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Planetary Protection: Mars "Dirty" Category IV by TheRadicalModerate on 11 Apr, 2024 20:37
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Both the Planetary Protection Independent Review Board and National Academies reports conclude that the probability of Earth life surviving on the exposed surface of Mars is low enough that some regions could support substantially dirtier missions than the current Planetary Protection Category IVa would allow, and they recommend that NASA (and, by implication, COSPAR) work to define what such a dirty set of guidelines would look like. Let's call this "Dirty Category IV", or maybe Category IVd ('d' for "dirty"), and think about how it could differ from the Mars Category IVa/b/c guidelines.
That's the thread topic.
Subtopics:
1) The actual requirements.
1a) What are the surface-area and enclosed bioburden limits for a dirty mission? I.e., how dirty is too dirty?
1b) How big does the safe area around the landing site have to be to be a dirty-qualified region? Note that it's very handy to have dirty regions defined as close as possible to special regions, because then a dirty spacecraft can land clean equipment, which can drive / fly / hop itself into the special region.
1c) How do you land a dirty spacecraft safely? Even Cat III missions have fairly stringent requirements if they can't guarantee that they won't crash into Mars for at least 50 years. Does every dirty-qualified surface region need an accompanying dirty-qualified EDL track? How severely does that restrict the ability to create dirty regions?
1d) Rules for how to manage clean equipment coming from or going to a dirty region.
1e) Rules for determining that a subsurface ice deposit is safe to mine. You can do interesting engineering in a dirty region, but a lot of ISRU work requires water to work at scale. Since the absence of water connected to the surface is pretty much the PPIRB and NASEM's bright line for where dirty regions might exist, this is a problem. Is it fixable?
2) How to move the process along.
2a) Getting industry input. This is a euphemism for, "Can the US government keep SpaceX from going rogue if this takes too long?" SpaceX can be either an extremely effective motivator for accelerating this process, or it could decide to try to break the system by exploiting the FAA's lack of charter to regulate PP adherence. (Sadly, whether this is possible for SpaceX to do needs to be on-topic here.) Keeping them on-side while using them as a blunt instrument to get COSPAR to move quickly is going to be tricky.
2b) What impediments are there getting something through COSPAR? Top of my list here: China and Russia. Anything that prevents Starship, which they no doubt view as a geo-strategic threat, from increasing cadence, they'll view as a win. Since a robust set of Mars landings does exactly that, delaying Starship landings on Mars will have a certain appeal. Given that neither country is likely to benefit much from dirty rules being promulgated soon, it costs them very little just to be obstructive.
2c) If COSPAR drags its feet, should NASA just write the rules and have done with it? IOW, can NASA diverge from COSPAR? The US could certainly claim that the existence of NASA-promulgated Dirty Cat IV rules was adequate to satisfies the US's OST Article IX obligations, but there'd be a lot of diplomatic fallout.
3) Is a dirty Cat IV necessary?
3a) How many more Cat IVa/b/c landers will there be before clean surface resources, deployed and managed from spacecraft in dirty regions, take over from the dedicated clean landers of the last 25 years? This ultimately depends on whether you can get dirty regions close enough to special regions to do get clean equipment to the right spots without landing it from orbit.
3b) Can a robotic dirty Cat IV be defined in the absence of nailing down a human-qualified dirty region? (I hope so, because the human guidelines are gonna take forever.) I'm tempted to say that a human region is a subset of the dirty regions, but that it can be otherwise defined independently.
Because this is a planetary protection thread, the temptation to start the usual "planetary protection is stupid!" food fight will no doubt be overwhelming to some of you. In an effort to keep you from reflexively reaching for the lime jello, try to restrict yourself to subtopic #3, where you'll be able to explain why spending time on this is silly. Have at it. -
#1 by Dalhousie on 12 Apr, 2024 01:12
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What's the difference between a "dirty category IV" and Category II - missions to bodies where there is significant interest relative to the process of chemical evolution and the origin of life, but chances of compromising contamination by spacecraft are remote. E.g. Venus; Moon; comets; carbonaceous asteroids; Jupiter; Saturn; Uranus; Neptune?
