How Can We Protect Mars from Earth Germs, While Searching for Life?

http://www.space.com/28517-mars-life-earth-germs-protection.html?cmpid=559070

First off, I’m not a biologist; I’m an engineer who imagines science fiction stories. Putting my imagination aside, I think we have underestimated the microbe world. The human animal has a love-hate relationship with bacteria and viruses. We need them for our survival, but they have the potential to kill us. A symbiotic relationship has existed for millions of years.

This article talks about the potential for us to infect another planet and for any bacteria or virus from that planet to infect us. We have to remember that bacteria and viruses evolve just like us. Their only purpose is to evolve and survive. They fight the same survival battles in the microscopic world that we do in ours.

In any closed environment where a bacteria or virus can survive, it will survive. It will continue to evolve in its attempt to survive. That environment can be another planet an asteroid or even a spaceship. Given enough time, it will find a way to survive.

Your simple answer is to sterilize everything. Well, that doesn’t work all that well. Unless we can kill every single organism, we’re in trouble long term. Remember that if we kill 99.99997% of a microbe .00003% of them survive. Those are stronger than the others are and may have some minor resistance to what we used against them. Over time, the number of survivors will increase and eventually we end up with some of our drug-resistant bacteria.

Imagine visiting Mars and leaving a couple of friends. Then at some point in the future, we return and find some green ooze all over the place. That green ooze could be the most virulent life form we could ever encounter. It could be capable of killing us just a well as laser pistol.

This problem will also appear on long space trips. The crew on the spaceship will be battling a continuous fight against the microbes that are traveling with them. Over time, the microbes will change and unless the crew can stay ahead of their evolution it might end up being a one sided battle. I can imagine a long space cruise where the antagonist is the microbial world aboard the ship. The battles may not be as dramatic as we write in our stories that they may be just as deadly.

 

Ray Jay Perreault

Science Fiction