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The Indirect Case For Life On Mars
Deinhard writes "Space.com is reporting that '[a] pair of NASA scientists told a group of space officials at a private meeting here Sunday that they have found strong evidence that life may exist today on Mars, hidden away in caves and sustained by pockets of water.' It is all based on methane signatures and not direct observation. Now plans for using the Genesis Device on Mars are out ... unless this is just a particle of preanimate matter caught in the matrix."
Methane can also be produced by volcanic activity. By all means keep coming up with ways to look for life on Mars, but most likely the only way we will find out for sure is to actually go there in person.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Here is the scientist's proof:
http://xmlx.ca/images/37/o_martian.jpg
Wait a minute... wasn't that in a Star Trek movie? There ain't no genesis device in real life is there?
Khabp'LA!
KHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNN!!!
And they are just over the horizon with their Atomic Pistols!
If ancient life can be discovered under Antarctic ice, nothing is unpossible.
Given our accessibility and coverage on earth, we didn't know about this ancient life until recently.
And now we only have few rovers on Mars...
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
oh, i mean...
CON!!!!
considering some of the extreme conditions organisms have been found to exist under on earth, Mars's landscape would be easy to survive in in comparision. One wonders how contaminated the Martian environment may have been from terrestrial probes sent there already.
...Santa may be real because he leaves me presents...
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
...before the first Starbucks, Walmart and McDonald's now appear on Mars?
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
KSR needs to rewrite Red Mars...
whether Earth is under similar surveillance by some remote civilization that discovered us millions of years ago.
At least that would explain some of those crop circles...
Microsoft releases the new Microsoft Genesis:
1. Terraforms any planet within 2 minutes.
2. Can only be used on Micrsoft Authorized, Genuine Planets and Asteroids (MAGPAs)
3. Any matter may be used, however the Matter Standard may be extended in the future.
Microsoft has critiziced GNU Terraform system, calling it 'anarchist'. Richard Stallman has responded, reminding about how Microsoft once lamented about how 'if people knew how planets were terraformed when the Earth became inhabitable, people would be in dystopian alien governments today.'
Meanwhile in an unrelated incident, a person has sued MMOINC for not letting him use a used copy of Marsland MMO.
The WiMax Foundation has come out saying that WiMax could blanket 99% of Mars. Microsoft has responded to GNU Terraform by making Microsoft Genesis free-of-charge.
Creature that secrete methane gas and spend their lives hidden in caves, never coming out for observation.
Well, of course, th-HEY! This isn't the "EULA Confusion w/ Used Copies of WoW?" thread!
At last, there's a strong factual basis supporting the life on Mars theory, I knew this day would come ever since... oh, wait. Just speculation. Damn! I thought they *really* meant it this time.
I do hope that this isn't another false alarm. This comes at about the same time as this odd lichen-like feature was photographed: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mars_life_05 0216.html >. Fascinating developments.
On a slight tangent, I wonder if Larry Lemke is related to the savant Leslie Lemke.
Eh?
Years ago we were told that the best place to find life on Mars would be under rocks where there could be lichen-like lifeforms. It would shield them from the harmful UV and solar radiation effects. But so far JPL hasn't used the Instrument Deployment Device (the remote "arm") to turn over a rock and examine what's under it with the microscopic imager. They've looked all over the exposed surface of rocks and even dug small trenches in the soil and examined that. Perhaps they don't want to break it, but still I would like for them to at least try to look under a rock or two. There might be something interesting there!
The proper way to avoid flatulence (colloq: farting) is through a controlled diet, avoiding beans, cabbage etc. Drilling is apt to get them nowhere.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
"Because know any sort of possibility of life on other planets is a hot button, we'll pull this theory out so that we can beg for funding."
It's all about getting more funding, and justifying what they have.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
... and that they eat at Taco Bell!
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
Dan Quayle, 8/11/89
I rest my case.
"There are already a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare." - Blair Houghton
i personally think that terraforming mars for human habitation is more important than the possible threat to the welfare of some ancient non-earth simple life forms
really
if we were in some hypothetical situation where a mars genesis project would commence or not depending upon the fate of the POSSIBILITY of martian microbes, i would push the button
because the sum total of what MIGHT be lost does not outweigh what WILL be gained
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I mean, we're just going to end up killing it all and http://science.howstuffworks.com/terraforming.htmt erraforming the whole friggin' place anyways.
TRHOnline - Staggering Towards Brilliance
... Now plans for using the Genesis Device on Mars are out ...
Since the "Prime Directive" is centuries in our future we are free to f' over anything we find there as we terraform.
But i'm not sure why we want to send them to mars though.
Unless a Martian creature suddenly appears within either of the camera viewfinders of the Mars probes Spirit or Opportunity and decides to ham it up.
