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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."
Damn that Saxifrage Russell and his Greens!
davejenkins.com |
Crash spaceship sites should be designated 'national historal parks'.
As if we were planning on paving the whole planet as soon as we landed.
pheww, I was worried it was gonna be a mob scene, but now I can rest easy, knowing that even after I get there, I can still go camping in the wilderness areas...
WTF IS THE POINT OF THIS!
get there first, make exisistence possible, wait until you reach a population of >50- then worry about running out of pristine areas.....
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
How about we GET there first, then colonize, then let all the pussy treehuggers whine about it?
shouldn't we go there first???
Someone is thinking ahead. For once. Refreshing to see.
There are, in fact, already treaties regarding space colonization. Just because it's not possible -yet- doesn't mean we should wait until it starts happening to consider how we want it to go.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
Until we can work out the value of an area (in terms of scientific benefits, mining, agriculture, etc...) we shouldn't go marking it off-limits.
Ideally these parks would have no value other than for eye candy.
Well, that would certainly put a crimp in any anyone's terra-forming plans...
Sig cancelled due to lack of interest
Well, the good thing is that after this we'll know exactly the seven areas the conspiracy lovers will tell us there are signs of ancient civilizations, martian colonies or other such stuff.
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.
Eureka Science News - automatically updated
Na they should be designated 'international historical parks' since any colonization on Mars would probably be by a multinational group.
It's an interesting dilemma. The only really good way to colonize Mars involves terraforming it. But the only way to preserve parts of the Martian surface precludes terraforming it. I guess you could build giant Martidomes to preserve the ancient landscape, but that seems like a lot of expense just to protect part of the planet from terraforming.
The question is - which makes more sense economically? Terraforming the entire planet, refusing to colonize it altogether, or building biodomes all over its surface? Right now, the third option is pretty much out of the question, so we have a long-term decision to make about whether Mars is more valuable as the red planet, or as a green one.
I wonder if the authors have read Kim Stanley Robinson's "Red Mars" (and Green and Blue...) He obviously thought a lot about the science involved in colonization, and saving areas of Mars "in their pristine state" won't be easy, if he got much of his analysis right. Especially if any of these areas are on the equator (the falling space elevator episode)
He should take solace in knowing that the massive amounts of radiation hitting the planet due to it having no atmosphere to speak of would likely burn out the eyes of the tourist.
These earth-like ideas of conservation don't map onto Mars and other planets *yet*. Roping off an area of Mars where the ships should not land!?! We're just starting to explore it. We don't yet know which areas are best to conserve and which are best to settle upon. Given that settlement could be an awfully boring and restrictive lifestyle, I'm sure that a lot will be conserved because of the harshness of the environment. Humans will have a hard-enough time preserving themselves in the Mars environment at first. I'm sure NASA's going to blow up a $25 mil. ship (or whatever amount of $) when they see it's accidentally heading for a conserved piece of land. I think these people's efforts would (in the meantime) be better applied here on earth. It's a novel idea for Mars but way too early. Let's not legislate Mars quite yet.
You start up National Parks and the bears show up to beg and go through the trash.
April Fool's day semiannual now? No, wait, that doesn't work out right either.
I think someone is conceptualizing Mars wrong. It's a whole PLANET. It costs billions of dollars to send a single probe. We aren't going to be littering it any time soon, nor are we going to land humans on it any time soon.
What we should worry about is not contaminating it with terrestrial microorganisms.
Wouldn't the designation of 'parks' on Mars best be left up to the people settling there? Like, we think we know a little bit about what's there, but really we don't know much of anything. Mapping from space, and a few square miles of exploration doesn't mean we know squat about Mars.
:)
For example, what if we find a huge system of underground caves, like exist all over the Earth. Maybe they're too close to the surface to even put a city. That would be a better choice, rather than marking 1000 square miles saying "This is park."
Not that it really matters. We haven't sent person #1 there yet, much less colonists. Really, the rules will be established by whoever gets there first, and then be redefined by whoever takes power there first. If a country puts a big freakin' space gun on Mars, and starts shooting down other countries landers, that leaves that country in control to say what a park is. Or more like, if the colonists decide that they're independant (with the big freakin' space gun to prove it), they get to declare their parks.
That's what the U.S. did. They told England, "This is ours". It doesn't matter what they declared as what before the colonists came over, it's all been changed since then. The only big differences are the distance, and the space gun.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I'm not certain if current space treaties actually deal with colonization, but treaties regulating the currently impossible are always easy to support. These treaties will be ignored/rewritten when space colonization becomes a practical reality. And, as always, no entity has the means and authority to enforce these treaties.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
So, America owns Mars now, right?
A national park must be owned by a nation... Solar park maybe?
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
How about we actually get there and figure out what is there first. We could doom any colonization effort by declaring areas off limits that have resources we will need or want. Can see it now, from here we say leave these areas alone and unexplored. We find out after the colony dies that those areas contain most of the water and other resources needed by a colony. But no, we can't touch them because they are declared national parks.
Face it people, if there was not life on Mars before there is a very high probability that there is life there now. As careful as we try to be keeping the various probes clean before launching them there will be a varity of microbes, bacteria, and viruses that hitched a ride on the probes and probably survived both the trip and reentry. So colonization has begun on the microbial level at least.
Lets get there first and find out what is really there then we can set aside areas as national parks.
People throw around the concepts of 'rights' too easily. What religious or natural philosophy would include property rights on another planet? Such a bloated sense of importance and entitlement..
Will there be pic-a-nik baskets in the parkon Mars ?
If you don't understand anything I post, please accept that I ate paste as a small boy...
