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Keeping Alien Samples Safe For Study
Metrollica writes: "Space.com features an article describing NASA's plans to prepare the Johnson Space Center that could one day house extraterrestrial life." An excerpt from the article: "It's human nature to clean for company more thoroughly than one would for oneself, but nowhere is this truth taken to greater extremes than at the Johnson Space Center. NASA's setting new standards of cleanliness in its labs that handle samples returning from space. And their efforts are laying the groundwork for samples that might some day contain evidence of extraterrestrial life from Mars, Europa, and other points little known."
From the lost episode, or just those who are lost, like me, too poor for cable/sattelite :(
How Jaded Are You?
Given the results of the last poll, in which CowboyNeal lost horribly to the option of 'yes', I voted for his option this time in hopes that it will raise his possibly near-obliterated self-esteem. :_D
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I could've sworn I disabled
you can always tell a poll's in trouble when he's got a 60% majority...
Offtopic, but who cares?
sulli
RTFJ.
http://www.farscape.com/ still no sign of CowboyNeal appearance.. yet
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Don't Get Caught
I've always thought Farscape and Blake's 7 were both similar in character makeup and plot arc (which is a good thing.. they're both awesome SciFi). My vote has to go to Rygel because he's such an unapologetic self centered sonofabitch, and he reminds me a lot of Avon. A refreshing change from the normal "lets help humanity (alienity???), be a nice guy/girl/amorphous blob" type of central character in your average SciFi claptrap.
Wait, I thought the poll said favorite escape characters. Never mind.
Farscape is a continuing series on the Sci Fi Channel. Currently on the third series. It revolves around the story of John Crichton an astronaut who while testing a vehicle, designed to use the gravity well as propulsion, accidentally gets tossed into a wormhole.
Ok while the story is really good and all, THEY DON"T HAVE ANY BLOODY NEW EPS! Then next new ep, is supposed to air sometime in april. relevent links: Official Web Site
I clicked on the 'results' link on the main page expecting to still see the 'marry me' poll, and momentarily thought there was a second incidence of ballot stuffing making CowboyNeal the fiance of the hour...
That would be Chiana if you're into sex with aliens who don't look like us, or Aeyrn if you're into sex with aliens who do look like us.
- Relativistic? That's barely Newtonian!
Chiana isnt bad looking, found a nude of her, not sure if its real. Space Babes
Humm, better results in google if you type nude in front of someones name. Nude Pics
That would be Chiana if you're into sex with aliens who don't look like us, or Aeyrn if you're into sex with aliens who do look like us.
Re:Which one (Score:4, Informative)
Only on slashdot would this be moderated as informative and not funny. Only here are we so serious about sex with aliens.
~z
sig?
Gods! Its been years since I've seen Blake's 7. It used to be on when I was in middle school, but public televison couldn't get the money to show it, Dr. Who, and Red Dwarf all in the same year, so they dumped Blake's 7. I really liked the show, though I have a feeling I missed quite a bit of it, due to the fact that it didn't come on until 1:00 am, Friday night.
At any rate, the comparison between Blake's 7 and Farscape is rather striking, now that you mention it. Strong, hero type leader (Blake/Chriton); manipulative, greedy sneak (Avon/Rygel); there seem to be similarities between Pilot and the Liberator's computer (and the computer the picked up later... what was that called?... damn! its been a while!). And the constant pursuit by the authorities. Really, Farscape seems to be Blake's 7 with a budget and American accents. How interesting...
Rhapsody in Numbers
Is it just me, or could that actually be a title of an XXX-rated movie?
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
they must have the cleaning crew from Wright-Patterson there for a weekend getaway
There was no air on the moon or in high earth orbit, so there was no reason to keep the astronauts quaranteened.
HOWEVER, it was a good idea, because they didn't know everything they were dealing with yet.
On Mars, Europa, and Io, there exists a remote possibility for life. Retreival missions should be geared to keep this life hermetically isolated from the Earth's biosphere.... Just in case.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
I hope they'll organize a televised deathmatch between it and some Earth microbe, seen through a microscope. That'd be cool.
The story went up ~5 minutes ago and I can't get anything, surly it can't have been /.ed this quickly? I would have really liked to see what kind of measures they would take to house extraterrestrial samples. How would you be able to remove all microbes from the air in a lab? Would you even use air, just keep it in a vacuum. That still leaves the problem of microbs on the equipment and and lab environment. They have experience keeping things in with viral labs but I don't think it's entirly applicable to this situation where you'd have to keep things out. All I can think of is shortly after building it roasting the entire lab to destroy every last trace of life than doing the same thing to the lab suits when coming in, which would of course have to be fire proof AND impermeable to moisture, anything come to mind? Are there any other more practical ways to effectivly destroy all cellular matter in an environment?
