5 ms·
Why Nothing Can Grow on Mars
- jqpabc123 2y agoToo cold, not enough oxygen, too much radiation, poor soil conditions, not enough water --- pick one, or all the above. It ain't happening for a very, very long time --- if ever.
- medymed 2y agoNo matter how much we conspire to destroy the environment on earth, by burning fuel or nuclear war or otherwise, the earth (or parts of it) will likely be more hospitable to humans than any other alternative. We can shoot some vials of DNA towards Alpha Centauri etc, but so much for the interplanetary humanistic escapists.
- luqtas 2y ago700 years ago, a lot of people didn't knew America existed... 200 years ago, a smartphone would sound pretty sci-fi what if we manage to head out of the solar system after 5 million of years? we are here for 300,000 so far
- MrVandemar 2y agoThe number of things we know are increasing, and the more information we have, the more likely we are to be able to extrapolate our capabilities. We can watch as much "Star Trek" as we like, but we ain't going nowhere.
- CGamesPlay 2y agoYou could have used that line about extrapolating our future at any point in history, and it would have been wrong each time. So I don't think it will be right now.
- MrVandemar 2y agoWell, [checks watch] it's 2024 so I'll just jetpack over and up to the parking lot, and drive my flying car home, and catch the 2nd week of the Moon Olympics. It'd be nice, but you know what, let's look after what we have, and if we get to Star Trek, that's fine, but if we don't we still have somewhere to live.
- inglor_cz 2y ago"and the more information we have, the more likely we are to be able to extrapolate our capabilities" I don't believe that. Major progress usually comes from entirely new technologies, not from continuous development of the already known ones. You wouldn't be able to extrapolate current IT sector from the state of things in 1924, because the transistor, the crucial building block for really heavy computation, wasn't around. Same with people in 1824 trying to predict current civil aviation from their state-of-the-art balloons.
- Vecr 2y agoThere's a lot of extrapolation going on already. It's like if you speculated an evil demon as running a VR simulation in the year 1900, more powerful than current computers. No knowledge of transistors needed. On the level of math and physics, there are new discoveries, but they don't come that often for the kind of thing big enough to help in this case.
- FL33TW00D 2y agoThis comment is really sad! Humans are destined to explore.
- indoordin0saur 2y agoSome people have spent so much of their lives staring down at their shoes that they've never seen the stars above.
- aredox 2y agoS-curves only look exponential at the beginning.
- Euphorbium 2y agoCan it be done? Probably. But it would take geological timescale to significantly change it this way.
- rapjr9 2y agoIt might be done like this: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/24/magazine/earth-geomicrobiology-microbes.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/24/magazine/earth-geomicrobi... It would indeed take a very long time, millions of years at least. So better get started now.
- in-tension 2y agoWhen they were talking about developing microbes that could excrete insulating materials, they said existing biofilms are sugar-based and wouldn't be able to hold in enough/heat water. So I started thinking about what if they could excrete minerals or metals. Then I was thinking about the challenges of expanding a protected inside area without exposing it to the outside. And about how much material would be needed. Which led me to thinking of covering individual microbes with metal. And now I have this picture in my head of a little microbe walking around in a armor.
- lucianbr 2y agoDo we have technology to manufacture a microbe or bacterium to given specifications? Can they assemble fragments of DNA from different living things to achieve one thing that might live on Mars? Or how do they plan to "make an organism that could grow outside on Mars"? The mentioning of existing organisms that can do or whistand various things is cool, but how would they use that?
- hoseja 2y agoIf we tried? Probably. Nobody will let you seriously try, on Earth at least.
- Bjartr 2y agoYou can do genetic engineering in your kitchen these days. It wouldn't be easy to build a mars-worthy microbe, but it's not other people that's going to stop you. https://youtu.be/F0_q-fD_lyU?si=7-z0gH2yxu4Ejdx3 https://youtu.be/F0_q-fD_lyU?si=7-z0gH2yxu4Ejdx3
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- hi-v-rocknroll 2y agoThere will be no terraforming of it for multiple reasons. This was already obvious. Human habitation of Mars will proceed nonetheless in closed habitats above or underground. It require bringing vast amounts of starter resources from Earth, and then prospecting for water while scavenging atmospheric nitrogen and carbon. It would be difficult to sustain settlements on Mars if native resources cannot be extracted economically, or if bidirectional trade between Earth and Mars was unable to be established.