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#2 by TheRadicalModerate on 12 Apr, 2024 04:11
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What's the difference between a "dirty category IV" and Category II - missions to bodies where there is significant interest relative to the process of chemical evolution and the origin of life, but chances of compromising contamination by spacecraft are remote. E.g. Venus; Moon; comets; carbonaceous asteroids; Jupiter; Saturn; Uranus; Neptune?
Well, for one thing, Cat II areas so far apply to entire planets, and they don't have any particular constraints on landing.
If we get some kind of dirty Cat IV, then Mars will consist of:
1) Dirty regions, where Dirty Cat IV will apply.
2) Special regions, where Cat IVc will apply.
3) Ordinary regions, where Cat IVa will apply for non-life-seeking missions, and Cat IVb for anything looking for traces of past or present biological activity.
As I said above, I don't know how you get a Dirty Cat IV mission on the surface without a lot of EDL risk management. I suspect that's going to be controversial. -
#3 by ccdengr on 12 Apr, 2024 15:52
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Both the Planetary Protection Independent Review Board and National Academies reports conclude that the probability of Earth life surviving on the exposed surface of Mars is low enough that some regions could support substantially dirtier missions than the current Planetary Protection Category IVa would allow, and they recommend that NASA (and, by implication, COSPAR) work to define what such a dirty set of guidelines would look like. Let's call this "Dirty Category IV"...
The PPIRB went so far as to say that most of the planet could perhaps be considered Category II (page 13, "NASA should reconsider how much of the Martian surface and subsurface could be Category II versus IV by revisiting assumptions and performing new analysis...")
Of course, a quick glance at the membership of the PPIRB doesn't show anyone with a lot of biology expertise, so one might imagine that their opinions don't have a lot more validity than any likely to be expressed on this forum
At any rate, I don't see how defining something with the same flavor of requirements as IVa but just higher spore counts and density really helps anything much. FWIW I think every piece of Mars-surface-bound equipment I've ever worked on was only required to meet IVa and met IVb limits for sure, and arguably IVc. If you have to clean and assay in the first place, it's not that hard to exceed the requirements.
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#4 by TheRadicalModerate on 12 Apr, 2024 20:54
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Both the Planetary Protection Independent Review Board and National Academies reports conclude that the probability of Earth life surviving on the exposed surface of Mars is low enough that some regions could support substantially dirtier missions than the current Planetary Protection Category IVa would allow, and they recommend that NASA (and, by implication, COSPAR) work to define what such a dirty set of guidelines would look like. Let's call this "Dirty Category IV"...
The PPIRB went so far as to say that most of the planet could perhaps be considered Category II (page 13, "NASA should reconsider how much of the Martian surface and subsurface could be Category II versus IV by revisiting assumptions and performing new analysis...")
Of course, a quick glance at the membership of the PPIRB doesn't show anyone with a lot of biology expertise, so one might imagine that their opinions don't have a lot more validity than any likely to be expressed on this forum
At any rate, I don't see how defining something with the same flavor of requirements as IVa but just higher spore counts and density really helps anything much. FWIW I think every piece of Mars-surface-bound equipment I've ever worked on was only required to meet IVa and met IVb limits for sure, and arguably IVc. If you have to clean and assay in the first place, it's not that hard to exceed the requirements.
Even if "dirty" turns out to be "as dirty as you like" (i.e., pretty much Cat II), you still have to balance that with the risk that an off-nominal EDL dumps the dirty object someplace that you care about.
Let's assume that the whole surface is divvied up into special regions (as they are defined today), Cat II regions, and buffer regions between the two.¹ Then maybe a good first stab at the new requirement is something like, "You must demonstrate a <1E-05 chance that an off-nominal EDL will dump your dirty spacecraft into a special or buffer region."
If we define a dirty mission as one that's Cat II on the ground, but also capable of meeting this EDL risk requirement, then the question is how easy it is to put together an EDL IIP track that doesn't cross any special or buffer regions (other than the buffer region surrounding the landing ellipse). And, if it's not easy, are there bioburden restrictions on the vehicle to compensate. (Cat III bioburden restrictions in the event it's not possible to meet the impact probabilities are basically the same as Cat IV, IIRC.)
