Author Topic: What if Mars is barren of life?  (Read 71345 times)

Offline JohnFornaro

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What if Mars is barren of life?
« on: 05/21/2012 01:25 am »
Everybody is hoping that Curiosity will find strong evidence of some kind of martian life.  Ok, well, the rhetorical "everybody".  But hey, who am I to dictate mission priority?

On the serious side, what we've seen of Mars to date sure looks lifeless.  There's a non-zero chance that the planet is lifeless, and that it has always been lifeless.

What mission priorities change if Mars is "certified" as a barren world?  Who, or what committee decides this "certification"?  When will it be decided?  Is there a cut-off point/date, or will the search for martian life always be in the list of possible missions?  How would it be determined to be lifeless?  At what point should we give up on that search?  If it is indeed a lifeless world, is it ok then to colonize it?  How much of the planet do we need to survey before we can say with confidence that it would be a barren planet?
« Last Edit: 03/06/2015 07:02 pm by JohnFornaro »
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Offline rdale

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #1 on: 05/21/2012 01:26 am »
I don't think any of HLV/SLS/Orion/Constellation missions to Mars are based on signs of life. So the impact would be none.

Offline scienceguy

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #2 on: 05/21/2012 02:03 am »
Let's not forget that we keep finding many different previously unknown lifeforms on Earth, and our exploring hasn't decreased the chance of finding them.

For this reason, I think we should colonize Mars right away, and if past or present Martian life forms are there then we will find them eventually.
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Offline go4mars

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #3 on: 05/21/2012 02:23 am »
For this reason, I think we should colonize Mars right away, and if past or present Martian life forms are there then we will find them eventually.
  Amen scienceguy!
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Offline spaceStalker

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #4 on: 05/21/2012 06:03 am »
Who is gonna pay for this colonization?
One billion people to be transported, or US citizens only?
Where is your Space (Queen) Mary II with thousands of passengers?
How many dragons? Not enough?

Until someone go out there stick a flag and claim *Dis mine, gtfo*, there will be no attempt to colonize Mars.
USA is lacking some 14+ trillions dollars, so who is gonna pay of this?
DIRECT type of mission? Sure! Boots and flags all over again.
Bunch a people in beer cans under pressure.

How about the cities that have to be built? Thousands of workers to be transported, their support equipment. The entire infrastructure to provide humans with suitable environment?

And when you manage to go there on a regular basis like cruise ship
build all the needed infrastructure, then what?
What those N amount of people will do for living? How many of them can do it, for how long? What about people who cant find a job?
What type of economy will mars have?
Or the point is lets go there! Just for the hell of it?
Or to through some people out there to decrease earth population instead of going to war?

In order to pull out this stunt, because it is such, you have to do it von Braun style - multiple, big, crowded of crew space ships. You are practically debarking on mars. You have to have everything that you will need now, not 2 years from now. You have to have your space based Queen Mary II cruise ship, it's a long trip and no one will want to be stuck in a beer can.



Offline mjcrsmith

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #5 on: 05/21/2012 06:57 am »
No impact. Signs of life are a "nice to have".

If there is to be money to be made, that will be the driving force. 

Offline neilh

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #6 on: 05/21/2012 07:02 am »
Everybody is hoping that Curiosity will find strong evidence of some kind of martian life.  Ok, well, the rhetorical "everybody".  I'd like to see som close-up of the "face", from on the ground, but hey, who am I to dictate mission priority?

On the serious side, what we've seen of Mars to date sure looks lifeless.  There's a non-zero chance that the planet is lifeless, and that it has always been lifeless.

What mission priorities change if Mars is "certified" as a barren world?  Who, or what committee decides this "certification"?  When will it be decided?  Is there a cut-off point/date, or will the search for martian life always be in the list of possible missions?  How would it be determined to be lifeless?  At what point should we give up on that search?  If it is indeed a lifeless world, is it ok then to colonize it?  How much of the planet do we need to survey before we can say with confidence that it would be a barren planet?

If the Mars ice caps have subglacial lakes equivalent to Lake Vostok, it could take quite a bit of effort to "certify" Mars as truly barren.
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Offline Dalhousie

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #7 on: 05/21/2012 10:10 am »
If the Mars ice caps have subglacial lakes equivalent to Lake Vostok, it could take quite a bit of effort to "certify" Mars as truly barren.

I think they would have probably  showed up in radar data if they had existed.

I don't think MARSIS has found any signs of liquid water zones at the instrument horizontal resolution (2 km) down to a depth of ~5km.  Nor to my knowledge has SHARAD, with shallower pentration (500 m) but greater horizontal resolution (300 m).  Vertical resolution for the two radars are 150 and 10-20 m, respectively.

However, neither instrument has global coverage as yet.


Edit:  Apparently the strong reflector at the base of the South Polar Layered Deposit is within the range of wet rock.  Whether it is or not reains to be seen.   It does not seem to correlate with depth, which argues against it being liquid water.
« Last Edit: 05/21/2012 12:38 pm by Dalhousie »
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Offline Dalhousie

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #8 on: 05/21/2012 10:49 am »
What mission priorities change if Mars is "certified" as a barren world?  Who, or what committee decides this "certification"? When will it be decided?  Is there a cut-off point/date, or will the search for martian life always be in the list of possible missions?  How would it be determined to be lifeless?  At what point should we give up on that search?  If it is indeed a lifeless world, is it ok then to colonize it?  How much of the planet do we need to survey before we can say with confidence that it would be a barren planet?

You can't prove a negative, but there comes a point after a long serious of negative results that  the negative can be considered as proven.  For example, non-survival of dinsoaurs into the Paleocene.

For Mars we can consider the following possibilities.  1)  Mars does not have life now, 2) Mars has never had life.

Reasonable confidence on 1) would probably require negative results after a dozen reliable searches at different sites for biomarkers on the surface and from sampling at least a dozen or so possible oases on Mars for active or dormant organisms.  Such results would be accepted as negative by the majority of scientists, I suspect. This is within the realms of possibility for unmanned spacecraft.

This might result in the dropping of COSPAR category IV for Mars surface missions and Category V requirements for sample return.  This would make life a lot easier for engineers and make crewed missions more likely.

Research priorities might shift to planetary processes and evolution, evidence for past life, and perhaps the possibilities for human settlement.

Reasonable certainty of 2) would probably need a score or more detailed sampling programs through stratigraphic sections in widely spaced localities looking for biomarkers and microfossils in the Noachian and Hesperian rocks and in exposures of the top 5 km of martian crust. Probably supplemented by drilling the polar caps, polar layered terrain, and perhaps deep drilling elsewhere. This could take decades, even a century of more of crewed exploration I suspect.

This might result in dropping Mars missions down to COSPAR category I although it would probably remain at II (the Moon is II after all).

Research interests might shift towards large scale human settlement and perhaps paraterraforming/ecopoesis/terraforming
 
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Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #9 on: 05/21/2012 01:34 pm »
Let's not forget that we keep finding many different previously unknown lifeforms on Earth, and our exploring hasn't decreased the chance of finding them.

For this reason, I think we should colonize Mars right away, and if past or present Martian life forms are there then we will find them eventually.

That's true, but especially in the case of carbon based microbial or bacterial life, there's problem of planetary cross contamination.  It may be argued that perhaps our flu virus will wipe out martian life; but due to a need for survival of our species, that this cannot and should not stop us from exploring Mars.

Contamination the other way is a different matter, since that too would be a non-zero chance.  The few arguments I've heard on this matter depend on ridiculing the idea of Mars to Earth contamination rather than presenting any evidence whatsoever that it could not happen.

I think a prudent course would be a human tended orbiting station (with tether based AG), designed to sudy Mars thoroughly, with the aid of a series of sterile rovers.  At some point, if it is determined that there's no ecosystem down there, then we land.

Like Neil mentioned, the ice caps would have to be thoroughly examined.

From a mission priority standpoint, one of the biggest rationales for continuing to spend money on Mars exploration, is that we are still searching for life.  If it is deemed a barren planet, what would be the financial motivation for further study?  Already, voices are calling for shifting the focus of search for ET to Europa.

At some point, as with the Moon, especially after a possible human landing, important political figures would write off Mars as BTDT.  Such an eventuality would lend credence to the critics who question the purpose of NASA's accomplishments.
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Offline scienceguy

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #10 on: 05/21/2012 04:30 pm »
Who is gonna pay for this colonization?
One billion people to be transported, or US citizens only?
Where is your Space (Queen) Mary II with thousands of passengers?
How many dragons? Not enough?

Until someone go out there stick a flag and claim *Dis mine, gtfo*, there will be no attempt to colonize Mars.
USA is lacking some 14+ trillions dollars, so who is gonna pay of this?
DIRECT type of mission? Sure! Boots and flags all over again.
Bunch a people in beer cans under pressure.

How about the cities that have to be built? Thousands of workers to be transported, their support equipment. The entire infrastructure to provide humans with suitable environment?

And when you manage to go there on a regular basis like cruise ship
build all the needed infrastructure, then what?
What those N amount of people will do for living? How many of them can do it, for how long? What about people who cant find a job?
What type of economy will mars have?
Or the point is lets go there! Just for the hell of it?
Or to through some people out there to decrease earth population instead of going to war?

In order to pull out this stunt, because it is such, you have to do it von Braun style - multiple, big, crowded of crew space ships. You are practically debarking on mars. You have to have everything that you will need now, not 2 years from now. You have to have your space based Queen Mary II cruise ship, it's a long trip and no one will want to be stuck in a beer can.


I suppose Europeans could have asked the same questions of the colonizers of North America in the 1600's.
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Offline spaceStalker

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #11 on: 05/21/2012 04:44 pm »
Your argument is INVALID!

Offline scienceguy

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #12 on: 05/21/2012 06:29 pm »
As to what would grow autonomously on Mars, I studied whether Xanthoria elegans, a lichen that lives in the Arctic, could survive on Mars.

Xanthoria elegans fixes nitrogen, and there is nitrogen in Mars' atmosphere. This lichen has even survived the vacuum of space:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xanthoria_elegans

Thus the low pressure and low temperature on Mars shouldn't be problem for it. Diedrich Möhlmann, a European scientist, actually put the lichen in a chamber simulating Mars to see if it would photosynthesize. It turns out that the conditions were just too dry.

However, Xanthoria elegans can use snow or frost as a source of water because it just uses the water that thaws at the interface. (Kappen, 1993)

Thus Xanthoria elegans might work if we can keep spraying snow on it.

Edit: added reference.

Kappen L. (1993) Plant activity under snow and ice, with particular reference to lichens. Arctic. 46 (4):297-302
« Last Edit: 05/21/2012 06:35 pm by scienceguy »
e^(pi*i) = -1

Online Chris Bergin

Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #13 on: 05/21/2012 06:43 pm »
Your argument is INVALID!

You can't just post that. You need to counter argue (provide rationale).
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Offline scienceguy

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #14 on: 05/21/2012 06:47 pm »
Here is a power point presentation I did when I was studying Xanthoria elegans:
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Offline go4mars

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #15 on: 05/21/2012 07:00 pm »
Who is gonna pay for this colonization?
The colonists.  Perhaps augmented by philanthrocapitalists and/or governments.

One billion people to be transported, or US citizens only?
Who bought tickets for colonists historically?  I was under the impression that it was mostly up to the individuals (other than slaves).  Is that assumption wrong?  If you don't like the analogy, why not?


1)  Where is your Space (Queen) Mary II with thousands of passengers?
2)  How many dragons? Not enough?
3)  Until someone go out there stick a flag and claim *Dis mine, gtfo*, there will be no attempt to colonize Mars.
4)  How about the cities that have to be built?
5)  Thousands of workers to be transported, their support equipment.
6)  The entire infrastructure to provide humans with suitable environment?
7)  And when you manage to go there on a regular basis like cruise ship
build all the needed infrastructure, then what?
8)  What those N amount of people will do for living? How many of them can do it, for how long? What about people who cant find a job?
9)  What type of economy will mars have?
10)  Or the point is lets go there! Just for the hell of it?
11)  Or to through some people out there to decrease earth population instead of going to war?
12)  no one will want to be stuck in a beer can.
1)  Clearly it hasn't been built yet.  Neither was Queen Mary II a long time ago.  What's your point?
2)  A useless point.  No one is planning to just show up with a few solitary dragons and "rough it in the desert" hoping for the best.  Clearly there needs to be a more robust architecture.
3)  You are welcome to your opinion of course.  I don't share it.
4)  Cities on Earth had to be built too if you'll recall.  What about them?
5)  I'll make sure I pack along some useful tools.  Don't worry about me.
6)  Yes.  That still remains to get designed and built.  No one is stating otherwise.
7)  What do you mean "then what"?  The first folks will probably spend an inordinate amount of time mapping out the geology to better characterize and understand the planet.  As the concentration of geologists among them will be high, they'll probably also try to figure out a way to make alcohol from the supplies on hand.  Then there will be coming up with ways to make life more safe and comfortable using local materials.  Slowly, various people will try doing various things, with varying degrees of success.  Some fraction of the folks will dislike their existence and cause grief for others (like on earth), some will write books or make movies or give massages.  Some will just chill out and enjoy the views and low-gravity romance or sports. 
8)  I strongly believe you are wrong to suppose it will be a command society (beyond basic survival).
9)  Libertarian utopia.
10)  That will undoubtedly be the "reasoning" of many colonists.  Why climb everest?
11)  Moving some people off-planet will certainly be good for the environment, but not really for the reasons I suspect you believe (less mouths to feed).  Several of the technologies mandatory for initial Mars colonists:   maximal recycling, food production, energy efficiency, etc.  will undoubtedly end up finding terrestrial repurposing to the benefit of the environment (through reduced consumption on Earth). 
12)  As someone who wants to go there some day, I prove your statement incorrect. 
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Offline go4mars

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #16 on: 05/21/2012 07:03 pm »
Thus Xanthoria elegans might work if we can keep spraying snow on it.

Edit: added reference.

Kappen L. (1993) Plant activity under snow and ice, with particular reference to lichens. Arctic. 46 (4):297-302
Fascinating!  Thanks. 

Some parts of Mars (Hellas basin anyway) get frost semi-regularly btw.

Edit:  Just noticed you knew that already (your presentation).
« Last Edit: 05/21/2012 07:05 pm by go4mars »
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Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #17 on: 05/21/2012 07:08 pm »
One billion people to be transported, or US citizens only?

Unfortunately, by focusing on the virtually impossible task you have presented, there is not much need to read beyond the first few lines of your post.  Was there a valid point?
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Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #18 on: 05/21/2012 07:36 pm »
BYOB

Excellent acronym.