Personally, I'm of the opinion that Martians shot down the NASA Mars Polar Lander and the ESA Beagle 2 8^)
Cor.
Don't assume for a moment that we won't colonize and terraform Mars. It may take 100 years and start with little research outposts like those on Antarctica, but soon enough it'll all be plowed up and paved over and we'll bring all the plagues of earth, litter included.
I suppose there will be an environmentalist coalition of some sort and some fine parks will be set aside, i.e. Olympus Mons, but when competing national iterests pit India and China against any other comers, it'll be a race to colonize it and damn the environment and anyone who pipes up to protect it.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
And we probably sent it there on the Viking Probes!
(or it's from the remains of a long dead civilization that had a war with the fifth planet of the solar system. The fifth planet was turned to rubble and the aftermath of the war destroyed Mars. So the survivors fled to Earth and feasted on dinosaur meat until they hunted them to extinction...)
Some years back, I heard a presentation that stated life would be found on Mars. The presentation went on to say that the source would be bacteria carried from the Earth's atmosphere by the solar wind. There is some evidence that severe thunderstorms do toss dirt and bacteria high enough into the atmosphere for this to be possible. Just think when we get to Mars, the common cold may be waiting for us there.
we can answer David Bowie's question.
Weren't large subterranean gas deposits on Mars of inorganic origin the plot of Total Recall???
I recommend we send Governor Schwarzenegger to investigate.
Is finding some form of life less evolved than bacteria really a reason not to terraform Mars? From a practical standpoint, it seems like if we are going to try, and are capable of, making Mars habitable, finding microbes shouldn't stop us.
We displace plenty of animal life here on Earth; after all, we are the dominant species. Why should Mars be any diffent? Because in 2 billion more years something may evolve? Doesn't sound like a reason to stop to me.
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
Don't they know that the biblical flood wiped out all form of life everywhere save what was on Noah's boat?
Now plans for using the Genesis Device on Mars are out ... unless this is just a particle of preanimate matter caught in the matrix.
I don't think that the preponderance of evidence suggests that any present life on Mars has any chance at all of evolving into an intelligent species. Given the current environmental conditions, and the planet's very stable geology, there's no likelyhood of a climate shift favoring such developments.
Unless we terraform the bitch.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Recommend my Boss and his flock of tattletales for the first mission to Mars to look for...
People to tell on!
Proof of life on Mars is becoming strikingly similar to commercial fusion or anti-balistic missile defences - always just another contract down the road. It's not that I have anything against the exploration of Mars, nor do I not appreciate the difficulty of understanding an alien environment, but every time NASA hypes to the public I feel like I'm watching/reading politics, not science.
This should be enough evidence for Bush to declare war on mars.
They live in caves... just like Osama.
and
The only possible reason for methane emissions is the production of wepons of mass destruction.
well, the last excuse was just as lame... NASA should take some pointers from the CIA.
According to http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7014 the scientists have not only detected methane, but also formaldehyde, which was measured at levels of 130 parts per billion. From the article:
He thinks that the gas is being produced by the oxidation of methane and estimates that 2.5 million tonnes of methane per year are needed to produce it. "I believe that until it is demonstrated that non-biological processes can produce this, possibly the only way to produce so much methane is life," he says. "My conclusion is there must be life in the soil of Mars."
Bruce
last I heard, Methane was frequently produced on Uranus.
I wonder how far the nearest cave is to the rover's current position? Does the rover have a flashlight?
It is giant cave dwelling space cows!
News Reporters Make Tasty Polar Bear Treats!
Is it just that I'm a cynic? They haven't even found liquid water and now there's "strong evidence" of life on Mars? Come on, I would be happy at the news just as much as the next guy but let's not jump the gun here...believing something is true does not make it true, not here, nor on Mars.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Evidence of methane and its coverage with water can be expained in at least one trivial way. Note Mars atmospheric composition:
C02: 95%
H2O: 0.03%
Now huge ultraviolet radiation breaks down H2O and CO2 to loose hydrogen/oxygen/carbon atoms (this process along with mars weak gravity is co-responsible for mars losing its once dense atmosphere). Additionally there is huge evidence of Electrical Discharge On The Martian Surface
Try simple high school science project: Load a container with water and CO2, add electrodes to create some discharge ('lightning') and you'll have your own PanGea in a bottle.
After some time all sorts of 'organic' chemicals will be present in the bottle along with most common methane (but also alcohols, higher carbohydrates and more complex molecules). I would think decent scientist would at least mention such possibility in reocurring articles on 'OH-OH methane is evidence of life on mars'
"the chances of anything coming from mars, are a million to one they said"
The end of the world is at hand!
