6 ms·

Darwins artificial ecosystem could be key to colonising Mars

69 points by KoZeN 16y ago

avar 16y ago
What exactly about this suggestion for colonizing Mars has been falling on "deaf" ears, who's been suggesting that we "improve [the] environment by force" on Mars? The few plans I've seen involve trying to terraform Mars slowly by introducing something like genetically modified high-altitude lichen and going from there. Of course in the process of doing so we'd use the organisms that work, not "force" the things we wish would work. The challenges of terraforming Mars will be very different than dropping a few trees on Ascension Island, which is what the Royal Navy did. As an aside, I recommend the Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson for an overview of how Mars might be incrementally terraformed through that method.
- arethuza 16y ago
  Zubrin's "The Case for Mars" is pretty good too (I found the chemistry in it quite fascinating). http://www.amazon.co.uk/Case-Mars-Robert-Zubrin/dp/0684835509 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Case-Mars-Robert-Zubrin/dp/068483550... However, these days if I ever did end up on Mars (unlikely, I know) I'd probably me a Red rather than a Green.
  - avar 16y ago
    Personally I don't see much reason why we shouldn't aggressively terraform Mars, including bombarding it with ice-rich asteroids to thicken the atmosphere. Having to walk around in space suits indefinitely if you want to go outside sucks, even just getting the atmosphere to a point where you won't suffer bruising from decompression if you go out with a face mask would be a huge improvement. Why would you want to keep it as it is?
    - davidw 16y ago
      > Why would you want to keep it as it is? To learn as much as possible before you irreversibly change it.
      - avar 16y ago
        > To learn as much as possible before you irreversibly change it. That's valuable too. But Mars's main value to humanity will be as a second home, not as a geologic curiosity. We'll be much more secure as a species if we have a second planet where we can walk outside and breathe the air, even if the temperature will be stuck at ~250K.
        Oxryly 16y ago
        Get a head start ruining a second planet because we're going to finish ruining our first pretty soon..? ;)
        sigstoat 16y ago
        So... we ruined this planet by making it less habitable, and we'd ruin Mars by making it more habitable? I take it we're supposed to leave the entirety of the universe exactly as it happened to be before we realized that we're capable of rearranging very tiny little bits of it?
        hugh3 16y ago
        There is some value to this argument if Mars turns out to have life on it. If this is the cas we should definitely hold off on the terraforming, which is why I hope it isn't. Otherwise: heck, it's just a rock, let's go nuts.
      - secret 16y ago
        I imagine we would lose the ability to learn about certain aspects of the planet (atmosphere, etc) if we changed it, but would the trade off be worth it given everything else that would be infinitely easier to study? I'm asking because I don't really know.
        avar 16y ago
        Mars is very cold right now with almost no atmosphere, and it has remained relatively unchanged for billions (yes, billions) of years. Terraforming it would entail thickening the atmosphere and heating it up. That'd cause a lot of changes to its surface. Water frozen for eons might start flowing, gases currently frozen in the ground might start evaporating etc. Eventually it might start raining, which would start massive planet-wide erosion. There's a reason you see craters on the Moon and not on Earth: It rains.
- KoZeN 16y ago
  who's been suggesting that we "improve [the] environment by force" on Mars? I think this was a poor choice of words by the writer in question. What I believe they meant by 'force' was instead of deciding on a formulaic approach with an expected outcome, why not just throw some stuff up there and see what happens.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    > why not just throw some stuff up there and see what happens. Martian atmosphere is a good classroom-grade vacuum. Considering the enormous cost of sending stuff there (and landing it safely) we would have to be careful not to send stuff that would die in a couple seconds of exposure to water-freezing temperatures, water-boiling vacuums and ultraviolet that would give the average human a Röntgen tan in about 10 seconds. Colonizing Mars will not be an easy undertaking without several breakthroughs in access to orbit, deep-space propulsion and radiation shielding.
    - xiaoma 16y ago
      I agree with you completely and apologize for the accidental downmod. The arrows are too close for iPod users. There are almost certainly some low cost methods that have yet to be considered seriously but it's a tough problem that will require tools we haven't even developed yet.
      - rbanffy 16y ago
        > and apologize for the accidental downmod it's ok. Accidents happen. I've had my fair share of fat-fingers on my iPod.
    - electromagnetic 16y ago
      Given that bacteria spores are known to survive for millions of years in dormancy, it wouldn't be a wasted effort to litter Mars with different and hardy species of bacteria. Even if the planet can't support them right now, it could lead to a potentially explosive growth in their population when temperatures hit just right. Considering that the hottest temperature recorded on Mars was 32C, talking like it's a wasted effort is wholly naive considering the survivability of regular bacterium, not to mention the extremeophiles. Cryophiles can reproduce down to -15C and up to above 10C. Radioresistant bacteria can survive 1500 times the dosage of radiation humans can, making Mars a breeze. Similarly there's radiotrophic fungus that actually grow off of ionizing radiation. The biggest concern with viability on Mars is that the regolith has such a high concentration of free radicals that any complex organisms simply could not survive in unprocessed soils. Essentially if we suck our thumbs and wait for the engineering of a super bacteria to survive all the environmental conditions, we're going to have to be engineering it to survive harsher soil conditions than we even know. Whilst bombarding the planet with bacteria and fungus that will only survive in the environment will help us in the long run. It would be advantageous to simply transfer several tons of select bacteria and extremophiles to Mars and colonize areas where temperatures routinely manage to hit above freezing. The lesson people fail to learn is that life doesn't adapt to its environment, it adapts its environment to life. Radiotrophic fungus is a black fungus, if conditions are adequate in this +0C regions for it to thrive, it would slowly decrease the regions albedo (increasing the regions temperature) and allow it a longer reproduction cycle. Similarly landing this in a natural heat-trap like a crater or valley would only dramatically increase