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NASA Wants To Invade Mars With Glowing JellyPlants
namespan writes: "NASA and university researchers are looking into creating plants that emit a jellyfish-like glow as a signal of trouble, say, not enough water or oxygen or nutrients in the soil, say. The idea: send them to Mars and have them glow feedback at us about how they're faring on the red planet. They will, of course, have to compete with the radio-controlled plants mentined in an earlier slashdot story. And the Triffids." We've done several stories on glowing plants and animals in the past, but this seems to be a bit more useful and detailed.
...and a few months later they have you using PLANTS. Goddamn.
~
Disgruntled NASA engineer.
It is a really stupid idea to send earth life, especially engineered life, to other planets without fully investigating them first. Look what happens on earth when life forms are placed in unnatural habitats: rabbits in australia, zebra mussels in the great lakes, killer bees in the southern US. Mars is far more of an unknown, and we should not do anything that even has the possibility for unintended consequences until we know what we are dealing with.
Surely there's a better way to detect conditions on mars without throwing plants at it. How about another robot lander (one that works) built with our modern knowledge of biochemisty?
It's been suggested that if we ever find that another planet has life on it, leave that planet alone and forget about it. I think that's a little extreme, but we should be very, very careful about cross-contamination, and launching plants modified with our somewhat primitive genetic tools into an unknown environment is going too far.
Seriously, they can barely =GET= to Mars, these days. What is the total? Of 8 probes launched, that I can think of, 1 went silent, 1 crashed & burned, 1 suffered a BSOD after it landed, 1 had an air-bag that just wouldn't deflate (Princess Diana could have done with one of those), 2 had equiptment that was essentially useless, leaving 2 that could do actual mission work to completion. (The rover mission, with air-bag, eventually worked, but they burned a lot of valuable mission time on that one.)
25% failure rates are a tad high, when you're trying to colonise a planet with enough glowing plants to detect, let alone use as monitoring devices.
If we're going to start doing SERIOUS space missions, let's do this right. First, round up all of NASAs managerial staff and drop them into thoe methane deposits they found off the east coast. They'll feel quite at home. At least, until the oxygen starts to react.
Once the deadwood is removed, replace those pathetic excuses for Operating Systems, and install *BSD and Linux. For chrissakes, they're using WINDOWS for virtually everything! It's no wonder everything they make blows up or cracks up.
Second, someone get rid of that ISS/IASS/whatever they're calling it, this week. No robot arm (until that's fixed!), serious equiptment failures, they've not installed the docking port yet, and the place is being used more by tourists than scientists. And they've not even got 1/10th of the thing BUILT yet! And once they have, there's a high liklihood of it being smashed to bits by space junk and/or meteoroids, before it's even used.
Third, rockets are WAY too inefficient, and WAY too unreliable. Don't tell me that the world's brightest can't build a simple firework that DOESN'T explode! I mean, this isn't rocket science! :)
Lastly, if the boss isn't confident enough to fly on one of these rockets, who is he to demand that genetically-modified plant slaves go instead?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
the aliens will eat the damn jellyfish before they do anything useful. Unless they make the jellyfish glow when they are being eaten :)
Seriously: with Earth, there is a significant pre-existing ecosystem we have to respect lest we screw up humanity's only (at the moment) life support system. With all other planets (and moons, and asteroids) in our solar system, there is not, thus we are free to mess with them as we please.
To the best of our knowledge there is no life in any of the other planets/moons. There MAY be life on mars (barely eeking out an existance however) and if so is it within our right to modify the planet and destroy life on a global (mars) scale?
We have not to this point conclusivly proven that there is no life on mars, or that there ever was.. The jury is still out on this, we just don't have enough data do decide if there is life elsewhere in the solar system. (Yet.)
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
God. I bought that trilogy and it is the most boring thing I have ever read in my life. Or tried to - I'm in the middle of the second one and I just let it go. anyone who wants the trilogy for cheap can contact me.
