The central feedback loop of directed panspermia is schematically shown in Figure 3.1. It seems uncontroversial that simple life is a precondition for complex life in both causal and chronological senses, and ditto for complex life in relation to advanced technological civilizations, such as those sought for in SETI searches. (Arrows in the figure are meant to relate primarily to the causal ordering.) While those issues are uncontroversial, the same cannot be said for the question what exactly can advanced civilizations act on, through one form of directed panspermia or another. We may imagine that this applies to a prospective habitable planet, like the Hadean Earth, in accordance with the original scenario of Crick and Orgel, but there is no reason not to consider other kinds of potential habitats. It is crucial to emphasize the potentiality here, since we now know that habitability in the medium to long term depends on whether a site is indeed inhabited or not, due to multiple complex biotic feedbacks [3.12]. This means that there was nothing obvious in habitability of Earth either—when observed from the Hadean temporal vantage point. On the contrary, something like very precise and advanced astrobiology and ecology had been required at the time (on behalf of potential Seeders) to predict even vaguely what could the hypothetical terrestrial biosphere evolve into in billions of years hence.
Taken together with the ever-increasing and at present inconceivable capacities of advanced biotechnology, this means that we can hardly specify where and how successful could the intentional seeding with life be. Hence, it seems appropriate to label the substrate where both local abiogenesis (in the Oparin-Haldane manner or any of its subsequent elaboration) and directed panspermia occur as “generalized habitable substrate” as a category wider than the usual—and rather narrow—set of habitable terrestrial planets. It is not, in the spirit of the words of Biblical Job cited above, enough to see “the waste and desolate land” in order to “make the ground put forth grass”.
Clearly, concerns of Copernicanism should be taken into account here: should we consider ourselves typical as far as capacity and intentionality for seeding other worlds are concerned? Obviously, the problem here is that we are creatures of our epoch and cannot observe our species “in the fullness of time”. We can speculate, though, on the basis of some actual trends—and indeed we should, taking into account high relevance of the issue.
First, let us consider the unintentional form of directed panspermia. Since 13 September 1959, when Luna 2 impacted the Moon, humans have been bringing their artifacts in contact with other celestial bodies—more than 60 years by now. During that period, great advances in microbiology have demonstrated how resistant terrestrial bacteria are and how achieving complete sterilization of any human artifact is practically impossible. Although people have been aware of this issue for quite some time (and the Office of Planetary Protection has been pompously set up at NASA), it is reasonable to wonder whether humans have already seeded other cosmic bodies with terrestrial life forms—or will do it soon in the continuation of our space programs. In particular, this is relevant for Mars, which is now home to a wide variety of human landers and rovers, and it is a target for future crewed missions. While attempts of sterilizing probes may indeed decrease chance of such an unintentional directed panspermia, sterilizing human astronauts is clearly impossible (and would be a criminal offense even if it were possible!). It is not just Mars—we cannot be sure that even the effectively interstellar probes like the Pioneers and the Voyagers do not carry minuscule pieces of Earth’s biosphere toward the stars. The Office of Planetary Protection notwithstanding, it is highly doubtful that anything short of complete cessation of all astronautic efforts can, in fact prevent such an unintentional directed panspermia. (I call it unintentional since, obviously, propagation of the terrestrial life was never a conscious idea; clearly, the outdated prejudices about fragility of microorganisms encouraged a somewhat relaxed approach to the possibility, which is still discounted as “science fiction” in some circles.) Contrariwise, if our efforts in space gain extent and momentum, the probability for this kind of directed panspermia will certainly increase with time, even if protective measures are applied (cf. [3.54]). The increase in probability will occur on timescales of human culture which are extremely short in comparison to timescales for astrophysical, as well as biological evolution. We shall return to this important point later.
Arguably, this kind of directed panspermia—an unintentional consequence of space activities of technological civilization—was not what Crick and Orgel had in mind. Intentional seeding of other habitats is certainly more interesting, but also more speculative, for obvious reasons. There is a parallel here with the transmission of non-native plants and animals between continents on Earth by humans. Obviously, humans transmitted useful crops like potato or maize from one continent to the rest of the world; equally obviously, transmission of various pathogens or the ten-lined potato beetle was unintentional and brought immense harm to humanity. Let us suppose that an advanced technological civilization will be capable of clearly separate the intentional from unintentional and to regulate the unintentional with 100% efficiency. Do such societies engage in intentional seeding of other worlds?
Again, we should try to take a look into the future of humanity first. There have been speculations and suggestions from time to time that humans could and indeed should seed other planets with the terrestrial kind of life. The reasoning is often based on a form of biocentric ethics: since planet with life is inherently more valuable than a dead planet, we ought to intervene when we encounter a dead—but potentially habitable—planet.8 The strongest contemporary proponent of directed panspermia and our ethical obligations of seeding the universe with life has been the American physical chemist Michael N. Mautner. In a series of papers and books, he has promoted the view that we have a duty to spread life throughout a presumably (mostly) dead universe [3.46–3.48]. Even more, he founded The Panspermia Society in 1995, with the explicit goal of bringing this moral imperative to practical fruition. Since the astrobiological revolution started about the same time, all this has resulted in much more vigorous discussions of the relevant technical and bioethical topics.
We cannot enter here into the latter aspect of the problem: as much as Mautner and others have argued that it is in fact our moral duty to seed other worlds [3.48], there are many astrobiologists and bioethicists who argue to the contrary (e.g., [3.49, 3.52]). This bioethical dilemma will remain with us for quite some time, one may safely presume. There is, however, one angle which has not been sufficiently discussed so far, namely, that the outcome of the debate has a political, as well as ethical, aspects. Even today, it seems plausible that private actors—for instance, companies such as SpaceX—can, if they so desire, launch proverbial soda-cans full of bacteria directed at Mars, Europa, or even some of the recently discovered extrasolar planets. Barring global nuclear war, or some other existential cataclysm, it is virtually certain that the launch mechanisms will become cheaper and more widely accessible in the future. We are not talking about some astronomically distant future, but the future unfolding on the timescales of years, decades, or at most centuries from now. There has been some revival of interest in all forms of panspermia ideas recently (e.g., [3.7, 3.32, 3.57]), which would hopefully give us better insight into the constrains and requirement for the long-term viability of any simple life forms in a variety of cosmic environments. Also, it could be easily shown that directed panspermia can be easily incorporated into a general category of numerical simulations in astrobiology [3.21].
However, if we wish to avoid the pitfall of chronocentrism, we have to take into account the “unthinkable”, namely, to speculate about what the future of human civilization or the past/present of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations may contain. This is not a luxury and it is not optional. The temporal scales of astrophysics and evolution are so much greater than those of human culture, so there are many temporal viewpoints of which we have no historical experience, even if we neglect all other parameter differences. While we cannot be certain that the same is valid for observers in other cosmic civilizations, it is reasonable to assume that a similar relationship between astrophysical and cultural timescales