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Fair point, but once we introduce Earth life we can’t exactly take it back.
Why would we want to? There are and always will be plenty of sterile environments in the solar system. What seems to be limited are habitable ones.
Maybe. The tricky part is figuring out which environments are worth preserving before we start changing them don't you think?
I'm not sure if it's particularly tricky. There's a lot of real estate and, outside of highly modified protected environments, there don't seem to be any places where life would easily spread.
My sense is that we can basically just pick a few places to try to colonize, which will require isolation from the outside environment, anyway.
Yeah, that makes sense. We could have specific areas for colonization while keeping others untouched for research might turn out positive.
It'll probably be centuries before we need more than a couple of giant lava tubes or craters, both of which are almost inexhaustibly abundant on both the Moon and Mars.
Maybe, but it’s hard to predict that far ahead. A few well protected sites could be enough for a long time, especially if future habitats remain highly controlled.
I can see the value in studying uncontaminated areas, but once we're trying to establish an ecosystem, I'm all for a spray and pray approach over a highly deliberate designed one.