Quote
Exploration implies that there are resources explore for.

In the case of Luna, I think there are good resources in the shadowed craters which could provide propellant.

For Mars, first we need to answer definitely if there's life.  MSL will not answer this question, unless there is unmistakeable visual macroscopic evidence of life; say, a field of lichen.

As I mentioned, there's a non-zero chance that MSL will not discover anomalous levels of any organic chemicals. Everyone from Malin on down will insist that such a result would not offer proof of there being no life on Mars whatsoever.

So what should be done next? 

It would be extremely difficult to plan the next Mars mission without knowledge of MSL's results.  For this reason, MSR should not get too much priority either.  For another, there's sound argumentation that another flagship mission should wait on JWST in any case.  The costing of flagship missions is flawed.  NASA shouldn't add another 800 pound gorilla in the room until the first one has been coaxed out.

Maybe the push for MSR is a quiet acknowledgement that Mars is barren, Idk.

Quote
I'd bet hard money that they would say "focus exploration on the resources you need". ... in my opinion - microbes are really not 'resources'.

I agree in both cases.  Around here (the forum), you will see arguments proposing propellant manufacture on Mars, but not much else.  Colonization efforts are far too premature.

Quote
Design a probe to ABSOLUTELY IMPREGNATE Mars with as much bacteria, plants, seeds, fertilizer and anything else under the kitchen sink to see if you can sustain ANYTHING on such an barren planet. 

If Mars is barren, I have a proclivity to accepting a tempered impregnation strategy.  An empirical approach; fire a load up there, see what grows; is conceptually simple, but not really conducive to getting good results, since there's too much chance combined with too much cost. If the planet is "ours to do with as we choose", a biologically based vonNeuman approach might be a good one.

Quote
If anyone claims that we can send a solar powered, manned spacecraft that has been travling for up to 12 months in space, and land on Mars and convert the currently existing materials into enough resources to survive for a year on the surface and return to earth... I'll buy them a bowl of soup.

You might want to tighten up on your wording; you offered a bowl of soup to every yahoo who only makes a claim.  If you meant to offer a bowl of soup to the yahoo who is actually successful, they may not be inclined to try, since the prize has such a lo value.



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Offline Dalhousie

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #19 on: 05/21/2012 09:27 pm »
As to what would grow autonomously on Mars, I studied whether Xanthoria elegans, a lichen that lives in the Arctic, could survive on Mars.

Xanthoria elegans fixes nitrogen, and there is nitrogen in Mars' atmosphere. This lichen has even survived the vacuum of space:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xanthoria_elegans

Thus the low pressure and low temperature on Mars shouldn't be problem for it. Diedrich Möhlmann, a European scientist, actually put the lichen in a chamber simulating Mars to see if it would photosynthesize. It turns out that the conditions were just too dry.

However, Xanthoria elegans can use snow or frost as a source of water because it just uses the water that thaws at the interface. (Kappen, 1993)

Thus Xanthoria elegans might work if we can keep spraying snow on it.

Edit: added reference.

Kappen L. (1993) Plant activity under snow and ice, with particular reference to lichens. Arctic. 46 (4):297-302

Interesting!

How well does etabloise as well as survive under artian pressures?

Can it fix nitrogen at very low partial pressures?
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Offline scienceguy

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #20 on: 05/21/2012 10:48 pm »
Interesting!

How well does etabloise as well as survive under artian pressures?

Can it fix nitrogen at very low partial pressures?

What you have just asked has not been studied yet. Any astrobiologists reading this thread should hurry up and test that.

Xanthoria elegans has been shown to photosynthesize under Martian conditions (de Vera, 2010), but the nitrogen fixation thing under Martian pressure has not been studied.

Reference

de Vera JP, Möhlmann D, Butina F, Loreck A, Wernecke R, Ott S. (2010) Survival potential and photosynthetic activity of lichens under Mars-like conditions: a laboratory study. Astrobiology 10:215-227
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Offline Dalhousie

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #21 on: 05/21/2012 11:36 pm »
Thanks!
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Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #22 on: 05/22/2012 01:40 pm »
Here is a power point presentation I did when I was studying Xanthoria elegans:

Excellent presentation.  Have you had any luck in running the experiment?
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Offline scienceguy

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #23 on: 05/22/2012 04:33 pm »
Here is a power point presentation I did when I was studying Xanthoria elegans:

Excellent presentation.  Have you had any luck in running the experiment?

Actually we never got to running the experiment. Diedrich Möhlmann in Europe beat us to the punch. He found that the Martian conditions were too dry for the lichen to survive in the open. However, in 2010, Jean-Pierre de Vera found that this lichen photosynthesized for 4 days under Martian conditions. Perhaps the lichen in the de Vera experiment was using water left over in its tissues. That's why I said that we would need to spray snow on this lichen if it were out in the open on Mars.
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Offline anonymous

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #24 on: 05/26/2012 06:58 pm »
The National Research Council's report on preventing the forward contamination of Mars found that on the basis of current knowledge, nowhere on the planet could be ruled out of being a 'special area' with water present below the surface, either in ice or liquid form. They recommended more geophysical research from satellites or from aircraft (which could give higher resolution) and drilling by landers. They thought it was likely that there is ice underground everywhere on Mars if you look far enough below the surface.

http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11381

They said there may be groundwater beneath the permafrost and it is the environment most hospitable to life. They said that although the permafrost will follow the terrain, the groundwater below will be at the same level everywhere, so it will be much further beneath the surface in highland areas than in low-lying areas. Nonetheless, it would probably be thousands of metres below the surface.

Only if drilling at a number of locations into permafrost and into any aquifers there might be below failed to find any signs of life could we be almost certain that there was no current Martian life. Because of the risk of contamination, I don't think there should a human presence on Mars until then unless there was a clear physical barrier that would definitely prevent contamination. Drilling so far underground may be difficult without humans actually on the spot, but I would hope they could run the drilling remotely from orbit or Phobos.

Offline Dalhousie

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #25 on: 05/26/2012 11:23 pm »
Hnce the rationale for the Red Dragon and Icebreaker concepts, which propose just that.
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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #26 on: 05/28/2012 03:38 pm »
I just wanted to update this thread and point out that I made a boo boo. Xanthoria elegans does not fix nitrogen. In fact, in order for it to grow, it needs a source of nitrogen like bird poop on the rocks where it grows. Thus, in order for Xanthoria elegans to grow on Mars, you would need a source of nitrogen like bird poop AND you would need to give it water in the form of snow or frost. However, this lichen has actually survived in outer space and photosynthesized in Martian conditions (at least temporarily, without nitrogen) so it is still the best candidate to survive on Mars.

One other candidate that DOES fix nitrogen is Stereocaulon paschale. It survives in the arctic, but whether it can survive on Mars remains to be seen.
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Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #27 on: 06/09/2012 01:10 pm »
The National Research Council ... recommended more geophysical research from satellites or from aircraft ... and drilling by landers. ...

Drilling so far underground may be difficult without humans actually on the spot, but I would hope they could run the drilling remotely from orbit or Phobos.

I pretty much agree with this approach also.  The efforts so far have just "scratched" the surface on Mars, and it just seems impossible that it can be stated yea or nay about life on Mars with 100% certainty.

We should certainly continue with the unmanned martian exploration program while we build up human spaceflight capabilities in the cis-lunar zone.  I think the first manned Mars mission should be a manned ring station; built in LEO, and placed on an unmanned lo-energy trajectory to Mars, where it would be met by the crew, who would have been sent by the fasted means possible.

It would grow to become a LMO spaceport, facilitating the two way travel between the two planets.  Yes, it would have some pricey hotel rooms built in.  Over its early years, the astros on board would remotely survey the planet, performing geophysical research along the lines suggested by the NRC.  My guess is that the planet is barren these days; this station should be able to confirm that.

If barren, the planet could be opened up to private development, using the publicly financed spaceport on a pag-go basis, and the terraforming of Mars could begin in earnest.
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #28 on: 06/10/2012 01:21 pm »
There are many organisms that could survive on Mars just as it is. Scientists keep finding more and more unusual and surprising extremophiles with these sorts of capabilities.

I've been having a discussion about this over at the new mars forum, and found out lots of information, so rather than repeat the same details here, will just link to the posts themselves:

Here are some links I found to various pages about Psychophiles, which can survive Mars like extreme cold brine as cold as -15C

http://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?pid=113437#p113437

Perhaps the best of those links is this one:

Even unlikely seeming organisms can turn out to be extremophiles because of adaptations they still retain from very early times of our Earth, here is "Conan the bacterium" normally lives in Dung but just happens to have the capability to survive on Mars as it is now.

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/1999/ast14dec99_1/

and here are many links I found about the impossibility of continuing with planetary protection policies once humans land on Mars, and some of the adverse consequences you could get as a result

http://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?pid=113403#p113403

I also made a section in the wiki article on Manned missions to Mars, in the "Criticism" section and added all this material there so you might like to read that too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manned_mission_to_Mars#Critiques

Basically even if Mars is sterile right now, it is still risky to send any Earth life there, because with exponential growth (single bacterium doubling reaches weight of EArth in two days) and extreme longevity of Endosporese (hundreds of thousands of years, possibly more, with DNA self repair for UV damage) - there's no way you can prevent contamination of the entire planet.

If a suitable extremophile finds a suitable habitat e.g. beneath the soil, it might happen even very rapidly. In any case it is inevitable because of the longevity of Endospores and the huge numbers that will unavoidably seed Mars in any human expedition to Mars.

This could destroy ancient geology - including the ancient sea bed deposits. If Mars never developed life, then they are even more interesting as they tell us what happens on a planet that never develops life, and perhaps tell us about pre-cursors to life.

Also it would lead to evolution of new forms of life, and it's been demonstrated that organisms hazardous to humans can develop in an environment with no animals in it - so might even make the entire planet a "No go" area for humans.

So - I'm in favour of terraforming eventually once we know a whole lot more about it and if we find that Mars is suitable for it and that it won't destroy something far more valuable than a new colony for humans.

But until then the idea of studying Mars by tele-presence and focusing instead on asteroids and space colonies makes much more sense I think.


Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #29 on: 06/10/2012 01:59 pm »
"Conan the bacterium"

Excellent first post.  I had not yet heard about Conan.

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But until then the idea of studying Mars by tele-presence and focusing instead on asteroids and space colonies makes much more sense I think.

I'm conservative regarding sending humans to Mars, largely because the possibility of back contamination is not understood at all, arrogant protestations to the contrary notwithstanding.

As to the idea that Conan could reproduce surprisingly quickly, and possibly mutate with a native organism into a dangerous human "virus":  This would be an argument to develop, promote, and enforce a one way travel policy for humans to Mars, say for a hundred years or so.  This would eliminate back contamination for that period.

But this wouldn't be the way to colonize, I don't think.  A new economy and a new government, would be best if there were two way travel.

Until martian life is proven and well understood, or disproven and the planet declared barren, we should orbit the planet with a manned ring station, and make that determination.
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #30 on: 06/10/2012 02:38 pm »
Glad you like my post :).

The problem with allowing any contamination of Mars at all is that it is irreversible, you can't get the life back again once it has started to spread. So a quarantine period wouldn't really help there even of 100 years, if the planet has become inimicable to human life because of development of a new life form on Mars, then you have a long uphill struggle to make it habitable again.

I think if you want to terraform Mars, then it's best to start smaller. So you'd start with experiments on Earth with Mars environments, then maybe build a few space habitats which would let you experiment with creating new ecosystems in a closed smaller environment. With a wealth of experience from that then you could start to think about how best to terraform Mars.

That might involve carefully introducing selected organisms in a special planned sequence. Also in your plans for terraforming, when deciding how to do it, you would have to make sure that the water on Mars isn't just going to be lost into space over a period of say a hundred thousand years (because it is irresponsible to create a new ecosystem with such a short life to it, if you think about the beings that might life in it in the distant future).

But before you do that then you want to be sure that there is nothing on Mars that's going to be destroyed by your terraforming that is of great value. That could be hard to know for sure e.g. what if a small colony of early-life exists somewhere on Mars that's a relic community from the first few million years of the planet's history?

It might exist in only one spot (like the metasequoias on Earth), say beneath an ancient ocean bed, or at the poles, or on the flanks of Olympus Mons or at the depths of the Marinae trench.

With the surface of Mars as large as the land area of Earth it would be a fair while before you explore it all - even on Earth we keep discovering new habitats for life. Also there is the possiblity of life even kilometers deep on Mars.

At any rate seems the decision to terraform Mars is not a decision we could make easily in the near future, and my guess is, it's probably a decision for future generations to make most likely.

Offline gospacex

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #31 on: 06/10/2012 05:56 pm »
There are many organisms that could survive on Mars just as it is. Scientists keep finding more and more unusual and surprising extremophiles with these sorts of capabilities.

I've been having a discussion about this over at the new mars forum, and found out lots of information, so rather than repeat the same details here, will just link to the posts themselves:

Here are some links I found to various pages about Psychophiles, which can survive Mars like extreme cold brine as cold as -15C

http://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?pid=113437#p113437

Not enough. -15 C is balmy by Martian standards.

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Basically even if Mars is sterile right now, it is still risky to send any Earth life there, because with exponential growth (single bacterium doubling reaches weight of EArth in two days) and extreme longevity of Endosporese (hundreds of thousands of years, possibly more, with DNA self repair for UV damage) - there's no way you can prevent contamination of the entire planet.

Contamination of sterile Mars is a tragedy... why?

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This could destroy ancient geology - including the ancient sea bed deposits.

I just don't know how we would survive such a loss.

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Also it would lead to evolution of new forms of life, and it's been demonstrated that organisms hazardous to humans can develop in an environment with no animals in it - so might even make the entire planet a "No go" area for humans.

I gather evolution also happens on *Earth* as we speak. It can make *this* planet dangerous too. Folks, we are in grave danger.

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But until then the idea of studying Mars by tele-presence and focusing instead on asteroids and space colonies makes much more sense I think.

You are literally scared of life.

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #32 on: 06/10/2012 06:28 pm »
As I understand it, the -15C is the temperature the Psychrophiles can actually live and reproduce. They can survive lower temperatures. On Mars in summer the equatorial temperature can be as warm as -5C which is easily warm enough for Psychrophiles to reproduce if there is any brine with the right salinity to be liquid at that temperature, e.g. underground.

The thing about introducing life to Mars is that it must have much less variety of life than Earth. There has probably been some exchange of life e.g. during the impact that helped make the dinosaurs extinct, that was able to send rocks into space at accelerations that would leave life within the rock viable and it could survive the journey to Mars - but that was probably only a few species, if it happened at all.

