Habitat Contamination - Warning: Rambling Ahead!

On Thursday, December 5, 2002, at 08:06 PM, victoriatangoman wrote:

> We've all seen reports that the Habitat environment will be able to
> keep out weeds, pests, etc by careful screening at the entry docks.

According to memory: when Biosphere II was closed they inadvertantly
closed in some birds. These particular birds were protected by law
from being held in captivity. They tried to catch them and failed, but
were able to convince the authorities not to arrest anyone.

My bet: there will be plenty of weeds, pest, etc. in space colonies.

The dinosaurs were destroyed by an asteroid because they weren't
space-faring. It's almost as if Gaia then thought "Well, dinosaurs
worked pretty well, but space-faring is necessary. Maybe I'll should
try mammals this time." Humanity is now developing systems to detect
and deflect asteroids, and could build orbital space colonies to spread
beyond Earth to insure life would survive a planetary catastrophe.

Al Globus
CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html