the effect. Colonizing Mars is a different story, but we should begin terraforming ASAP. Complex plant life would transform Mars completely within a single persons lifespan, however all complex plant life survives in a mixture of O2 producing and CO2 producing respirations. Until the atmosphere has O2 present in an actual percentage, terraforming will require exceedingly complex greenhouses not necessarily to trap in heat, but to trap in oxygen. You can irrigate countless acres very simply to provide the necessary water, you can't build the necessary domes or greenhouses, etc, that would be needed to trap oxygen. It's simplistic to say, but throwing everything at Mars and seeing what sticks certainly wouldn't hurt, and if you aim it at some good spots, it could even thrive with amazing simplicity on such a complex problem. I mean if we're pissing around imagining bacteria (I've heard of no actual effort to genetically engineer a viable terraforming bacteria, so this is based on assumption) we might as well imagine one that performs self-sustaining electrolysis of rust to release the vast tonnages of sequestered oxygen in the Martian soil.
- electromagnetic 16y ago
  Temperatures on Mars in areas hit 30C, many of the unmodified lichen reproduce well below these temperatures. I don't see a point in 'planning' when we already have the necessary bacteria and fungus to be doing. Bacteria spores have survived millions of years, temperatures colder than anything on Mars, freeze drying and beyond, whilst still being viable when reanimated by the correct conditions. Find key locations and seed them. Craters and valleys will trap any heat produced by these lichen (via lower albedos and the bacteria themselves) making them ideal locations if their temperatures break freezing. Mars' strong winds will do all the work of spreading the spores into surrounding areas that are habitable, or that may become habitable if the lichens have adequate effect. I fail to see what the harm in trying is aside from a loss of money. However any space launch comes with the expectation that it could fail, any deployment comes with the expectation that it could fail. Failing is part of going to space. However the crucial here is that this produces valued data. Until we get data we are guessing and all the mythical genetically modified lichens in the world will do nothing if we guessed wrong and they'll be guessing blind for attempt 2. We should be doing a trial run with materials off the shelf, so to speak. If our off the shelf materials don't work, then we design our own. It should never be the other way around. I know, we're hackers, we like to tinker, but YC is about start ups, it's about doing. Not everyone here had 20 years to fiddle making their own programming languages to perfectly execute their start up, they just got on and did it with off-the-shelf stuff until they had to invent, if they had to.
probablyrobots 16y ago
link to google maps http://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF8&ll=-7.943126,-14.364624&spn=0.131421,0.219727&t=h&z=13 http://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF8&ll=-7.943126,-14.364...
- electromagnetic 16y ago
  link to Green Mountain photo: http://www.panoramio.com/photo/4235237 http://www.panoramio.com/photo/4235237 (thanks to hitting street view on the google maps link)
ithkuil 16y ago
"to explore .... and boldly go ..." does this count as split infinitive?
- mbyrne 16y ago
  Yes, but split infinitives are a more powerful and better form of expression. To not split an infinitive is to create a weaker and less coherent thought stream.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  "and to boldly split infinitives that no man has split before" is one of my favourite Douglas Adams quotes ;-)
rbanffy 16y ago
What a wonderful story. Thanks, KoZen.
- KoZeN 16y ago
  Umm, thanks?! Not exactly hackerish or star-upish I know but I was going along this guideline: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. I find it fascinating that as a race we have reached a point where we are seriously discussing the possibility of making another planet hospitable enough to maintain human life.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    There are off-topics and off-topics. Yours was one of the good ones. ;-)
three14 16y ago
It's certainly interesting, but the article itself could be better written. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Mountain http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Mountain implies that it wasn't really Darwin's efforts, nor is it a true example of an artificial ecosystem.
mkramlich 16y ago
Key difference: one is an island on Earth, the other is Mars.
mkramlich 16y ago
After we bring "climate change" to Mars let's also bring huge government debts, religion, pollution, dictatorship and WMD's! It will be awesome. Or, alternately, we could try to fix/solve/eliminate those things before spreading to other planets.
- istari 16y ago
  Those things are inherent to the human condition. They are hard wired into our DNA. Where we go, so will they.
  - mkramlich 16y ago
    I'm not so sure that they are inherent. Some individuals can clearly overcome and rise above them. Just because all haven't doesn't mean it isn't possible. But my point was that, as much as I like the idea of colonizing Mars, I don't have as much of an idealistic view of it as some might. Because I think as long as we haven't solved or eliminated those other issues first, we're just going to bring them to Mars with us. It won't all be unicorns and rainbows and shiny spaceships and robots and techno-meritocracy ruled by wise ethical anarcho-socio-libertarians. As it's going now, we're going to start polluting Mars, erecting churches there, fight wars, etc. Ideally I'd like to see us overcome these things and leave them behind before spreading it off-planet any further. Or at least say, "This is acceptable here on Earth. But not on Mars." Idealism, probably not practical, granted, but that was my point.
- electromagnetic 16y ago
  Well detonating a series of thermonuclear warheads under the Martian polar caps would certainly help distribute CO2 and water ice into the upper atmosphere and to the equatorial regions where the ices have the potential to melt. What an excellent suggestion, I'm putting you up for a Nobel Prize! Please, you have a high enough Karma to know not to make asinine BS posts. We don't give a crap about religion or politics here except when it's relevant, and no where in this article was there a discussion on politics, religion or any of the other topics you noted. Despite the fact that watching rapid ecological changes on another planet would give us vast amounts of data on changes in environmental patterns and countless information on how climate change might affect our planet. Terraforming Mars is important beyond our species pathetic problems, in that our expansion to other planets might give our species the longevity to solve those problems than get hit by a rogue asteroid, comit, or other such object we've yet to see.

