Astronauts Have Been Stuck In Low-earth Orbit,

Should We Find A Second Form Of Life Right Here On Our Doorstep, We Could Be Confident That Life Is A Truly Cosmic Phenomenon. If So, There May Well Be Sentient Beings Somewhere In The Galaxy Wondering, As Do We, If They Are Not Alone In The Universe.

It Is Possible That A Scientific Discovery Will Be Made That Humans Will Later Regret Because It Has Awful Consequences. The Problem Is, We Probably Would Not Know In Advance And, Once The Discovery Is Made, It Cannot Be Undiscovered.

In Time, [a Martian] Colony Would Grow To The Point Of Being Self- Sustaining. When This Stage Was Reached, Humanity Would Have A Precious Insurance Policy Against Catastrophe At Home. During The Next Millennium There Is A Significant Chance That Civilization On Earth Will Be Destroyed By An Asteroid, A Killer Plague Or A Global War. A Martian Colony Could Keep The Flame Of Civilization And Culture Alive Until Earth Could Be Reverse-colonized From Mars.

The Vast Majority Of Terrestrial Species Are In Fact Microbes, And Scientists Have Only Begun Scratching The Surface Of The Microbial Realm. It Is Entirely Possible That Examples Of Life As We Don't Know It Have So Far Been Overlooked.

In The 1990s I Began To Study The Prospects That Life Could Spread From Mars To Earth Or Maybe Earth To Mars And That Maybe Life Began On Mars And Came To Earth, And That Idea Seemed To Have A Lot Of Traction And Is Now Accepted As Very Plausible.