5 ms·

Compared to Earth, we know very little about Mars. Purposefully contaminating our craft (or worse, starting any sort of terraforming operations now) before we f

Compared to Earth, we know very little about Mars. Purposefully contaminating our craft (or worse, starting any sort of terraforming operations now) before we fully understand the planet would make efforts destined for failure at best, and produce unforeseen consequences for the planet at worst. We've attempted similar things here on Earth in the past without fully understanding the consequences, with the ecological disasters to show for it. Better for us to more fully understand that planet first.

WalterBright 11y ago
I doubt a better understanding can happen without sending humans, and there's no way to put humans about Mars without also releasing Earth life. Do you oppose a manned mission to Mars? Besides, there's still zero evidence of life on Mars. There's no ecology to disrupt.
- ckozlowski 11y ago
  >Besides, there's still zero evidence of life on Mars. There's no ecology to disrupt. That remains to be seen. The scientific community feels that the absence of evidence so far does not rule out the possibility. Today's announcement should bring us closer to finding out. http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/sep/28/nasa-to-reveal-major-mars-finding-prompting-water-speculation http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/sep/28/nasa-to-revea...
- simonh 11y ago
  That's been trivially falsified by the tremendous leaps in our understanding of the planet from each successive probe we've sent. For example, we only recently got indications of the likely presence of significant quantities of perchlorates in Martian soils, which has dramatic consequences for any possible effort at terraforming. As for 'no ecology', we're a very long way from being in any position to say that. Edit: I can't reply to WalterBright's comment, so I'll reply here. I didn't talk about having to prove anything. It's a matter of balance of evidence. What percentage of the possible biomes on Mars have we tested and how thoroughly did we test them? I'd argue less than 10% of the most life-hostile biomes and those only cursorily. That's way too low a fraction to have any confidence that Mars is dead. Sure, we can't test every grain of sand on the whole planet, we have to draw the line somewhere, but for now we've barely scratched a small part of the surface.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]

WalterBright 11y ago

I doubt a better understanding can happen without sending humans, and there's no way to put humans about Mars without also releasing Earth life. Do you oppose a manned mission to Mars? Besides, there's still zero evidence of life on Mars. There's no ecology to disrupt.

ckozlowski 11y ago
>Besides, there's still zero evidence of life on Mars. There's no ecology to disrupt. That remains to be seen. The scientific community feels that the absence of evidence so far does not rule out the possibility. Today's announcement should bring us closer to finding out. http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/sep/28/nasa-to-reveal-major-mars-finding-prompting-water-speculation http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/sep/28/nasa-to-revea...
simonh 11y ago
That's been trivially falsified by the tremendous leaps in our understanding of the planet from each successive probe we've sent. For example, we only recently got indications of the likely presence of significant quantities of perchlorates in Martian soils, which has dramatic consequences for any possible effort at terraforming. As for 'no ecology', we're a very long way from being in any position to say that. Edit: I can't reply to WalterBright's comment, so I'll reply here. I didn't talk about having to prove anything. It's a matter of balance of evidence. What percentage of the possible biomes on Mars have we tested and how thoroughly did we test them? I'd argue less than 10% of the most life-hostile biomes and those only cursorily. That's way too low a fraction to have any confidence that Mars is dead. Sure, we can't test every grain of sand on the whole planet, we have to draw the line somewhere, but for now we've barely scratched a small part of the surface.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]