Astronauts on Mars would introduce a huge variety of micro-organisms, an event quite without any precedent for Mars and something we have no true experience of to guide us. It's a bit like introducing rats to Mauritius making the dodo extinct, or placental animals to Australia, but much more of a big event than any of those.

Then the thing is - it's not like the slow evolution you usually have on Earth. You have an entire planet, and micro-organisms with possibly a short lifetime (though reproduction tends to be slower at cold temperatures, some psychrophiles still have relatively short lifetimes), and a novel environment for them to explore, and no competition so you will probably get adaptation radiation into many different species as the life colonises the planet.

Here on Earth then many of the "experiments" life can do have already happened, we can still get some surprises but the various types of life have found their niche and already done their best to adapt and colonise the Earth. While on Mars, it's all new and anything could happen. It's not just me that thinks this, here is an example paper about the possibility of organisms on Mars evolving to be hazardous to humans:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17511302

". Organisms can emerge in Nature in the absence of indigenous animal hosts and both infectious and non-infectious human pathogens are therefore theoretically possible on Mars. Although remote, the prospect of Martian surface life, together with the existence of a diversity of routes by which pathogenicity has emerged on Earth, suggests that the probability of human pathogens on Mars, while low, is not zero. "

And that was just about existing pathogens already there. Here we are talking about many new species evolving - and most of them originating in e.g. skin flora and other micro-organisms brought to the planet on a humans occupied spacecraft - so likely to already have a "taste" for either humans or for spacecraft surfaces (like the microbes that corroded the metal and glass of the Russian space lab towards the end of its life).

With the ancient geology - if you aren't interested in Mars for scientific reasons - why would you want to go there at all? It makes much more sense to set up a habitat on a near Earth asteroid if you want a new habitat for humans to live on, and to get away from the Earth. The ancient geology could tell us many new things about our own past, and about the evolution of life - either why Mars is sterile, if it is, or how life evolved there, if it isn't.

So - the contamination of sterile Mars I see as a tragedy because it would prevent this opportunity to find out about a planet very similar to Earth where life didn't evolve.

Of course the galaxy is probably full of such planets, either way whether Mars is sterile, or if life evolved there but much less than Earth.

But if we spoil this opportunity, the only other way to study such a planet close up would be to travel light years to nearby stars, and it would mean a wait of probably centuries at minimum most likely thousands of years before you can get a sample return which we could get from Mars in a couple of years.

I hope that's a bit clearer. It's a clear headed assessment of the risks, not scare mongering, I don't want to scare people at all. Just thing if you look closely at the research that's been done, the conclusions are pretty much inescapable, that we really shouldn't attempt to colonise Mars quite yet, as we simply don't know enough about what might happen if we do and some reasonable probability consequences would be rather unfortunate in various ways.

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #33 on: 06/10/2012 06:35 pm »
Then there are all the other things that could happen on Mars, including inadvertent terraforming, where the introduced life transforms the climate either reducing or increasing the atmospheric pressure, or changing it's composition or the temperature of the planet, and because it's not planned or worked out it could go either way, not in a way that we would want most likely.

It could make the existing life forms on the planet extinct - and they might be really interesting, including maybe life from an earlier stage of evolution e.g. before cell membranes quite developed to their modern level of complexity. Who knows what we could discover from such things?

Offline gospacex

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #34 on: 06/10/2012 10:41 pm »
As I understand it, the -15C is the temperature the Psychrophiles can actually live and reproduce. They can survive lower temperatures. On Mars in summer the equatorial temperature can be as warm as -5C

Only for a VERY short periods, and only on the surface. At other times (such as every night), this surface gets as cold as Antarctic.

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which is easily warm enough for Psychrophiles to reproduce if there is any brine with the right salinity to be liquid at that temperature, e.g. underground.

Underground temperatures are more stable (at 3 meters, almost constant) and they are -40 C or lower.

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While on Mars, it's all new and anything could happen. It's not just me that thinks this, here is an example paper about the possibility of organisms on Mars evolving to be hazardous to humans:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17511302

". Organisms can emerge in Nature in the absence of indigenous animal hosts and both infectious and non-infectious human pathogens are therefore theoretically possible on Mars. Although remote, the prospect of Martian surface life, together with the existence of a diversity of routes by which pathogenicity has emerged on Earth, suggests that the probability of human pathogens on Mars, while low, is not zero. "

And there is a possibility that I will be struck and killed by a meteorite on the way to work tomorrow. I probably should stay home?

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And that was just about existing pathogens already there. Here we are talking about many new species evolving

"Many" new species evolving on frigid (-40...-80C), oxygen-less, irradiated planet? How much time that'll take, 10^10 years?

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With the ancient geology - if you aren't interested in Mars for scientific reasons - why would you want to go there at all?

Colonization. I think future is more important than dead ancient rocks (with all due respect to said rocks).

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So - the contamination of sterile Mars I see as a tragedy because it would prevent this opportunity to find out about a planet very similar to Earth where life didn't evolve.

People dying from hunger is a tragedy. Your sci-fi scenario of magically super-fast evolved bacteria eating entire layers of Mars rock depriving a handful of people from enjoying their geology hobbies is not.
« Last Edit: 06/10/2012 10:41 pm by gospacex »

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #35 on: 06/10/2012 11:43 pm »
Warmth for a short period is all you need for life to grow and spread. Similar to plants that flower in a desert only every few years.

Indeed on Mars you could have life that flourishes only every few tens of thousands of years when you get equatorial snow due to variation in the tilt of the axis (much more extreme than Earth without our stabilising moon).

That's easily possible for micro-organisms as endospores have been revived on Earth after hundreds of thousands of years of dormancy, that's reasonably established now (others may even survive millions of years but less certainty about that).

Just a small colony could create billions and trillions of endospores that could then get spread over the planet in the Mars dust storms and at that dormant stage they are highly resistant to UV, cold, heat, dryness, almost anything Mars could throw at them - because the conditions are so harsh there many will be destroyed but most likely many will still survive.

That's not my own opinion at all, there are lots of research papers and studies that suggest that life could survive on Mars.

http://mmbr.asm.org/content/70/1/222.full

"In summary, as discussed by scientists such as Rummel (56), Mancinelli (39), and Horneck et al. (30), planetary protection issues of great importance include minimization of the inevitable deposition of Earth microbes by humans on the surface of Mars or other potentially life-bearing locations in our solar system (59) and prevention of Martian subsurface contamination by Earth microbes and organic material. The natural environments of places in our solar system that may harbor life or complex forms of organic chemicals should be protected so that they retain their value for scientific purposes as humans design planetary missions to search for organic material (60) on and beneath the surface of other planets or to study the chemistry and mineralogy (61) of extraterrestrial landing sites."

http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11381&page=41

"Currently, we do not know whether there is, or has ever been, life on Mars, nor do we know if there are environments on Mars today that can sustain life—terrestrial or martian. However, as knowledge of Mars grows and understanding of the planet matures, it is increasingly evident that there may currently be diverse environments on Mars that may be or might have been hospitable to life, either now or in the recent past."

That's just the surface of Mars, and there are many other possible niches, including the caves which might have the equivalent of our hydrothermal springs.

Then another possible niche is deep underground. On Earth there are micro-organisms that live kilometers underground, and indeed a huge mass of such organisms if you measure them by weight. They could survive on Mars where the rock is warm enough underground (Mars is still thought to be geologically active, even though it doesn't have continental rift).

With Mars the reason I say anything could happen is because the life is expanding out onto a planet that may be devoid of life or have very little competition. So it would surely radiate out into many new species. It might do that slowly or quickly. If it finds clement habitats e.g. hot springs or even cold brine, it could spread very quickly.

It's not like accidents that could happen to us on Earth in that respect. Also it's a whole planet we are talking about, the only close to Earth like planet that we have within thousands of years of travel time with even reasonably foreseeable future technology and the only one we can get to at all right now.

Do you want to "chance it" and just press ahead on the chance that everything will be okay?

If the planet ends up inhospitable to human life, covered in human pathogens, or the climate changes and it gets colder or loses some of its atmosphere - or you find evidence that it had fascinating native life that existed just a decade ago and is now now extinct - if that happens do you just say "Oops, I knew that was a possibility but took a chance on it and made a mistake, sorry about that"?

Of course in a way it is science fiction based on imagination because we don't have facts to base projections on. But your ideas are also science fiction. Indeed I think old sci fi stories have a lot to do with it, they were written many years ago some of the famous ones, even decades ago, when no-one had any idea of the issues this new research has turned up.

So - the idea of humans colonising Mars, exploring it, and there being no problems on the planet as the result - that is also a science fiction idea s much as the pictures I've been painting here, and from what I've read, seems to be a lot less based on modern research and reality than the ideas I've suggested here.

No need though to despair about space colonies. Really Mars isn't the best location for colonies at present. Near earth asteroids are much better. Or if you explore mars because you are interested in the geology, science, or scenery - then it's much better to use rovers and robots, and you can send astronauts to Deimos to have a nearby presence of humans without the light speed barrier. It could be really interesting and exciting.

For human habitation in space, then it's a much better first step to mine the nearby asteroids (nearly 200 over 1km size within close range of the Earth) and set up habitats on them - could be big places if made around or from a 1 km asteroid, and some of them are larger, up to 32 km diameter.

So, start close to home where you can replace vital supplies from Earth in just a couple of days if something gets broken which you can't make yourself, or send someone home to a hospital if they need urgent treatment you can't provide in the habitat. And space habitats could be really nice places to live as well, with wonderful views of the night sky and occasionally passing closer to the Earth so you can see it too, or maybe you could even while constructing the habitat also change the orbit so it eventually orbits Earth or the Moon. They probably have ice or at least easily extracted water because not formed by collision with the Earth as the Moon was.


Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #36 on: 06/10/2012 11:47 pm »
Here is a good article about the possibility of life on Mars several kilometers below the surface where it may be warm enough for permanent liquid water  it's one of the two main possible explanations for the recent detection of methane on the planet

http://www.thelivingmoon.com/43ancients/02files/Mars_Images_52_Methane.html

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #37 on: 06/11/2012 12:07 am »
On the speed of evolution, micro-organisms can evolve far more rapidly than multi-cellular creatures like themselves. They have shorter lives, some reproduce in twenty minutes or less, so an hour or two for a micro-organism like that is is like a century for a mammal, so a day for a micro-organism is like a thousand years for a mammal, and three years is like a million years for a mammal.

Also adding to that, they can also exchange genes with each other, that is between completely different species, so if one species evolves an adaptation that's useful, it can spread it to distantly related species.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microorganism#Evolution

So they can evolve really quickly. We've seen that in medicine, evolution of new super-bugs can happen rapidly.
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/news/080401_mrsa

See also:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/science/26lab.html?pagewanted=all

"Other scientists are watching individual microbes evolve into entire ecosystems. Paul Rainey, a biologist at the New Zealand Institute for Advanced Study at Massey University, has observed this evolution in bacteria, called Pseudomonas fluorescens, that live on plants. When he put a single Pseudomonas in a flask, it produced descendants that floated in the broth, feeding on nutrients. But within a few hundred generations, some of its descendants mutated and took up new ways of life. One strain began to form fuzzy carpets on the bottom of the flask. Another formed a mat of cellulose, where it could take in oxygen from above and food from below.

But Dr. Rainey is only beginning to decipher the complexity that evolves in his flasks. The different types of Pseudomonas interact with one another in intricate ways. The bottom-growers somehow kill off most of the ancestral free-floating microbes. But they in turn are wiped out by the mat-builders, which cut off oxygen to the rest of the flask. In time, however, cheaters appear in the mat. They do not produce their own cellulose, instead depending on other bacteria to hold them up. Eventually the mat collapses. The other types of Pseudomonas recover, and the cycle begins again, with hundreds of other forms appearing over time. “The interactions are everything you’d expect in a rain forest,” Dr. Rainey said."

That's just in a flask with not that much variety of habitat

On mars though they would evolve in a much more diverse way because of the huge number of different habitats they would encounter, with either no competition - or the species already there have followed different evolutionary pathways and don't have any of the adaptations that have evolved on Earth in the last probably 65 million years at least (if they came to Mars from the impact that helped to make the dinosaurs extinct).

On the other hand the Mars life has also had millions of years of independent evolution possibly in different directions so sometimes it might outcompete Earth life, or vice versa, just like introducing mammals and other species to different continents on the Eartht.

Offline Dalhousie

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #38 on: 06/11/2012 12:09 am »
There are many organisms that could survive on Mars just as it is. Scientists keep finding more and more unusual and surprising extremophiles with these sorts of capabilities.

“Could” being the operative word.  We don’t know that that they would if we introduce them. 

“Survive” is also very different to “thrive”.  Some terrestrial organisms may survive for short periods of times under some martian conditions.  Even here we need to differentiate between the many microenviroments.  A surface exposed to UV is different to one that is not, a spacecraft surface is different to a mineral grain.  A spacecraft interior, continuously warmed by RHUs is different to the shallow subsurface.  We also have to differentiate between surviving in a dormant state to actually reproducing and colonising the surrounding environment.

You come across lots of loose talk about single microbe contaminating Mars.  It doesn’t work like that. 

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Here are some links I found to various pages about Psychophiles, which can survive Mars like extreme cold brine as cold as -15C

http://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?pid=113437#p113437

Perhaps the best of those links is this one:

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Even unlikely seeming organisms can turn out to be extremophiles because of adaptations they still retain from very early times of our Earth, here is "Conan the bacterium" normally lives in Dung but just happens to have the capability to survive on Mars as it is now.

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/1999/ast14dec99_1/

It’s an impressive bug, but it won’t live on Mars as we know it.  D. radiodurans is aerobic (requires oxygen) and feeds of organic matter – usually abundant organic matter.  The martian surface is oxidising but not aerobic, and organic matter is probably rare.

The significance of  D. radiodurans is more general, that that there are ways in which some microbes can adopt to cope with high radiation.

We have to be careful of selective quote mining.  The same link says, quoting Robert Richmond, "Within responsible imagination, no long-dormant lifeform can be expected on the surface of Mars due to combined build up of damage over time caused by both incoming space radiation plus the background radiation."

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and here are many links I found about the impossibility of continuing with planetary protection policies once humans land on Mars, and some of the adverse consequences you could get as a result

http://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?pid=113403#p113403

Beware the “one bacterium will contaminate Mars” mindset.  It is unhelpful and quite simply wrong.  Microbes on or in a spacecraft don’t contaminate the surface.  Surface contamination by microbes does not equate to colonisation by them.  And local contamination or even colonisation does not equate to global contamination.