_________
¹A buffer region would presumably be a region that was similarly hostile to Earth life, but one in which a landing ellipse wasn't allowed to intrude, or any microbe-shedding surface activity was allowed to proceed. IOW, it's part of the downwind range for a source that was farther upwind. -
#5 by ccdengr on 12 Apr, 2024 21:30
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If we define a dirty mission as one that's Cat II on the ground, but also capable of meeting this EDL risk requirement, then the question is how easy it is to put together an EDL IIP track...
Sorry, but there are so many hypotheticals here that I don't see the point of speculation, since it all depends on what a few PP specialists end up deciding (as indicated, I was underwhelmed with the qualifications of the PPIRB in this area to begin with.)
There's an MSR briefing next week anyway that might render this moot.
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#6 by TheRadicalModerate on 12 Apr, 2024 22:58
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If we define a dirty mission as one that's Cat II on the ground, but also capable of meeting this EDL risk requirement, then the question is how easy it is to put together an EDL IIP track...
Sorry, but there are so many hypotheticals here that I don't see the point of speculation, since it all depends on what a few PP specialists end up deciding (as indicated, I was underwhelmed with the qualifications of the PPIRB in this area to begin with.)
There's an MSR briefing next week anyway that might render this moot.
Fair enough, but this is eventually going to be a big fat hairy deal for SpaceX. As long as Mars remains a Cat IV-only planet, Starship can't land on it without SpaceX deciding to brazen out a PP-violating launch license with the FAA, and the FAA actually issuing it. It's much, much better for everybody if push doesn't come to shove.
Needless to say, the MSR briefing and what happens to Starship landings are orthogonal. But I'd put the chances of the SRL/MAV package being anything other than Cat IVa-compliant at basically zero. -
#7 by ccdengr on 13 Apr, 2024 00:16
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Fair enough, but this is eventually going to be a big fat hairy deal for SpaceX. As long as Mars remains a Cat IV-only planet, Starship can't land on it...
Everyone acknowledges that the current PP rules can't possibly cover crewed missions, and I for one don't see uncrewed missions to Mars by SpaceX happening as soon as many seem to.
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#8 by TheRadicalModerate on 13 Apr, 2024 06:08
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Fair enough, but this is eventually going to be a big fat hairy deal for SpaceX. As long as Mars remains a Cat IV-only planet, Starship can't land on it...
Everyone acknowledges that the current PP rules can't possibly cover crewed missions, and I for one don't see uncrewed missions to Mars by SpaceX happening as soon as many seem to.
I'm not talking about crewed missions at all--strictly robotic. Would you agree that crewed missions won't happen until a couple of synods' worth of robotic missions have been debugged?
Everybody does indeed acknowledge that the rules have to change for crewed missions. I'm not sure everybody agrees they have to change for robotic missions before the crewed rules come out.
I'd guess COSPAR thinks they have 15 years to nail down the crewed rules. SpaceX would like something for uncrewed engineering tests in half that time. That'd be the 2031 window. Do you think it's going to take SpaceX longer than that to put together a landing test? -
#9 by thespacecow on 13 Apr, 2024 14:59
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IOW, can NASA diverge from COSPAR?
Of course. Anybody disagree will need to cite a law or regulation that says otherwise.Quote from: TheRadicalModerateThe US could certainly claim that the existence of NASA-promulgated Dirty Cat IV rules was adequate to satisfies the US's OST Article IX obligations, but there'd be a lot of diplomatic fallout.
No there won't be.
This would be no different from US using domestic law to allow private companies to collect and sell space resources, in defiance of the Moon Agreement which is still one of the five UN space treaties even though it's a failed one. There's little diplomatic fallout from that move.
There would be even less diplomatic fallout from a change of planetary protection policy, since nobody cares about this except a few astrobiologists and activists who don't really care about the science itself. The planetary resource law is more controversial since it could potentially have negative impact on countries who export resources, planetary protection change has zero impact on the national interests of other countries, and it may even help emerging players in space, i.e. it'd certainly makes it easier for India to build Mars landers. -
#10 by ccdengr on 13 Apr, 2024 16:49
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I'd guess COSPAR thinks they have 15 years to nail down the crewed rules. SpaceX would like something for uncrewed engineering tests in half that time. That'd be the 2031 window. Do you think it's going to take SpaceX longer than that to put together a landing test?
