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is 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 com
by gabrielgoh 9y ago
is 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?