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Basically even if Mars is sterile right now, it is still risky to send any Earth life there, because with exponential growth (single bacterium doubling reaches weight of EArth in two days) and extreme longevity of Endosporese (hundreds of thousands of years, possibly more, with DNA self repair for UV damage) - there's no way you can prevent contamination of the entire planet.

If a suitable extremophile finds a suitable habitat e.g. beneath the soil, it might happen even very rapidly. In any case it is inevitable because of the longevity of Endospores and the huge numbers that will unavoidably seed Mars in any human expedition to Mars.

Exponential growth does not happen for long and stops as soon as the organism runs out of an essential item, be it an energy source, living space, inorganic nutrients, whatever.  All of those things are going to be limited on Mars. 

Even endospores get killed off in hostile environments, usually more or less exponentially.  Unless they come into contact with a hospitable environment they are doomed.

As far as human missions goes, it is entirely feasible to 1) minimise contamination, 2) constrain contamination.  Even if contamination does occur, the endospores you worry about are of organisms adapted to human environments or to living on or in the human body.  They won’t be able to activate on Mars.

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This could destroy ancient geology - including the ancient sea bed deposits. If Mars never developed life, then they are even more interesting as they tell us what happens on a planet that never develops life, and perhaps tell us about pre-cursors to life.

How would microbes “destroy ancient geology”?  It does not happen on Earth, it won’t happen on Mars.

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Also it would lead to evolution of new forms of life, and it's been demonstrated that organisms hazardous to humans can develop in an environment with no animals in it - so might even make the entire planet a "No go" area for humans.

Endospores can’t evolve.  Even if they were to activate to form living microbes and did, these will be increasingly adapted to martian conditions, not to the human body where they might cause disease.  There are thousands of pathogenic microbes, but only a handful – those that cause botulism, ergot, tetanus, and legionnaires disease -  that are not adapted to the bodies of animals.  Note that even on Earth with its thousands of pathogens, there are no “no-go” areas from disease.

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So - I'm in favour of terraforming eventually once we know a whole lot more about it and if we find that Mars is suitable for it and that it won't destroy something far more valuable than a new colony for humans.

If you worry about the consequences of small and inadvertent contact with the martian environment from human missions you should worry far more about terraforming would involve introducing thousands of microbe species to Mars to thrive and diversify.

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But until then the idea of studying Mars by tele-presence and focusing instead on asteroids and space colonies makes much more sense I think.

When would be the decision point?  After ten missions, a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand?
Apologies in advance for any lack of civility - it's unintended

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #39 on: 06/11/2012 12:18 am »
As for people dying of hunger - the reason we don't have billions of people dying of hunger on the Earth at present is because of the green revolution, sharing and  development of agricultural technology and new species, which is thought to have saved a billion people from starvation at the time, and surely more over the decades since then.

We have the ability to produce enough food on the planet to feed everyone, largely because of that. The reason people still starve is largely political, and to do with how economics works, and poverty - as many nations have huge stock-piles of food at the same time that other nations have people who are dying of hunger. It's not right to blame science for that at all.

Also - discovering new things about life from study of ancient organisms on Mars or life that evolved in a different way - could easily lead to many new useful things for humans - new medicines, new food, new ways of growing things, new ways of making biochemicals in the lab, new materials on the nanoscale with unusual properties (like spidersilk, etc). There's no knowing at all what you would discover.

Then balance against that a few human colonists who set up a base on Mars, and most likely it is abandoned because of the supply issues so you have space habitats instead anyway. And as a result of their visit none of those discoveries happen because the native life goes extinct.

Then also add in the possibility - hard to quantify how likely it is but surely not zero probability - that they even find that Mars changes and becomes host to micro-organisms that create pathogens that are allergens, or say, cause lung disease when breathed in, or in other ways are hostile to human life, and find that they evolved directly as a result of their visit.

It's all "science fiction" now. But quite a few things that are now reality were science fiction a few decades ago, and I think at least that it's well possible some of these things may actually happen.

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #40 on: 06/11/2012 12:19 am »
Just a link to the Green Revolution for anyone who doesn't know about it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #41 on: 06/11/2012 01:22 am »
Okay good point about Conan the bacterium, you are right, it seems likely it might have a hard time surviving on Mars just as it is, because of the lack of oxygen.

But it's still true, it does have hidden extremophile capabilities, that you wouldn't expect from an organism like that, and other species may well have hidden extermophile capabilities, as many micro-organisms are poorly understood and we don't know what their capabilities are.

Also it does survive in an amazing variety of habitats on Earth. And if there is life already on Mars then it would find organic material there to eat, and though we think the oxygen in the soil is unavailable to life, maybe there are ways that it can be e.g. disolved into the brine and so made available to the likes of radiodurans, maybe in micro-climates (like the micro-climates you get under quarts rocks on Earth with their own special communities).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinococcus_radiodurans

Incidentally one hypothesis about its origins is that it might be derived originally from a Martian micro-organsism delivered to Earth in a meteorite.
http://biospace.nw.ru/astrobiology/Articles2002/Astrobio_pavlov_25-34.pdf

BTW on the temperature, just discovered, air temperatures for the Spirit rover, measured in the shade, occasionally rose as high as 37C. Also spirit rover in its first measurements of temperature of the soil got some readings of 5C.
http://ufologie.patrickgross.org/htm/marsspiritnews.htm#02192004

The ground would be warm to the touch at times as Viking landers found that sometimes the soil can reach 27C http://www-k12.atmos.washington.edu/k12/resources/mars_data-information/temperature_overview.html

With endospores, then they do survive UV radiation, most die when exposed to the martian surface conditions and direct sunlight but a certain percentage to survive for a while, and you just need a few mm. of soil to get protection from the UV.

Here are a couple of links I found about that:
http://aem.asm.org/content/74/4/959.abstract
http://phys.org/news201938033.html

The endospores would just be carried in the air out of the airlock, or get rubbed off the space-suit. You are talking about many trillions of micro-organisms, in a human occupied space-ship.

I don't see any way that a human could leave the space-ship without letting many of them out of the ship into the atmosphere. Just the air escaping from the airlock, or your feet trail them from the interior of the spacecraft onto Mars - you can't realistically sterilise even the space-suit from endospores which requires at a minimum 30 hours dry heat at well over 100C and that's just to get rid of most of them, in a human occupied space-ship, hardly "clean room" environment, then many will survive even that.

Just to get into the space-suit you would touch the exterior of it and you would walk on other non-sterilised surfaces that air from the space-ship has passed over.

And what if there is an accident during landing, as could surely happen, it's still quite a risky undertaking the first mission to Mars.

It does just require one of them to contaminate Mars if it happens to have the right adaptations to survive for long enough to reproduce and start to evolve.

It's true that many would die and the ones that die won't contaminate the planet. But there I'm talking about any that survive. Of those that survive, you only need a single living organism - once it reproduces for the first time on Mars, then there is very little to stop it going on and contaminating the entire planet.

It would be in "fits and starts" - if it finds a warm micro-climate (for its species) e.g. under a stone in summer, it could rapidly grow and create many endospores, which would then spread in the wind in the Martian dust storms and find other micro-climates to reproduce again. That's how I imagine it happening. Then eventually it may find a cave or the like and reproduce in huge numbers.

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #42 on: 06/11/2012 01:45 am »
The reason the life would destroy geology is because it is geology that has never encountered the life, and might be made of fragile materials that e.g. disolve in water, or is organic and can be eaten by life.

Then later on the life if it transforms the climate of the planet, especially if it warms it up a few degrees by release of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, obviously that could lead to liquid water beneath the surface at times mainly because of the change of temperature - wouldn't last long on the surface as we know, it would evaporate into the atmosphere, and maybe eventually lost to space or fall again as snow - but it could cause local floods and that would obviously would destroy a lot of the interesting geology on Mars.

On earth you get erosion as a continual process by wind, and by erosion in many ways including formation of soil so the life would also erode it longer term but you might get some changes even short term.

On mars I particularly have in mind the various deposits from the ancient oceans. The micro-organisms might find micro-climates within them, and transform them chemically so they are completely different in composition from the originals.

Especially if they included traces of organics from the really early days of Mars, which might be fascinating, occur in geological layers say, that's just the sort of deposit that modern micro-organisms could destroy.

Also, even without methane, they might melt the ice near the poles - by changing the colour for instance, by covering it with a dark surface, again change climate and change ice based geology.

I'm well aware that I'm no expert in any of this - I'm a mathematician not a biologist. But someone needs to raise these points, it seems to me that people are getting carried along with a wave of enthusiasm for human exploration of Mars, just because of sci-fi stories about Mars and the obvious human interest, without stopping to reflect that humans really aren't the best explorers to use if you want to look for traces of early life (especially organic traces) and to look for possibly even modern life.

The various papers are easy enough for a lay person to read (unlike my own subject maths where you have to be a specialist in the particular area to be able to understand most of modern maths research). You are right that I need to be careful about selective quotes and will take more care on that. But the basic ideas are understandable enough so that it's possible to enter into the debate and ask these questions - which hardly anyone seems to be doing - and I think they should.

The thing is it's okay to have the opposite opinion, that's fine, but it should be researched properly. If there is even a small chance (and as yo know I think it is quite a large chance, even near certainty) that contamination will occur with at least some of these issues, then that needs to be properly looked into, and the questions that the likes of me have need to be answered before anyone sets foot on Mars. It is irresponsible not to do that.

Also - the terraforming too, I think could be a really useful thing to do later on, but if we do it too soon, when our knowledge of it must be really inadequate, so many things we don't know, there's a high chance it could go horribly wrong, and there is only the one Mars, we don't get a second go at either discovering traces of early life there, or terraforming it if the terraforming goes wrong. Making life extinct or destroying early organic geological records is irreversible.

Also if life seeds it and then evolves in undesirable ways - though you might be able to do things to ameliorate it perhaps, you might just make it worse by attempting to interfere with the situation and might just have to watch and let things take their course.

Anyway hope this all helps clarify what I'm saying.

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #43 on: 06/11/2012 01:50 am »
My main aim is to get people talking about these issues and researching it more, and to find out for themselves if it is a problem or not.

And not to just accept that everything is okay because the majority seem to be just "going along with the flow" and just assuming that it will all work out somehow.

From reading those papers one thing that stands out for sure is that I'm not alone - there are enough researchers who are experts in the subject, and have serious doubts about human exploration of Mars, and who believe that human exploration risks destroying the very things that they wish to discover - life or traces of life from the past.

They need to be listened to, and more research needs to be done to find out if their concerns are valid.

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #44 on: 06/11/2012 02:05 am »
On the decision point, that's not for us to decide I think.

It might be that terraforming Mars is something for a future generation to do. It would depend what we find as we explore Mars. Terraforming of course would transform the climate and might well make any existing Mars life extinct - it would depend how interesting it is, how much we are learning from the planet, how important it is to terraform Mars.

For instance if by then we have many space habitats running successfully, some of them by then maybe in the outer solar system even - and the population of humans is also stable or even declining (as might well happen with some projections of population data just a few decades from now) then there will be much less motivation to colonise Mars. We might be really glad that we never did it at that point.

We or some inhabitants of Earth will probably need it eventually I mean billions of years in the future when the sun goes red giant, and swallows up the Earth, it might be that Mars is the only or best place to go to as a new terraformed planet, which might even happen naturally as Mars warms up.

Or maybe it is needed some time before then for some reason. Or it is thought good to terraform it for some reason even though not needed.

It's a decision for the future. You can waste a lot of energy trying to foresee future decisions, and then when the time comes, often what happens isn't any of the situations that you thought about in advance when you tried to foresee what you would decide.

Offline Dalhousie

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #45 on: 06/11/2012 05:08 am »
Okay good point about Conan the bacterium, you are right, it seems likely it might have a hard time surviving on Mars just as it is, because of the lack of oxygen.

But it's still true, it does have hidden extremophile capabilities, that you wouldn't expect from an organism like that, and other species may well have hidden extermophile capabilities, as many micro-organisms are poorly understood and we don't know what their capabilities are.
 
Also it does survive in an amazing variety of habitats on Earth. And if there is life already on Mars then it would find organic material there to eat, and though we think the oxygen in the soil is unavailable to life, maybe there are ways that it can be e.g. disolved into the brine and so made available to the likes of radiodurans, maybe in micro-climates (like the micro-climates you get under quarts rocks on Earth with their own special communities).

We can speculate all we like about what might be possible.  But we have to stick with what we know or can reasonably extrapolate.  Extremophiles are found in extreme environments, so are not likely to hitch a ride in or on spacecraft.  Microbes that do are most likely to be those which surpive on moist environments at standard temperature and pressure, in, on and round humans.  No the type of microbe that will thrive on Mars.

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Incidentally one hypothesis about its origins is that it might be derived originally from a Martian micro-organsism delivered to Earth in a meteorite.
http://biospace.nw.ru/astrobiology/Articles2002/Astrobio_pavlov_25-34.pdf

Not relevant to the case in point.

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BTW on the temperature, just discovered, air temperatures for the Spirit rover, measured in the shade, occasionally rose as high as 37C. Also spirit rover in its first measurements of temperature of the soil got some readings of 5C.
http://ufologie.patrickgross.org/htm/marsspiritnews.htm#02192004


The ground would be warm to the touch at times as Viking landers found that sometimes the soil can reach 27C http://www-k12.atmos.washington.edu/k12/resources/mars_data-information/temperature_overview.html
[/quote]

Without liquid water, energy or food, any microbes than revive because of warmth are not going to be able to thrive.  Temperatures stay this warm only briefly, within a couple of hours everything will freeze again.  In fact, emerging from their spores under such conditions will kill microbes off faster.  Any on the outside will be killed off even faster by the hard UV that occurs everywhere.

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With endospores, then they do survive UV radiation, most die when exposed to the martian surface conditions and direct sunlight but a certain percentage to survive for a while, and you just need a few mm. of soil to get protection from the UV.

Here are a couple of links I found about that:
http://aem.asm.org/content/74/4/959.abstract
http://phys.org/news201938033.html

First, only a fraction of microbes produce spores.  Second of those that do, the spores have to remain viable.  Third, the viable spores have to be transported to the soil.  Finally  they have to find a suitable environment in the soil to activate and thrive.  Mere protection from UV is not enough.

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The endospores would just be carried in the air out of the airlock, or get rubbed off the space-suit. You are talking about many trillions of micro-organisms, in a human occupied space-ship.

There are not going to be many endospores inside the spacecraft.   Most microbes will be active since they from a hospitable environment, when rapidly exposed to the outside environment will kill most of them off very rapidly, even those that would form spores given more time.  A few might form spores but since they won’t find any hospitable environments, so what?