Yes.
Of course, that's just my opinion, and I don't know why you would care about that any more than COSPAR cares what you think.
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#11 by TheRadicalModerate on 14 Apr, 2024 17:32
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I'd guess COSPAR thinks they have 15 years to nail down the crewed rules. SpaceX would like something for uncrewed engineering tests in half that time. That'd be the 2031 window. Do you think it's going to take SpaceX longer than that to put together a landing test?
Yes.
Of course, that's just my opinion, and I don't know why you would care about that any more than COSPAR cares what you think.
Nobody cares what I think, but I care what COSPAR thinks. I'll bet SpaceX does, too. -
#12 by thespacecow on 02 Jul, 2024 03:03
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If you think US government agency/regulator wouldn't casually defy UN, think again: US FCC to international regulators: It’s not ‘practicable’ for LEO constellations to deny coverage to a given geographyQuote
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said operators of global satellite constellations cannot switch off service to a given nation or geography, a statement that flies in the face of evidence of satellite operators doing just that when their services are not licensed.
The FCC’s position came in written statements to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Radio Regulations Board (RRB), which has been trying to get SpaceX to switch off access to its Starlink service in Iran. -
#13 by VSECOTSPE on 04 Jul, 2024 02:50
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This has nothing to do with the UN or commercial comsats broadcasting into autocratic/closed nations or anything like that. It’s a liability issue for the USG, which is bound by treaty. If a spacecraft launched from US soil spoils another planet or brings back the Andromeda strain, the USG is liable, not the spacecraft manufacturer or operator. The USG will be/must be conservative by necessity here. Ignoring the recommendations of scores of worldwide experts in the field would not be conservative.
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#14 by thespacecow on 04 Jul, 2024 04:07
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This has nothing to do with the UN or commercial comsats broadcasting into autocratic/closed nations or anything like that. It’s a liability issue for the USG, which is bound by treaty. If a spacecraft launched from US soil spoils another planet or brings back the Andromeda strain, the USG is liable, not the spacecraft manufacturer or operator. The USG will be/must be conservative by necessity here. Ignoring the recommendations of scores of worldwide experts in the field would not be conservative.
Again, we're talking about forward contamination here, and it has zip all to do with liability of launch. Liability of launch is covered by an international treaty called Liability Convention, it's signed and ratified by the US. There's no international treaty covering planetary protection.
Oh btw, the experts in the field already said we should reclassify much of Mars surface to Category II, there're papers and National Academy report on this. -
#15 by VSECOTSPE on 04 Jul, 2024 16:52
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Again, we're talking about forward contamination here, and it has zip all to do with liability of launch.
Yes, it does. Under the liabiity convention, the launching state is absolutely liable for damage due to its faults _in space_.QuoteOh btw, the experts in the field already said we should reclassify much of Mars surface to Category II, there're papers and National Academy report on this.
“Experts in the field” is not the same as COSPAR. You can find an “expert” that will take any idiotic position on any particular position if you look hard enough. And the National Academies (plural) is a membership organization. It doesn’t publish reports. It’s advisory arm, the National Research Council, does.
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#16 by rsnellenberger on 04 Jul, 2024 18:45
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As I posted in the other planetary protection thread, the convention on liability explicitly applies only to damage to the property, lives, etc of signatory states. A hypothetical non-US terraforming mission that impacts the Mars surface with 200 tons of rich compost *might* invoke the convention if it lands on Viking 1.Again, we're talking about forward contamination here, and it has zip all to do with liability of launch.
Yes, it does. Under the liabiity convention, the launching state is absolutely liable for damage due to its faults _in space_.QuoteOh btw, the experts in the field already said we should reclassify much of Mars surface to Category II, there're papers and National Academy report on this.
“Experts in the field” is not the same as COSPAR. You can find an “expert” that will take any idiotic position on any particular position if you look hard enough. And the National Academies (plural) is a membership organization. It doesn’t publish reports. It’s advisory arm, the National Research Council, does. -
#17 by VSECOTSPE on 05 Jul, 2024 14:20
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As I posted in the other planetary protection thread, the convention on liability explicitly applies only to damage to the property, lives, etc of signatory states.
