Water on mars! Go Phoenix!

[CaptainDonovin]

Oh please. This is the same guy who couldn't spell potato correctly. Why should he know anything about the location of Mars. I know there are a lot of Americans who couldn't find Afganistan on a map (or Minnesota for that matter) but this was a Vice President {gag} and he should at least know how to spell.

 

[CaptainDonovin]

Not trying to bash you scotthm but if, and even though I lean towards 'when' I'll go with 'if' here, we find a fossil or microbe on Mars that will quickly shoot down the "life doesn't exist anywhere but Earth" arguement real fast. I'd love to sign up for the first trip to Alpha Centauri but I also want to know what's in my own backyard.

And I also think $450 million to go to Mars is better spent than the cost of going to Iraq. (no offense to those who are for this or to our brave military personnel, just an opinion)

More discoveries here at this link, btw.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/06/26/mars-dust-life.html

 

[Jadzia]

What I'd like to see is rather than exploration, is to try growing stuff up there.

We could probably selectively breed/genetically engineer some plants here on earth to adapt to low pressure atmospheres, and microbe-free martian-like soil. (Reduce the pressure by 5% each generation) From something like desert grasses, mountain grasses, arctic grasses etc. Once we have the things surviving, we could send some little plants up there, some plant fertilizer, and plant the things, and see if they survive.

Since there is water vapour in the thin atmosphere, it may be possible to condense it out using a solar powered compressor and a peltier pump. That water vapour could irrigate the plants until (maybe) they are mature enough to pull the water vapour from the air themselves.

It would be lovely to see something managing to survive up there.

 

[Zachary Smith]

What I'd like to see is rather than exploration, is to try growing stuff up there.

We could probably selectively breed/genetically engineer some plants here on earth to adapt to low pressure atmospheres, and microbe-free martian-like soil. (Reduce the pressure by 5% each generation) From something like desert grasses, mountain grasses, arctic grasses etc. Once we have the things surviving, we could send some little plants up there, some plant fertilizer, and plant the things, and see if they survive.

Since there is water vapour in the thin atmosphere, it may be possible to condense it out using a solar powered compressor and a peltier pump. That water vapour could irrigate the plants until (maybe) they are mature enough to pull the water vapour from the air themselves.

It would be lovely to see something managing to survive up there.

Be careful what you wish:

"No one would have believed in the middle of the 20th Century that human affairs were being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than Man's. Yet, across the gulf of space on the planet Mars, intellects vast and cool and unsypathetic regarded our Earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely joined their plans against us . . . "

 

[scotthm]

Not trying to bash you scotthm but if, and even though I lean towards 'when' I'll go with 'if' here, we find a fossil or microbe on Mars that will quickly shoot down the "life doesn't exist anywhere but Earth" arguement real fast.

And so what if it does? I'll certainly concede that it may, but it's not that big a deal to me. It'll upset some people, and it will elate others. So what?

And I also think $450 million to go to Mars is better spent than the cost of going to Iraq.

I don't disagree with you on this, but that's a discussion for another forum.

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[Paxil]

What I'd like to see is rather than exploration, is to try growing stuff up there.

We could probably selectively breed/genetically engineer some plants here on earth to adapt to low pressure atmospheres, and microbe-free martian-like soil. (Reduce the pressure by 5% each generation) From something like desert grasses, mountain grasses, arctic grasses etc. Once we have the things surviving, we could send some little plants up there, some plant fertilizer, and plant the things, and see if they survive.

Since there is water vapour in the thin atmosphere, it may be possible to condense it out using a solar powered compressor and a peltier pump. That water vapour could irrigate the plants until (maybe) they are mature enough to pull the water vapour from the air themselves.

It would be lovely to see something managing to survive up there.

It would be wrong for us to introduce any life there unless we are absolutely sure there is no native life it might harm or interfere with. And once we do that, we can never be sure that any other life we find there didn't actually originate from something we sent.

 

[scotthm]

We could probably selectively breed/genetically engineer some plants here on earth to adapt to low pressure atmospheres, and microbe-free martian-like soil. (Reduce the pressure by 5% each generation) From something like desert grasses, mountain grasses, arctic grasses etc. Once we have the things surviving, we could send some little plants up there, some plant fertilizer, and plant the things, and see if they survive.

Never mind the -100 F temperatures they'd be subjected to.

It's a nice dream, but until we can control our own weather (and I'm still waiting for us to be able to understand and predict it) I don't see how we could make Mars habitable for plant life of any kind, regardless of the soil composition.