69 points by KoZeN 16y ago

avar 16y ago

What exactly about this suggestion for colonizing Mars has been falling on "deaf" ears, who's been suggesting that we "improve [the] environment by force" on Mars? The few plans I've seen involve trying to terraform Mars slowly by introducing something like genetically modified high-altitude lichen and going from there. Of course in the process of doing so we'd use the organisms that work, not "force" the things we wish would work. The challenges of terraforming Mars will be very different than dropping a few trees on Ascension Island, which is what the Royal Navy did. As an aside, I recommend the Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson for an overview of how Mars might be incrementally terraformed through that method.

arethuza 16y ago
Zubrin's "The Case for Mars" is pretty good too (I found the chemistry in it quite fascinating). http://www.amazon.co.uk/Case-Mars-Robert-Zubrin/dp/0684835509 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Case-Mars-Robert-Zubrin/dp/068483550... However, these days if I ever did end up on Mars (unlikely, I know) I'd probably me a Red rather than a Green.
- avar 16y ago
  Personally I don't see much reason why we shouldn't aggressively terraform Mars, including bombarding it with ice-rich asteroids to thicken the atmosphere. Having to walk around in space suits indefinitely if you want to go outside sucks, even just getting the atmosphere to a point where you won't suffer bruising from decompression if you go out with a face mask would be a huge improvement. Why would you want to keep it as it is?
  - davidw 16y ago
    > Why would you want to keep it as it is? To learn as much as possible before you irreversibly change it.
    - avar 16y ago
      > To learn as much as possible before you irreversibly change it. That's valuable too. But Mars's main value to humanity will be as a second home, not as a geologic curiosity. We'll be much more secure as a species if we have a second planet where we can walk outside and breathe the air, even if the temperature will be stuck at ~250K.
      - Oxryly 16y ago
        Get a head start ruining a second planet because we're going to finish ruining our first pretty soon..? ;)
        sigstoat 16y ago
        So... we ruined this planet by making it less habitable, and we'd ruin Mars by making it more habitable? I take it we're supposed to leave the entirety of the universe exactly as it happened to be before we realized that we're capable of rearranging very tiny little bits of it?
      - hugh3 16y ago
        There is some value to this argument if Mars turns out to have life on it. If this is the cas we should definitely hold off on the terraforming, which is why I hope it isn't. Otherwise: heck, it's just a rock, let's go nuts.
    - secret 16y ago
      I imagine we would lose the ability to learn about certain aspects of the planet (atmosphere, etc) if we changed it, but would the trade off be worth it given everything else that would be infinitely easier to study? I'm asking because I don't really know.
      - avar 16y ago
        Mars is very cold right now with almost no atmosphere, and it has remained relatively unchanged for billions (yes, billions) of years. Terraforming it would entail thickening the atmosphere and heating it up. That'd cause a lot of changes to its surface. Water frozen for eons might start flowing, gases currently frozen in the ground might start evaporating etc. Eventually it might start raining, which would start massive planet-wide erosion. There's a reason you see craters on the Moon and not on Earth: It rains.
KoZeN 16y ago
who's been suggesting that we "improve [the] environment by force" on Mars? I think this was a poor choice of words by the writer in question. What I believe they meant by 'force' was instead of deciding on a formulaic approach with an expected outcome, why not just throw some stuff up there and see what happens.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  > why not just throw some stuff up there and see what happens. Martian atmosphere is a good classroom-grade vacuum. Considering the enormous cost of sending stuff there (and landing it safely) we would have to be careful not to send stuff that would die in a couple seconds of exposure to water-freezing temperatures, water-boiling vacuums and ultraviolet that would give the average human a Röntgen tan in about 10 seconds. Colonizing Mars will not be an easy undertaking without several breakthroughs in access to orbit, deep-space propulsion and radiation shielding.
  - xiaoma 16y ago
    I agree with you completely and apologize for the accidental downmod. The arrows are too close for iPod users. There are almost certainly some low cost methods that have yet to be considered seriously but it's a tough problem that will require tools we haven't even developed yet.
    - rbanffy 16y ago
