Posted on 12/01/2004 5:10:47 AM PST by Momaw Nadon
A set of seven 'planetary parks' have been proposed for the conservation of the martian environment by two European scientists. Each of the parks contain representative features of the landscape on Mars.
The Polar Park would protect the martian ice cap; Olympus Park would make the largest volcano in the solar system, Olympus Mons, safe from commercialism and exploitation. Charles Cockell, a Britich microbiologist, and Gerda Horneck, a German astrobiologist, point out that many parks on Earth were established to protect their natural beauty, not just wildlife.
"It is the right of every person to stand and stare across the beautiful barrenness and desolation of the Martian surface without having to endure the eyesore of pieces of crashed spacecraft scattered across the landscape."
Among the many barriers to this proposal is the fact that while many nations, including the United States, Russia and China, have signed the UN Outer Space Treaty, few have ratified the 1979 Moon Agreement. This agreement specifically seeks to regulate the exploration and exploitation of natural resources found on the Moon and other celestial bodies; the U.S. has not ratified this agreement.
I'm not aware of any proposal in science fiction to create parks on other planets for the purpose of conservation. SF authors are aware of the potential problems of economic exploitation; here's a quote from Alfred Bester's novel The Computer Connection:
I'd been smart enough to be prepared; a huge wicker hamper with enough deli for months, clean linen and blankets. A freighter to Saturn is no luxury jet...
Saturn was quite a sight as it came looming up... Alas, only the two inner rings remain. Despite violent protests by ecologists and cosmologists, the Better Building Conglomerate had been permitted to harvest the third outer ring for some kind of better building aggregate. There was a housing crisis, and the [Conglomerate] paid enormous taxes. One infuriated astronomer had been euthanized for burning the chairman of the board.
Also, natural and manmade caves on the Moon were used for recreation in Robert Heinlein's The Menace From Earth; loonies used Bat's Wings to flap around and enjoy themselves.
Read more at Scientists propose conservation parks on Mars.
I don't have a problem with protecting the natural enviroment of the other planets but I do worry about going overboard. I hate to think that we may find something of great value to mankind only to find it off limits.
Deforestation?
Aside from a newly invented "right," the euroweenies should clean up all the "crashed aircraft" littering Earth's parks before worrying about another planet.
Are they figuring out a way to make the US pay for it?
There is always the enforement issue.
A solution desperately in search of a problem.
...all no doubt to protect the breeding grounds of the threatened Martian caribou herd.
Oh brother!
Complete flapdoodle.
They are using the same tactic in Antarctica. Greens want to prohibit exploration of the huge underground lake, Vostok.
Sheer hubris.
Such specism. The silly idea negates the possibility that alien species who land and inhabit Mars long before our ability to do so reaches that point, must abide by our edicts.
Can there be anything more ludicrious than a claim by earthbound NGO's on the universe?
Which is disappearing because of Martian warming and the fact that we just don't care enough.
Gerda Horneck, a German astrobiologist
Complete list of life forms studied by astrobiologists:
"It is the right of every person to stand and stare across the beautiful barrenness and desolation of the Martian surface without having to endure the eyesore of pieces of crashed spacecraft scattered across the landscape."
If it is my "right" (as defined by kooks like this), then I demand the government fund a trip to mars for me to see the beautiful barrenness.
Considering that Greens rage against the destruction of the tropical rainforests for "all the potential undiscovered medicial cures lost each day", their prohibitions against exploring vast swaths of the earth is 1) inconsistant, 2) illogical and 3) inhumane.
The environmentalists have been enraged when more people might have the ability to access earth-bound National Parks. They're bound to go out of their gourds if you defile a pristine, human-free planet.
Plan for desert (Death Valley) upsets environmentalists - County aims to 'restore' access to land through 1866 mining law - 06/24/04 San Bernardino County Sun
The other "Children of Heinlein" will probably excommunicate me from the National Space Society for saying this, but I am a complete heretic on this issue. Mars is the only other planet in this system where is there is evidence (not proof) of indigeneous life forms. We're about to go there and contaminate the hell out of it with e. coli, et al. I believe that ALL of Mars should be maintained as a solar system preserve with only sterilized probes going there until we are sure that there is NO indigeneous life. There are plenty of sterile rocks to colonize.
Yes, but let us keep circumcision out of this debate.
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