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Mars Terraforming Debate
blackhelicopter writes "This Guardian article describes the implications of terraforming Mars - the subject of NASA's forthcoming debate. Quote from Dr Lisa Pratt, a Nasa astrobiologist, concerning life probably already on Mars: 'We simply cannot risk starting a global experiment that would wipe out the precious sensitive evidence we are seeking'."
i think we should focus on cleaning this planet up before we decide to punt and basically make a new one.
I think we should make a backup before we start applying patches.
I'm not very concerned with messing the precious barren desert they have going there...not as much as I am about our lush diverse ecosystem anyways.
And if there is life there, well its sure to be better suited to its native environment than what we bring along. At worst we get our first scientific data about how our bacteria interact with xenobacteria.
You can't take the sky from me...
Isn't this just a tad premature? I mean, we haven't managed to get people to Mars yet. We're probably not going to find life there until we do, and since we've landed craft there already, there's a good chance that any life that is there has been infected already by terrestrial strains of whatever. Let's revisit this debate in about ten years when we've got some evidence and when we have some sort of space capacity that will allow us to get people back and forth to Mars. Until then, this and other articles like it are more than useless wanking that reminds me of the homegrown human-apologist "earth first" eco-wackos.
--
Vote for your hopes, not for your fears - Vote Third Party
Is it necessarily an easy decision? Perhaps we need to debate the meta-question: Is life the only criterion relevant to whether we should muck around with a planetary system?
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
Not with masses of plant and equipment. The costs of getting them there are pretty trivial, we already have plenty of probes on the planet. They just have to be able to carry an aerosol canister to disperse them. The hard part is designing microbes which will thrive and multiply in the environment.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
This planet nurtures us, protects us, and defines our very nature - and it has been doing this continuously, without much help at all, since we were drawing on cave walls. While I am all for the idea of self-sustaining artificial habitats if it can be done, it looks darned difficult to me to get the things the Earth provides, essentially free for the taking, into orbit such that they are sustainable.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
As more and more data is showing, it appears Mars once had a much denser atmosphere that probably supported liquid water. There is also evidence that Mars once had an Earth-like dipole magnetic field and magnetosphere which protected the ancient Martian atmosphere from the radiation of the solar winds. Many researches now believe that without a magnetic field the Martian atmosphere was simply eroded away by the solar wind.
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I am merely a layman on this subject, but it seems to me that without somehow restarting the Martian dynamo to generate a global magnetic field, the idea of terraforming Mars will always remain science fiction.
With this information, it seems to me that the idea of terraforming Mars is a joke. Am I missing something?
References:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast31jan_
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/3016_mag
http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0012/17marsmagnet
Negative, I am a meat popsicle.
There wouldn't necessarily be any evidence of other types of life being formed here on earth because they simply are not successful... the succesful genetic makeup, once it finally took, would have overrun the planet long before the first multicelled organisms ever appeared. Any evidence of prior types of life existing would be drowned out by the presence of the far more abundant successful organisms.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Wow... I know there's a "disposal mentality" in our society, but throwing away this planet once we make it to others is spectacularly careless. We're going to want this planet long after it's no longer necessary for the survival of the species.
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
I stopped reading your post after this line. If this is what you beleive I don't want to read any more of your ideas.
Wow. That's surprisingly open minded of you, and bodes well for the movement. Anything that doesn't agree with your philosophy is instantly turned off without bothering to read the explanation, eigh? Where I come from, that's called fundamentalism, and is a sign of a closed mind and an indefensible intellectual predisposition.
If you had bothered to read further, you would have found that my main arguments for terraforming Mars is the potential for a greater knowledge and appreciation for environmental issues, and as a protection against potential future environmental catastrophes.
Kyoto was a compromise because it will force the closing of, for example certain broken down Russian factories where income is at a sustinence level and potential investments are nonexistent. Certain people in India eek out survival by the completely hazardous and toxic recycling and burning of computer parts. Environmental controls will put these people out of jobs in areas where there aren't any other jobs. That's a reality. That's also fair, as the environmental pollution these activities create is likely to kill more people than the activities themselves support. But to say that that is not a reality of existence in other countries is extremely close-minded.
I fashion myself an environmentalist, having bicycled more miles than many people drive and protested environmentally destructive activities. To this day I'm peeved about the importation of Snails to the North American ecology, and feel that wolves should be re-introduced into the wild. Come to think of it, I'm also a member of the Green Party. If the belief that environmentally sound activities involve compromise with people's other needs is so alien to you that you stick your fingers in your ears and go "La-la-la-la-la," then get out of my movement. That form of fundamentalism is out of touch with the experiences of most people in this world, even most environmentalists, and only serves to feed the stereotype of the lunatic fringe "greenie." A stereotype which has proven an effective weapon against us many times in the court of public opinion.
And don't post annonymously if you believe in something. Have a spine.
- Chris Canfield
The ______ Agenda
Asimov seemd to do quite well with his Laws of Robotics in 1940. Because he was thinking so far ahead of the technology, he could work on the philosophy, rather than get bogged down in the technicalities.
Similarly, human cloning needed a lot of discussion a long time before it was a practical proposition to get a feel for where the moral concensus lies. If it had been left till the technology was ready, some scientist would have just gone ahead and done it before anyone could object. Which reminds me, that was the topic of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.
So, yes, let sci-fi writers ask the interesting questions, and let's have as much discussion as possible long before terraforming is possible.
I was going to mod this post up but I don't think it provides enough information. Before Clinton signed the Kyoto treaty the senate passed a resolution 95 to 0 saying that they would not support the treaty unless it held developing countries (such as China) to the same standards. Clinton signed the treaty even though it specifically exempted the developing countries. Without the support of the senate the U.S. would not live up to its obligations in the treaty. When Bush pulled out of the agreement he was just being realistic.
Part of my job involves science policy research. When I talk to scientists, they say just the opposite. They don't want more science fiction. In fact, they blame science fiction for getting inaccurate ideas out to the public. (You might say that good science fiction doesn't do this, but how much science fiction is good?)
The debate in question is not forming policy. It's just throwing ideas on the table. They aren't saying 'let's form a Preserve Life On Mars Society -now-!' They're saying 'so, if there is life on Mars, how should we deal with it?' This kind of debate is highly constructive, as it lays groundwork for policy no matter what information comes out later on.
What Future?
Yeah, I can't think of a reason either. Which is why I as an environmentalist don't want to destroy industrialized society. I only want to sacrifice a little economic efficiency for the sake of long-term viability. And it's why I don't go making up evils as my dissenter's motivations when there are other, more rational explanations.
Freedom isn't free; its price is the well-being of others.
How arrogant can we possibly get as to think that we have even and inkling of understanding into how the planet works on an astronomical scale?
My bio professor made a short convincing argument supporting some form of regulation of fossil fuel consumption back in '83. It boils down to this: Soon, the third world will be hopping onto the industrialization bandwagon (and that included the 1+ billion Chinese). At some point billions of tons of carbon will be added into the atmosphere. How can there NOT be climatic changes when that much chemical material is inserted into the atmosphere? (You can't be a scientist with any understanding of chemistry, physics, or ecology and not realize that.) If you live in the Gobi desert, sure, any change would be an improvement. Do you really think the US is going to improve or even retain its living conditions with global environmental change?
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon