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Life Possible On 'Large Regions' of Mars
astroengine writes "Australian scientists who modeled conditions on Mars to examine how much of the Red Planet was habitable have said that 'large regions' could sustain life. Using decades of global data, the researchers have evaluated the entire planet, and found that 3 percent of the Martian volume could sustain Earth-like microbial life. As a comparison, only one percent of the volume of Earth contains life. However, the only habitable regions are below the Martian surface where the temperature and pressure could sustain liquid water."
I'd be interested to know how deep they think you'd have to drill to find water beneath the surface of mars. If it's actually a reasonable depth, it seems like it could be a good source of propellant for a return trip, were a manned mission ever to take place.
Since Earth is a lot larger than Mars, and the habitable regions typically lie somewhere near the surface, it's no surprise that a larger proportion of Mars's volume is habitable. (The outer layer of an onion is larger in comparison to the onion when the onion is smaller.) The real question is that of absolute size: How many cubic metres of life-bearing volume is there on Mars in comparison to Earth?
Let's bring back some martian soil, put it in a chamber emulating its atmosphere and climate, mix in some extremophiles and see what happens!
The paper can be found here.
The slant they're putting on it is slightly different. They've noted that in a large proportion of areas on Earth where there is liquid water there isn't necessarily life, so simply searching for liquid water in space isn't necessarily the best way to go about looking for other life or places which would be habitable: you need to bear in mind other factors as well if you want to narrow it down.
We need to send a dragon on a mission their to get the facts. I think that one with a couple of nukes inside would be interesting. Even better would be if it had the ability to hop a few places. Perhaps modify it use methane/LOX and then at each landing sites, while science is being done, generate the fuel.
What I find interesting is that so many ppl want to send ppl on a 2--way mission. Instead, it should be thought of as a 1-way mission and have them go there and stay at least a decade. One of the most important reasons is that Mars DOES have the likelihood of having life. If so, the last thing that we want to do, is bring it back here.
Basically, the group of ppl would focus on survival, building out a base, and of course science. But much of the work there could be carried out by robotics, with the ppl their to control and fix them. In addition, it would actually be cheaper and safer to do the 1-way.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
According to NASA, liquid groundwater would probably be a few kilometers beneath the surface of mars. The deepest oil wells are around 9 kilometers deep, so drilling down to it would be possible, as long as you knew where to drill for it.
3 percent of the Martian volume could sustain Earth-like microbial life. As a comparison, only one percent of the volume of Earth contains life.
That's no comparison. Compare % volumes that could sustain life. Or compare volumes that actually do contain life. But comparing one to the other reveals nothing.
As great as it sounds to start populating Mars, I haven't heard a whole lot on the economics of it, why would anybody want to?
Why did they use this measure? With Mars being so much smaller, of course a higher percentage of the volume would be hospitable. Mars has 15% of the volume of Earth but 28% of the surface area. Just seems like bad comparison.