[meteorite-list] Life's Rocky Road Between Worlds

From: David Weir <dgweir_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 09:44:12 2004
Message-ID: <3B266847.B958BCF8_at_earthlink.net>

Hello Ron and List,

This article you have sent challenges the belief embraced by NASA
scientists and yourself that we need to spend millions (or billions?) of
dollars to construct a bio-containment facility for Martian return
samples. Like I have said previously, billions of tons of "hospitable
ejecta" has found its way to our not-so-virgin Earth. A quote from the
article:

"The long term average transfer rate of 150kg of hospitable rocks per
year,
with 7% of resident microbes surviving (if any were present in the rocks
at
the time of launch), is equivalent to a series of space missions that
return samples of about 10 kg of Martian rocks each year under protected
conditions that are favourable to the survival of any life within the
rocks."

So what makes the small samples returned to Earth by our spacecrafts so
threatening? Certainly some of the 10 kg of naturally ejected hospitable
rocks originate from greater depths more favorable to life than that
which we will sample. I am far from convinced that we need to spend all
this money to protect ourselves from something that's been here on Earth
longer than we have.

David
Received on Tue 12 Jun 2001 03:06:47 PM PDT