      > and apologize for the accidental downmod it's ok. Accidents happen. I've had my fair share of fat-fingers on my iPod.
  - electromagnetic 16y ago
    Given that bacteria spores are known to survive for millions of years in dormancy, it wouldn't be a wasted effort to litter Mars with different and hardy species of bacteria. Even if the planet can't support them right now, it could lead to a potentially explosive growth in their population when temperatures hit just right. Considering that the hottest temperature recorded on Mars was 32C, talking like it's a wasted effort is wholly naive considering the survivability of regular bacterium, not to mention the extremeophiles. Cryophiles can reproduce down to -15C and up to above 10C. Radioresistant bacteria can survive 1500 times the dosage of radiation humans can, making Mars a breeze. Similarly there's radiotrophic fungus that actually grow off of ionizing radiation. The biggest concern with viability on Mars is that the regolith has such a high concentration of free radicals that any complex organisms simply could not survive in unprocessed soils. Essentially if we suck our thumbs and wait for the engineering of a super bacteria to survive all the environmental conditions, we're going to have to be engineering it to survive harsher soil conditions than we even know. Whilst bombarding the planet with bacteria and fungus that will only survive in the environment will help us in the long run. It would be advantageous to simply transfer several tons of select bacteria and extremophiles to Mars and colonize areas where temperatures routinely manage to hit above freezing. The lesson people fail to learn is that life doesn't adapt to its environment, it adapts its environment to life. Radiotrophic fungus is a black fungus, if conditions are adequate in this +0C regions for it to thrive, it would slowly decrease the regions albedo (increasing the regions temperature) and allow it a longer reproduction cycle. Similarly landing this in a natural heat-trap like a crater or valley would only dramatically increase the effect. Colonizing Mars is a different story, but we should begin terraforming ASAP. Complex plant life would transform Mars completely within a single persons lifespan, however all complex plant life survives in a mixture of O2 producing and CO2 producing respirations. Until the atmosphere has O2 present in an actual percentage, terraforming will require exceedingly complex greenhouses not necessarily to trap in heat, but to trap in oxygen. You can irrigate countless acres very simply to provide the necessary water, you can't build the necessary domes or greenhouses, etc, that would be needed to trap oxygen. It's simplistic to say, but throwing everything at Mars and seeing what sticks certainly wouldn't hurt, and if you aim it at some good spots, it could even thrive with amazing simplicity on such a complex problem. I mean if we're pissing around imagining bacteria (I've heard of no actual effort to genetically engineer a viable terraforming bacteria, so this is based on assumption) we might as well imagine one that performs self-sustaining electrolysis of rust to release the vast tonnages of sequestered oxygen in the Martian soil.
electromagnetic 16y ago
Temperatures on Mars in areas hit 30C, many of the unmodified lichen reproduce well below these temperatures. I don't see a point in 'planning' when we already have the necessary bacteria and fungus to be doing. Bacteria spores have survived millions of years, temperatures colder than anything on Mars, freeze drying and beyond, whilst still being viable when reanimated by the correct conditions. Find key locations and seed them. Craters and valleys will trap any heat produced by these lichen (via lower albedos and the bacteria themselves) making them ideal locations if their temperatures break freezing. Mars' strong winds will do all the work of spreading the spores into surrounding areas that are habitable, or that may become habitable if the lichens have adequate effect. I fail to see what the harm in trying is aside from a loss of money. However any space launch comes with the expectation that it could fail, any deployment comes with the expectation that it could fail. Failing is part of going to space. However the crucial here is that this produces valued data. Until we get data we are guessing and all the mythical genetically modified lichens in the world will do nothing if we guessed wrong and they'll be guessing blind for attempt 2. We should be doing a trial run with materials off the shelf, so to speak. If our off the shelf materials don't work, then we design our own. It should never be the other way around. I know, we're hackers, we like to tinker, but YC is about start ups, it's about doing. Not everyone here had 20 years to fiddle making their own programming languages to perfectly execute their start up, they just got on and did it with off-the-shelf stuff until they had to invent, if they had to.

