Psyke Phaeton

Life on Mars with Pete Worden | h+ Magazine

Should we change Mars and make it ours? What if Mars has any type of life, should we change it to suit us? Should we change another natural system? Who owns Mars?

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Surreal

Considering that we can't get our asses in gear to clean up our mess on Earth, why are we going to another planet unless it's already suitable for human life and rich in resources and has primitive natives we can exploit?

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Redhead

IF Mars already has life on it, then we should leave it alone.

But if it's dead, then what the hell, why not do what we please with it?

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"Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words" Dorothy Parker.

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Lucifer Baphomet

If there is life on mars, and it's unicellular..

I say we still go.

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Redhead

Life on Earth started out unicellular.

It doesn't matter how big it is, it still deserves a chance to reach it's full potential.

Lucifer Baphomet

Mars was more amenable to life earlier in it's history when it had plentiful surface water.

Martian life, assuming there is any peaked long ago

Redhead

Nonsense. Just because it's not amenable to life as we know it on Earth doesn't mean a thing.

By definition it's Alien Life. Applying standards of life on Earth to life on Mars is ridiculous.

It's Mars, not Earth.

Lucifer Baphomet

No..

we have extreme environments on Earth too...

look at black smokers
look at the bacteria that live in the lithosphere itself
bacteria within glaciers


But the thing is, in less than optimum situations... life indeed thrives, but....

It tends towards extremely simple organisms

Redhead

And that gives us the right to exterminate it and replace it with life that we think is more "worthy"?

You know what that sounds like to me Luc? That sounds like the say kind of thing that the Europeans said in the 1500's when they were raping the New World.

To be honest, I'm shocked to hear that kind of thing from you.

Spaceman Opus

They say you can't go home again, but in this case I think I'd make an exception

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Lucifer Baphomet

Theres a diference between higher life forms and bacteria, Red.

And, I'd hazard that if anything, the greening of Mars would actually give any local flora and fauna an oppertunity to thrive.

And anyway I don't believe in giving bacteria the same rights as people..

If I did, I'd never take antibiotics

Redhead

Ok, I agree with you on your basic principal. Here on Earth it's sink or swim and I would, of course, take antibiotics. Those bacteria are attacking me personally, so they get nuked with no remorse.

But, and this is a really big "but", any life on Mars, any, is a totally independent evolutionary process. It occurred spontaneously without any influence either by us or on us.

It deserves to have it's own chance to go where it might. It's a precious, independent thing in the Universe. Destroying it would be like destroying a unique piece of art here on Earth just because we thought another artist's work is better.

It's a treasure and should be treated as such.

Samantha Fuller

Their are a few more variables to consider first is any native life based on DNA as we know it. It appears to me as though mars was an inhabited planet that suffered a catastrophe like the island of Karatoga, with only microbes and possibly cockroaches surviving. The earth ships might be the first primitive rafts reintroducing higher life forms. Next is how we get there, if we go via Hoffman orbits (approx 2 yrs via chemical rockets) we will almost certianialy develop near 100% recycling via either plasma incinerator or super critical water oxidizer. In which case it will almost certainly be easer to setup up self contained biospheres on mars rather than teraform it.

If however we go via nuclear rockets or engineered antigravity then we need to worry about significant ecological impact.
Or if we find life as we don't know it. then we have some really hard decisions.

Surreal

So where is this money for terraforming and transport to Mars coming from and why can't we spend it developing completely renewable energy sources and clean up the Pacific trash patch instead?

(I support space exploration for science, but let's clean up our own fucking planet before we use another one as a strip mine or trash dump)

Lucifer Baphomet

See...

Id contend this point.

I'm a big fan of the idea of panspermia, and this little rock os still the subject of some debate

I'm of the opinion that any genetic materiel in this solar system has been cross fertilised with any existant genetic material in the solar system.

And I think we all come from cometary material.

Lucifer Baphomet

I think they go hand in hand.

Samantha Fuller

Just by committing to go to mars we fund & inspire engineers to develop practical plasma incinerators or super critical water oxidizers. Then we can start feeding junk plastic into them and get renewable energy out. once we do that an a big enough scale here on earth then the plastic patch in the ocean will start to clean itself up.

Quantum Destiny

I really don't see it as being one or the other, I see space exploration and R&D into green technologies as being two of a number of things that are much more deserving of funding than many of the things that currently receive ridiculous sums of tax payers money e.g. military.

Redhead

Just for the sake of argument I was disregarding this point. I have gone on record in the past saying fix Earth first before venturing to other worlds.


This is a fine theory and I can even see some logic to it. However, we shouldn't just assume that it's a fact. Before we exterminate another world's life forms we need to be 100% sure that they are the same as us.

Colette Meiji

alternatively .. maybe if you gave them another planet to fuck up .. they would do less damage to the Earth.

Be11a Lefevre Bunny Swan

Yipppee! More beaches to litter and over populate! Wait .. there are beaches right???!

One giant leap toward space tourism in New Mexico - CNN.com

Bard Jameson

The claim that we should "fix" Earth before we venture out always makes me wonder if that is even possible. Is there any example of such in "nature"?

Generally, viruses propagate within a host until the host is exhausted, then move out to another host. Migratory grazing animals denude an area of grazing land then move on.

I know the popular notion is that we are "better" than viruses or grazing herds. But are we really? And if not, is that really such a condemnation of us as a species?

/'s advocate

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Aimee Weber

Colonization is essential for the survival of Earth species. Earth is a single point of failure. One single cosmological calamity like the one that took out the dinosaurs will spell the end of us and most of the animal/plant species we love. We need to have our eggs in more than one basket for long term survival.

As for "fixing" ourselves ... it's a purely subjective term. While most humans think of a very human centric "nature" involving parks and hiking trails filled with all the bio diversity we know and love ... real nature is actually a bit brutal filled with evolutionary struggles where species routinely change their environment to the detriment and destruction of other species. There really isn't going to be such a thing as a "fixed" environment (especially if you happen to be polio, malaria, or other life forms humans are happy to eradicate if given the chance.)

So we can do both. Work to make nature ... eh, not so much "natural" but rather "the way we like nature to look" with bio diversity, hiking trails, parks, granola bars, etc. At the same time, we need to get humans, plants, butterflies, frogs, and all kinds of other earth-based life forms on another planet before something really big smashes into our little rock. If there are microbes on Mars, bring em back to Earth so if Martian conditions become worse than they are ... those life forms can survive too.

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"I asked the Ouija Board about the ideomotor effect, but it just told me to f*ck off."

Lucifer Baphomet

I also think we should get to work ASAP mining the belt

Redhead

Nothing lasts forever. There will come a day when all life on Earth, all of it, will be gone.