Make your peace with whatever god you worship!
Thomas Gold has postulated this basic situation, and suggested drilling for life for a very long time.
But her mummy is yelling "No"
And her daddy has told her to go
But her friend is nowhere to be seen
Now she walks through her sunken dream
To the seat with the clearest view
And she's hooked to the silver screen...
But the film is a saddening bore
For she's lived it ten times or more
She could spit in the eyes of fools
As they ask her to focus on -
Sailors fighting in the dance hall
Oh man! Look at those cavemen go
It's the freakiest show
Take a look at the Lawman
Beating up the wrong guy
Oh man! Wonder if he'll ever know...
He's in the best selling show -
Is there life on Mars?
It's on Amerikas tortured brow
That Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow
Now the workers have struck for fame
'Cause Lennon's on sale again
See the mice in their million hordes -
From Ibiza to the Norfolk Broads
Rule Britannia is out of bounds
To my mother, my dog, and clowns...
But the film is a saddening bore
'Cause I wrote it ten times or more
It's about to be writ again
As I ask you to focus on -
Sailors fighting in the dance hall
Oh man! Look at those cavemen go
It's the freakiest show
Take a look at the Lawman
Beating up the wrong guy
Oh man! Wonder if he'll ever know...
He's in the best selling show -
Is there life on Mars?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
"Me fail english. Thats unpossible."
Ralph
does simple celled life deserve?
in the time it took you to compose your post, your body killed a couple thousand such life forms
we might learn something from them, and that would be a loss, but that is about it
oh and btw, after mars, we'll go to venus
yes, humans are like a virus... so what?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
How about the methane is being released at a constant rate but the fluxuation is caused by a flux in the density of the atmosphere as a whole.
We know the C02 ice caps will melt in the summer and grow back in the winter... perhaps during the summer period, with the addition of C02, the atmospher is better able to "hold" the constant discharge of methane... or maybe it is just easier to detect?
"The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one"
But still, they come!
***
It's a perfectly cromulent word.
If your comment title says 'Re: Foo', I'm not likely to read it.
I wonder if the mars rover could carry terestrial lifeforms, i.e. mold, that could then start populating mars.
reminds me of a thing my friend says..."If we weren't s'posed to do it, we wouldn't be able to do it."
Works for religionists and evolutionists alike.
Just a thought - make of it what you will.
While it is remotely possible that some earth organisms could live on Mars it is stupendously unlikely that they would have been able to hitch a ride on earlier Mars probes. The reasons for this are rather simple - first, the Earth organisms that could live in high-UV, massively thermally fluctuating, and co2 saturated environments don't happen to live in the places the rest of use humans normally do and certainly don't do well in an oxygen rich clean room with zero UV and human comfortable temperatures like those used to build and package Mars probes. Second problem is the cold hard vacuum of space. Generally speaking we don't tend to pressurize our unmanned space vehicles - it adds complexity, expense, and on heck of a failure point to do so. While the craft are shielded from radiation and certain components are nominally heated they do not maintain much of an atmosphere...and generally speaking we have yet to find an earth based organism that will suvive those types of conditions for any prolonged period... like the many months it takes to get from here to Mars. No, if there is indeed a biologic process creating methane on Mars it is far more likely that it originated there than it is that it came from here on a probe. Remember Occam's Razor - the simplest answer is usually right.
Well, Mr Bowie, we nearly like your new song, but I'm not too sure about that second line. Now I'm only a record executive, and no nothing of rhyme and rhythm, but I think that it would scan better with an extra word tagged on the end.
How about the word "hair" ?
"She's furniture with a pulse"
...what if we brought life to mars?
Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know. ~Lao Tzu
"Strong evidence that life may exist..." This is meaningless statement. There's no evidence of any life there. Just a lot of hot air back here on earth.
it had significant volcanic activity a long time ago, as evidenced by Olympus Mons, but none that we've ever detected going on now or in the recent past
Actually, lava flowed on the surface of mars as recently as 4 million years ago. That is the "recent past".
I strongly predict that this business will be yet another false alarm. In fact, I stake my anonymous reputation on it!
Come May 13 (and it cannot come soon enough), "Star Trek" will be history. Making Trek references everywhere will quickly become as quaint and passe as making "Buck Rogers" references.
Scientists releasing papers and ideas, especially ones that are obviously controversial, before the peer review/publication process has been completed is poor science. While the peer review process is not perfect with the potential to overemphasize mediocre/bad work or miss good work, the system is the checks and balances upon which science has relied for decades to ensure quality work.
For an example of how releasing scientific results to the media before it is fully evaluated can have disastrous effects, check out cold fusion.