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I don't see any way that a human could leave the space-ship without letting many of them out of the ship into the atmosphere. Just the air escaping from the airlock, or your feet trail them from the interior of the spacecraft onto Mars - you can't realistically sterilise even the space-suit from endospores which requires at a minimum 30 hours dry heat at well over 100C and that's just to get rid of most of them, in a human occupied space-ship, hardly "clean room" environment, then many will survive even that.

Just to get into the space-suit you would touch the exterior of it and you would walk on other non-sterilised surfaces that air from the space-ship has passed over.


Suit ports are one way of keeping the interior and exterior environments largely separate.  Whether they are necessary remains to be seen.

Spores are not as big an issue as, once again, they will only activate in a hospitable environment.  For microbes that are likely to be found in a human habitat there are not any on Mars.

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And what if there is an accident during landing, as could surely happen, it's still quite a risky undertaking the first mission to Mars.

Already an issue with MSL.  The answer is you avoid landing in an area with a potential hospitable environment in the subsurface.  Spores on the surface of Mars are not an issue. 

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It does just require one of them to contaminate Mars if it happens to have the right adaptations to survive for long enough to reproduce and start to evolve.

First they have got to be active to reproduce and evolve.  If they are not active this won’t happen.   Even if they do activate, the environment may not have the resources to sustain them for long and they will die anyway.

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It's true that many would die and the ones that die won't contaminate the planet. But there I'm talking about any that survive. Of those that survive, you only need a single living organism - once it reproduces for the first time on Mars, then there is very little to stop it going on and contaminating the entire planet.

Again, you don’t understand microbial ecology.  First the microbes have to survive, then they have to find a suitable environment, then that environment has to sustain them for a long period, then there has to be a viable dispersal mechanism. 

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It would be in "fits and starts" - if it finds a warm micro-climate (for its species) e.g. under a stone in summer, it could rapidly grow and create many endospores, which would then spread in the wind in the Martian dust storms and find other micro-climates to reproduce again. That's how I imagine it happening. Then eventually it may find a cave or the like and reproduce in huge numbers.

It is a possible mechanism, but very unlikely.  Let’s say microbes escape from an airlock First few endospores are going to form as most microbes will be killed off very quickly, spore formation is a slow process, taking many hours.  Then the spores themselves have to survive – the proposed dispersal medium, the martian atmosphere, is very harsh, irradiated by hard UV, cosmic rays, is very dry, very cold, contains oxidising dust and is at very low pressure.  Thirdly, they have to get into a hospitable environment.  We aren’t talking about extremophiles here, just common household microorganisms like Staphylococcus, Streptococcus, Bacillus, and E. coli.  They need warm, liquid water, high gas pressure, abundant nutrients.  They are not going to find it on the surface.  They probably won’t find it across most of the subsurface either.  Nor is there a means for them to readily getting to the subsurface from the atmosphere.  Fourthly even when in a hospitable environment, they don’t always activate.  But if they do find such a niche, they may not live long anyway. Such niches are likely to be both resource limited and ephemeral.

Last year I was involved in a study looking at microbial contamination from a field station in the desert that had been operating for ten years. 100 m away from the station we could not find any.  Heating, freezing, desiccation, and UV, even on Earth had killed off the invaders.
Apologies in advance for any lack of civility - it's unintended

Offline Dalhousie

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #46 on: 06/11/2012 05:14 am »
My main aim is to get people talking about these issues and researching it more, and to find out for themselves if it is a problem or not.

And not to just accept that everything is okay because the majority seem to be just "going along with the flow" and just assuming that it will all work out somehow.

From reading those papers one thing that stands out for sure is that I'm not alone - there are enough researchers who are experts in the subject, and have serious doubts about human exploration of Mars, and who believe that human exploration risks destroying the very things that they wish to discover - life or traces of life from the past.

They need to be listened to, and more research needs to be done to find out if their concerns are valid.

You will never get complete scientific agreement on any subject.

How many researchers are "enough"?  One? Ten? One hundreds? One thousand?

Apologies in advance for any lack of civility - it's unintended

Offline Dalhousie

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #47 on: 06/11/2012 05:18 am »
Besides robotinventor, you are missing the point of this thread.  This thread is about the consequences of there not being life on Mars.

In that case, since the risk on Earth of ordinary household organisms mutating is both low and manageable, the risks on Mars is going to be even lower.

And you still haven't come up with any evidence for the geological record on Mars being obliterated in the extremely unlikely event of terrestrial microbes managing to thrive there.
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Offline Dalhousie

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #48 on: 06/11/2012 06:17 am »
Icarus. 2003 Oct;165(2):253-76.

Survival of endospores of Bacillus subtilis on spacecraft surfaces under simulated martian environments: implications for the forward contamination of Mars.

Schuerger AC, Mancinelli RL, Kern RG, Rothschild LJ, McKay CP.

"The primary implications of these results are (a) that greater than 99.9% of bacterial populations on sun-exposed surfaces of spacecraft are likely to be inactivated within a few tens of seconds to a few minutes on the surface of Mars, and (b) that within a single Mars day under clear-sky conditions bacterial populations on sun-exposed surfaces of spacecraft will be sterilized."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14649627
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Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #49 on: 06/11/2012 10:51 am »
Dalhousie, yes I know it said 99.9% would be inactivated quickly. But that's only on sun-exposed surfaces of the spacecraft, and the populations small. It suggests that if part of a spacecraft is accidentally contaminated, as in the drill bit on the Curiosity rover which someone took out of its sealed container in order to attach it to the rover without the correct precautions, then so long as you expose it to enough sunlight on Mars it will be sterilised anyway.

If they fall to the ground and are covered by dust in that time then they will be protected from UV from then on, or even if they are in the shadow of the spacecraft, rock, rover or even an astronaut for long enough.

For the diversity of extremophiles take a look at this paper
http://aem.asm.org/content/71/8/4163.full

That's in clean room spacecraft assembly facilities.

It includes even "uncultivable" extremophiles which we know little about because they can't be cultivated yet, so goodness knows what they could do.

New strains could evolve even during the assembly of the Mars mission spacecraft, and during the journey from Earth to Mars, and while on Mars, they could also evolve in micro-climates on the spacecraft, e.g. in the airlock, or on human piloted Mars rovers - just small amounts of evolution in that time but enough to express some hidden trait that they already have in their genes useful on Mars, or to maybe exchange such traits with another organism.

 I don't think you can say that just because it came to Mars on a human occupied spacecraft, that it requires warm and moist conditions, and can't easily adapt to some other environment - or even that because it is part of the normal skin flora that it can't survive e.g. under the soil on Mars. That Deinococcus radiodurans is an example to show how organisms can have hidden capabilities you wouldn't guess from their habitat.

Good to hear what you say about endospores taking hours to form, and that in practise in the desert you found nothing 100 meters away from the station. It's good to hear from someone who researches in this sort of area for "ground truth" as it were, thanks.

But - bear in mind we don't know what the conditions are like on Mars, don't even know much about the soil just below the surface, which might well have even liquid brine at not too great a depth in summer.

Also it doesn't have to reproduce. If you have endospores in that 100 meters radius from humans active on the surface, and they are below the soil surface, a few mm down enough to escape UV radiation, or in the shadow of a pebble or boulder or the shadow of the spacecraft - then they will survive until the next dust storm - and then the dust storm will protect them from UV light as they are transported to somewhere completely different on the surface of the planet. It will also probably cover them with dust when they get there so they are protected from UV again and in a series of dust storms the protected still viable endospores could end up anywhere on Mars.

As for formation of the endospores - they may already be on the spacecraft and just not activated, but also, they could form in intermediate environments between the spacecraft and the surface. E.g. in the air lock - or at places on an astronaut's space-suit where a tiny leak of air escapes into the atmosphere, or they might get into the fabric or surface of the space-suit and survive long enough because of the warmth of the astronaut to form endospores, or on minute flakes of skin that escape from the air lock, or whatever.

It would be possible to research into this and find out more exactly what could happen. You could simulate a Mars expedition in a simulated Mars environment on Earth - could have the atmosphere and soil and the UV light and everything, just the gravity would be hard to simulate which is unlikely to make much of a difference to micro-organisms.

Then, just attach a simulated spacecraft environment with an airlock to it, and human astronauts go inside and do the activities they would do on Mars, and you do all the sterilisation you would do on Mars, indeed could simulate the entire mission with humans in the space-craft and a simulated Mars atmosphere and soil.

Then see if there are any viable endospores beneath the surface of the soil after the "expedition". Also you could simulate a Mars dust storm too, maybe in a wind tunnel, and see what happens to those endospores that remain after a dust storm.

It would be a fairly costly experiment, but nothing compared with the cost of a human mission to Mars.

If there were no viable endospores then that would be somewhat re-assuring, wouldn't completely prove it though. It would mean the risks are somewhat lower than they seem right now. It would also be reassuring for continuing with the robotic rover explorations of Mars.

I think though that there would be endospores.

Even if it did turn out okay, I'd have doubts about a human expedition because

1. it does just need one endospore that is viable and lands in a suitable environment, so even an experiment like that if it comes out okay, can only say that it's unlikely to happen, not that it absolutely won't happen. With something as potentially so valuable and interesting to us as a whole planet like Mars, I'm not sure that it is enough even to be 99.99% sure it won't be contaminated.

That's a bit like searching for NEOs that could impact with Earth. The actual probability of finding one that will cause catastrophic impact with Earth in say the next century is so low that if you look at it from a personal point of view, you are much more likely to die in a car accident,  or by fire or eletrocution.
http://impact.arc.nasa.gov/gov_asteroidperils_2.cfm

But the consequences for the entire civilization and for huge numbers of people are so large that ordinary calculations of probability to assess whether something is worth doing don't apply, and also even the low risk is still higher than e.g. the risk of dying in an aeroplane accident.

It's the same with Mars I think, that the potential value of the planet is so high, if it remains uncontaminated, that even a low probability outcome as low as the probability of catastrophic impact by a NEO on earth does need to be researched and considered.

2. It doesn't deal with the issue of accidents to human occupied spacecraft. If say the descent rocket fails or the parachute doesn't open during the landing, and it crashes into Mars and leaves human bodies on the surface, mixed up with debris from the space-craft - then that's completely the end of any planetary protection of Mars from Earth, surely - you would agree there at least I imagine?

As for numbers of researchers, you just need one person who has a valid point of view and isn't like a complete crank, for it to require more research to find out what the situation is. Even someone who seems really eccentric and noone else in the field believes anything he says - even then so long as he is expert enough on the subject to have a valid opinion - for that matter even if not - then there is a chance he might be right. Enough examples of that in the past e.g. continental drift, or on a smaller scale e.g. the likes of Chicxulub as evidence of a gigantic impact crater, which is completely accepted by everyone nowadays did take a while to get accepted, when originally there was much less evidence for it than there is now and the evidence wasn't so clear.

On the destruction of geology, I've said my thoughts there, can't really contribute more except to repeat, the only things I have thought of so far are, conversion of any organic deposits on Mars by life that reproduces in them, the potential of floods if the planet is warmed by a few degrees (possibly just temporarily) as a result of release of methane by introduced life, and the possibility of life transforming the climate by forming dust or other deposits that cover ice and make it more likely to melt.

I suppose another possibility is that the introduced life leads to formation of clouds, or other atmospheric changes, that lead to the cooling of Mars.

But - I'm not a geologist either and there might be other hazards. Those are enough for me though, enough to not want to do it for purely geological reasons.

All this is predicated with "Until we know a lot more about Mars - and terraforming". It's a call for research and more understanding of those details before we think about doing a human expedition. The concern is doing either of those at our current level of lack of knowledge and experience of these matters.

The future decisions would be made by people with much greater knowledge of Mars (through extensive robot exploration), and life, and the possible consequences of terraforming than we have now.

I noticed btw that future rovers will have the capability to drill deep into the surface of Mars.

Here is one that is actively under development, ExoMars will be able to drill 2 meters into the surface

http://www.aerospace-technology.com/projects/exomars-rover-mars-exploration/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExoMars

At the moment slated for launch in 2016.

There's also the possibility of drilling much deeper.

There are proposals for deep drilling down to the 100meters to kilometers range by tele-operation using human crews in Mars orbit here:

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/marsconcepts2012/pdf/4185.pdf

That's the sort of direction I think would be a safe and responsible way to explore Mars and also involving humans to do the things they do best, the same crew could obviously tele-operate land rovers and aerial rovers on Mars.

I'm not saying, never colonise or terraform Mars. Just that it's not quite the right time to do it yet, and that we need to go more slowly, (I don't know if you know the phrase "more haste less speed"?), and explore Mars by rovers and telepresence.

Okay to plan out details for human exploration and colonisation and explore the ideas of course.

Even if not used for Mars in the near future, those ideas could be used for space habitats, and some of the details could also be used for rovers on Mars as well. E.g. making fuel from the Mars atmosphere - originally an idea for human colonisation and supply in the Mars direct project - but it could just as well be used for sample return of large quantities of material back to EArth.




Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #50 on: 06/11/2012 11:23 am »
BTW I know that link I posted about deep drilling is meant as preliminary for human colonisation, and doesn't address concerns about contamination of Mars.

But it could also be used for discovery to find out if there is life in those possible underground aquifers on Mars, and as part of a robotic exploration of Mars, so there I'm taking the technology in the paper and using it as part of a different view on how you would explore Mars.

Human exploration of Mars as soon as envisaged in the paper I think is too soon as if we have only just started to drill for underground aquifers, and demonstrated the technology in a few places, clearly we don't know that much about Mars at that stage, whether sterile or there is life there already, either way, wouldn't know if it is sterile and wouldn't know much about its composition.

Also for that matter if human colonists are getting their water from underground aquifers, that brings up the immediate possibility that they might easily contaminate those very aquifers.

So - not aligned with the views in the paper, same with some of the other ones I quote. You don't have to be aligned with the views of researchers to use their conclusions for other things they didn't address at all in the paper. Indeed that's often how research proceeds that one person uses results of someone else's research and builds on it and finds out things that were never even thought of as a possibility.

Offline Dalhousie

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #51 on: 06/11/2012 12:52 pm »


Dalhousie, yes I know it said 99.9% would be inactivated quickly. But that's only on sun-exposed surfaces of the spacecraft, and the populations small. It suggests that if part of a spacecraft is accidentally contaminated, as in the drill bit on the Curiosity rover which someone took out of its sealed container in order to attach it to the rover without the correct precautions, then so long as you expose it to enough sunlight on Mars it will be sterilised anyway.


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If they fall to the ground and are covered by dust in that time then they will be protected from UV from then on, or even if they are in the shadow of the spacecraft, rock, rover or even an astronaut for long enough.

