If a moon of Jupiter support life - should we introduce new life for Earth travelers? (1 Viewer)

Should we introduce new life on Europa for future travelers from Earth (Multi-Choice)

  • Strongly - NO - Just absolutely not

    Votes: 2 28.6%
  • Probably Not - but so what if it happens by accident

    Votes: 1 14.3%
  • Yes - After we determine No life at all (total absence of life)

    Votes: 1 14.3%
  • Yes - After we determine no life beyond microbes

    Votes: 1 14.3%
  • Yes - After we determine no life beyond fish

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Yes - After we determine no life beyond whales

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Yes - Don't check just do it - Space Travel for humans is too important

    Votes: 2 28.6%
  • Yes - just to show Humans can do it

    Votes: 1 14.3%

  • Total voters
    7
  • Poll closed .

Rx_

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With the news from NASA - that Europa may support life. It most likely has a warm salty sea under the ice. with the low gravity, the water might not be crushing as gravity is only a fraction of Earth's gravity. Oh, and it has oxygen that might support a lot of fish for example.

Would it be justified to introduce Earth biological species for future space travelers?

It isn't a new concept. Sailors of wooden ships use to release mammals ranging from rabbits, goats, pigs or deer on inhabited islands for the same reason. Of course, domesticated farm animals from Europe were introduced to the Americas. The modern Horse was introduced too.

A moon with a small gravity field could make a great place to land, drill an Ice Hole, sent the UAV down to collect some fish and go back to the asteroid space station.

If there is no intelligent life (even like whales), why not use the resources?
What are your thoughts?
Are we 15 years away from making the decision? And, 30 years from making it so?
Review Europa Graphics for Life and Ocean Here
 
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Anakardian

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It really depends.
How many new species of fish and other marine life is discovered on earth every year?
How long will it take to be sure there are not other lifeforms there already?

We are pretty good at surviving here but on Europa we would die due to the radiation. It might not be the best thing to send an astronaut out there just to have him die.
 

Galaxiom

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Assuming their is no carbon based life there already, an entire ecosystem would need to introduced.

Moreover, with almost no sunlight, the bottom of the food chain would require organisms that could metabolise the resources available, possibly using minerals in ocean floor vents driven by tidal heating.

It would be a monument achievement to introduce a bacterial ecosystem. Forget about fish.
 

Anakardian

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Using it as a refueling station though, that might be possible with a robot.
Water is a quite useful resource for oxygen and fuel.
The amount of fuel you can save by refueling out there is staggering.
 

Rx_

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Re: no sunlight
Europa, NASA revealed new evidence for water geysers shooting from the ice-covered satellite. (e.g. volcanic activity)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/habitats/Hydrothermal_vent
It appears that the Earth had at least twice frozen over, ice over a mile deep at the equator.
Life survived deep in the Indian Ocean in hydrothermal vents.
http://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2016/09/new-genus-bacteria-found-fracking-wells
In deep drinking water wells, in fracking wells, and in even deeper test drilling, ...
Bacteria keep showing up.
Perhaps exobiologist might be able to mix, match a combination.
Yes, the water for fuel would be something else too.
The new atomic engine that superheats hydrogen (tiny with a huge push over any rocket we have today) might be able to constantly accelerate at 32 ft/sec/sec.
In theory, it could make 1/10 speed of light. Stopping at this moon to refuel might even enable asteroid mining.

A group in Calif does advanced magnet research. In theory, some super magnetic devices could create a suitable shield against radiation.
Of course, my favorite would be to bring back a sizeable 0.8 KM round asteroid back to the Earth's orbit, but offset 6 months. Twenty feet down should protect most.
If it was round, it should be painted to look just like the Earth. That should confuse those pesky aliens who don't get enough sleep.
 

The_Doc_Man

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Mankind is all too often "tweaking" something to make it better. We need to not do that so much.

We can talk about global warming / climate change if we like, though I'm still of mixed opinions on that subject. (Not that it exists, but I think the stated cause is too simplistic.) That's one case of man mucking up the environment.

We can talk about fracking wells which sometimes lead to poisoning water tables and causing sinkholes.

We can talk about industrial pollution that leads to acid rain and the poisoning of the land/water ecosystems.