I stole this Sig
OK, I'm taking bets on the first post to make a joke about a nuclear self-destruct device. Any takers?
If all goes well the Stardust mission will be returning to Earth with cosmic dust particles from the comet WIld 2 sometime in 2006
From what is mentioned on the project webpage it seems that they plan to return the sample to Earth via a capsule to be jettisoned from the space probe when it returns.
While the chances for contamination are relatively low, it certainly can't hurt to be prepared.
More info at
http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/index.html
-- Your local friendly mad scientist-in-training
Imagine if there was once advanced, possibly even intelligent, life on Mars.
Would it be too far-fetched to speculate that perhaps that all higher life forms were wiped out by some virus or bacterial disease?
With the plant and animal life gone, the climate of the planet would change radically -- to the extent that we see today - but the cause of the catastrophy could stil be lurking in the soil.
What guarantees do we have that bringing back a sample of soil or rock from Mars wouldn't expose this planet to the same catastrophic outcome?
From what I read, scientists are still debating whether those odd fossil-like oddities discovered in meteoric fragments from Mars are actually petrified bacteria.
I think it makes a lot of sense to take every possible precaution when it comes to bringing stuff back from Mars. It might even be a good idea to do the initial analysis up in the ISS just in case it's really bad news. After all, how do we know that we could actually contain a pathogen such as that which might be returned from the red planet?
Is it really worth the risk?
Alternate link to story on Yahoo! News. The Yahoo site has the text of the story, but not any images of the room. I should have included that link when I submitted the story.
--Metrollica
we may as well give up now.
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Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.
that have red hair.
"The truth is IN there."
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
What justification is there for intentionally housing possibly dangerous extra-terrestrial life forms? The curiosity of a few academics is surely not reason enough to put the entire human race at potential risk!
After all, no matter how carefully they may store these organisms, there is always the possibility that they may somehow escape. Once the terrestrial biosphere is contaminated with foreign organisms, who can say what the result will be? History is rife with examples of non-native species decimating populations of unprepared organisms.
I am not worried so much about macroscopic life forms as microscopic ones, such as bacteria and viruses. Having evolved for millions of years apart from terrestrial macro-organisms, these creatures could devastate our maladapted immune systems.
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Domine Deus, creator coeli et terrae respice humilitatem nostram.
Although I am seriously skeptical of any actual Alien beings already in captivity (or storage) by the government, I do tend to think that they know somewhat more about the space program in general than they're letting on.
Is it possible that some of this news could be gradually preparing the public to accept the idea that there is proof of life elsewhere in the universe? I imagine most people would not have much of a difficult time accepting this, but there are groups (I believe) that would have a difficult time dealing with the fact that life exists anywhere beyond Earth.
I just wonder if they're preparing for something they might get, or preparing us for what they've already got.
(I could also be listening to Art Bell too much...)
My Webcomic: Asylum on 5th Street
Hrm, so where did they hold the stuff from them 50s? ;)
Seems Nasa expects to only find bacteria and other simple life.
How are you going to deal with intelligent life, i mean come on bacteria????????? We shouldnt worry about that stuff, we should be worried about how to deal with contact with REAL alien life, meaning stuff that we've never seen before and wont know how to deal with which is as intelligent or more intelligent than us.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Do we really know now if life is on mars or not? no air or water on the surface, what about under the surface?? When they drill on mars, or can get a probe to actually land on mars, we will find out.
As far as life on other planets, I'm 99 percent sure theres life on europa, that planet is like the south pole is on earth, alot off ice, and alot of water under the ice, meaning theres bound to be life under the ice, and the life could be intelligent life at that.
Europa would be the planet to check for contact with aliens, the fact that we havent even a probe planned for Europe must mean Nasa isnt trying to discover intelligent life, they wouldnt know how to handle it if they did.
bacteria, thats a life form simplee enough for us to properly handle.
Imaginee us going to Mars or Europa, and bringing back some unknown alien lifeform, will that lifeforms friends send ships to earth and attack us, who says they arent as intelligent as us, now they could be like aliens on earth but some of these other planets had life on them long before earth.
Who knows.
In my opinion i dont see why we need to bring stuff back at all, we can do all of our tests in space to make sure its safe, bring it to a space station. Let astronaughts deal with it.
