The BZR 1&2.

The following is a summery of the two key reports that direct first contact policy.

BZR 1 – “Bio Hazard Return”

By Dr. Furgus Worrysom.

Space is a big empty sea in which many strange things may be found. We can not stress this point enough. Things we can hardly imagine will likely be found out there someplace. As we explore our understanding of physics and biology will be expanded, by encountering things that should not exist.

Knowing the council wants practical ideas not general warnings, we will get down to specific concerns. Landing on another planet. It will be a main objective of the exploration core. But should not be rushed into. Before any landing, extensive orbital scans must be conducted. Environmental data examination will show if a planet is habitable or not, it will give us a basic suitability rating. Is the air breathable? How close to Earth’s norm is the gravity and pressure? Can we walk around without a full space suit?

Whatever the answers from orbital scanning, we must next send down an unmanned probe to take direct samples and analyze them on the spot. The aim here is to find any dangers not detectable from a far. Easy enough if you are dealing with a world like Mars. A few soil and air samples and that is all. But what if you are exploring a world full of plant and animal life? There may be a hundred dangers easily visible, a hundred more hard to spot, and a thousand on the microscopic scale.

Do you start to see the big caution sign? Before we allow any humans down on such a world there should be months, if not years, of unmanned exploration and research. To be totally safe no samples at all should be brought back to Earth. But this is against scientific curiosity. So we must establish careful quarantine protocols for the retrieval and processing of any alien samples, especially where hard sterilization safety measures are not appropriate.

If you imagine a Ranger ship entering a new star system, doing a quick fly around and scanning each planet, then landing on a new class M planet, the crew walking out of the ship without protective suits, then you are embracing fiction. We must not be so cavalier about exploration.

Yet it is inevitable that people will land on strange new worlds, or dock with alien space craft. In any such event precautions must be in place. Suits should be worn on any first contact, even if the scans read as a safe environment and people should not open their visors just to smell the air. When returning the team should be put through a hard decontamination process before taking the suits off, then a quick strip down individual soft sanitation before going to be checked out by the medical officer.

Every ship must have an isolation med-bay near the air lock. One that is not the main med-bay. It should be able to hold 4 crew, and that should be the max sent on any away mission. If the doctor has any reason to be concerned, they should order a crewman to be quarantined. This must not result in any sort of mark against the crewman, as fear of consequences may prevent a person from reporting some “minor” symptom. Unfortunately we can only make recommendations for isolation times based on Earth example of problematic issues. In general, the longer the better. A simple 2 day quarantine does little good, but it better than none at all.

Anyone who has seen science fiction horror films, knows the sort of issues we may face. Some of these films also illustrate very clearly the sort of problems we want to avoid. Poor planning and crew performance are high on the list. If a ship has no facilities for decontamination and isolation, if it has no processes for dealing with potentially hazardous life forms, if the crew has no training, then we have a disaster on our hands.

The aim, at all costs, is to prevent any bio hazard from returning to Earth, because the result could be deadly to us all.

BZR - 2 “Being Human Right”

By Eve Allson

Caution is a good idea. But we must admit and even embrace the way humans really do act. A failed system is almost always the result of an inaccurate starting assumption or a wild over estimation of the effectiveness of said system to modify individual behaviour.

“Nothing great was ever accomplished by a timid man.” some Roman emperor said that and it sure is true. Exploration more than most undertakings requires risk. We should minimize the risk as much as possible. But we should not let doing so paralyze us. Very easily we could fall into a process where any new unknown results in us retreating to study it slowly at a distance.

For example; If a Ranger scout ship encounters a drifting alien craft, what should she do? With out getting to close, scan it then try to make radio contact. Fine start, but almost certainly the aliens will not know our language. If they respond at all, we will likely have no idea what they said. The safest thing would be for the Ranger to drop a drone, which would monitor the alien ship from a distance, allowing the Ranger to get on with its assigned mission. Later a dedicated investigation team can come have a look.

Does that sound like what an explorer would do? No, it sounds like the advice of a bureaucrat. Reasonable and cautious. A real human would be curious and want to investigate. After all, what is the reason scout ships are sent out, if not to deal with situations exactly like this? Of course a crew should be careful as they investigate, knowing that the unexpected can happen. They should proceed with all available safety measures in place and be ready for a lengthy decontamination and possibly quarantine after returning from the alien ship.

In this sort of situation, the away team must also keep in mind that they are trespassing. The aliens have every right to react with hostility. While we have no real grounds to use force in our defense. Yet survival is a very strong human drive, so it would be unreasonable to expect people to quietly surrender or be killed. Thus before any away mission, an extraction plan in addition to the regular exit plan must be laid out.

Curiosity is our main motive and it should be embraced. However we do not recommend reckless random button pushing. Instead we promote “look a lot, touch a little”. A scout should gather as much data as possible, while disturbing the area as little as possible. Which brings us to an important mission paradigm; Everything should be reported, yet even the best report will always have blank spots.