See, for example, the results from that GREAT idea of introducing the coypu a.k.a. nutria into southern Louisiana swamps as a way to control water lilies that were choking out the marsh. Problem was that nutria aren't picky eaters, so they eat the vegetation that was preventing erosion in the bayous, creeks, and ponds, so they added to the destruction of the marsh.

When they moved to inhabited areas, their burrows started to undermine waterway banks. It got so bad that the local sheriff's department has a nighttime duty where they allow their deputies to ride around in trucks at night taking low-caliber pot-shots at the nutria using scoped varmint rifles.

The ONLY saving grace to importation of the nutria is that the Louisiana alligator population was really low and as such, was on the endangered species list. However, turns out that a nutria is a bite-sized morsel absolutely perfect for your medium-to-large gator, and after a brief brush with extinction, the gators came roaring back because they had adapted to a new (and apparently, to them, yummy) food source. Nature solved the problem of controlling the population of nutria by increasing the population of the predators.

As a side note and for more background, see also the show Swamp People. In some episodes you can even hear what a roaring gator sounds like. To my ears, the roar is guttural and thunderous. Some of the hunters use nutria as bait for the gators, though there are exceptions to when that is appropriate. But the point is that it all started when Man had this great idea to control water lilies.
 

kevlray

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There are stories from all over the world of man trying to take of an issue only to get a bigger issue from it. It has only been the past years (in a few cases), that there was some fore thought of the outcome of an action. i.,e., so what would happen if you got rid of all the poisonous snakes in Florida? The mice and rats would probably take over the state.
 

Galaxiom

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They killed off the cats on Macquarie Island to help the penguins. Unfortunately the rabbit population exploded. All those burrows destabilised the land and a landslide went through the penguin colony.
 

Rx_

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I think the term is Invasive Species?
We all have our pet real-world personal experience of villains of conservation biology disrupting ecosystem and throwing native populations into disarray. The English Sparrow in the US Midwest, burrows on islands, Russian Tumbleweed in North America, Bigfoot in Australia, ...
However there seems to be a bias.
After all, many now-beloved native creatures were once invasives?
California Wine Grapes from France, Horses in North America, dozens of honeybee species in North America, trees on deserted islands, Mountain Trout in Colorado, Irish Potato, North American Tomato, Russian Wheat in North America, Elton John in Hollywood ...

The first step would be to build a base with a significant artificial magnetic field. Likely, humans might need to live a couple of hundred feet below the ice surface. That is OK, the ice is around 15 Km thick. Low gravity would be a challenge. The habitable structure would most likely need to be a large circular donut spinning so humans could spend time in 1 G environments.
For those watching the SciFi The Expanse - 200 years in the future - only the Solar System is colonized. ICE is worth more than most things. Ice provides water, oxygen for air and hydrogen for nuclear propulsion transportation.
Europa would be a great re-fueling "truck stop".
The organisms miles below might pose a bigger threat to humans than humans to the organisms. (spoiler alert if you haven't watched the 1st Season).

As far as Planetary Probe "sterilization" Protection, an article years ago indicated the parachutes were exempt due to cost for some projects. If not mistaken, the Mars Pathfinder was the first not to be sterilized.
Perhaps the wooden ships carrying rats - with fleas - with germs was not all that unique in modern times?
 

Rx_

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The fun part of the Europa deep oceans with high oxygen content and possibility of life being constant for over 100 million years is how things might evolve.
Is evolution a result of normal but massive climatic change (including meteorites, volcano, and air-conditioning)? Or, would dinosaurs have evolved into more intelligent creatures than humans had ecology conditions not changed?
 

Galaxiom

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The fun part of the Europa deep oceans with high oxygen content and possibility of life being constant for over 100 million years is how things might evolve.

Where would the oxygen come from? It is abundant on Earth only due to vast photosynthesis. Before chlorophyll, there was virtually no available oxygen.

Is evolution a result of normal but massive climatic change (including meteorites, volcano, and air-conditioning)? Or, would dinosaurs have evolved into more intelligent creatures than humans had ecology conditions not changed?

Only if extra intelligence gave them more advantage than it cost. A big brain is very expensive on resources. Ours wouldn't be so useful if not for the opposable thumb which opened up a lot of possibility for manipulating things and a consequential demand for coordination.
 

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