This is true as far as it goes, but the OST is subject to other international environmental law and principles. I posted a couple links and quotes in the other thread.
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#18 by deadman1204 on 05 Jul, 2024 18:21
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What's the difference between a "dirty category IV" and Category II - missions to bodies where there is significant interest relative to the process of chemical evolution and the origin of life, but chances of compromising contamination by spacecraft are remote. E.g. Venus; Moon; comets; carbonaceous asteroids; Jupiter; Saturn; Uranus; Neptune?
There isn't. This is just like saying "cancer free if you ignore the tumor". -
#19 by thespacecow on 08 Jul, 2024 03:21
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Again, we're talking about forward contamination here, and it has zip all to do with liability of launch.
Yes, it does. Under the liabiity convention, the launching state is absolutely liable for damage due to its faults _in space_.
Wrong, the "damage" listed in the Liability Convention is very specific, it has nothing to do with forward planetary protection:Quote from: Convention on International Liability for Damage Caused by Space ObjectsArticle I
For the purposes of this Convention:
(a) The term "damage" means loss of life, personal injury or other impairment of
health; or loss of or damage to property of States or of persons, natural or
juridical, or property of international intergovernmental organizations; -
#20 by VSECOTSPE on 08 Jul, 2024 06:29
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Wrong, the "damage" listed in the Liability Convention is very specific, it has nothing to do with forward planetary protection:
When the USG signed and ratified the OST, the USG agreed to “carry on [its] space activities in accordance with international law, including the Charter of the United Nations”. That includes international environmental laws and principles. The USG is bound by its signature and ratification to ensure that any entity launching from US soil complies (and has done so for decades now).
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#21 by thespacecow on 11 Jul, 2024 04:46
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Wrong, the "damage" listed in the Liability Convention is very specific, it has nothing to do with forward planetary protection:
When the USG signed and ratified the OST, the USG agreed to “carry on [its] space activities in accordance with international law, including the Charter of the United Nations”. That includes international environmental laws and principles. The USG is bound by its signature and ratification to ensure that any entity launching from US soil complies (and has done so for decades now).
None of the other international laws the US has signed can serve as the legal basis for planetary protection, NASA's own document made it clear that Article IX of OST is the sole reason they're doing planetary protection:Quote from: NID 8715.129 Biological Planetary Protection for Human Missions to MarsPreface
P.1 Purpose
a. This directive defines NASA’s obligation to avoid harmful forward and backward biological
contamination under Article IX of the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in
the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies (the
"Outer Space Treaty"), October 19, 1967.
Besides, you already conceded that NASA can change its planetary protection policy independent of COSPAR in the other thread:If there is still no COSPAR human planetary mission standard to copy, NASA and the FAA will need to promulgate something that conforms to the relevant principles under international environmental law.
So I'm not sure what you're even arguing here, since this is exactly what I said up thread and what my ITU example illustrates: The US government is not bound to COSPAR guidelines. -
#22 by TheRadicalModerate on 11 Jul, 2024 05:26
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Oh btw, the experts in the field already said we should reclassify much of Mars surface to Category II, there're papers and National Academy report on this.
Those same experts, many of whom have participated in COSPAR planetary protection work, aren't saying that the US should just willy-nilly start landing dirty stuff in areas that might conform to the PPIRB and NASEM criteria.
Indeed, the PPIRB and NASEM papers recommend that the international community do the work necessary to characterize what could be made Cat II and what couldn't.
There's a good-faith way for the US (and, specifically, SpaceX) to get the guidelines changed. It's the same way that they've gotten the guidelines changed in the past, as better information become available.
But it takes time, and it requires that the people negotiating recognize that there are a lot of different interests involved. A lot of those interests require samples that are as pristine as possible, from as many different places as possible. Could they work around that? Well, yeah, but it would almost certainly make drawing conclusions about martian life, extinct or extant, and martian geology more difficult.