What makes you think they will fall?  If they do they will be on the surface and exposed to UV

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For the diversity of extremophiles take a look at this paper
http://aem.asm.org/content/71/8/4163.full

That's in clean room spacecraft assembly facilities.

It includes even "uncultivable" extremophiles which we know little about because they can't be cultivated yet, so goodness knows what they could do.

There is a difference between particular species being present and them being abundant.  The most common species present in a clean room are unlikely to be extremophiles because it is not an extreme environment.  Not only are their particular requirements not met, they will be outcompeted by the more normal species.

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New strains could evolve even during the assembly of the Mars mission spacecraft, and during the journey from Earth to Mars, and while on Mars, they could also evolve in micro-climates on the spacecraft, e.g. in the airlock, or on human piloted Mars rovers - just small amounts of evolution in that time but enough to express some hidden trait that they already have in their genes useful on Mars, or to maybe exchange such traits with another organism.

They microbes will be inactive on the way to Mars and on the surface of Mars.  They can’t evolve new strains when they are inactive. 

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I don't think you can say that just because it came to Mars on a human occupied spacecraft, that it requires warm and moist conditions, and can't easily adapt to some other environment - or even that because it is part of the normal skin flora that it can't survive e.g. under the soil on Mars. That Deinococcus radiodurans is an example to show how organisms can have hidden capabilities you wouldn't guess from their habitat.

Microbes are highly evolved to specific environmental conditions, just like with multicellular forms.  You don’t expect penguins in the desert or termites in the ocean.   

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Good to hear what you say about endospores taking hours to form, and that in practise in the desert you found nothing 100 meters away from the station. It's good to hear from someone who researches in this sort of area for "ground truth" as it were, thanks.

The paper is submitted, we will see what the reviewers say.  We used PCR analyses to characterise the microbial populations.

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But - bear in mind we don't know what the conditions are like on Mars, don't even know much about the soil just below the surface, which might well have even liquid brine at not too great a depth in summer.

We actually do have some idea of conditions on Mars, at least at six sites, which is one why we have some reason to suspect there are emphemeral brines at at least some locations.

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Also it doesn't have to reproduce. If you have endospores in that 100 meters radius from humans active on the surface, and they are below the soil surface, a few mm down enough to escape UV radiation, or in the shadow of a pebble or boulder or the shadow of the spacecraft - then they will survive until the next dust storm - and then the dust storm will protect them from UV light as they are transported to somewhere completely different on the surface of the planet. It will also probably cover them with dust when they get there so they are protected from UV again and in a series of dust storms the protected still viable endospores could end up anywhere on Mars.

Lifting spores into the atmosphere during a dustr storm will expose them to UV and kill them off.  Even during a severe storm the martian atmosphere is not opaque to UV.

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As for formation of the endospores - they may already be on the spacecraft and just not activated, but also, they could form in intermediate environments between the spacecraft and the surface. E.g. in the air lock - or at places on an astronaut's space-suit where a tiny leak of air escapes into the atmosphere, or they might get into the fabric or surface of the space-suit and survive long enough because of the warmth of the astronaut to form endospores, or on minute flakes of skin that escape from the air lock, or whatever.

Doesn’t  matter, they still will be progressively and rapidly killed off.  Experiments show that.  Unless they enter a hospitable environment they won’t activate.  Consider tetanus.  The spores are everywhere in the outside world. But they pose no threat to anyone normally. It is only when get into a deep wound where oxygen is low and food abundant do the activate.

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It would be possible to research into this and find out more exactly what could happen. You could simulate a Mars expedition in a simulated Mars environment on Earth - could have the atmosphere and soil and the UV light and everything, just the gravity would be hard to simulate which is unlikely to make much of a difference to micro-organisms.

There is a lot of work done on this already.  Which is why the current view is that we don’t have to sterilise spacecraft that are on the martian surface, only those tools and instruments that dig down into the zones where liquid water might be present – the equivalent of the sharp object that infects a wound with tetanus.

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Then, just attach a simulated spacecraft environment with an airlock to it, and human astronauts go inside and do the activities they would do on Mars, and you do all the sterilisation you would do on Mars, indeed could simulate the entire mission with humans in the space-craft and a simulated Mars atmosphere and soil.

You don’t need to go to this level of sophistication.  You can look a dispersal from analogue terrestrial sites (as we did) like deserts and polar stations.  You can also test parts of the system under more accurate simulations of martian conditions – as we do already.

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Then see if there are any viable endospores beneath the surface of the soil after the "expedition". Also you could simulate a Mars dust storm too, maybe in a wind tunnel, and see what happens to those endospores that remain after a dust storm.

This has not been specifically done but you can predict that airborne spores drenched in hard UV for days on end are not going to do very well.

It would be a fairly costly experiment, but nothing compared with the cost of a human mission to Mars.

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If there were no viable endospores then that would be somewhat re-assuring, wouldn't completely prove it though. It would mean the risks are somewhat lower than they seem right now. It would also be reassuring for continuing with the robotic rover explorations of Mars.

The results are already reassuring.

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I think though that there would be endospores.

There might be a few but if they can’t activate they are not a hazard to anything and if they can’t activate they can’t reproduce. 

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Even if it did turn out okay, I'd have doubts about a human expedition because

1. it does just need one endospore that is viable and lands in a suitable environment, so even an experiment like that if it comes out okay, can only say that it's unlikely to happen, not that it absolutely won't happen. With something as potentially so valuable and interesting to us as a whole planet like Mars, I'm not sure that it is enough even to be 99.99% sure it won't be contaminated.

There no such thing as certainty.  However you can design your system so that the probability of a viable endospore living long enough to find a suitable environment is very low.  Microbiology labs work like this all time.

Remember too the assumption in this thread is that we have shown Mars to be devoid of present life. Under those surcumstances the presence of occasional spores or even viable colonies is not going to reduce the scientific viability of Mars.

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That's a bit like searching for NEOs that could impact with Earth. The actual probability of finding one that will cause catastrophic impact with Earth in say the next century is so low that if you look at it from a personal point of view, you are much more likely to die in a car accident,  or by fire or eletrocution.
http://impact.arc.nasa.gov/gov_asteroidperils_2.cfm

But the consequences for the entire civilization and for huge numbers of people are so large that ordinary calculations of probability to assess whether something is worth doing don't apply, and also even the low risk is still higher than e.g. the risk of dying in an aeroplane accident.

It's the same with Mars I think, that the potential value of the planet is so high, if it remains uncontaminated, that even a low probability outcome as low as the probability of catastrophic impact by a NEO on earth does need to be researched and considered.

So we reduce the risks to as low as possible.  But at the same time we cannot eliminate risk.   So we need to balance returns against risk.  The scientific returns from human presence of Mars are demonstrably enormous, many orders of magnitude greater than what can be achieved by unmanned spacecraft.  There are whole scientific disciplines that can’t be done with unmanned spacecraft.  So the return justify the risk.

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2. It doesn't deal with the issue of accidents to human occupied spacecraft. If say the descent rocket fails or the parachute doesn't open during the landing, and it crashes into Mars and leaves human bodies on the surface, mixed up with debris from the space-craft - then that's completely the end of any planetary protection of Mars from Earth, surely - you would agree there at least I imagine?

No I don’t agree.  You can’t contaminate an entire planet from a single crash site. Especially not under the assumptions of this discussion which is that Mars is lifeless. Even if some microbes survive the explosion of a crash they are still in a very hostile environment, they are not going to spread.

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As for numbers of researchers, you just need one person who has a valid point of view and isn't like a complete crank, for it to require more research to find out what the situation is. Even someone who seems really eccentric and noone else in the field believes anything he says - even then so long as he is expert enough on the subject to have a valid opinion - for that matter even if not - then there is a chance he might be right. Enough examples of that in the past e.g. continental drift, or on a smaller scale e.g. the likes of Chicxulub as evidence of a gigantic impact crater, which is completely accepted by everyone nowadays did take a while to get accepted, when originally there was much less evidence for it than there is now and the evidence wasn't so clear.

The examples are not valid.  In the case of continental drift or an impact causing the KT extinctions, you start off with a hypothesis that needs testing.

Here we are talking about risk assessments, we are talking about reducing the risk from known hazards to an acceptable level.

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On the destruction of geology, I've said my thoughts there, can't really contribute more except to repeat, the only things I have thought of so far are, conversion of any organic deposits on Mars by life that reproduces in them, the potential of floods if the planet is warmed by a few degrees (possibly just temporarily) as a result of release of methane by introduced life, and the possibility of life transforming the climate by forming dust or other deposits that cover ice and make it more likely to melt.

I suppose another possibility is that the introduced life leads to formation of clouds, or other atmospheric changes, that lead to the cooling of Mars.

But - I'm not a geologist either and there might be other hazards. Those are enough for me though, enough to not want to do it for purely geological reasons.

It’s unlikely that the random and accidental introduction of microbes to Mars would result in such changes on a scale meaningful to us.  Even if such changes did occur, they would not obliterate the geological record.  We have had massive climate changes and abundant biota on Eary for billions of years and still have a well preserved geological record.

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All this is predicated with "Until we know a lot more about Mars - and terraforming". It's a call for research and more understanding of those details before we think about doing a human expedition. The concern is doing either of those at our current level of lack of knowledge and experience of these matters.

Aboslutely

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The future decisions would be made by people with much greater knowledge of Mars (through extensive robot exploration), and life, and the possible consequences of terraforming than we have now.

Robot exploration can never be extensive compared with what human crews can achieve.

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I noticed btw that future rovers will have the capability to drill deep into the surface of Mars.

Here is one that is actively under development, ExoMars will be able to drill 2 meters into the surface

http://www.aerospace-technology.com/projects/exomars-rover-mars-exploration/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExoMars

At the moment slated for launch in 2016.

Two metres will be an advance on what we do now, and very useful.  But it is a highly specialised tool of limited use that only scratches the surface.

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There's also the possibility of drilling much deeper.

There are proposals for deep drilling down to the 100meters to kilometers range by tele-operation using human crews in Mars orbit here:

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/marsconcepts2012/pdf/4185.pdf

I real doubt that drilling hundreds of metres or kilometres on Mars (or anywhere else) using robotic technology is realistic.  Especially on the mass budget they propose  It’s a challenge to drill 2 metres

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That's the sort of direction I think would be a safe and responsible way to explore Mars and also involving humans to do the things they do best, the same crew could obviously tele-operate land rovers and aerial rovers on Mars.

I'm not saying, never colonise or terraform Mars. Just that it's not quite the right time to do it yet, and that we need to go more slowly, (I don't know if you know the phrase "more haste less speed"?), and explore Mars by rovers and telepresence.

When is the right time?  After hundred missions, a thousand missions?  We could send a thousand high level robotic missions, rovers, drill rigs, sample return and still not learn as much as from a single crewed mission.
Apologies in advance for any lack of civility - it's unintended

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #52 on: 06/11/2012 01:21 pm »
We could learn a lot from robotic missions once you start to get sample returns from the planet - that's the main area where robots are lacking. Human operators can choose interesting rocks for the robots to bring back.

The risk is endospores surviving in shadows. Surely they can just be brushed off surfaces, or be carried in the air? They must be light and easily travel and fall into shadows in the vicinity of a spacecraft.

I'm not convinced that the endospores won't be protected by the dust storms. It blocked 99% of the light for the solar panels for the Mars rovers
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2007/20jul_duststorm/

So does reduce the light considerably. Are you sure that it is transparent to UV or is that just a hypothesis for research?

Also the dust storms could pick up tiny pebbles, with endospores in crevices in the pebble, so protected like an endolith.

Agree you have a good point they can't evolve new strains while inactive, that's a good point thanks for the correction.

They could evolve while on Mars though in the intermediate habitats like the airlock, and they can also evolve in the clean room assembly traits that could be useful on Mars.

Good luck with your paper.

Six sites isn't much and so far we don't even know much at all about the ground even a few inches below the surface.

I call this an unknown because we don't have any previous experience of introducing new life to something as extensive and varied as a planet. So we can expect surprises.

We do have a hypothesis that need testing - here the hypothesis that Mars is easily contaminated by a human mission, and that life introduced in that way can spread throughout the planet, and transform the climate. That's my hypothesis, similar to the continental drift hypothesis that continents move.

You've produced various reasons for thinking it won't happen like that. But, even though you are obviously knowledgeable in the subject, and I don't dispute that, but still, that doesn't mean I have to accept the same conclusions.

The things you've said so far I don't find convincing, not nearly enough to lay to rest my concerns on the issue. I understand them, can understand why you think it's unlikely enough to be almost zero risk, can understand where you are coming from. But I don't find them convincing enough yet.

I feel that you are underestimating the level of risk, also vastly underestimating the potential scientific returns from exploration and stud of Mars in its pristine state prior to terraforming, and over-estimating the advantages of human exploration over rovers.

Indeed in some ways I think rovers have advantages over humans. They can travel to places that humans can't travel to safely, can be made smaller than humans, airborne etc. Indeed especially with the way rovers and guided remote vehicles (e.g. in the deep sea or for study of volcanoes) are gradually beginning to be used on Earth to explore hostile environments, maybe by the time a human exploration to Mars is a reality then use of remotely guided and semi-autonomous robots for exploration might be the normal way of doing this.

We should be able to learn at least as much from Mars using rovers as we can learn from the ocean depths using remotely controlled vehicles, which is a lot especially once you can do sample return from Mars. Eventually you would want to go in person just as now people want to go to the ocean depths in person - but it's not necessary for the research, it is done more because it is a natural human thing to want to go there in person.

The rovers we've sent to Mars so far are just early pioneers. Later ones will give much more science return, and sample return also.

Anyway I've said my main points now, and anyone reading this has heard both sides of the argument. As with all these sorts of discussion, it's often a matter of how you weight the various points and ideas.

I also feel, it is an evolving field, and that we may know a lot more in the near future to guide our decisions better than is possible now.

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #53 on: 06/11/2012 02:10 pm »
BTW with the drilling one of the points they make is that drilling is often done remotely by telepresence here on the Earth, sometimes by operators over 100 Km distant from the drills  So it's not that different to do it the same way on Mars.

The equipment still has to be transported to Mars either way and with telepresence you don't have to get the humans down to the surface and up again, so quite a saving on the lander and fuel.

