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Terrestrial Garbage On Mars
An anonymous reader writes "The garbage left behind by the twin Mars rovers was highlighted this week by the close-up view in panorama of the Spirit rovers' heatshield. Not including the various Viking, Pathfinder and some crippled probes, the human contribution of rover hardware to the martian surface now includes a few odd nicknacks, parachutes, heatshields, back shell,landing petals and many wheel tracks. It may be September before the rovers themselves become part of the red planet's debris field."
It will be "just like home".
--Phillip
Can you say BIRTH TAX
They'v been throwing their rocks at us for years; we're just returning the favor.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
Where's a giant spaceship that turns into a maid with a vacuum cleaner when you really need one..
It's less mess than a single paper clip in my back yard. If that's the only mess we make on Mars, I'm going to be very sad and disappointed.
Yes, I am a bleeding heart liberal quasi-socialist envormentalist. It's not like we're covering Mars with buckyballs or anything. :-)
Remember Salvage 1, where Andy Griffith plays a guy who wants to go to the moon to salvage all of the junk up there? Maybe he can reprise his role, and head off to Mars!
- Bill
It's a travesty that the pure & honorable planet Mars now has the solar system's worst semi-sentient race befouling it's gloriously pristine dead surface with plastics and shiny metal.
The only thing worse would be the filthy creatures actually setting foot on Martian soil!
Vote for Martian succession this winter to keep the Martian surface clean!
Although never positively identified, it was thought to be a piece of Kapton tape - an adhesive used often in aerospace applications.
Reminds me of an old joke: The surest sign of poor engineering is wrinkles in the duct tape.
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
Everything I'll need when I get there!
All that expensive hardware just being thrown out as trash, what a shame.
I'd be happy to give it a home!
Can someone give me a ride to go pick it up?
"The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
and when we get there we'll find them rednecked martians with our rovers up on blocks.
Keep it in perpective! It's not that much debris and there really is no other way to carry out these missions.
In a hundred years or so, when Mars is colonized, there will probably be museams at the landing spots of the various rovers with all their debris collected and displayed. People will pass by and ooh and aah at our antique technology.
Maybe the garbage will have useful navigation purposes:
"Have the rover turn left at the heatshield and then go towards the parachute."
If you've read the Red Mars trilogy, you know about the hypothetical conflict between Mars preservationists "the Reds" and terraformists "the Greens". While these books are set in the future, within the Mars-nerd community people are already starting to form similar ranks. From scientists who condemn manned missions as contaminating a virgin planet to people already doing research on what greenhouse gas mixture to use to heat up the place. There is a NASA debate on this that got some press recently.
Blaze a trail to the New World
Next, I shall completely spoil the purity of the Sahara desert by dropping three parachutes and 72 bottles of sugared soft drinks on random locations across it.
Just think, in a few million years when we've wiped every bit of out existance from Earth, aliens will be able to land on Mars and deduce that a civilization was once there. Ah the irony.
This feels like a joke, but there are people who might well invest some serious effort in "Keeping Mars Clean". My advisor was involved in the Voyager "Grand Tour" mission back at JPL in the 70's and he was telling me that when the launch was first announced, a group of people protested that Voyager was "stealing energy" from Jupiter with its gravity-assist maneuver. They were concerned that if enough probes were sent that way, Jupiter's orbit would be irrevokably altered. No, really. Obviously not a lot of math skills involved...
"I'm a scientist! I don't think, I observe!" - Dr. Clayton Forrester
Reminds me of an old commercial from the 70's. The updated version would feature a pair of NASA rovers driving across the Martian landscape. The rovers throw a bag of drive-thru trash out the window, which lands at the feet of a Native Ameri...er...Martian. The camera pans up and we see the native shed a tear. Shame on us! Don't we all feel terrible about the space program now? Please see "Wayne's World" for details.
Gives the tourists something to see when they visit..
Seriously though, apart from the possibility of earth microbes messing things up (also exagerrated, I believe) its no problem - this is a PLANET people, its a pretty big area..
In the meantime we are becoming afraid of our own shadows, when it comes to space travel. For instance they decided to prematurely end the Galileo-Jupiter mission, even though the satellite was still operational (albeit low on fuel) for fear of loosing control of it and having it "contaminate" one of the moons. By all means, lets do some initial robot landings to check for microbes, but we should not be afraid to ultimately make human footprints in some of these places..
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"