NASA’s draft EIS does NOT establish that life from Mars can get to Earth faster and better protected in a meteorite - or that ANY life on Mars can get here in this way – it does NOT overturn previous warnings of the potential for large scale effects – and these mistakes have MAJOR public interest and legal implications

Abstract

This paper focuses on the arguments in NASA’s draft EIS which claims that life can be transferred more easily from Mars to Earth in meteorites than in the sample tubes. It also claims that there is no significant risk of effects on the environment These statements are at odds with the cites they themselves cite on these topics. This paper shows that the literature doesn’t support their conclusions and that there are many papers that raise significant concerns for the potential for large scale effects on the environment which they don’t refer to.This paper focuses on the literature on whether life can be transferred from Mars to Earth on meteorites, the literature on the potential for large scale effects, on public involvement and on the legal process.This paper also includes for motivation a brief summary of why the published literature says that there is potential for extant life in Jezero crater either in microhabitats in a seemingly uninhabitable desert in biofilms similarly to the seemingly uninhabitable Mars analogues of the McMurdo dry valleys and the hyperarid core of the Atacama desert. This will be expanded on in a follow up paper.As Rummel at al wrote (Rummel et al, 2002:96)., “Broad acceptance at both lay public and scientific levels is essential to the overall success of this research effort.”This is part of a series of papers in which we find that the cites for NASA’s draft EIS are so flawed that a clean restart is needed with a properly peer reviewed study to assess the environmental impact correctly. If NASA uses this as their final EIS, and it gets taken to the courts, NASA won’t have a case, It will fail basic review, just through checking the EIS’s own cites. However, I suggest with some changes the proposed action can go ahead in a way that is safe for the environment and maximizes return for astrobiology and geology.What this EIS proposes is similar to building a house without smoke detectors. But a house for nearly 8 billion people, most of whom are not aware that this decision is being made for them by NASA. This smoke detector analogy is from Margaret Race from her contribution "No Threat? No Way" (Rummel et al., 2000) We need to examine this properly and if it is needed we need to install those smoke detectors. To do this requires an adequate EIS that uses the sources correctly and it needs to consider alternatives designed to protect Earth with 100% safety, and not just “no action”The issues that need to be addressed in this draft EIS are so many and so serious that they can’t be covered adequately in a single paper. The reason for writing these papers is to have credibility during the NEPA review process, for any potential legal appeals, and if necessary, for the presidential review for large scale effects. Other issues will be covered in subsequent papers.