The Anglo-Australian space program:
Some of this hardware is still rusting in the desert; Iβve touched it.
I really want to a probe to visit Haumea, itβs the most interesting unvisited TNO. Really wish society would invest to mass-produce a cheap, standard planetary probe and send 1 or 2 a year to unvisited bodies.
If it could do double duty as an asteroid diverter, that seems like a viable pitch.
You joke, but:
There is a dark side to you I had not previously suspected.
Panspermia would mean abiogenesis has an essentially infinite potentially habitable surface on which it could have happened. But to me it seems the main problem with it is: if panspermia happened, why does all known life appear to have arisen from a simple unicellular ancestor vs lichen, or tardigrades, or other more complex life forms known to be extreme survivors?
Tardigrades are really not good candidates for spreading through space. They get a lot of press for surviving things we canβt handle, like extreme cold and radiation. But those are the resting tuns, and out of those come microscopic animals that feed on moss or rotifers or so on. They could never spread on a lifeless world. They would starve if they didnβt suffocate, let alone breed.
Lichens could do a lot better since they have symbiotic algae or cyanobacteria to make food. But while the fungus part allows them to survive in places too dry or bright for those on their own, it brings weaknesses too. They generally have trouble with pollution, and I donβt know any can survive without oxygen. And maybe beside the point, but in most the fungus spreads on its own β germinating spores depend on finding new symbiotes.
Out of everything alive today, Iβd say the best candidates for surviving elsewhere would be just cyanobacteria themselves, or maybe some other photosynthetic bacteria. Some live as endoliths in very cold, nutrient- and water-poor habitats like the Antarctic desert. And certainly bacteria can be resistant to radiation β Deinococcus famously more than tardigrades, although that is again one that needs oxygen and food.
Mind, I donβt think panspermia is a particularly plausible idea. Against the increased potentially habitable surface you have all the problems of getting across space to a specific place with livable conditions, not one substance it finds too toxic, just enough light but not too much ultraviolet, for long enough to establish itself. It seems so much less likely than placing the origin of life in the one place we know it is suited for.
But if something did make the jump, I would expect it to be something a lot more like our simple unicellular ancestor than anything else.
A newly discovered moon tunnel could be the perfect place for a colony,β¦
ahg! theyβve found my lair at last.
i was immediately reminded of:
who knows whatβs in that rock. 
( and this book, i think itβs in this book, also has one of my most favorite embedded short stories.
some astronauts manage to land on a comet to explore it. you are left with distinct impression there might be life under the surface, waking up as it approaches the sun. but, the astronauts have to leave. and itβs never resolved. so good. )
A soft heart keeps Enceladus warm from the inside.
