/someone out there better than this? So far, we are just looking for single celled organisms anyway.

Hi kshultz222@yahoo.com,

For the same reason we think before we talk... You learn more if you keep your mouth shut when you are in an unfamiliar neck of the woods.

Some of the other comments are very good. I doubt if we had some real understanding of how everything really holds together we would be so dumb to change thing before we had made an intelligent assessments first. Here on earth we are losing species every day... why go and stuff up some other potential ecosystems before we understand them and potentially use them. They are "the locals"... scorched earth policies are always going to have a cost (insert your recent examples here).

For the slightly more intellectually challenged members... think of the red plague that Tom Cruise came across in "War of the Worlds".... not from the alien's point of view but the inhabitants of Earth's point of view. If 19th Century man can understand the problem (HG Wells) why is it so hard for 21st Century man to do likewise? I guess it is useless to tell people that Art mirrors Life (even after more than 100 years).

War of the Worlds by HG Wells (full text)

Cheers

If we go to mars to search for life, and we have found it, and it looks like stuff from earth How could we be sure it wasnt contaminants from earth it's self if we do not sterilize?

Yes one of the ultimate goals of space travel is to spread our species from planet to planet, but one of the other major goals is to figure out if we are alone in the universe. To answer this question we need to be sure we arent going to kill other life with what we bring, but to also make sure when we do look we dont just find ourselves.

Hope that helps in understanding.

J-n

Hi J-n,

They may be "incompatible" goals.... it is a "test" of our wisdom. So far we are not getting passing grades with even the species here on Earth. There are many thousands of species of living creature that man will not be able to examine in-vivo... that were here "alive" a hundred years ago... and we never had a chance to study them... how many more will disappear before we even know they exist? If this is what we do to our genetic "brothers" and "sisters" what are we contemplating with this nonsense?

Any one of those species may have been a natural cure for all forms of cancer or an "elixir of eternal life"... you will never know now.

Cheers

I always thought they were just keeping anything that went into space as clean as possible, to pervent anything (like a speck of dust or whatever) from damaging it.

Well, look at it this way.

If aliens from Mars showed up here - wouldn't you have wanted them to take a shower first?

We harbor millions of bacteria - since we don't know what type of effect our bacteria would have on another planet - we shouldn't be messin' around, right?

That's just my $0.02.

Oh my God! I think I agree with messanger on this. Ol Satan must be freezing his nads off about now!

Krreagan

They may be "incompatible" goals.... it is a "test" of our wisdom. So far we are not getting passing grades with even the species here on Earth. There are many thousands of species of living creature that man will not be able to examine in-vivo... that were here "alive" a hundred years ago... and we never had a chance to study them... how many more will disappear before we even know they exist? If this is what we do to our genetic "brothers" and "sisters" what are we contemplating with this nonsense?

I guess this is my point: Scientists go to Congress to get money to make these trips into space, in order to do what scientists do - to study something. As American citizens, we allow these expenditures in order to study these places as well. However, I think we expect something more. We expect to go for the adventure, and to set it up for future exploration and settlement, etc.

I think many scietists have "grandiose" ideas that may or may not mesh with the general publics views. If they wish to continue getting "our" money, they might need to consider our views more strongly. In the U.S., we do not believe that our government should decide everything for us (fill in the blank: morons, uneducated, etc.) folks. In the same way, I am not so sure that we want scientists to make all the decisions about what we should do in space.

I just don't think the the general public is thrilled with scientists vision in this area, and I think the scientific community needs a reality check.