Next time you go for a stroll on Mars, be sure you don't leave any litter behind. A plan to keep parts of the red planet in their pristine state could see seven areas turned into 'planetary parks', regulated just like national parks here on Earth.
Seems to me like we should be worring about more practical problems before such wild-eyed fantasies.
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. H. L. Mencken
Thanks for these interesting comments. Its good to hear what a 'non-space exploration' community has to say as we don't get to hear these views that often.
Its worth remembering that we have already crashed space probes on Mars. Several have now been crash landed on the planet.
So this is not just wild eyed fantasy, but practical reality.
If I was a Montana Cattle Ranger I'd be pretty annoyed if someone
left a burnt out car in my field. So the question is : should we be concerned
about leaving crashed/old spacecraft lying around other planets, which eventually might be settled.
It is some way off in the future, I agree, but it might be useful to think about these problems - as we are already dropping spacecraft on other planets.