That's a completely legitimate interest. It's not SpaceX's interest, which is to land Starships on Mars. But when you have conflicting interests, you negotiate. You don't simply dismiss the other interests; you find a compromise.
It seems to me that your principal objection is that you want Starships to be able to land on the surface right now, and other interests be damned. To be honest, my inner 5-year-old wants the same thing. But I'm not five, and I understand that somebody's going to have to do some diplomatic work before we have a resolution. I'm not sure why you don't understand the same thing.
There will be a resolution. It'll just take longer to occur than you might like. Newsflash: Starship will probably take longer to be ready to land on Mars than you might like, as well. -
#23 by thespacecow on 11 Jul, 2024 13:12
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It seems to me that your principal objection is that you want Starships to be able to land on the surface right now, and other interests be damned.
Actually no, I don't want it right now, since nobody needs it right now.
I do want it to be ready when SpaceX is ready to send Starship to Mars, which I estimate would happen by 2026 or 2028.
It's like what Gerst said in front of Congress, flight hardware should not be waiting for paperwork, that should never be allowed to happen.
So there's still some time but not a lot of time. I might also add that none of these means I'm critical of NASA PPO, in fact from some limited view into what PPO is doing, I think they're already diligently working on this problem, and I'm cautiously optimistic that it can be resolved by 2026/2028. But as I said before, this will be resolved by a US planetary protection policy for human mission to Mars created by NASA PPO, regardless of what COSPAR thinks. -
#24 by tea monster on 11 Jul, 2024 13:41
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I've been waiting since the 1960's for people to land on Mars, so "right now" would be great.
The problem is, and has always been, that planetary protection is great, but it won't survive colonisation. Once you put a load of people down on the surface of Mars (or anywhere else for that matter), it's done. Airlock seals leak, Suits can leak, Accidents happen, or you have people who get lazy or try to save a buck by bypassing protocol. One way or another, it's going to happen. You can minimise the damage and try and keep it confined to certain areas. Unfortunately, humans, by nature, are messy and some of them just won't follow rules.
You can choose planetary protection, or you can colonise. You can't realistically have both. -
#25 by VSECOTSPE on 11 Jul, 2024 16:31
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None of the other international laws the US has signed can serve as the legal basis for planetary protection, NASA's own document made it clear that Article IX of OST is the sole reason they're doing planetary protection:
Nowhere in that excerpt does NASA claim that the OST or a certain section of it is the “sole reason” NASA pursues “planetary protection”. That’s your spin and words, not what is actually written.
All NASA is saying is that their planetary protection processes conform to US obligations under the OST. That’s it. And what the OST says with respect to member obligations is that members will “carry on activities in the exploration and use of outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, in accordance with international law, including the Charter of the United Nations”. This means that NASA’s planetary protection guidelines have to meet whatever international environmental law and principles are relevant. The shorthand for this to date has been COSPAR’s planetary protection guidelines for robotic missions.
Even if you totally discount US obligations to international environmental law and principles under the OST, the OST also binds members to “freedom of scientific investigation in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, and States shall facilitate and encourage international cooperation in such investigation.” Forward contamination of water-bearing environments today on Mars and potentially life-bearing ancient environments on Mars is not consistent with this and related language in the OST. Again, the shorthand for conforming to this language to date has been COSPAR’s planetary protection guidelines for robotic missions.QuoteSo I'm not sure what you're even arguing here, since this is exactly what I said up thread and what my ITU example illustrates: The US government is not bound to COSPAR guidelines.
For all intents and purposes, the US is bound by COSPAR’s guidelines for robotic missions because there is no other standard. Yes, COSPAR guidelines are non-binding, even for robotic missions. But the reality is that if your nation is a responsible actor on the international stage — and the US is one and tries hard to be one even when we fall short — you’re going to conform to COSPAR because there is no other standard to turn to. It would be irresponsible and a violation of of the OST itself and multiple international environmental laws and principles to ignore COSPAR’s robotic guidelines and replace them with nothing for a manned Mars mission.
NASA and COSPAR have been working on this hole in planetary protection policy for years now. It will eventually get addressed and COSPAR will promulgate guidelines and/or NASA will promulgate a policy that covers manned Mars missions and meets international environmental law and principles. It may even take a NASA Starship mission or SpaceX application to the FAA to get the technical bureaucracies to put their pencils down, but it will happen.