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #54 on: 06/11/2012 02:53 pm »
On the geological record - if you go back far enough in time here on the Earth it is very patchy. E.g. the Burgess shale, is a lucky spotlight on a era which shows up many organisms that we wouldn't know about otherwise, and that's only half a billion years old. For times earlier than that the record is very patchy, the oldest probable fossils are micro-fossils from 3.4 billion years ago:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archean_life_in_the_Barberton_Greenstone_Belt#Fossil_record

http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v4/n10/full/ngeo1238.html

The oldest rock is 4.4 billion years old:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_dated_rocks#Oldest_terrestrial_material

Fossils and other remains of early life on Mars could easily have remained undisturbed even for 4.5 billion years, because the planet has never had continental drift, no subduction, the volcanoes like Olympus Mons just grow and grow staying where they are beneath the surface.

So the surface of Mars is particularly pristine, much less disturbed than the Earth. All that's happened there is an early ocean that dried up, may have formed more than once with floods, the atmosphere changing composition and getting thinner, and the planet getting colder, and the volcanoes getting larger, and the occasional impact from meterorites or comets or the like.


Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #55 on: 06/11/2012 03:00 pm »
It's my guess that if life became extinct on Mars - which is quite hard to imagine how that happened (what could make it extinct once it gets started especially if it adapts to be able to survive deep underground) then the actual organic remains of the early life might still survive on Mars. Because - without life there is nothing to eat those remains so no reason for it to decay.

Also if life never formed there at all then in the sediments in the floors of the dired up ocean beds, there may be layers which still have the actual chemical and organic remains still there of the early pre-cursors of life so we can study them and find out how the planet evolved in the early pre-life stages and get an insight into what Earth was probably like before life evolved here, and how hard it was for life to get started.

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #56 on: 06/11/2012 03:07 pm »
Glad you like my post ...

Yes, but there are many problems with your first, and subsequent, statements.  For example, your statement about ruining the geology is pretty much bogus.

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The problem with allowing any contamination of Mars at all is that it is irreversible...

True.  And of course, the scientific benefit of studying a truly alien life form would be of great benefit.  Except for those who already know for a fact that Mars is barren:

Contamination of sterile Mars is a tragedy... why?

If you already know, and can prove that Mars is sterile, you should contact COSPAR.

Quote from: robertinventor
But until then the idea of studying Mars by tele-presence and focusing instead on asteroids and space colonies makes much more sense I think.

You need to clarify your "ruining geology" remark, or back away from it.  We might ruin the geology of the asteroids!  Personally, I think we should get a 1rpm, 1gee manned ring station around Mars, and start studying it very intensely, so as to make or break the case for colonization.

Astronauts on Mars would introduce a huge variety of micro-organisms, an event quite without any precedent for Mars and something we have no true experience of to guide us. ...

The ancient geology could tell us many new things about our own past, and about the evolution of life - either why Mars is sterile, if it is, or how life evolved there, if it isn't.

Once we decide to land people, it will only be a matter of time before a suit rips, or a container ruptures, and our Earthly bugs are let into this hostile environment.  Ultimately, we'll have to deal with the results of this, and if the poop hits the fan, those first human visitors may be stranded against their will.  I have no idea how that will play out.

But, give it up with the geology. 

People dying from hunger is a tragedy.

Which the Mars-One proposal seems to promote at this stage of their website development.

If you mean instead to bemoan the human tragedies that our Earthly nations impose upon their own people, that would have little to do with Mars.

I'm all in favor of, in priciple, the idea that colonization would result in new governments which would have the opportunity to better ensure and promote people's welfare and development.

So, start close to home where you can replace vital supplies from Earth in just a couple of days if something gets broken which you can't make yourself, or send someone home to a hospital if they need urgent treatment you can't provide in the habitat.

Of course, that hab would be on the lunar surface, but hey: Carry on.

"Survive" is also very different to "thrive".

True, but we don't know anything at all about the thivability of new organisms introduced to Mars.  Far more info is needed.  And the surface is very inhospitable.

I could see a sealed, surface hab, with a thick concrete floor isolating it from bugs from below.  There could be a regimen where digging below a small distance would not be attempted by humans, leaving that task to suitably disinfected robots. And suit ports as well.  Distilled subsurface water would be free of pathogens.  I think a scenario could be designed where there might be a human "colony", suitably isolated from the planet as a whole.

Quote from: Dalhousie
When would be the decision point?  After ten missions, a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand?


An unfair question at this stage, since not enough is known about the enviroment, or a specific non-contaminating human habitation configuration.

I do think we should know more before having a manned landing.  At the same time, there is no urgency to make a colonization decision.

I'm coming around to the view that the planet may be visited with adequate two way microbial protection.
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #57 on: 06/11/2012 03:30 pm »
JohnFornano,

Yes a spinning orbital colony around Mars sounds just great to me.

I don't see so many advantages in a sealed unit on the surface of Mars however, they might as well operate from orbit as do that, then you have no risk at all, and no problems with accidents. If the orbital colony is spinning then they even have g. up there as well, could be more than the mars g. level.

I can understand the wish to "touch the surface" just like the same motivation that has motivated explorers to try to visit the deepest depths of the ocean in person. But as a human wish, not as a scientific need I don't think it is required in that sense.

The spoling the geology thing is - I mean like the geological record of fossils and early life especially, and layers of the martian soil, and deposits from the flowing water, also records of how water flowed on the planet in the early stages of the planet. Also e.g. records of the early atmosphere and climate preserved in the ice, all that sort of thing. More micro-scale geology, or geology at a more subtle level.

Not so much geology in the sense of igneous rocks or the like. I don't mean that introduced life would make massive changes in the actual shape of the planet, not likely e.g. to erode mountains or anything like that in the short term at least (might do eventually thousands or millions of years down the road).

Seems to me it could actually modify large scale features in some areas of Mars, where the structure is made mainly of ice, if it leads to a temporary melting of the ice. Also if the chemical composition of the atmosphere changes and the rocks react with the atmosphere (e.g. oxygen in the atmosphere).

But that's not the main concern on my mind here.

Might be that the word geology isn't such a good one to describe what I mean but don't know a better one.

Hope that's a bit clearer. I do have clear ideas in my mind but don't always express them so well.

I hope mainly that my posts can get people thinking about this more, rather than to just try to resolve it on the spot.

It's enough if it needs thought and further research before colonisation, because the more you research into it, the more you understand better what the issues are which then guides further research and planning until eventually you are able to make a decision that is reasonably well based on understanding the issues.

The thing that really brought this to a head for me recently was when I saw the  Mars First video on youtube. That might make it more imminent than we expect, if you start to get privately funded ventures able to travel to Mars and land astronauts there.

There are also several governments with an interest in Mars, and if you had like a bit of a race, one government or privately sponsored group wanting to be the first to land an astronaut on Mars, then while with the Moon that wasn't a problem at all, with Mars it could mean sending astronauts to Mars far too early when our knowledge just isn't sufficient to know that it is okay to do it.




Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #58 on: 06/11/2012 03:39 pm »
Your idea of abandoning astronauts on Mars if they make a mess of the planet and pathogens develop there - that would protect the Earth yes. But it leaves Mars as a planet that isn't safe for humans to colonise in the future. It's not like if you leave it for 100 years eventually it will return to the way it was before, seems that most likely it would just get harder to colonise.

Also - gospacex said that the organisms brought by humans - just want to point out the immense variety of organisms that live on humans, thousands of different species. Indeed the total number of species isn't known and is the subject of a $115 million project to research into this and find out more

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_microbiome_project

More about the human microbiome here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_microbiome

So we aren't talking about just a few well known species. We are talking about thousands of species and many genera, with some of them probably not that well studied yet, and fungi and archaea as well as bacteria. All those species would be let loose on the surface of Mars during a human exploration, and also many others that happened to come into the spacecraft in other ways, and e.g. lived on the metal and glass of the spaceship (like the ones that evolved to eat the metal and glass of the russian space lab).

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #59 on: 06/11/2012 03:43 pm »
Anyway, I'm glad you feel we need to know more before a manned landing. That's the main thing that I hope some of the space enthusiasts who want to land on mars will come to think as well.

I am very much on the side of wanting to colonise Mars, I'm a sci fi and space enthusiast and have read most of the early sci fi novels about Mars.

It's just that when you think about the details and the issues, as I've been doing since I heard about the modern researches and extremophiles etc, then it just doesn't seem safe to do it right now, that's what I'm coming over to believe - and the more I find out, the more it seems that we don't know enough yet and the more potential risks and issues there are that need to be deal with.

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #60 on: 06/11/2012 03:57 pm »
Also in case it got lost in the thread maybe a good point to summarise my main concerns.

1. That life could be introduced to Mars and change the planet so we lose the opportunity to study a truly pristine Mars which might have much to teach us.

2. That life introduced to Mars could evolve to new strains that are either a nuisance in various ways (like getting into the lungs making you cough that sort of thing), or even dangerous to humans - and once there would be an issue for all future attempts to colonise Mars

3. That life introduced to Mars could change the climate in ways that are undesirable or that have consequences that we don't want to happen.

4. Also that it is irreversible, once you introduce life to Mars you can't undo the results of what you did.

It's pretty much certain that there are habitats on Mars that Earth life could survive in and evolve in, even not just extremophiles, so long as they can survive between the warm periods when the ice melts, or deep underground in underground aquifers or in caves.

I think that it's possible after much more study that we could get around those issues. So that e.g. we might learn enough about terraforming, maybe with experience of closed ecologies in increasingly larger space habitats and experiments with actual Mars conditions to know what the effects of introducing life to Mars will be.

The main question seems to be about how easy or hard it is for the life we introduce to get from the space ship to those other habitats where it would survive.

Most likely I think you wouldn't send humans there first. You would send robots with a specially selected group of micro-organisms to prepare the planet first, also change the climate if needed, and you would actually have an eco-system there in place already.

Maybe proceed like steps through the stages of evolution of our planet so through selected micro-organisms then multi-cellular life and then finally introduce humans once it has stabilised.

But it might well turn out that what we can learn from Mars in its pristine state is so valuable that we don't want to terraform it for a long period of time in the future, and meanwhile space habs might provide places to colonise and so fullfil that need as well as Mars would ever do.

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #61 on: 06/11/2012 03:59 pm »
I do have clear ideas in my mind but don't always express them so well.

Been there, continue to do that.

Your idea of abandoning astronauts on Mars if they make a mess of the planet and pathogens develop there  But it leaves Mars as a planet that isn't safe for humans to colonise in the future....

Well, it's more like abandoning should they become deathly ill and contagious.  But still, that's why we have COSPAR, in part to avoid having a bad case of infectious planetaryitis.
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #62 on: 06/11/2012 04:07 pm »
Also in case it got lost in the thread maybe a good point to summarise my main concerns.

1. That life could be introduced to Mars and change the planet so we lose the opportunity to study a truly pristine Mars which might have much to teach us.

2. That life introduced to Mars could evolve to new strains ...

3. That life introduced to Mars could change the climate ...

4. Also that it is irreversible...

1. True, but a barren planet would have somewhat less to teach us, since Geology is less than the sum of Geology plus Life.

2. Yeah, so separate people from the planet for a good while.

3. Not all that much.  We would be changing the climate on purpose, should we terraform.

4. Yeah, but the call should be made at some point a good number of decades in the future.

Nice to see someone thinking a bit.
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #63 on: 06/11/2012 04:11 pm »
Great, anyway at least hope my concerns are clear, and thanks to all of you to listening to them and thinking about it, and I've found this a really useful discussion, and learnt quite a bit more about the subject as a result.

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #64 on: 06/11/2012 04:21 pm »
Also your answer to 1. is interesting, I agree that once we have found out all we can about the Pristine Mars, and if it then seems safe and wise to do it based on what we know then, it is possible we could also learn a lot from terraforming Mars as well.

There might be some who are preservationists wanting to preserve Mars no matter what or to try to keep the entire solar system in a pristine state for ever. I respect anyone who  thinks like that, it has it's points.

But myself, I feel it is okay to go out into space and develop the asteroids and the Moon and make habitats for humans there and possibly eventually indeed terraform Mars - or indeed Venus also is a possibility, there are ideas for ways it could be terraformed, and humans could also live on the poles of Mercury.

Then you could have life evolving separately on more than one planet in the solar system and that could be really interesting, to see what happens.

Or for that matter, another idea is, if we found early life on Mars which once flourished, and is now near extinct but some still survives - in that situation especially if it is interestingly different from Earth life, you could marsform Mars rather than terraform Mars.

By that I mean, make conditions there more like the conditions of early Mars - and then let the life continue to evolve on Mars like a parallel for the early years of Earth - and see if it evolves in the same way, see if you get e.g. multi-cellular life, and organisms evolving from the sea and so on - an experiment you can't do in a laboratory because you can only really do it realistically on a planet scale object like Mars.

Because - it doesn't seem to me that there is any urgent need for Mars as a place for humans to live since spacehabs can provide that just as easily, using water from the asteroids to make air and so on. So you could maybe have the opportunity to do stuff like that instead, if you take a more relaxed kind of laid back attitude to it, instead of deciding in advance what you want to do with Mars, first study the planet and find out a lot more about it, and then based on that, decide what you want to do next.

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #65 on: 06/11/2012 04:24 pm »
That could also be a really interesting thing to do with a sterile Mars, to return to the topic of this thread - marsform it, so the oceans return, careful not to seed it with any life at all, try to recreate conditions that are likely to make it possible for life to evolve, and then see if life evolves in the oceans.

Offline gospacex

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #66 on: 06/11/2012 10:06 pm »
The ground would be warm to the touch at times as Viking landers found that sometimes the soil can reach 27C http://www-k12.atmos.washington.edu/k12/resources/mars_data-information/temperature_overview.html

Wrong.
From your link:

"the warmest soil occasionally reaches +81° F (27° C) as estimated from Viking Orbiter Infrared Thermal Mapper."

Viking *Orbiter*, not lander. *Estimated* from IR mapper, not measured for real.

Even if we assume that estimation is correct, Orbiter sees millions upon millions of square kilometers of the planet, including some exceptional spots (black rocks + shaded from wind + at noon + on equator).

The highest ever temperature Viking *Landers* saw over *entire six years* of observations was -6C.

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BTW on the temperature, just discovered, air temperatures for the Spirit rover, measured in the shade, occasionally rose as high as 37C.

URL?

Offline gospacex

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #67 on: 06/11/2012 10:32 pm »
By that I mean, make conditions there more like the conditions of early Mars - and then let the life continue to evolve on Mars like a parallel for the early years of Earth - and see if it evolves in the same way, see if you get e.g. multi-cellular life, and organisms evolving from the sea and so on - an experiment you can't do in a laboratory because you can only really do it realistically on a planet scale object like Mars.

You do realize that this crazy idea of watching evolution unfold would require MILLIONS OF YEARS to bear fruit?