probablyrobots 16y ago

link to google maps http://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF8&ll=-7.943126,-14.364624&spn=0.131421,0.219727&t=h&z=13 http://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF8&ll=-7.943126,-14.364...

electromagnetic 16y ago
link to Green Mountain photo: http://www.panoramio.com/photo/4235237 http://www.panoramio.com/photo/4235237 (thanks to hitting street view on the google maps link)

ithkuil 16y ago

"to explore .... and boldly go ..." does this count as split infinitive?

mbyrne 16y ago
Yes, but split infinitives are a more powerful and better form of expression. To not split an infinitive is to create a weaker and less coherent thought stream.
rbanffy 16y ago
"and to boldly split infinitives that no man has split before" is one of my favourite Douglas Adams quotes ;-)

rbanffy 16y ago

What a wonderful story. Thanks, KoZen.

KoZeN 16y ago
Umm, thanks?! Not exactly hackerish or star-upish I know but I was going along this guideline: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. I find it fascinating that as a race we have reached a point where we are seriously discussing the possibility of making another planet hospitable enough to maintain human life.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  There are off-topics and off-topics. Yours was one of the good ones. ;-)

three14 16y ago

It's certainly interesting, but the article itself could be better written. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Mountain http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Mountain implies that it wasn't really Darwin's efforts, nor is it a true example of an artificial ecosystem.

mkramlich 16y ago

Key difference: one is an island on Earth, the other is Mars.

mkramlich 16y ago

After we bring "climate change" to Mars let's also bring huge government debts, religion, pollution, dictatorship and WMD's! It will be awesome. Or, alternately, we could try to fix/solve/eliminate those things before spreading to other planets.

istari 16y ago
Those things are inherent to the human condition. They are hard wired into our DNA. Where we go, so will they.
- mkramlich 16y ago
  I'm not so sure that they are inherent. Some individuals can clearly overcome and rise above them. Just because all haven't doesn't mean it isn't possible. But my point was that, as much as I like the idea of colonizing Mars, I don't have as much of an idealistic view of it as some might. Because I think as long as we haven't solved or eliminated those other issues first, we're just going to bring them to Mars with us. It won't all be unicorns and rainbows and shiny spaceships and robots and techno-meritocracy ruled by wise ethical anarcho-socio-libertarians. As it's going now, we're going to start polluting Mars, erecting churches there, fight wars, etc. Ideally I'd like to see us overcome these things and leave them behind before spreading it off-planet any further. Or at least say, "This is acceptable here on Earth. But not on Mars." Idealism, probably not practical, granted, but that was my point.
electromagnetic 16y ago
Well detonating a series of thermonuclear warheads under the Martian polar caps would certainly help distribute CO2 and water ice into the upper atmosphere and to the equatorial regions where the ices have the potential to melt. What an excellent suggestion, I'm putting you up for a Nobel Prize! Please, you have a high enough Karma to know not to make asinine BS posts. We don't give a crap about religion or politics here except when it's relevant, and no where in this article was there a discussion on politics, religion or any of the other topics you noted. Despite the fact that watching rapid ecological changes on another planet would give us vast amounts of data on changes in environmental patterns and countless information on how climate change might affect our planet. Terraforming Mars is important beyond our species pathetic problems, in that our expansion to other planets might give our species the longevity to solve those problems than get hit by a rogue asteroid, comit, or other such object we've yet to see.