IF its a live alien why tell the people about that? so they can panic? Let the astronaughts in space interview the alien or run some tests, then send it back to its friends.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Yep, I think you've been listening to too much Art Bell.
Roswell was most likely just a smokescreen to divert attention from the fact that Nazi scientists were working for the US to develop their rocketry program. They probably realized that if they produced "evidence" of a crashed saucer and then quickly backtracked and denied it (substituting a weather balloon for the saucer) that people would think there was a conspiracy to cover up the alien crash. Worked pretty damn good. Meanwhile, no one is even thinking about having the former enemy on the public payroll.
That, my friend, is the real conspiracy.
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I didn't want to leave this space blank.
Zoltar: "Home Planet: these earthlings had a really crappy waiting room. The Nation Geographics were ten years old, they had no dish of candies on the coffee table, and from watching "Nick at Nite" we have determined that the next season of "I Love Lucy" you all have been waiting for is really going to suck. I suggest we destroy their planet now."
Which is exactly why I don't understand why we haven't got a base of some sort on the moon yet. Think of the benefits.. we could test all sorts of new space engines and thrusters, and perhaps perfect easy Moon -> Mars flights. We could also dig up any minerals that are there, and maybe even find the Monolith :-)
Am I just nuts, or would a moon base really be helpful as well as awe inspiring for the entire planet?
mogorific carpentry experiments
Why bring it to Earth? Just bring it to the Space Station.
Specifically, you have the returning space probe enter Earth orbit. A service vehicle is then dispatched to dock with the probe. Part of the service vehicle is designed to serve as a containment module for whatever beasties the probe brought back.
Then the service vehicle navigates back to the space station and docks. The containment module remains off-limits to personnel, all observation/experiments are performed using machines preinstalled in the containment module.
If the beasties start pulling an Andromeda on us, you jettison the module and send it on its way to the Sun.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
Of course, that fell in line nicely with rumors that JSC was actually a Hanger 18 site. And that's why JSC property includes lots of undeveloped land (all those underground facilities). Now days there's a major road and a magnet school along one of the borders that used to be closed off NASA territory.
Of course - its all bunk anyway. But it fit nicely with the Alien Room at the bottom of the (sometimes) locked elevator.
Johnson Space Center is just south of Clear Lake City, between the city of Houston and the Gulf of Mexico. The land it is on is already sinking. Every year, local roads disappear for days at a time under high water after heavy rains.
Houston locals, including the people at NASA-JSC, entertain themselves by betting on where the hurricanes are going to hit. Locals track them on maps--and everybody has maps with latitude and longitude, because they are distributed by local businesses printed on placemats, grocery bags, and such.
Clear Lake has a straight section running directly from the Gulf of Mexico to the south side of Johnson Space Center. Topo map A big hurricane, hitting at the right point in the tidal cycle, could create a storm surge that would flood everything at JSC up to, maybe including, the second floor.
When I worked there (a long time ago) high-water preparedness consisted of putting the equipment up on tables and desks.
It seems to me that a place which could be sloshing with seawater is not the best location for this lab.
You missed the news that NASA is planning a sample return mission to Mars within the decade. Actually, they've been planning it for quite a while now, at least 10 years. It has been delayed by several years by the Polar Lander and Climate Orbiter debacles, but it is still on.
I remember as a kid going to the Smithsonian Air & Space museum, and they had an Apollo exhibit with a slice of a moon rock exposed for anyone to touch.
Well, I did what kids normally do, I touched it and I turned out ok, except for that X-Files episode they based on my life. Dirty bastards...
This is sorta of a continuation of discussion started the other day. ( see here) Basically the premise is that if intellignet life exists out there then there is a high probability that it's millions of years more advanced than us and that they would probably be engaged in massive civil engineering projects (such as arranging stars for pratical benefit) that would be observable from earth. The question is what would we look for that would be out of the ordinary?
Well, actually it is/was a TV Show and it showed us that they didn't just die.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
You think there's a witches brew from the Petroleum industry. Just think about all the chemicals and biological agents dumped in to Houston's bayous from flooded university labs last year.
In any case - JSC does have some degree of underground structures. I'll have to dig up some info on that room and find out exactly how deep it goes. But otherwise, JSC has a somewhat extensive network of underground utility tunnels (although they don't got THAT deep, but I understand they're very wet).
Having said all that - The Alien Room is labled as such because of our sense of humor. Not because of its actual use.