Totally OT, I know, but there really were rats the size of cats (see about half way down), although the interviewee may have been turning Bowie's lyrics into fact. Or something.
Getting slightly back OT, the answer to the question "Is there life on Mars?" would seem to be a "definite maybe"
"She's furniture with a pulse"
Have you ever thought that some huge alien many millennia ago past Mars and farted? That could explain the methane.
With respect, at the moment this is a lot of hypothesis built on a very small base of data. I am prepared to speculate that there are many ways in which these very very very tiny proportions of methane (and they are small) could have ended up in the atmosphere - given our limited knowledge of mars (only 4 successful landers with limited capabilities) there may be many subtle mechanisms by which stored methane could leak, at least in these sort of quantities..
Having said that, I believe it is even probable that live did exist on mars, and very possible it is still there. Thanks to the MERs, we know that mars was wet for some length of time in history, probably for millenia. From evidence of martian meteorites on earth, we can assume a high probablility of cross-fertilisation of DNA between earth-mars during that time. Given that, and given how tenacious we know DNA is once created, it is probable that it still thrives in some sub-terranian (sorry sub-martian) pocket..
Once thing is sure - we should be investing more to find out..
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
Decades ago, a treaty was signed stating that Antarctica would be used for scientific purposes only.
Also, terraforming there would not be a good idea. We would have to warm up the climate, and before the temperature would rise, the glaciers there would melt, raising the ocean level significantly. The resulting death toll would make the recent tsunami look like a small splash. The same thing goes for draining the Mediterranean. The water has to go somewhere.
Eventually, we will have to expand out into space, if not for practical reasons (natural resources, living space), for psychological purposes. Throughout history, people have constantly been going west because of the belief that it was their duty as humans to control the land out there, an idea commonly known as manifest destiny. Now, if we go any further west, we'll end up in the Far East. The only direction lefr is up.
An entire universe is out there to explore and bring civilization to. All we have to do is grab it!
So, the next shuttle will be named Thunderchild?
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
You can't fool us Mr. Quayle! It was stupid, stupid stupid, and you're not going to rationalize it as poor wording now.
...making the indirect case for the existence of God. This is all very well and good from an "armchair philosophy" standpoint, but until I see electron micrographs of the native Martian fauna (or flora?), I won't believe there's anything alive there except any stray bacteria trapped deep within Terran probes (I'd say "Earthling probes", but that'd sound even sillier, not to mention like it's something that probes an Earthling...)...
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
Aleady published:
Detection of methane in the martian atmosphere: evidence for life?
Vladimir A. Krasnopolsky, Jean Pierre Maillard, and Tobias C. Owen
Icarus, Vol. 172, pp. 537-547, 2004.
Of course Krasnopolsky, an eminant scientist (the former head of the USSR's Venera Venus program) now living in the Washington DC area, reported this at scientific conferences prior to publication also.
I just love it when NASA tries to grab all the publicitly for something that has already been published in the scientific literature. This is not something new for NASA.
The lifetime of CH4 on Mars is 340 years (Krasnopolsky et al., 2004).
When the find the life on Mars... his name will be Kaaaaahhhhhnnn!
I urge NASA to refrain from attempting any drilling exploration on Mars as it will seriously disturb the underground biosphere in Mars, hence harming the potential life-forms that they may find. So whatever life-form they find will be dead anyway.
He meant to say "Find life on Mars before our Sun enters the Red Giant phase and makes teh question meaningless".
We can keep sending robots, but if we do so likely the first really good proof we have of life is when it evolves and flies here. "Why didn't you just come over?", they will ask, and we'll respond "Exp thought it was too hard so we didn't bother".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You should try reading Zubrin sometime. We can get there fairly cheap, and we can do a lot more in person.
But you already know that since I proved it time and time again in endless debate - I now realize you are nothing but an Eliza style bot repeating the same tired arguments again and again and thus am limiting my responses only to posts where you have managed to fool moderators into elevating your mistaken diatribes against humans on Mars.
In short, Humans on Mars could be brought for about the same price (or only 2-3x) as the simplest hopping robot, and give far better results since a human would know where to "hop" to.
But then you are the same person that thinks a shipping crate costs about the same as an unfolding lander, so I'm sure your counter-argument will dramatically underestimate the cost of the hopper.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
if you take humans to Mars, you need to bring them back. that alone can double the cost. what about the cost of developing space suits that can tolerate extreme environment? oxygen and food supply? removal of human waste? safety precautions that needs to be made? etc. etc.
i really doubt it will be 2-3x, i can't see anything less than an order of magnitude difference.
Laf, the debate that you ran off from after making all sorts of ridiculous assertions and completely avoiding most of the issues that I presented?
