Of course I do like the idea of spreading life in a controlled way. DPS is however mostely about bacteria and mostely about non-photosynthesizing bacteria. I do adhere to the mainstream opinion, that simple (bacteria-like) life is probably common in the universe. To me this would imply that DPS would not change this. The success rate, e.g. with commets, is also very (exponentially) low. Interestingly, also, ethical considerations are rarely discussed in the context of panspermian (e.g. not at all in the lengthly wikipedia article).

That said, there are of course quite a few common points. The Genesis project is all about to give a planet the optimal conditions for complex life evenutally to evolve. I hope that this notion may be attractive to the panspermia community too.

The way i see it, and i am a mere amateur, there are three very good reasons to argue for cosmic ancestry:
1. If you are confronted with the rise of a complex system of self replication during the habitable window of a planet's lifetime you really should not expect the emergenge of such systems as early as possible. This is highly suspicious and has been voiced by Prof. Hawking initially. This strenghtens our case because of the improbability involved for such systems to arise. Simply put its implausible.

2. It has been argued before that, by the use of estimating evolutionary progress over time that the planet is not old enough to provide sufficent time for such a development. This is controversal, of course, as there is much debate going on about the proper use of molecular clocks in genetics. This being said, recently a paper was published tracking the origin of multicellular synthesis to the change of a single protein. The Last Universal Common Ancestor was, following genetic reverse-engineering already a full fleged cellular organism with all the complexity of transcription and translation mechanisms that goes along with that. Considering its apperance some 3.5 to 3.8 billion years ago and the age of the planet itself (4.54 by) this is a lot of complexity packed in such a short period, including planet formation itself. Its a bit comparing apples and oranges, but the point is complexity we are talking about here, so in my opinion that is fair game. It took a billion years after that for the first cyanobacteria to form multicellular colonies (the change of a single protein in the machinery). Under normal circumstances, which is overall the case if you look at the tree of life, efficiency should increase with adaption. It seems to have decrased serveral orders of magnitude in this case, which is very strange, as well.

3. There is the notion, if you look at the root of the tree of life, dominated by hyperthermophiles, that LUCA itself was a hyperthermophile. This has been called in question and is of course debatable, but the environment, certainly during the planet's early formation was a violent one (moon formation to pick one example). This calls for a robust system and not a delicate, unoptimized fresh one to colonizze the planet. And a robust one it seems to be. The problem here is that hyperthermophiles are already an optimization in themselves with thick proteins to hold together under thermal molecular vibration. This is contrary against every rule of evolution as we understand it under both paradigms.

This brings us around full face to the Fermi Paradox. I am taking my estimates from the paper "Aliens can watch I Love Lucy" from Lou Scheffer. It turns out this is indeed possible if you got a reciver with a diameter of the distance from sun to earth. Thats one big reciever. The real question should be if we can recive signals from another civilization. It turns out we couldn't detect a civilization equivalent to our own at the range of a mere lightyear. We do not have such a reciver and in all likeliness will not for a very long time. This is an errorenous assumption. It would require an incredible stroke of luck to be hit by a point source by a sufficiently strong and focused signal and even then we wouldn't know what happened, probably never being able to locate the signal again (we already had such signals). There is no evidence for backing this notion.

I think Dr. Frank J. Tipler struck gold with his argument with Sagan and Newman about Von Neumann Probes. He argued that such machines (or organisms for this case) should already populate the galaxy at this time. I think he is right and at the same time mistaken. I think something very similar happened and is happening. These "probes" weren't neccesarily built. This kind of approach, considering the timescale, is not really compatible with calling home, nor is this a neccesary requirement, nor is even a concious builder really an requirement. It is far simpler to perform a task fully independantly and for a very long time, especially if the task is replication and adaption. Or, to put it bluntly: it is possible to argue the Fermi Paradox does not exist because we are here.

The problem isn't so much a Paradox which hasn't even sufficient data to back its existance, i am thinking interstellar transfer is really the point where this idea stands or falls. Maybe there is exchange between Oort clouds, exchanging material and sending comets into the inner systems as stars pass close to each other. In any case these organisms have to have the capability to remain dormant for a very long time in space. Radiation isn't so much a problem as it could be shielded biofilms or simply accumulating dust (comets do have an electromagnetic field?/the "singing comet"?), the problem is atomic decay of cell components at these timescales. It wouldn't surprise me in the slightes if there was a mechanism, be it semi-active or passive to deal with that also, after all i have read about protection mechanisms for genetic information in dormant microbes. The data from the Rosetta comet mission was very interesting, indeed. Such a huge concentration of organics came as a big surprise for some - others expected, even predicted it for decades.
...Best regards, Sascha Wageringel

Dear Richard, You may find interesting the paper attached. The first author is a Professor of Archaeoastronomy from Tbilisu Ilia University. Marina

Dear Marina, Thank you very much. I will study this interesting new paper with great care. Comets may not only be producing these nano-dust particle clouds, but comets should also accrete particulates from them as they pass through them during their orbit around the Sun. The astonishing difference in elemental composition and minerals on the nano-meter to micro-meter size scale revealed in SEM spot analysis and 2-D x-Ray map studies of the Alais, Orgueil, Murchison and Polonnaruwa carbonaceous stones (thought to be cometary in origin) may provide direct observational evidence in support of the major hypothesis concerning the existence of comet produced nano-dust clouds such as was proposed in the Simonia et al. paper. Yours, Richard B. Hoover