I like Science Fiction, but not when the science involved is sociology and political science. There are vast open spaces in these books with absolutely no plot! Just descriptions and analysis.
I have to admit he has some nice ideas in it, but you could compress the three volumes into 1 if you just kept the plot in and cut out most (not all) of the really useless and meaningless background. Yes, SOME of it is neccesary, but a lot of it adds absolutely nothing to the plot.
--
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
"What the fuck's a triffid?"
-Chris
...More Powerful than Otto Preminger...
Human anatomy can last more than long enough to get to mars, in no gravity. However, to get to mars, we'd be using thrust, which would provide some gravity, and give the mars travellers a better medical condition to live in.
Mars has more gravity than the moon, so you're better off there also. Probably enough gravity on mars to keep people functioning properly for life, though that hasn't really been tested yet.
Mars is a good target for long term settlement because of the higher gravity. Given our current technology, it's the best choice for this reason (venus turns into an instantly better option the day we figure out how to make it cooler, or to build habitats that can take the heat with a very near 0 failure rate). There are also a lot more exploitable mineral resources on mars/venus than on the moon.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
MARS NEEDS CHUTNEY
Rather than wondering if Mars can adequately support freakish glowing jelly plants, why not just plant a whole diverisy of different plant types and see what (if anything) CAN survive and adapt?
Why are the folks at NASA so interested in whether Mars can support glowing jelly plants? Do they know something that we don't?!
You mean those plants that wear sunglasses that dance around to nearby music? Imagine a REAL plant that can do it!
If that's the case, let's plant hemp on Mars. Supply enough fuel to unleash a legion of HempCars!
I agree with you though that we seem to be, once again, taking an Americentric view of this. We are not the Undisputed Lords of Earth, folks. What might China or Zimbabwe like to do with our solar system? Never thought to ask them, huh?
"Smear'd with gumms of glutenous heat, I touch..." - Comus, John Milton
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
You really should attribute your post to Pratchett.....
Eric
next will be plants in different colours, RGB, radiocontrolled showing pepsi and burgerking commercials. or WWF wrestling.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Sorry I'm far from a scientist but shouldn't NASA be benchmarking on how to actually get people to the moon. If I'm not mistaken, man can only stay in space for X amount of time before deterioration of the bones start to occur. If this is the case would it even matter if plants could exist on the planet if people couldn't eventually get there?
Maybe someone would care to share information on the human anatomy in space, I know I've passed by URL's before indicating why astronauts couldn't stay in space for prolonged times, maybe someone has bookmarked it or studied it. With that in mind, I wonder what will be done via way of speed, ship, etc., to get there. Has NASA been in the works with some ultra high speed shuttle or something.
Want Root?
Its about time the USA stopped funding NASA and Astrology altogether.
He thinks this program was created by Miss Cleo who (according to him) was reading her tarot cards and predicted to him "Duh fayte of dee planitz iz inna yore handz tell dem at slashdot.org to call me now for my free psychic readin"
Want Root?
Would you please read the article before you post? I may be wrong, but it doesn't look like you did.... here's why I say that (really, I'm not trying to put up a flamebait post here!)
In the article, it does not talk about simply releasing plants into an uncontrolled environment on mars. Towards the end of the article the following appears: " The first wave of Martian plants envisioned by Ferl and his colleagues would sprout inside a very small and protected greenhouse. " So the first experiment doesn't have the kind of intentions that you are speaking of...
So how about the future, you might (and should) ask? Well, earlier in the article, the following quote was talking about future use of plants on mars as life support systems for human colonists: "Such life support systems on Mars will probably involve growing crop plants in Martian soil within specially designed greenhouses, says Andrew Schuerger, a manager of Mars projects with Dynamac Corporation at the NASA's Kennedy Space Center." Clearly the intent is, at first, to keep the plants in a controlled environment, and not allow them to range free.