For all of the people here, SuperKendall thinks that we should send robots in parts, then have people assemble them on the surface, and then relaunch them to get to their destination (for some bizarre reason), instead of just sending them to their destination to begin with. And a lot more outright batty stuff.
And that number is 50x, not 2-3x. Manned mars mission costs typically are near 50 B$, while robotic missions are typically ~1 B$. And I already discussed the reasons why with you, which you ignored, just like you ignored the issues with radiation shielding.
"Well, then fire it up and show me what this..." (sigh)
I hereby declare you a karma whore. Anonymously of course, since this comment will no doubt be modded down. I just want you to know that you're not fooling everyone. Just a little note from me to you. Will it make you change your behavior. Probably not. Will it make me feel better. Undoubtedly - already has.
The prospect of an entire new empire of life should be celebrated, not bemoaned as an impediment to colonization. It is of infinitely more value to the human race.
Who needs to sink back down into another gravity well, anyway? When we settle off-world, I don't think it will be onto planetary surfaces.
Share and Enjoy: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Better check on the guy who does the polls. I think he died.
Or maybe he's just really, really early for next year's Valentine's Day.
I hope we haven't contaminated the planet already with some Earth super-virus/bacteria from the rovers.
Why you green blooded, in-human.....
The authors infer the existence of life on Mars from detected methane. If it emits methane, then it exists.
In about 3.5 centuries we have progressed from René Descartes to this: "I fart, therefore I am".
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Naw.. real nerds Khan.
For some years now, the principle investigator for the 1976 Viking Lander Labeled Release Experiment has claimed that his experiment did find evidence of life on Mars. The problem is that the results from the other Viking experiments was inconsistent with this, so NASA decided that the LRE detected a non-biological chemical reaction.
Is this new data about methane consistent with the Viking LRE data?
Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnn!!!!
"strong evidence that life may exist today on Mars, hidden away in caves and sustained by pockets of water."
Cool, there are programmers on Mars.
Somehow I seem to remember a Simpsons qoute about thermodynamics that's applicable to this situation. NASA should investigate this.
..........FULL STOP.
I hate to break it to you, but Star Trek and the universe it portrays is fiction. Thus, the future as seen in this work of fiction is quite probably also not going to happen. Which means that we won't end up with a "Prime Directive".
Pretend that something especially witty is here. Thanks.
I know the answer to that question. http://www.newpath4.com/forsalespacecraftenginecon stantpowertheory.htm . Interesting things, inter-planetary engines. Just so happens any engine worth its salt in weightless space is also anti-gravity inside any planet's gravitational field. Two birds, one stone. Interstellar or transtellar is also non-interstellar. Who woulda thought? Everybody WANTS IT; who will pay for it? Excellent question. Probably the Saudis, altho the Chinese are just hungry enough to grab it. Americans? Too big a ego. They'll pass. Saw where MIT visited my page yesterday. One shot deal, won't last long. Bill Gates can have it if he wants it. Does he? Space-X told me they're too busy. They're working on a PROPULSION ENGINE. A plane engine for Outer Space. Wow! What a novel idea. What a waste of money.
You should learn to control your emotions. They will be your undoing.
There might be life on Mars?!? Small microscopic organisms with enough DNA info to fill a floppy disk.
So What? We got lots of life here on earth. Earth is the life planet. So would you cut the health care and education budgets to spend billions of dollars to find out if there is or isn't life on Mars?
Maybe these guys are just a plant for Steven Spielberg's big new movie where the life on Mars comes to Earth with hostile intent. But good-ol' Tom Cruise kicks their rubber-masked ass back home where they belong.
Jeez. $250 million remakes of cheezy $40,000 movies of the 1950's. Or 1930's, "King Kong" anyone? Aren't you just pissing in your pants in anticipation of these once-in-a-lifetime millenium-event movie blockbusters?
More Jeez and crackers. Some scientist quote-unquote who is about to lose his government grant because he can't think of new and expensive ways to kill people who don't shop at the Baby Gap, forms a committee of other poor white-coat schumcks in the same position in order to concoct a weird theory that life may exist on Mars. (and if you only give me another $200 million in research funds...I won't ever have to go back to teaching undergrads, er.. what I mean to say is "Our team will be able to confirm whether this theory will lead to the most exciting discovery in human history!"
they have found strong evidence that life may exist today on Mars, hidden away in caves and sustained by pockets of water.' It is all based on methane signatures and not direct observation.
I for one welcome or new Martian methane overlords.
I think we should explore Mars for what it is and not what the NASA PR hounds want it to be. If we go with the expectation of NOT finding life we do not jeopardize public interest (and funding) for future missions, because we are going there to find out what's there. There are bound to be some interesting surprises in store for us. If we DO find life it's the icing on the cake.