- Someone 2y agoBidirectional trade would require Mars to have something Earth wants to pay for. Given the costs of sending stuff, it would have to be something that’s very valuable per kg. What is there that could conceivably fit that bill?
- outofpaper 2y agoPotential candidates might include rare minerals or isotopes that are scarce on Earth. Another possibility could be revolutionary scientific data or biological samples unique to Mars, which could be invaluable for research. Oh, and media, we love us some media and it travels light ;)
- lazide 2y agoSo…. Martian super kink porn? How insane would it have to be to cover the costs of that sort of expedition and not be more affordable to make on earth and just pretend it was made on Mars? We don’t currently know of any unique rare minerals or isotopes on Mars (except for stuff unique just because it was picked up on Mars).
- Anarch157a 2y agoThere are plenty of valuable stuff we need on the asteroid belt. Going straight there from Earth would be much more difficult and expensive than launching from Mars. A self sustaining Martian colony would serve as a trade and resupply post for asteroid miners.
- polotics 2y agoWhat about the clouds of Venus? https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20030022668/downloads/20030022668.pdf https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20030022668/downloads/20...
- ben_w 2y agoNot enough water, 0.0020% says Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus Though I guess that's more a reason against there being life there at the moment, than a reason against us going: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=93+bar+*+surface+area+venus+*+0.0020%25+%2F+surface+gravity+venus https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=93+bar+*+surface+area+v...
- dsq 2y agoIsnt terraforming a waste? After all, there's no need for open lakes and breathable air over the entire planet, even if it was feasible given the available water, which it isn't. Much better to concentrate resources to make human livable sealed communities with something like hydroponics for food.
- indoordin0saur 2y agoIf we wanted a population of, say 100 million people, which of the following two projects would require more resources? A.) Habitats and sealed communities along with all the heating, radiation mitigation, life support systems, etc. along with the infrastructure to support farming and all other necessary activities hardened for the harsh environment. B.) Putting the correct mixture of gases into the atmosphere to warm the planet, protect against radiation, CO2 for plants to breathe and make the air pressure high enough to allow for liquid water. I genuinely don't know. It seems to me like at a certain population it would be cheaper to do B rather than have an enormous population along with all the farms and whatnot they need in large steel and glass domes. For what it's worth Mars seems to have all the necessary raw ingredients for terraforming except for nitrogen or some other filler gas for the atmosphere.
- feoren 2y agoTerraforming (B) would require more resources, probably by several orders of magnitude. It would be badass, though.
- notTooFarGone 2y agoI think you vastly underestimate the amount of radiation and how hard it would be to build a colony that is protected enough and is "self sustaining". Nice kurzgesagt video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqKGREZs6-w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqKGREZs6-w If we manage to terraform mostly using robots and bacteria that would be so much easier.
- dTal 2y ago
- fny 2y agoThere’s a lot of barren desert across the globe where nothing grows—-why not start there?
- foundart 2y agoThe author of the article is at an organization that is working on engineering organisms that can survive on Mars, so the list of difficulties is their map of hurdles to overcome. See https://www.pioneer-labs.org/ https://www.pioneer-labs.org/
- eddyzh 2y agoI love how the author points out repeatedly that the chance of achieving the goal are abysmal and then goes on about how they try anyway. It is very informative.
- poulpy123 2y agoI noticed that the opinion on mars colonization tend to look like the bell curve/IQ meme, with the one thinking we can colonize mars in the middle. The simple fact that we are quickly making earth unlivable although we have 4.5 billions years of coevolution behind us shows that we are very far from being able to terraform any planet
- ribcage 2y agoYour friend is probably a retard if he invites you for a coffee and tells you to engineer a plant to terraform Mars.