Scientists Propose 'National Parks' On Mars

colonist writes "Microbiologist Charles Cockell and astrobiologist Gerda Horneck want to turn seven areas on Mars into 'national parks', conserved in their pristine state. 'It is the right of every person to stand and stare across the beautiful barrenness and desolation of the Martian surface without having to endure the eyesore of pieces of crashed spacecraft scattered across the landscape,' they write. Cockell is not against colonization, though. He says that setting aside some areas for conservation would free up the rest of the planet for settlement."

Comments

Who is this guy

[FiReaNGeL]

Charles Cockell, of the British Antarctic Survey, works on microbes growing in the extreme polar conditions. If you have an access to Nature, check his latest paper treating of "Ecology: widespread colonization by polar hypoliths". There's a summary available from BioEd Online for those (prolly 99% of the crowd here) who can't access Nature.

Look towards home planet first.

[stimpleton]

Never mind Mars.

The US *is currently* building a road in the Antarctic from their scientific base on the edge of the region too the Pole.
They are *mining snow to fill in crevases*.

The Man on Mars should be worried...

Brown said phase one of the project -- filling huge crevasses with ice on the crevasse fields 70 kilometers (40 miles) south of McMurdo station -- has already been completed.

Sir Edmund Hilary (the first man to climb Everest)has just walked part of it, and needless to say, has slammed the initiative.

http://www.antarcticconnection.com/antarctic/news/ 2003/021003road.shtml/