Mars could never had had much water. There are large swaths of Olivine on the surface of Mars which readily decays in water. There still may have been sufficient water on Mars at one time for life to have evolved or to be infected by a lifebearing meteorite blasted off the surface of the Earth. I would wager that if we DO find life on Mars it closely related to Earthly life. The only question then would be who contaminated who and how long ago did it happen?
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
if you take humans to Mars, you need to bring them back.
Why? Why not make it a mission for life?
that alone can double the cost. what about the cost of developing space suits that can tolerate extreme environment?
Not nearly as extreme as suits we already have take, and we've also already designed a lot of suits for very extreme environments like extreme heat, extreme depth, etc.
oxygen and food supply? removal of human waste? safety precautions that needs to be made? etc. etc.
Yes there are issues to work out.
But lets take that hopping robot as an example. First of all, you have to get it there. We had two rovers for a reason - because we wern't totally sure it was going to make it. Indeed one had a flash memory problem and all through the program they ran itno things that almsot blew the whole thing like malfunctioning parachutes, airbags not as tough as they thought, etc. You can't take the tremeendous success that NASA has had for granted and assume that whatever you want to send is going to make it. Sending humans means human pilots and a lot more leeway to generate a successful mission.
And as for the robot itself. The rovers have worked pretty well but a hopping robot is an order of magnitude more difficult to build properly than waht we have so far. It has to hop, land OK, and somehow absorb a lot of G's so that instrumnets on board all survive. That's going to take a lot of timer, effort and money - making the apprent cost of a manned mission shrink in comparison, especially if you might have to build and land two of them to really have a good chance of lasting success.
Sending humans requires more resources but that is offset by the flexibility you get from having humans on the scene to adddress issues that arise.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I do agree that it's a hard choice to make, send humans to Mars or send more probes to interesting places like Titan.
But I think that long term, it's far more useful to have an extended manned presence through the solar system that will enable even more such missions than we might be able to manage only from Earth. Not to mention the mental boost we would get from really having a permanent human presence on Mars itself. It's a question of sending many questionable one-off mission rather than increasing the base of our reliable capability to send even unmanned missions.
I really recommend Zubrin's book for a very sober view of how we can get to Mars realistically. Indeed they are currently engaging in terrestrial-based experiments that address a lot of the little but crucial small practical details of the effort.
Although I am pleased with the current direction of the space program, I think the timeframe for that effort is rather long and I fully believe it will be a private mission that lands on Mars in about fifteen to twenty years or so.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So what was going on with mars 195,000 Years Ago?
The matrix has you. Follow the transplanetary probe.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/caves/
I thought about this NOVA serie as soon as I read the news. Not conclusive, but ineresting.
--- You make things foolproof, and they'll find you a damn fool.
What does a "space official" do and how does one become one??
Even more important, how much do they make?
I am sure if there were life on Mars the States would have sent troops there to free them from their opressive regime and in the process lost about 1459 American Soldiers in the name of saving lives...
"I used to have that really cool,funny sig
You don't really think the many space probes that have landed on mars were all absolutely perfectly sterilized do you?
... which could have seeded life there.
We've planted life there. Maybe not the life that has made the extra methane, but either way there is life there.
Life on Mars does not require that life originated on mars. There are martian meteorites on earth, Presumably there are earth meteorites on mars
panspermia lives.
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
Finally, we can tell Alexei Sayle that there is life on Mars! Results for Peckham, however, remain inconclusive.
You must think in Russian.
I think serious work on looking for current life on Mars will come when the Mars Science Laboratory lander arrives on Mars in 2010.
Unlike the current Mars Exploration Rovers, MSL is designed specifically to look for the possibility that lifeforms existed on Mars either in the past or even now. Also, because it will most likely use the same type of "nuclear" battery that powered the Galileo and Cassini spacecraft, it could run for two Earth years or more doing soil sampling, with the rover travelling well over 200 kilometers (124 miles) during its mission. It also means MSL can land and operate at higher latitude regions of Mars, which means the possibility of landing MSL near the polar cap regions.
The planet actually has an atmosphere. If we could find a way to seed the upper atmosphere and cool it down or somthing...
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Why nuclear? Is this so if the microbes look hostile old GW can push the red button and sort them out? :)
Seriously , I can't see the greenies going for that and I have to say that if it crashes , you can't 100% guarantee that it won't spread nuclear contaminants over a huge area of Mars. Hardly a good start for possible colonisation or the bugs that may already be there. Whats wrong with solar panels and some wiper or fan to keep them clean?
and that's exactly the point i was countering at the beginning. for the added resources required to send humans, we can send so many more non-manned missions as to offset the benefits of one manned mission.
and you weren't serious about making it a permanent mission, were you? can you show me an oxygen and food generators then? or are we gonna make it a one way mission and sacrifice a scientist or two?
