Author Topic: What happens to space travel if it is proven that there never was life on Mars?  (Read 67435 times)

Offline beb

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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?

Offline rtphokie

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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?

On to Titan or Europa. 

Offline Lar

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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. :)
"I think it would be great to be born on Earth and to die on Mars. Just hopefully not at the point of impact." -Elon Musk
"We're a little bit like the dog who caught the bus" - Musk after CRS-8 S1 successfully landed on ASDS OCISLY

Offline Star One

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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. 
« Last Edit: 06/12/2013 07:08 pm by Star One »

Offline SpacexULA

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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. 

True, but those are the things that allow all the wishy washy good feelings about wanting to turn into real progress.

It was those boring advances in maritime technologies in the late 1300s-1400s that allowed true sea exploration.

This forum is dedicated to the people who love to watch the space technology forged in the early 1900s mature to a point where we can get out of the Leaf Erickson mode and get into the East India Company mode.
« Last Edit: 06/12/2013 07:31 pm by SpacexULA »
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Offline ChrisWilson68

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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. 

That's just guesswork on your part about what most people care about.

My own guess is that most people are far more interested in having humanity move into space than in whether or not there were once microbes on Mars.

How many movies depict a future where people live in travel in space?  In how many movies is it mentioned whether or not microbes once lived on Mars.

Offline LegendCJS

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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. :)

Technically you can't prove this, but to even give it a serious try already requires significant advancements in interplanetary travel, with multiple scientific and expeditionary outposts all over Mars, and decades of through exploration in every nook and cranny of that planet.  I'd say space travel would already be in pretty good shape by the point that the scientific community agreed that there was never life on Mars, if this ever happened.
Remember: if we want this whole space thing to work out we have to optimize for cost!

Offline savuporo

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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.
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Offline enkarha

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Reducing launch costs and building infrastructure isn't an end in itself, though. You have to have a reason for going to space, and an important one of those, besides mining and just because it's so cool, is science, which includes the search for extraterrestrial life. I think that having the confidence to say that there's a very small chance that there's life on Mars means that there's already been huge money and time investment in the planet, maybe to the mass-colonization level.

And even if we somehow know before we dig deep, no, people probably won't stop caring. In the attached survey (summary), on pg 3 there's the various reasons people see as the strongest for putting humans on Mars. Searching for life is about 24%. Though I think the survey as a whole pretty fraught with bias,  that number I think is fairly indicative that exobio isn't the end all be all of space exploration.
Let me see what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars ♪

Offline LegendCJS

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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.
Yes, those darn planetary protectionists that hold the power of the purse and control space program budgets and priorities worldwide.  What a nice world view: assert that PP-ers are the main obstacle, and also assert that overcoming that obstacle requires proving a negative- it does make a pretty convincing explanation as to why progress is so slow.  I see its attraction.

Obligatory note that I don't hold the same view, because this is the internet and the risk of sarcasm being mistaken for sincerity is 100%.
Remember: if we want this whole space thing to work out we have to optimize for cost!

Offline Dalhousie

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Though I think the survey as a whole pretty fraught with bias.....

Why do you say that?
Apologies in advance for any lack of civility - it's unintended

Offline RigelFive

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Oh my here we go all over again! 

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!!!!??

So now we've added Boron to the list of needed precursors to produce life (and this was determined by a couple of "cosmochemists" over a beer!!!!!!!!!!!!!!?)   :D



NASAs effort to find microbial life on Mars has turned into the equivalent of the experts on Ancient Aliens running around doing field research to prove aliens/UFOs really exist.
« Last Edit: 06/13/2013 06:03 am by RigelFive »

Offline beb

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Apparently I wasn't as clear as I thought I was in my introduction to this thread. *sigh*  It seems to me that all news coming from mars, and also Jupiter and Saturn, is framed by the search for life. Will funding for space exploration disappear, like a popped soap bubble, when people conclude that there is no life out there to discover?

Offline Covspaceman

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To answer the OP, it really depends on your audience. I'd suggest that, for biologists in particular, whether life existed on Mars or not isn't the primary question. The important issue is WHY it did or didn't. Answering that would further the quest to pin down the requirements for life and how it started here on earth.
To answer that question with any confidence would almost certainly require having humans in-situ on other worlds so human spaceflight is still very much 'on the cards'.

Andrew.

Offline R7

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Will funding for space exploration disappear, like a popped soap bubble, when people conclude that there is no life out there to discover?

Unlikely.

a) Probes are being sent to places known for sure to be dead as a dodo (Mercury, Pluto, Venus etc.)
b) How do you conclude that there is no life elsewhere to discover except thoroughly try to discover it in all the places that theoretically could harbor it. Takes a long time to dig Mars all over, we have barely scratched the surface in couple places, and then there are the the Jovian moons, Titan and rest of the universe...
c) The end game should be us spreading our life elsewhere, no? How to do that properly requires exploration for a long, long time.

Btw I wouldn't disregard planetary protectionists. If a Martian bug or fossil of such would be discovered they'd get very loud for sure, wanting to declare the entire planet as extra-terrestrial wild life sanctuary or something, and of course to protect us from evil Mars super plague.
AD·ASTRA·ASTRORVM·GRATIA

Offline JohnFornaro

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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!!!!??

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.
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline gospacex

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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.

Don't underestimate our green friends.

If you think they can't argue that we must keep our dirty polluting hands off Martian rocks, dust and ice, that they have an "immeasurable" value in a pristine, untouched, "natural" state, then you are in for a surprise.

Offline RocketmanUS

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Does not matter whether there ever was life else were in the universe or Mars.

We would head to Mars anyway on our way to exploring and colonizing beyond Earth.

Online Orbiter

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You have to understand why we'd go to Mars. It would never be just to find evidence for life there past or present.
KSC Engineer, astronomer, rocket photographer.

Offline ChrisWilson68

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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!!!!??

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.

What Felisa Wolfe-Simon actually claimed was the she had discovered a microbe that could substitute arsenic for some of the phosphorus normally needed to construct DNA.

That's not really the same as claiming arsenic was a precursor to life.  It was only a claim that perhaps arsenic could replace phosphorus.

Neither she nor NASA claimed it was alien life.  They simply claimed it suggested alien life might be possible in a wider range of environments that was otherwise assumed.

But the reason there was a kerfuffle at all was that it was shoddy research and it turned out on closer examination that what Wolfe-Simon had claimed had never actually happened.  NASA rushed to trumpet results to the popular media before they had been properly peer reviewed.

The scientific consensus is now that Wolfe-Simon's microbes never used arsenic in place of phosphorus to build DNA.  And well-established principals of chemistry say it's not physically possible, as the bonds arsenic would form are orders of magnitude too weak to fill the role of phosphorus in DNA.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felisa_Wolfe-Simon

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