Does the Doom III ad have anything to do with the article, or is that just a coincidence?
It is the right of every person to stand and stare across the beautiful barrenness and desolation of the Martian surface
Cool, so who's paying for my ticket? It IS my right to go there, after all...
You can't take the sky from me...
'National Parks' ..
Who's nation though?
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Which nation exactly owns Mars?
Some of the probes went *SPLAT* instead of landing safely :)
-- Gone Crazy, Back Later
...We'll strip-mine the other planets later.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
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
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
those are Valles Marineris and Hellas Planitia
- first, because canyons provide a very good place for underground houses - you have just a window on the side of a canyon
- second, because Hellas is the lowest place on whole planet, which results in twice the atmospheric pressure (Mars has 6hPa on average): 14 hPa. Pressure has big influence on water phase - in Hellas you would expect water to be in liquid phase, while everywhere on Mars you expect water to constantly dwiddle between gaz and solid phase (tri-point place on phase diagram). Liquid water is a good argument to put human settlements in Hellas.
I know that stuff because my wife makes a PhD about base on Mars.
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#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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http://www.antarcticconnection.com/antarctic/news
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
Nice article. I for one am happy that this subject has been broached now as it is important. Might be a good idea for all those interested to read KSR's Mars Trilogy and the Clayborne-Russell arguments to get a real insight into the issues that (might probably) arise and be at stake.
;)
That said, I'd still love to see a human presence on Mars, as long as I'm one of em...
Closer to home, imagine if we colonised the moon at some point in the future - would you send crews out to pick up the man-made "litter" left behind by, say, the Apollo 9 mission, or would you keep it as a[n] [inter]national monument to a piece of human history?
It'd be like trashing the Mayflower or something because it had served it's purpose and was cluttering up the landscape.
I say, the spacecraft and probes that land on Mars before the place was colonised would have historical significance.
I guess the folks proposing the conservation areas are just thinking a few dozen centuries ahead (a more power to them for trying to prevent a potential problem).
Though moderated as funny, you're more +4 wry.
It isn't that we're planning on paving the whole planet, it's that the planet doesn't have forests and such.
The result is that if you land one large spaceship it's visible a very, very, very long way.
The whiter a piece of paper is, the more you notice a single mark on it. The same is true of Mars. By the time there's significant colonization any talk of untouched wilderness will be pointless. It isn't like Yellowstone where you can find yourself a fairly tiny little nook in the forest and pretend there isn't a highway a half mile back.
The required size for an effective park on Mars is just too large for it to be practical, which is rather the opposite of your "joke".
The point of this is to cordon off areas of Mars where McDonalds can't put billboards.
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
...they stole all of the pic-a-nic baskets!
Only the English love barren lifeless deserts and would want to preserve them in their pristine state.
Most people that live near or on a desert would rather change them into an oasis (or in this case terraform). Try living in, or travelling on one - it looses a great deal of it's romance very quickly.
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
Space parks means... SPACE RANGERS!!! "Hey Chuck, the tourists on trail three just ran out of oxygen. Can you spacelift them a few tanks with the Mars hopper?" "All Rangers, a bunch of tourists are being attacked by native demons. Make sure to bring your BFGs! *click* Sigh, what part of the 'FEED THE DEMONS AND THEY WILL EAT YOUR SOUL' do they not understand?"
read the bunni comic
I guess the British Beagle landers will have to find a new destination.
Number two says, "There are no Nations anymore. There's only coporations." I suppose that means that the parks would be owned by MickeySoft, General Products and Lockheed Transnational. "Mars deserves a break today. No exploration will be allowed to interfere with our relative advantage over our fellow men."
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Such people always have at their core a hatred for mankind and, thus, themselves. These are the people that wax poetic about beaver damns and the ecological changes they invoke and at the same time condemn man's works as destructive.
Mars is a planet that (arguably and maybe) once supported life and does so no longer (arguably and maybe). What cosmic plan does it disrupt to bring life back to that planet or bring life to it for the first time? And if he thinks that Mars' pristine wilderness is going to survive life's onslaught unchanged he is so wrong in a thousand ways!
We have earned the right to change Mars to suit ourselves and barren, lifeless vistas be damned! How did we earn it? By surviving, by achieving and by striving until we can leave our cradle and venture outward to other planets and beyond.
Wow, I thought he was dead, but he's not!. Can you point to the slam? The article you pointed to (my link works, yours had an extro /) was mostly positive about the road.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Question: if there are no trees on Mars to hug, aren't we going to need a new name to call these nuts?
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves
Shouldn't we be a little bit more worried about the situation here on earth first? Between the issues in our current national parks and if they will exist with all the clutter and chaos of our society. Mars is YEARS off from inhabitation anyway, so why worry about that now? I mean its a great idea and all but it is much more important to first consider how we will land and live on the surface let alone utilize a national park...
_
Free 27" Sony WEGA TV
I can see him in his Cowboy outfit now :p
Otherwise its just death by a thousand cuts, just like good 'ol Earth.
Mars is already dead (with the possible exception of microbes).
Earth--with all its "mining", "exploitation" and "contamination"--is actually the one planet that's full of life.
How many vehicles are we planning on crashing on the planet so that you can't look anywhere without seeing one of them? At the current rate we're sending out Mars missions... how long would it even take?
I think it could be argued that most of "us" (in the global sense) have learned very few lessons...
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I was always of the opinion while reading the Mars Trilogy that they would largely come to pass... and look at this... we haven't even landed any people there yet and we have the 'pristine vs teraform' argument going on.
:D
Excellent