I would volunteer to do that. I'm sure I'm not the only one. You can fit a person and enough consumables to last them to Mars on a short trajectory in pretty much any medium-lift rocket, at a pinch a Falcon 5 would do. Anyone with the cost of that want to send me to mars?
I am trolling
"Damn... they found my fart!"
your topic as
Earliest Human Remains Dead.
unpossible, a.
Now only dial.
Impossible. (Very common c 1400-1660.)
1362 LANGL. P. Pl. A. XI. 225 Poul proui{th} it is vnpossible riche men in heuene. c1400 Lanfranc's Cirurg. 153 {Th}er is no {th}ing vnpossible to stalwor{th}e nature. 1453 in Wars Eng. in France (1864) II. 488 It is unpossible unto us so sone to purvey for the saide socours. 1471 FORTESCUE Wks. (1869) 535 The forsayd minor is now clerely proved unpossible. 1523 LD. BERNERS tr. Froiss. I. cxlv. 173 The frenchemen coude natte passe no way, without they wolde haue gone through the marshes, the whiche was vnpossyble. 1570 T. WILSON Demosth. Orat., Life 127 Vnpossible it is for anye one to deceyue him. 1610 FLETCHER Faithful Shepherdess II. i, Whose grief..to anothers eye May seem unpossible of remedy. 1697 G. BURGHOPE Disc. Relig. Assemb. 169 There's nothing requir'd of us..which is unpossible. 1773 GOLDSM. Stoops to Conq. II. i, By the laws, your worship, that's parfectly unpossible. 1825 BROCKETT N.C. Words, Unpossible, for impossible. The word is frequent with the vulgar in the North. 1844- in Sc. and dialect use (Eng. Dial. Dict.). 1866 FLO. MARRYAT For Ever & Ever II. 194 That is an unpossible thing, Sir.
absol. 1581 MULCASTER Positions iv. 17 Nothing giuen to the vnpossible, where possibilitie must take place.
Hence unpossibleness; unpossibly adv.
1561 T. HOBY tr. Castiglione's Courtyer IV. Ss ii, The vnpossiblenes of ye matter. 1658 OSBORNE Adv. Son Wks. (1673) 175 Therefore not unpossibly the cause why the Devil was so earnest..to make them commit if [sc. a sin]. 1659 Misc. Ess. Paradoxes 176, I confesse the Party may not unpossibly be very Rich.
I already went over this with Kendal, and more. I analyzed every last Mars mission that's failed; out of the dozen or so, humans could have saved at least one and possibly two; however, one Mars success would have killed humans due to an unplanned delay in its ability to aerobrake.
He cites Zubrin, but then gives numbers that are an order of magnitude out of the ballpark from even Zubrin, who is one of the most optimistic promoters of manned mars missions in existance. He tries to attack things that have *never* been a problem (i.e., latency and mobility - neither of them have limited the science we've been able to do) in exchange for, what is even by Mars Direct a 50x increase in costs. He has completely ignored the issue of Bremsstrahlung radiation, insisting that it's been addressed but refusing to back up the claim. He made one false statement after another about Mars exploration and about Zubrin's numbers. And he's obsessed with this crazy concept of sending rovers to Mars in pieces, then assembling them on the dusty low-tech surface like tinker toys, then relaunching them and having them reenter (i.e., the *guge* added expensive of having to escape the gravity well with large engines and then redissipate your kinetic energy with an intact heat shield) on a different part of the planet to do their exploration, for some god-unknown reason (claiming that it will save the probe from having to unfold - which has never been a problem, and is one of the most minor steps of all of the effort to get a craft to the surface - and ignoring the fact that when it gets to the spot on Mars that you actually want it to explore after relaunching it, it will have to "unfold" there anyways).
Is it really worth talking with someone like that?
"Well, then fire it up and show me what this..." (sigh)
Because so many more things can go wrong that are uncorrectible on an unmanned mission, it takes away some of the cost differential.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
btw, pretty much all the things you listed above applies equally for manned or unmanned missions. malfunctioning parachutes will screw the mission in either case. it's not like those parachutes can be repaired even with human intevention. since human will need observation instruments, the entire mission is just as sensitive as if it were unmanned.
Not the same - does the shuttle suffer if a parachute fails? No, because it does not need one. Note that obiously you cannot use a shuttle lander on the surface because there are no runways, but the principal holds in general.
Similarily a human mission could rely to some extent on a pilot to provide direction on where to land rather than spending a lot of money hardening the craft because you cannot intelligently pick a landing site and direct your craft there rather than having to assume the craft may smack into a house-sized boulder and survive.