The alarmism in this and the other thread about some sinister COSPAR cabal conspiring to keep mankind from its destiny on Mars or that misreadings of this clause or that clause somehow invalidate decades of US obligations under the OST is all goofy and frankly the stupidest way to kill a manned Mars effort. Landing something like Starship in a sensitive water-bearing or ancient environment on Mars in contravention of US obligations under the OST is the quickest way to lose the sponsorship and protection of the USG and earn the ire and interference of the international community.
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#26 by Spiceman on 11 Jul, 2024 17:47
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Quote
It seems to me that your principal objection is that you want Starships to be able to land on the surface right now, and other interests be damned. To be honest, my inner 5-year-old wants the same thing. But I'm not five, and I understand that somebody's going to have to do some diplomatic work before we have a resolution. I'm not sure why you don't understand the same thing.
You nailed it ! -
#27 by ccdengr on 11 Jul, 2024 18:48
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https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/events/science-and-planetary-protection-in-advance-of-hum/Quote
Please join NASA’s Science Mission Directorate for a series of workshops aimed at discussing the priority science goals and Planetary Protection knowledge gaps that NASA should address in advance of human presence on the surface of Mars.
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#28 by TheRadicalModerate on 11 Jul, 2024 19:03
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Actually no, I don't want it right now, since nobody needs it right now.
I do want it to be ready when SpaceX is ready to send Starship to Mars, which I estimate would happen by 2026 or 2028.
Ah, so you want a Mars Starship right now, as well.
As long as you're a little bit patient, things will work out. There's a credible plan to reclassify some areas to Cat II / Cat IVd / whatever. That plan will almost certainly be the basis by which human guidelines are created. This will result in spacecraft landing in fairly boring areas and having the schlep Cat IVc-compliant robotic drilling equipment overland for significant distances, but that will only last until subsurface ice/water is adequately characterized. Then there will be a proposal on how to relax Cat IVc, and we'll be off to the races.QuoteIt's like what Gerst said in front of Congress, flight hardware should not be waiting for paperwork, that should never be allowed to happen.
It's not paperwork. It's a good-faith negotiation between the scientists and the engineers. You seem to think all these people are idiots. That's a Dunning-Kruger-like mistake. Some of them just have different priorities than you.QuoteBut as I said before, this will be resolved by a US planetary protection policy for human mission to Mars created by NASA PPO, regardless of what COSPAR thinks.
Speaking of other interests, the State Department has still a different set, which is they want their interpretation of the OST to prevail, because there's a buttload of money and soft power on the line. That's what the Artemis Accords are all about. So they're not going to allow a private mission to get ahead of international consensus, because then nobody will believe the US government on anything related to international space policy. That's an outcome that's at least a order of magnitude worse than SpaceX's Mars plans getting delayed by a couple of synods. -
#29 by TheRadicalModerate on 11 Jul, 2024 19:11
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I've been waiting since the 1960's for people to land on Mars, so "right now" would be great.
The problem is, and has always been, that planetary protection is great, but it won't survive colonisation...
You can choose planetary protection, or you can colonise. You can't realistically have both.
The purpose of planetary protection isn't to make sure that martian microbial rights are preserved. The purpose is to ensure that we get the scientific information we need before we lose the ability to get pristine samples.
If Mars colonization were happenning in 2031, that would be a big problem. But it's just goofy to think that will happen. We might have Starship robotic missions in 2031 (although I'd think 2033 is more likely). We might have human missions by 2037 (although I'd think that 2041 is more likely). And then, because even though SpaceX is always late in the short-term, they over-perform in the long term, we might have more than 1000 people living on Mars by 2050.
If the scientists can't get what they need in 20 years, then we'll need to have a hard conversation. But, again, these people aren't idiots. -
#30 by thespacecow on 12 Jul, 2024 12:35
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Actually no, I don't want it right now, since nobody needs it right now.
I do want it to be ready when SpaceX is ready to send Starship to Mars, which I estimate would happen by 2026 or 2028.
