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I like the colour palette I came up with for Luna. I wonder if I’ll ever get to use it again after these few pages?
Given the travel times and technology involved, it shouldn’t be too difficult to keep all human viruses off of Mars. Same for the viruses in most animals. As long as that quarantine is maintained, there can no new vector for new viruses to arrive. And the only real disadvantage to doing so would be when Martians travel back to Earth.
↓ Transcript
Panel 1: Flashback to Mars. Maida and her aunt make their way, along with a crowd of other travelers on foot, away from the scene of the Kakure attack at the train station. The Martian military oversees them. Maida's voice-over: "We left Mars-- my aunt and I-- because it wasn't safe there anymore. My mum and... My mum is going to follow us as soon as she can."
Panel 2: Maida and her aunt sit on a bench, looking tired, in a refugee camp under a dome on Luna. Voice-over: "We went to Luna first. That's where all the fugees go. It was crowded and awful."
Panel 3: Two people in hazmat suits and a refugee with an unhealthy-sounding cough pass Maida and her aunt. Voice-over: "A lot of us took ill, which we're not used to. Mars doesn't have viruses."
Panel 4: A medic in spotless white clothes goes over some files while Maida sits in a medical room. A plaque on the wall reads: "To preserve our human nature." Voice-over: "But the worst is that they had to change us, before we could move to Earth."
Panel 2: Maida and her aunt sit on a bench, looking tired, in a refugee camp under a dome on Luna. Voice-over: "We went to Luna first. That's where all the fugees go. It was crowded and awful."
Panel 3: Two people in hazmat suits and a refugee with an unhealthy-sounding cough pass Maida and her aunt. Voice-over: "A lot of us took ill, which we're not used to. Mars doesn't have viruses."
Panel 4: A medic in spotless white clothes goes over some files while Maida sits in a medical room. A plaque on the wall reads: "To preserve our human nature." Voice-over: "But the worst is that they had to change us, before we could move to Earth."
It’s impossible to keep human virii and other flora out of any ecosystem involving humans (never mind livestock and companion animals). Humans are laden with virii, bacteria, and micro-arthropods and worms. One estimate suggests that there are more bacteria in your small intestine alone than human body cells in all the rest of your body.
What would happen, I think, is that, since the expensive part of space travel is escaping planetary gravity wells, trade between the two planets would be handled remotely, with very little human travel or involvement at all. In that sense, a quarantine would be maintained, and would probably result in microbiological diversity similar to that which allowed European diseases to wipe out Native Americans in the 16th century.
I never said Mars didn’t have bacteria. I’m pretty sure it would be harmful to try to eliminate all those gut bacteria from your system, never mind the important role they play in, for example, having healthy soil you can grow plants in. Or making cheese. I’m not moving to any planet where they can’t make cheese.
My apologies, then. I misinterpreted what you wrote. I’m guessing they had to change Maida and her aunt by artificially increasing their bone density and muscle mass to account for the gravitational differences between Mars and the earth (disregarding freefall losses).
Over a long space voyage though, any contagious diseases that require constant transmission to new hosts (like cold and flu) would “burn out”, having infected everybody they could possibly infect on the ship (resulting in immunity) before they get a chance to mutate and become virulent again. It happens in the Antarctic research bases. When new people arrive everybody gets sick, but after that they’re disease-free.
A several month space flight should be enough to keep an automatic quarantine against all of the fast spreading diseases.
That was my thought, yes. The other factor at work would be future technology. We’re so close to being able to wipe out the last few endemic human viruses in 2016, I’m sure that in the future the only cards viruses will have left to play will be the vastness of the human population and the threat of animal viruses mutating and attacking us. Neither of which would be a danger on a theoretical Martian colony.