While that's all well and good, you also said: " Let us get some humans on the planet and set up some expirements to test for life before we think about Mars agriculture." And your point may be reasonable, to some fearful extent, but it is also addressed in the article:
"Learning to grow plants on Mars will be an important precursor to humans living there. Future explorers will need oxygen, food, and purified water -- items too costly to ferry from Earth to Mars on a regular basis. But plants can help provide those essentials inexpensively and locally as part of a self-contained "bioregenerative" life support system."
So the idea you suggest, sending a manned mission, is exactly what this research is trying to facilitate.
Now, maybe I am wrong on this, or maybe I am reading too much into your comment, but I do agree with the general spirit of your point that we should be careful about importing non-martian native organisms into the Martin environment. A real worry, along those lines, is what happens if the plants in those enclosed environments do get released, and possibly what forseeable situations would lead to such a thing occurring?
I dunno, it just seemed that your worries could have either been explained better or resolved by closer examination of the article. Indeed though, as I said, I do agree that there is something to at least consider or worry about before we send plants to Mars.
Finally is it just me who is struck by the sheer outrageous obscenity and waste - all this money spent on throwing things at Mars when there are many problems on Earth that are far more pressing: AIDS, War, Famine, lack of gun control in our inner cities, etc etc etc.
I don't know what you do for a living, but I'm sure that someone finds it worthless no matter how you might defend your interest/stance on the issue.
The fact is, an astronomer isn't going to find the cure for AIDS and he/she isn't going to stop war, feed the hungry, or try and take away anybody's guns (besides, if someone tries to take away MY gun, they'll get shot.)
Just because YOU think that those minor issues take priority over space exploration/exploitation doesn't mean that the rest of the right-thinking world agrees with you.
Remember, at one time, people thought the search for the new world was a waste of resources.
Luckily for us Americans, someone decided to make that journey.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
All your planet are belong to us.
Seriously: with Earth, there is a significant pre-existing ecosystem we have to respect lest we screw up humanity's only (at the moment) life support system. With all other planets (and moons, and asteroids) in our solar system, there is not, thus we are free to mess with them as we please. Similar arguments apply if you invoke the "right" of ecosystems to exist unmolested: by and large, there ain't no ecosystems outside of Earth right now.
Granted, if we want to check to see if there is microbial life on other planets, we should do this before terraforming, but that's just a matter of dispatching the right probes while we're still determining how best to terraform. In fact, the data from said probes would probably be a useful step in the process of terraforming, since if life was detected, we would have the option of altering the native life to alter the planet rather than completely custom designing our own plant colonizers.
...and I wonder where I can buy glowing jellypants.
Check out our infosecurity industry blog: http://securitymusings.com/
That's funny, I always thought "notorious spacetime crackpots" would be a great name for a band.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
So, wouldn't you have to establish a Wildlifeless Preserve, to uh, preserve the natural state of wildlife on Mars (which is to say, either dead or never alive)?
I guess it might make sense, but you'd have to sort of redefine preservation a little. Most nature preservation efforts and laws focus on things that are either alive, were once alive, or somehow relate to things that are alive. After all, nearly every square inch of Earth's surface contains life for some sort, so that's our bias. Even Antarctica - although not exactly in teaming multitudes or anything.
So what might this mean here on Earth? If there were a truely lifeless place on Earth, would it be better (in therms of the enviornment) to try to keep it that way, or do we have something of an obligation as living organizms to try to spread life to new places?
Sort of reminds me of some stuff from schismatrix.
--
In spite of the suggestions and all the tests that I have made, I have not cavato a spider from the hole.
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
I've got a better idea:
Round up all those SUV-driving, cellphone-talking teenage girls, and launch them instead. Then simply monitor for attempted calls for help as they struggle to breathe... until one of them gets smart and finds Arnold's alien atmosphere device, anyway... naaah, it'll never happen.
"So on one hand, honey is an amazingly sophisticated and efficient food source. On the other hand it's bee backwash."
The quote at the bottom of this page reads, "One planet is all you get."