Ah, so you want a Mars Starship right now, as well.
Well let's wait and see then, I don't have time to go round and round over this, especially when people are not arguing in good faith.
Just remember what you claimed:
1. NASA must follow COSPAR, COSPAR needs to develop guideline first, then NASA follows it.
2. SpaceX wouldn't send Starship to Mars until 2033.
And what I claimed:
1. NASA doesn't need to wait for COSPAR, NASA will develop planetary protection policy to enable Starship Mars mission first.
2. SpaceX would send Starship to Mars in 2026/2028 window.
Let reality show who's right. -
#31 by thespacecow on 12 Jul, 2024 13:04
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None of the other international laws the US has signed can serve as the legal basis for planetary protection, NASA's own document made it clear that Article IX of OST is the sole reason they're doing planetary protection:
Nowhere in that excerpt does NASA claim that the OST or a certain section of it is the “sole reason” NASA pursues “planetary protection”. That’s your spin and words, not what is actually written.
All NASA is saying is that their planetary protection processes conform to US obligations under the OST. That’s it. And what the OST says with respect to member obligations is that members will “carry on activities in the exploration and use of outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, in accordance with international law, including the Charter of the United Nations”. This means that NASA’s planetary protection guidelines have to meet whatever international environmental law and principles are relevant. The shorthand for this to date has been COSPAR’s planetary protection guidelines for robotic missions.
What? Didn't you just claim COSPAR’s planetary protection guideline is NOT international law in the other thread, now you're claiming it is an international law which NASA planetary protection has to meet?
There're no other international environmental laws that are relevant to planetary protection, in fact planetary protection has nothing to do with protecting Mars environment/life at all. -
#32 by Spiceman on 12 Jul, 2024 14:32
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Quote
1-I don't have time
2-to go round and round over this
3-especially when people are not arguing in good faith.
1-If you don't have time, please stop posting. Nobody will miss you. I mean - really.
2-You've gone circular reasoning over quite a long time, indeed. Time for you to move on. See 1-
3-I salute your lucidity - you are not arguing in good faith, indeed. Glad you saw the light. -
#33 by VSECOTSPE on 12 Jul, 2024 15:38
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What? Didn't you just claim COSPAR’s planetary protection guideline is NOT international law in the other thread, now you're claiming it is an international law which NASA planetary protection has to meet?
I responded to this in post #217 in the other thread.QuoteThere're no other international environmental laws that are relevant to planetary protection, in fact planetary protection has nothing to do with protecting Mars environment/life at all.
I responded to this in post #175 in the other thread.
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#34 by matthewkantar on 14 Jul, 2024 16:55
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Thinking about Mars samples/sample return, it occurred to me that even if the samples collected to date are not returned, in the future they might be valuable for having been sealed before humans contaminate the planet. While not pre-human-robot, still pre-human.
A money saving strategy would be to cache as many samples on Mars as possible without worrying about retrieving them. Let the humans who some day go pick em up when they get there.
The important thing is the science, not when it gets done. Spend the MSR $$$ to cache more samples. Scientists (someday) get unsullied samples, humans get to go to Mars. Not sure how the international partners are kept happy. -
#35 by TheRadicalModerate on 14 Jul, 2024 17:22
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Thinking about Mars samples/sample return, it occurred to me that even if the samples collected to date are not returned, in the future they might be valuable for having been sealed before humans contaminate the planet. While not pre-human-robot, still pre-human.
A money saving strategy would be to cache as many samples on Mars as possible without worrying about retrieving them. Let the humans who some day go pick em up when they get there.
The important thing is the science, not when it gets done. Spend the MSR $$$ to cache more samples. Scientists (someday) get unsullied samples, humans get to go to Mars. Not sure how the international partners are kept happy.
The problem with this is that the science probably has to be an iterative campaign: get some samples, analyze them, identify some new targets at which to collect samples, and repeat. The same goes for the iterative relaxation of the planetary protection regime: Find some really barren spots, land some assets to see how barren they really are by propagating tagged simulants from the landing site, revise the guidelines based on those experiments, and repeat.
In a perfect world, the timing of the science might not be important. But in a political world there's considerable national prestige in getting samples returned first.
