Selfish thread alert! I need help with my sci-fi comic...(please?)

Basically its about mankind finally getting the chance to explore an alien planet filled with life, within this century. Like star trek and others, the mode of transportation from earth to this alien planet is basically magical, because lets face it, the closest planetary system is how many light years away?

But....I don't want my story to be pure fantasy, I want it to be sci-fi. A good science fiction is hypothetical.

I want to make sure that I have a good understanding of what are the realistic challenges for mankind exploring an alien planet filled with life. But I have no idea where I can really begin researching that for my comic!

Let's say for example - that this planet has an atmosphere similar to earth, oxygen and all that. In other movies I've seen the characters will say something "its safe to take our helmets off!". But does that make sense to you? Wouldn't there by a real threat of inhaling alien viruses and microbial life? Doesn't that threat have to be addressed before they can take off their helmets?

In the movie pandora, the human soldiers ran around in the jungle with very little protection. Sure they had a helmet/mask, but large parts of their skin was exposed to the jungle. Here on earth, just walking barefoot in the jungle exposes you to all sorts of parasites. Wouldn't it be even more dangerous on an alien planet to expose even the smallest portion of skin? I guess the pandoran excuse is they've been researching for years.

As I imagine, when humans explore an alien planet they'll need to be protected head to toe from microbial intrusion. And it might be a nice idea to not contaminate the planet with our own bacteria?

Considering that, what about pee or poop? So imagine you have your human astronauts, trekking through that alien jungle. Its been hours, and someone's gotta go. Is it safe for that astronaut to drop their pants, go behind and alien bush and drop in a can? Or, again, would a naasa scientist advice against that becuase that literally exposes them? Just use your diaper and be a man?

Or, am I being too paranoid and its really not that big of a deal? I mean, trees have viruses but I'm not worried I'm gonna catch it. I'm not a tree so it doesn't affect me! Maybe that logic works on alien planets too???

Anyways, I'm not asking for the solutions to these problems - that's the scifi anything goes part!! I just want the real science part - what are the real challenges and dangers of exploring an alien jungle compared to an earth jungle??




Btw, you space nerds should totally watch the anime Space Brothers. Props to the author! Its a realistic story of japanese astronauts set in our life times. Its made me enthusiastic about manned missions again!