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Anyway, I'm no expert in this area, but if you're interested in practical tips for exploring Mars without spending NASA-sized sums of money, you should check out The Case for Mars, which puts forth what appears to be a very well-researched and thoughtful plan.
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
Not even wowed by glowing plants!
Glowing plants, not jellyfish, has N possible payoffs. Are you smart enough to figure them out? No? Then why don't you let the NASA guys figure out what these N possible payoffs are.
Don't you get it? Life is a gamble with no guarantees. Risks and payoffs is the name of the game. Are you telling me that you want to risk *not* sending plants that glow in the dark to Mars as an analytic tool? This is the ultimate in self sufficient robotic analysis! You get to measure the soil, water, oxygen, and mineral conditions through a self propogating self sustaining device, a genetically engineered mustard plant!
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
Seriously, has there been any convention on what is appropriate/inappropriate to do to Mars? Once it's infected, begins an unstoppable course if interferring with another world's development (or maybe they tried something like Chiu's magnetic rings and this is what happened to to their once lush planet, what with over population and all...) is there a RL Prime Directive?
-- .sig are belong to us!
All your
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
How in hell can sending glowing jellyfish to Mars have any possible payoff. Are these guys on crack ?
Well let's see. Such research could be used to produce crops on earth too. If they can engineer a plant that can live on mars it surely can live in the Sudan. Plants that glow when they are stressed, yep usefull in agriculture, let's you know when to water or whatever
Do the Americans think they OWN Mars ? Surely Mars is owned by the United Nations who entrust that nobody destroys it.
Nope, they don't thing they own mars, they think nobody owns mars. So who will stop them. According to UN treaty no govenrment body can own any other planet or moon
Finally is it just me who is struck by the sheer outrageous obscenity and waste - all this money spent on throwing things at Mars when there are many problems on Earth that are far more pressing: AIDS, War, Famine, lack of gun control in our inner cities, etc etc etc.
I wish this argument would go away. but here goes the counter
War: Nope, our tax dollars won't prevent that
Famine: Yep, spending money on genitically enginering these plants ccould sure benifit the worlds food supply
AIDS: Maybe more money could be spend on AIDS research, but it is very well funded probably to the point of diminisheing returns
Lack of gun control: Nope, NASA's money isn't going to make the legislative process any smarter
Its about time the USA stopped funding NASA and Astrology altogether.
That's Astronomy not Astrology
As x approaches total apathy I couldn't care less.
No! Don't do that! They might evolve into intelligent martians and come back to attack us! You'll never know how cosmo radition would alter their genetic structure. We have enough trouble to worry when will killer tomatos come and get us all!
Well this is certainly an interesting idea, and the greenhouse plan sounds fine, but if you want to grow plants on the martian surface you've got a LOT of problems to overcome (nearly zero air pressure, dry-ice cold temperatures, hardly any water, no magnetosphere to protect against cosmic rays, high UV, etc) No fancy reporter system is going to fix that. Try growing plants in antartica first.
One issue I had: the reporter gene is presumably GFP. GFP doesn't actually glow, it flouresces. If coupled to luciferase it could glow, but then you wouldn't actually need GFP because the luciferase itself produces light. Of course you could always just light them yourself with external UV, or the natural UV on mars may be enough on its own (during the day, anyway). Also, there are many variants of GFP that glow in different colors besides green, so you could use those to offer a richer set of reporter genes.
cryptochrome
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Bah, the end of half-life sucked (the entire Xen, etc, episode). The Darkstar mod, on the other hand... that ending was good :)
I thought the headline said glowing jelly pants.
Seriously, though. With all the hype over highly-advanced uses for tools like these, it makes you wonder if they've considered using them closer to home. Imagine how useful plants like that would be if they were engineered to produce light at any point in a photosynthetic lull...Truly efficient solar-powered lights! Try easing the energy crunch on the West Coast and slow the wrecking of this planet before you jump off to prepare another one, bozos. Boing!