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ALH84001 and Me - Part 3



The Press Conference

    The next day I arrived early, but all the parking
spots had been taken, and this was one of the few times that I have
had to use paid parking in a nearby lot.
     I went into the auditorium and took my seat.  The
scientists were already there, and then Dan Goldin arrived.  The news
conference started, but something was wrong with the equipment.
     The NASA television people fiddled with the equipment, but
nothing they could do could get it to work. And despite being told to
arrive no later than a hour or two before the press conference, the
ABC News camera man was still settingup, and not satisfied with his
shot, was audibly complaining to his controller through his headset
the entire time.
     The announcement was made that the conference would be delayed
for a few minutes, and I went outside to smoke a cigarette.  Now
despite the well known 
carcinogenic effects of tobacco, there were members of 
the panel who also had made the decision that the psycho-active
effects of tobacco were worth the risk,
and they soon joined me. Strange though it may be, none of the other
journalists who were working that day smoked.
     We began to talk with each other, the main
topic of the conversation being that while the Mars
enthusiasts had reached the conclusion that the discovery of the
fossil meant that a manned flight to Mars should be made, in fact the
discovery meant that making a manned flight had become far more
difficult.
We discussed how the increased concerns about the problem of
back-contamination would have to be handled.
     Finishing our smokes, they and I went back into the auditorium.
The technical glitches had been fixed, and the news conference
started. I watched as the people I had been talking with just a few
minutes before took on their public faces and described their studies
and conclusions. (The entire time the ABC news cameraman continued to
audibly complain to his controller about his shot, and I felt like
going over and stopping him.)
     Soon came time for questions, and I asked Administrator Goldin
about the rumors that a new office was going to be set up under the
National Academy of Sciences, whose approval NASA would have to get to
insure that the Earth was not contaminated by any organisms from Mars.
    Goldin explicitly stated that NASA would do nothing to endanger
the Earth, and went on to talk about how well the current process that
NASA had set up was working, and that there was no need for any
additional review.
     I myself had only heard about the plan a few minutes before,
while talking with the several of the panelists outside, and they did
not seem to think that the current process would be sufficient.  




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