Yes humans will need observation instruments, but it's a lot easier to let humans configure and use them on the ground than it is to set them up so they work semi-autonimously, have to maintain constant contact, and have to be conpletley manipulatible remotley. There is a reason why a Hotwheels car is a lot cheaper than an RC vehicle.
And you weren't serious about making it a permanent mission, were you? can you show me an oxygen and food generators then? or are we gonna make it a one way mission and sacrifice a scientist or two?
Why not, we know at least enough to set up habitats that could sustain people for a year or two. And with continual resupply missions, we could extend that a lot longer. Frankly I would be perfectly fine with spending the rest of my days on Mars knowing that I would be removed from any real medical care or what have you. Even if it only meant a few months of time on the surface a lot of people would jump at the chance.
But it does not have to be that drastic, Zubrin again does actually lay out a plan for rotating crew that come back. I just happen to feel you could save some of that expense.
I saw that Rei responded to you, and didn't read what he said - he has some crazy idea about how robots can do anything for a fraction of the cost of humans and tens to ignore the real cost to automated missions and discounts the possibility of somewhat cheap human travel to Mars using exisiting technology. All I can say is that some people are stuck in the past, doomed to live without vision and then become astonished as things they predicted to be impossible come to pass.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
We lose one crew on a manned Mars mission and all the time/effort/money we spent up to that point will be wasted due to the public outcry at the loss of important people on TV. Never forget that Americans really are that shallow.
The scientists in the article, Carol Stoker and Larry Lemke have sent the following to their colleagues in NASA and elsewhere:
Here are the facts:
1. On Sunday night we were attending a private party of space exploration enthusiasts in which there was a discussion about the possible meaning of the results from recent Mars missions. We were speaking as individual scientists on our own time and did not represent ourselves as speaking for NASA.
2. No one at the party identified themselves as a reporter, and in fact no reporters were present. This article is based on hearsay about what somebody at the party thought they heard us say. We think this represents extremely poor journalistic standards.
3. No Nature paper has been submitted with Rio Tinto results. This claim is simply wrong. The MARTE project has several papers in preparation that describe the work we are doing at Rio Tinto and the first results of that work, but nothing has been submitted yet. Preliminary results have been published in abstract form at various scientific meetings. If you want to see what the MARTE team has actually said about results from Rio Tinto drilling and its relevance to life on Mars, go to www.marteproject.com and click on publications. All our REAL publications are posted there.
4. The work at Rio Tinto is relevant to finding life in a subsurface terrestrial environment and canít be used to infer anything about life on Mars, directly. The Rio Tinto work by its very nature canít tell us if there is life on Mars, but certainly helps formulate the strategy for how to search for life on Mars. One approach to searching for extant life on Mars is by drilling. Partly for this reason, the MARTE project was selected for funding by NASAís ASTEP program, out of the Science Mission Directorate and is a joint project between NASA and Spainís Center for Astrobiology.
Carol Stoker and Larry Lemke
Well I'd like to see both. But I'd like experience a whole bunch of things in my lifetime. Stuff like the ice cliffs of Europa and and its sub-ice oceans, the oily oceans on Titan, the view of Jupiter as it hangs in the sky from Io and so on. It isn't going to happen in person. But I can do it by proxy with unmanned probes. People aren't traveling to Titan or Europa in my lifetime. And it's not just about pretty pictures. Each of these things offers interesting science too. I'm not convinced that a manned presence in space is going to help with these things much.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
You mean they used motors to put robot's feet down instead of gravity? Wow.
People aren't traveling to Titan or Europa in my lifetime.
I'd like you to reconsider that - if you're younger than 40-50, you may very well be wrong. I don't think we're far away at all for real real and meaningful increases in longevity - I'll bet we see people at least around, if not on, Titan within 100 years (after we've got more a foothold on Mars and are launching trips from there).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I hate to break it to you, but Star Trek and the universe it portrays is fiction. Thus, the future as seen in this work of fiction is quite probably also not going to happen. Which means that we won't end up with a "Prime Directive".
You are probably wrong. If we get off our rock and if there is anything else out there, something heading in the general direction of the "prime directive" would be likely if current western social values continue. Attitudes embracing environmentalism and endangered species protection are not necessarily confined to Earth. Similarly attitudes towards respecting "primitive" cultures would not be confined. And on the less respectul side there is also the "practical" angle of leaving "primitives" in their "primitive" state. Less likely to be a threat and more easily controlled, there is some historical precedent for that too.
The real world is far more complex than fiction and far more difficult to make prediction about. Definitive statement like yours are foolish.
Source: http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2005/feb/HQ_05052
Glass Cows?