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That is indeed awesome but I would argue that it also means we would need to undertake a much more thorough search to find out of mars is indeed a dead planet.
by justinjlynn 9y ago
That is indeed awesome but I would argue that it also means we would need to undertake a much more thorough search to find out of mars is indeed a dead planet. Once we land a large concentration of biological matter there -- we won't have an opportunity to look again without dealing with massive potential for cross-planetary contamination.
Of course, it's a trade off and it's great news if we ever had to undertake a crash program to get at least a few humans and/or earth originated genetic material off planet with any hope of it surviving without extensive terraforming.
- ianai 9y agoIt might not be quite as bad as you think. I imagine Martian farmers would be doing something like hydroponics. The soil and water might come from mars but the actual plants grow in tiny, isolated compartments within buildings. I doubt the resource scarcity would allow for anything resembling a more traditional farm.
- Terr_ 9y agoIt's relatively easy to keep macroscopic plants from escaping, the real issue is the smaller stuff like bacteria, which will get everywhere no matter what kind of farm you're running.
- ianai 9y agoEven there, though, they’re going to want to have air tight areas.
- Terr_ 9y ago"Even there?" Forget the farm, this has nothing to do with farming per se. It doesn't matter if the crew does nothing but eat pre-sealed sterile goop. The problem is that ensuring a sterile barrier so nothing gets out of your habitat-- especially when spacesuited living humans must pass through regularly -- is somewhere between incredibly expensive and just impossible.
- credit_guy 9y agoSo Earth bacteria will go out and contaminate Mars. sooner or later it would happen. We could still study the original Martian biome, if that exists.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoThe problem is, with Earth life present on Mars you can no longer be sure that the life you find there wasn't brought in by colonists.
- coldtea 9y agoWell, if they could be that alike, then it's not much worth studying anyway...
- TeMPOraL 9y agoIt would be worth studying - if they were much alike, the first obvious questions to answer would be "why" and "which came first".
- Ntrails 9y agoWorth studying is an interesting term. I've got a bunch of things which are worth fixing, but none of them get prioritised. Would you say that it would be preferable to block the creation of a colony on the basis that it interferes research that might happen one day? Personally I'd say no.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoDidn't mean to imply it; I'm probably the last person on this site to argue against a colony on Mars. But it would be worth it if, during initial construction of the colony and preferably before sending men, we could send over some studies.
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- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- iancmceachern 9y agoExactly - like open source food computers! www.openagriculturesupply.com
- gabrielgoh 9y agois this a real concern? it should be relatively easy to distinguish life on earth from life on mars, should it exist. Especially considering it comes from a completely new path of evolution. Furthermore, a mars station would allow science to be done directly on mars, rather than having payloads of material sent to and from earth.
- djsumdog 9y agoYou should read The Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. It's fiction, but it's one of the most well researched series of novels and is feels incredibly realistic, believable and it has really amazing characters/story to boot. But this concern is expressed in that series, and it is a real one. The first people we send to Mars will not be visitors. They'll most likely be colonists. They will die there. Once they start to truly colonize (if they survive) we will loose the ability to determine if any microbes we find are Terran or Martian.
- bovermyer 9y agoWe still haven't interacted with all of the life on our own planet. There are things living in the dark places of the world that are difficult for us to reach. Is it really necessary to preserve potential (but not confirmed) Martian life before establishing a beachhead?
- webXL 9y agoThat's my question as well. Judging by this thread, it appears we're not thinking hard enough about the unknowns, like what if Martian life is hostile to the microbes we depend on? Are we welcome there? Will we have to engineer some kind of virus that's friendly to our life support that wipes out these unfriendly lifeforms?
- zipwitch 9y agoIf we want to search Mars for life before we contaminate it then we need to launch a crash program to do so now, because our window is swiftly expiring. Right now a small group with minimal resources (on the to build and launch stuff into space scale) could likely launch a cubesat with some sort of bacterial payload that would eventually get to Mars. Such a stunt is only going to get easier in the next few decades. Explore Mars, in depth, ASAP, or someone will render the issue moot by starting their own terraforming project on the cheap. (Or the not so cheap. I don't believe Musk's colonization plans -if they ever come to pass- would be able to prevent contamination, no matter how hard they might try.)
- rev_bird 9y ago>could likely launch a cubesat with some sort of bacterial payload that would eventually get to Mars Curious how this might work, given the energy required not only to escape Earth's orbit, but to get into another one around Mars and crash into it. It's my understanding that cubesats don't have anything that could do any of that stuff, and a larger craft doing the heavy lifting would be way more complicated.
- azernik 9y agoThey would have to get permission from the launching country, and that launch country would be obligated by the Outer Space Treaty to impose limits on contamination.
- jvanderbot 9y ago
- vbuwivbiu 9y agoThe evidence so far predicts that Mars is now sadly dead. The ratios of gases in its thin atmosphere are not consistent with a living planet (no oxygen, and the seasonal methane is probably geological). Ancient Martian life was probably identical to Earth's, due to similar conditions, chemistry and exchange of genetic information between the two planets (and Venus, in addition to life from other solar systems via comets). In the rocks we should find fossils eventually with our current rovers.