Exploring The Solar System We are just starting out in space travel, and yet we have managed to contaminate the Moon and Mars. This doesn’t take into account the asteroids we could have contaminated. I have been talking about this for many years. There was an admission years ago that no rocket and its contents could be 100 percent sterilized. That was the start. Then there was the admission NASA didn’t completely sterilize one of the rover’s drills which it used. Now there is a report of the biggest contamination of all. There is a tiny microscopic creature known as a tardigrade. It is extremely hardy and can even live in space for quite some time. It resembles a pink caterpillar with a more defined head and tiny feet. In 2019 a spacecraft was created called Beresheet. It was developed by SpaceIL and Israel Aerospace Industries and sent to the moon. It contained a cargo of tardigrades. The spacecraft crashed on the moon spreading the microscopic life all over. Hopefully the tardigrades died or at least went into hibernation. We really don’t know. I guess we will have to wait until an astronaut is sent into the crash site and test for them. We did a good job contaminating our planet, can’t we at least wait until we explore planets and moons before disturbing their systems? We are just too careless. The things which are on our planet, even those which seem harmless, could be deadly for alien life of all kinds. Even if NASA could perfect the perfect sterilization technique, how can we force other nations to do the same? We really can’t and some of them in order to advance their space programs, might not sterilize anything, because they want to get into space as fast as they can. A question comes to mind. While would anyone send animals, even microscopic ones, to the moon until we know a lot more about it? Everyone knows the chance of a crash by newly emerging space powers is quite high and even if it was not, they should not be doing this yet. The space station has become the primary laboratory for experiments in a no gravity environment. I believe one of the major experiments should be the development of artificial gravity. I say this because it really is needed for longer manned space flights. Not living with earth gravity takes a toll on the human body. The second type of experiment should be trying to figure out the best way to block radiation which is practical and not dependent on heavy lead shielding. Someday we might find out how to do this using some type of wave. As we get closer to going back to the moon, things are going to change radically. We will build structures there and I am sure we will laboratories. When we do this, we might even conduct experiments which were too dangerous to conduct on earth. Take for example the biological labs on earth which are testing and modifying dangerous diseases. Many of these diseases might die if they got out of the moon lab due to lack of an atmosphere. For all we know there could have been labs already built there. There are many rumors of moon bases already existing. Many countries are just bursting to get into space mining. If the engineering could be worked out and the cost brought way down, it could open up a future where there is abundance of minerals and even the rarest of minerals are plentiful. We probably will also discover currently unknown minerals. I believe as AI and robotics advance, the idea of mining in space will become more practical. It could become like the car factory floor where no one is seen and there are just robots doing the job. As communications get faster no humans may be needed on the site at all. There is also the question of how long will it take to explore all the planets and moons just in our own solar system. I believe we should do that first before trying to get to other star systems. There are now 290 confirmed moons in the solar system, eight planets, and five dwarf planets known so far. Some believe the Kuiper belt, which is an area in the outer solar system might contain more planets and other objects. We are yet unable to completely examine it. Nature has been good to us, placing our solar system on the arm of our spiral galaxy where there is plenty of room and away from the chaos of the inner area. The arm of the galaxy we are on was reported by ScienceNews as being a major area and is more expansive than previously thought. It is difficult to picture our galaxy since we are inside it, but scientists have been able to figure this out. I think most of us have seen scenes where in Star Trek the Enterprise comes to our solar system and seems to only be minutes from earth. Some scientists have taken this to heart and have been trying to develop a warp drive. It seems none of them have been successful. The idea of bending space seems to me to be dangerous to those planets and ships which might be in the space we warped. I am no rocket scientist so I have to leave this stuff to them. We do need to travel a heck of a lot faster however if we intend to explore space. One of the things scientists have found out about weightlessness is it has an effect on our brains. The brain seems to adapt and might be making new connections. The data is being used to develop cures for people with brain disorders on earth. We are building robots specifically for use in space. These robots will be able to change their shape on their own. The robots will be made of self-reprogrammable materials. They would be able to take material from an alien world and build other robots on their own to explore more planets and assist with current exploration. One of the major things which had people on edge was the idea of robots building other robots on their own. With the development of AI, it makes the idea even scarier to them. I am not crazy about using robots in place of astronauts. I would much rather see humans make contact with alien races than robots doing the job. There is something to be said about a living creature making contact and not a machine.
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