I saw this headline on Yahoo this morning"Ancient Mars Had Component Key to Life, Meteorite Reveals"and it make me wonder how much of current efforts to sent humans to Mars hinges on the hope of finding life there. So what happens to space travel if it is conclusively proven that life never existed on Mars. Will people continue to be interested in space, manned space travel or visiting other planets? Or the majority of people say that since there is nothing there, there is no reason to ever go there?
You can't prove the negative.But if the probabilities start to get "vanishingly small" I will feel better about eventual terraforming.I confess, though, to me, this all is a side issue... just like exoplanets. There is in-space infrastructure to build and launch costs to be reduced. Much more important stuff to work on.Life is for sensationalists.
Looking for life is one of the primary reasons for people involving themselves in space & astronomy I suspect. You can bet if asked the ordinary person on the street why we should explore space is far more likely to give the answer looking for other life than not caring a fig for stuff such as in-space infrastructure & reducing launch costs. Such a hyper-practical approach motivates very few.
Quote from: Lar on 06/12/2013 02:44 pmYou can't prove the negative.But if the probabilities start to get "vanishingly small" I will feel better about eventual terraforming.I confess, though, to me, this all is a side issue... just like exoplanets. There is in-space infrastructure to build and launch costs to be reduced. Much more important stuff to work on.Life is for sensationalists. Looking for life is one of the primary reasons for people involving themselves in space & astronomy I suspect. You can bet if asked the ordinary person on the street why we should explore space is far more likely to give the answer looking for other life than not caring a fig for stuff such as in-space infrastructure & reducing launch costs. Such a hyper-practical approach motivates very few.
If it could be conclusively shown that the likelyhood of life ever existing on Mars is vanishingly small, it would get planetary protectionists out of the way, and we could get on with development, industrialization and eventually colonization of the place.
Though I think the survey as a whole pretty fraught with bias.....
Will funding for space exploration disappear, like a popped soap bubble, when people conclude that there is no life out there to discover?
Didn't the NASA / world scientific community go crazy on Felisa Wolfe-Simon (who actually performed experiments) for suggesting that Arsenic was a precursor to life!!!!??
Quote from: RigelFive on 06/13/2013 05:42 amDidn't the NASA / world scientific community go crazy on Felisa Wolfe-Simon (who actually performed experiments) for suggesting that Arsenic was a precursor to life!!!!??Whoah there, kemosabe.The kerfluffle was that she and NASA claimed that it was alien life, when actually it was weird terrestrial life that was found. Nobody complains about weird life.