Welcome back AndrewC!
Haven't seen you around for awhile.
And that crash of the polar lander was the engineers' fault for not getting their units correct. There was nothinig mystical about it.
Again I say the bar is on the rise. Sauron was trying to say that no progress has been made in abiogenesis hypotheses in the last 50 years, now we're talking about the deeper mysteries of DNA. You know that the literature on the topic is abundant for anyone who wants to look.
My own personal view is that we'll never discover everything that can be known in the universe in this life, and probably not in any other. I'm just happy when the furnace is working when it's 4 degrees outside, the sports highlights come on in the morning before work, and I can get on FR and blather like an idiot. ;)
Sounds good to me. The adventure is in the journey, not the destination as far as abiogenesis is concerned.