However, I'd be interested to see what we could come up with. Let's try subjecting plants to harsh UV radiation, blisteringly cold sub zero temperatures, air and soil drier than that of our driest deserts, and see what survives. It ought to prove interesting.

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[scotthm]

It would be wrong for us to introduce any life there unless we are absolutely sure there is no native life it might harm or interfere with.

What would make it 'wrong'? We've done the same here on Earth for millennia.

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[Paxil]

We have not introduced any new life to the earth. I notice you have no response to my debunking your lame financial argument either.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Just send up a rocket with a couple hundred varieties of seeds and microbes and scatter them - then stand back and watch to see what happens.

 

[scotthm]

We have not introduced any new life to the earth.

Don't pretend that Man hasn't 'helped' bring species together that would probably never have 'naturally' encountered one another. The Americas are infested with Eruopean/African/Asian flora and fauna brought over by explorers and merchants.

I notice you have no response to my debunking your lame financial argument either.

I gave it due consideration.

However, let us not stray too far from the topic.

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[Paxil]

I notice you have no response to my debunking your lame financial argument either.

I gave it due consideration.

In other words, you have no response. It doesn't matter what you think we should do anyway. NASA agrees with me:

Nowadays, when we send out space probes, we sterilize them. What little I know of this seems to indicate that our sterilization processes may be far from perfect. Regardless, the rationale for sterilization is sound -- whether or not life exists or has existed at the probe's destination, sending some of Earth's life to the destination would potentially muck things up beyond repair. When we fear a spacecraft might not be sterile, we purposefully destroy it while it still has fuel enough to perform a fatal maneuver, as we did with the Galileo probe to protect the potential life on Jupiter's moon Europa from earthy microbes possibly riding on the probe. These are real concerns that govern our use of current robotic space probes.
source

 

[scotthm]

It doesn't matter what you think we should do anyway. NASA agrees with me

There's a difference between not wanting to contaminate Mars (or elsewhere) with life, and it being "wrong" to do so. NASA aren't concerned with whether it's "wrong" or not, they're just so determined to prove the existence of extra-terrestrial life that they're being careful to not introduce any themselves. That's all.

Once they're satisfied that they know whether indigenous life ever existed on Mars, they'll happily infest it with humans and their germs.

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[Paxil]

Nonsense, if life ever were to be found on Mars, the cries in the scientific community to preserve and not introduce any other life to compete or harm it will be nearly universal.

 

[Jadzia]

Why is a barren planet so much more attractive to scientists, than watching life managing to adapt and thrive upon it?

Is life such a terrible thing?

 

[The Squire of Gothos]

And I have no problem with spending money on pure science. It's just that I feel that our space program is focusing too much on trying to prove that microbes exist, or have existed, in our solar system, and not enough on finding ways to get man beyond the orbit of Earth, and ultimately to the stars. I guess I just don't care if there are germs on Mars or Europa.

But I suppose that something has to be done to keep the public interested in space science, so maybe I should just chalk it all up as advertising.

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I remember reading a quote from a German official in the 1930s, just before scientists started leaving Germany en masse, it went something along the lines of "A scientist preens himself on finding one molecule in his lifetime, a street cleaner pushes millions into the drain in one brushstroke".

I got the same vibe from your post.

Congratulations to NASA on another Mars milestone. For a planet that eats 50% of the probes sent its way, NASA have done well in the last few years.

 

[scotthm]

Nonsense, if life ever were to be found on Mars, the cries in the scientific community to preserve and not introduce any other life to compete or harm it will be nearly universal.

That's going to burst the bubble of most everyone wanting to colonize space.

If we find a planet worth living on, we can't go there because we might upset its ecology. If we want to colonize, we have to start on a rock so hostile to life that nothing has/can survive there. That's certainly a lovely scenario for the future of manned space flight.

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[The Squire of Gothos]

Phoenix may have just gone kaput...stand by.

Has it?

 

[Squiggy]

No, still cranking along. False alarm.

Just send up a rocket with a couple hundred varieties of seeds and microbes and scatter them - then stand back and watch to see what happens.

Throw in some spiders and a nuclear power core and you've got yourself a deal mister!

 

[romulus]

That's what I'm thinking.

Right now it’s not important to most people anyway but if people ever really want to go out to space and can (without government help). I wonder if they will care about those "rules" and if the people who make them will be able to stop them.

I'm all for not killing life just for fun, but to totally block people from going to a whole planet to protect its sanctity or what ever is a little much.

Part of life is about adapting even to totally knew situations. Trying to protect "life" so it never meets "human interference" or "Earth life" is artificial too. I don’t think we should put ourselves in some kind of bubble afraid to interact with all other life just because we might damage it.