Do you realize that Mars is not yours to satisfy your curiosity, and only it? That besides scientific value, it has an enormous economic value as the most habitable planet we know (after Earth)?

Looking at the number of your posts in the last day, I must ask - are you obsessed? Can you survive knowing that some people - gasp! - might in fact disagree with you?

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #68 on: 06/11/2012 10:35 pm »
Okay, I can't find that particular page right now but here is another, this time it says Spirit recorded highest air temperatures in the shade of 35C in summer (95 degrees F)

http://marsrover.nasa.gov/spotlight/20070612.html

If you click on the seasonal chart you can see the details - for most of the year then it records air temperatures above 0C in the middle of the day in the shade:

http://marsrover.nasa.gov/spotlight/images/20070612/20070612_Spirit_LFHzczm_plot.jpg

I'm not sure how you interpret that in terms of soil temperature - does the air get hotter than the soil for some reason on Mars? What also about say a quartz flake creating a micro-climate over a patch of icy brine- would that be enough to melt the ice for say a couple of hours each day??

It did measure soil temperature as well. Somewhere I saw a mention of soil temperature measurement of 5C in the spring, so it would get warmer in the summer - but that was just like news stories rather than direct data from Nasa.

However it's solar panel temperatures here may be a rough guide to what soil temperatures are:

http://marsrover.nasa.gov/spotlight/images/20070612/20070612_Spirit_SA4_plot_2.jpg

It's not that different from the air temperature in the shade, differs in detail especially a dip in the maximum shade temperature around sol 600 but the temperature range is similar.

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #69 on: 06/11/2012 10:47 pm »
Okay - it's just an idea - mightn't be one of my better ideas, but I though it seemed nice at the time.

Yes do seem to have made rather a lot of posts now I think about it.

I'm going through a bit of a dull patch just now where it's just fixing lots of minor details in the next release of the software, and am self-employed so can get distracted sometimes. But I have actually got a fair amount of work done today, possibly a bit less than normal because of thinking about this and following up some of the ideas.

Anyway if it comes over like that then probably I've said too much, sometimes when you present too much material it no longer helps the case, better if the other person has to find out stuff themselves.

 I don't mean it like that though, I care about finding out what the truth is but not particularly concerned whether I'm right or not :).

Anyway it's been an enjoyable discussion and I have learnt a lot and just because I've answered your points doesn't mean I haven't listened to what you said as well and thought about it carefully because I have and will continue to mull it over when I think about this.

Thanks,




Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #70 on: 06/12/2012 12:22 am »
Anyway it's been an enjoyable discussion and I have learnt a lot and just because I've answered your points doesn't mean I haven't listened to what you said as well and thought about it carefully because I have and will continue to mull it over when I think about this.

Nicely put.

Take five, and go invent something.  Then tell us what it was. :)
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline Dalhousie

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #71 on: 06/12/2012 01:58 am »
We could learn a lot from robotic missions once you start to get sample returns from the planet - that's the main area where robots are lacking. Human operators can choose interesting rocks for the robots to bring back.

Certainly, which is why MSR has been the highest priority mars science objective ever since Viking.  Unfortunately it looks to be difficult, risky, and expensive, which is why it hasn’t been done yet.  It ids also very limited, most studies suggest that what might be returned is a kg or less of material from a single site or a cluster of sites in a very small area.

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The risk is endospores surviving in shadows. Surely they can just be brushed off surfaces, or be carried in the air? They must be light and easily travel and fall into shadows in the vicinity of a spacecraft.

If spores can move into shadows that easily, they can also move out again.  Shadows also move, and even permanently shadowed area get scattered UV.  Only when permanently buried will they be protected from UV.  Even then, unless it is in a habitable environment, the spores won’t activate.  Though protected from UV they will still be gradually killed off by background radiation

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I'm not convinced that the endospores won't be protected by the dust storms. It blocked 99% of the light for the solar panels for the Mars rovers

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2007/20jul_duststorm/

So does reduce the light considerably. Are you sure that it is transparent to UV or is that just a hypothesis for research?

The key phrase there is “direct sunlight”.  Even the worst dust storms don’t block out 99% of the total light.  Some is absorbed, some is scattered.

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Also the dust storms could pick up tiny pebbles, with endospores in crevices in the pebble, so protected like an endolith.

Dust storms don’t pick up pebbles.  We do know that sand  moves on Mars.  But again, any burial in a layer that can be moved by the wind will only be temporary as they will soon be uncovered again.  It might take longer to kill them off but killed off they will be. 

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Agree you have a good point they can't evolve new strains while inactive, that's a good point thanks for the correction.

No worries

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They could evolve while on Mars though in the intermediate habitats like the airlock, and they can also evolve in the clean room assembly traits that could be useful on Mars.

Neither of those environments are likely to drive evolution.  A clean room is simply one that is clean.  The airlock interior will basically be the same as the rest of the habitat.  If there is any selective pressure, it will be fore that environment, not for the outside world.

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Six sites isn't much and so far we don't even know much at all about the ground even a few inches below the surface.

It is not a lot, but it is certainly not no data.

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I call this an unknown because we don't have any previous experience of introducing new life to something as extensive and varied as a planet. So we can expect surprises.

Indeed.  Which is why stringent efforts are made to minimise it happening in an uncontrolled fashion.

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We do have a hypothesis that need testing - here the hypothesis that Mars is easily contaminated by a human mission, and that life introduced in that way can spread throughout the planet, and transform the climate. That's my hypothesis, similar to the continental drift hypothesis that continents move.

That is not a hypothesis, but a conclusion.  Approaching it as a science question is also the wrong way to go about it.    What are required is not hypotheses to be tested, but operational procedures to minimise risk.  This is a management and engineering issue, not a scientific one.  The science questions are much lower order and inform the process.  So we can measure the environmental parameters by spacecraft and extrapolate using models.  We can simulate these conditions in the laboratory and see how microbes repond.  We can measure the bioloads on spacecraft under assembly and after periods in space.

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You've produced various reasons for thinking it won't happen like that. But, even though you are obviously knowledgeable in the subject, and I don't dispute that, but still, that doesn't mean I have to accept the same conclusions.

Of course, people need to make up their own minds.

[
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I feel that you are underestimating the level of risk, also vastly underestimating the potential scientific returns from exploration and stud of Mars in its pristine state prior to terraforming, and over-estimating the advantages of human exploration over rovers.

The level of risk I am applying is the current standard for Mars missions, present and future, as laid out by COSPAR.  The current view, based on research and experience, is that we don’t need to sterilize spacecraft on the martian surface unless they are going to a special (i.e. potentially habiatable) region, and only then the tools and instruments that actually interact with it.

“Pristine”, like “contaminate” is a very subjective word.  It depends on the context and the aims. A pristine rock to a geochemist or mineralogist might well be crawling with microbes, they won’t care.  However, someone looking for prebiotic chemistry or biomarkers will not want any introduced microbes or foreign organics.  Which is why tools and instruments working on potentially habiatable zones on mars have to be both clean and sterile.

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Indeed in some ways I think rovers have advantages over humans. They can travel to places that humans can't travel to safely, can be made smaller than humans, airborne etc. Indeed especially with the way rovers and guided remote vehicles (e.g. in the deep sea or for study of volcanoes) are gradually beginning to be used on Earth to explore hostile environments, maybe by the time a human exploration to Mars is a reality then use of remotely guided and semi-autonomous robots for exploration might be the normal way of doing this.

None of the past, present, or future lunar or Mars rovers have been or will be sent to places that cannot be safely accessed by astronauts.

ROVs and AUVs have not really supplanted divers or crewed submersibles in underwater operations overall, they have complemented them. 

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We should be able to learn at least as much from Mars using rovers as we can learn from the ocean depths using remotely controlled vehicles, which is a lot especially once you can do sample return from Mars. Eventually you would want to go in person just as now people want to go to the ocean depths in person - but it's not necessary for the research, it is done more because it is a natural human thing to want to go there in person.

Unmanned overs on Mars will, by their nature, always carry fewer instruments of lower precision and accuracy than a crewed mission, will work far slower, and are far less flexible and adaptable.  Of course, if direct human presence is not possible then people have to live with the consequences of that.

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The rovers we've sent to Mars so far are just early pioneers. Later ones will give much more science return, and sample return also.

They will be better, but the limits are still there.  Time lag, power, volume and mass constraints.  Any improvements will benefit crewed mission as well, so the performance difference, a factor of about a thousand, will remain the same. That's just in the rasks the unmanned rover can do.  There will remian other tasks that unmanned rovers are ill-equipped to do, and some that are impossible.
Apologies in advance for any lack of civility - it's unintended

Offline Dalhousie

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #72 on: 06/12/2012 02:01 am »
BTW with the drilling one of the points they make is that drilling is often done remotely by telepresence here on the Earth, sometimes by operators over 100 Km distant from the drills  So it's not that different to do it the same way on Mars.

No.  Research rigs aside, you still need people on hand to operate and service the drill system, even if control in some cases is off-site.

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The equipment still has to be transported to Mars either way and with telepresence you don't have to get the humans down to the surface and up again, so quite a saving on the lander and fuel.

The surface of Mars is a much safer place for the crew than being in Mars orbit. Plus experiments show that in exploration direct human presence outperforms telepresence by a factor of ten, even in those fields which can be done with telepresence. 

The payload cost on the Mars surface of a system that takes full advantage of telepresence is not going to be much smaller than what is required for a crewed mission.

Anyway, we have moved OT, there are plenty of threads that discuss this already.
Apologies in advance for any lack of civility - it's unintended

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #73 on: 06/12/2012 04:27 pm »
Nicely put.

Take five, and go invent something.  Then tell us what it was. :)

Thanks :). As you see I've taken a bit of a break, done lots of work today, this is a good time to relax and post a bit more before supper :). If I leave it for a while before posting, that should deal with what seems to be a bit of an issue of posting too much, also gives time to think things over.

Actually it may seem a bit dull, it's a software metronome, but I find it really interesting coding most of the time - inventing lots of details about how it works. Many musicians are excited about it mainly because it handles complex rhythms no other metronome can manage (as far as I know). It's called "bounce metronome"

Stuff like this - this is a video of the release candidate I'm working on now showing some of its new capabilities


Or this bouncing sprite which is rather fun:


This shows a couple of my older programs, not been working on them for some time though, hope to return to them soon:


So anyway that's enough to give you an idea of what I do :).
Robert

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #74 on: 06/12/2012 05:27 pm »

Certainly, which is why MSR has been the highest priority mars science objective ever since Viking.  Unfortunately it looks to be difficult, risky, and expensive, which is why it hasn’t been done yet.  It ids also very limited, most studies suggest that what might be returned is a kg or less of material from a single site or a cluster of sites in a very small area.

Yes right, there are several ideas around, this ESA one might be the first to get a sample back, and they don't say an amount but another one said 500g.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/jonathanamos/2010/06/planning-for-mars-sample-retur.shtml
That's still a fair amount, enough to keep scientists writing papers for decades I expect, as they gradually learn more about Mars from it.

But - it's no surprise, if you take all your fuel with you, it has to be a pretty small rocket, in some ways its amazing that you can even think of sending a rocket all the way back from Mars to Earth, it helps that Mars has such a low gravity and thin atmosphere.

I think the way forward further in the future to get lots of material back is to use the same method as for Mars Direct where you generate most of the fuel for the return journey on the surface of Mars itself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Direct

If spores can move into shadows that easily, they can also move out again.  Shadows also move, and even permanently shadowed area get scattered UV.  Only when permanently buried will they be protected from UV.  Even then, unless it is in a habitable environment, the spores won’t activate.  Though protected from UV they will still be gradually killed off by background radiation

All I can say is, I don't find that convincing enough, could deal with some of the endospores of course but some places will be permanently shadowed, fall into a gap between two pebbles or something, and get very little light even if on the surface. Then just needs a rover or astronaut to roll over that pebble, or even for the wind to move it, and it is buried completely.

The key phrase there is “direct sunlight”.  Even the worst dust storms don’t block out 99% of the total light.  Some is absorbed, some is scattered.

Do you have any references there? Or is it just a working hypothesis?

If it's dropped by 99% then that surely means total light reaching the panel and not just the amount that reaches it directly. Or is it less able to convert light that hits the panel from an angle? I don't think solar electric works like that, so long as the photons hit the panel it should be able to convert it.

The absorbed light in the dust would get re-radiated as infra-red probably I imagine, obviously can't just disappear because of energy conservation, but that's probably what happens to the UV as well.

Dust storms don’t pick up pebbles.  We do know that sand  moves on Mars.  But again, any burial in a layer that can be moved by the wind will only be temporary as they will soon be uncovered again.  It might take longer to kill them off but killed off they will be. 

Again hard to prove a negative like that. Especially if you think about the dust devils, also in a big storm it would be complex, and there would be places with stronger winds within it perhaps dust devils within the storms - some think that dust devils start off storms though I gather there is uncertainty about that.

I had a look around but couldn't find anything on the largest grains raised by a storm. But dust devils certainly can lift grains of a few mm across as this reference shows:

http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/full/gif/1985LPI....16..571M/0000571.000.html

Also it disturbed the position of a pebble in the cms range.

But a few mm is easily large enough to have some crevices and cracks for endospores to lodge in and survive, as endospores are really tiny, not sure but perhaps even the fine dust you get most of in dust storms might have a few cracks in the particles that an endospore could be sheltered in?


Neither of those environments are likely to drive evolution.  A clean room is simply one that is clean.  The airlock interior will basically be the same as the rest of the habitat.  If there is any selective pressure, it will be fore that environment, not for the outside world.
 

Sorry not explained it too well, needs a bit of background. The clean rooms  favour organisms that are able to survive the cleaning procedures that are used to keep the rooms clean. That's what that the author of that paper I quoted earlier about extremophiles in clean rooms was interested in. As I understand it clean rooms at least the ones used for spacecraft assembly are quite a good place to look for extremophiles becaue the very measures that keep the rooms clean remove all ordinary micro-organisms so favour extremophiles populations. I don't know if they actually drive evolution, but they might,
If you find a previously unknown species in a clean room, as has happened, it would be hard to know perhaps if it evolved their or you just never knew about it before.
There's that paper again that I mentioned earlier, here it is:
http://aem.asm.org/content/71/8/4163.full

"Spacecraft assembly facilities such as those used by NASA at the California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the Johnson Space Center, and the Kennedy Space Center are unique microbiological environments. They are extremely oligotrophic (nutrient poor and high stress) because they are rigorously and repeatedly cleaned with antimicrobial agents, particulates are continuously filtered from the air circulating through the facilities, the atmospheres within the facilities are maintained at low humidity, and most surfaces are comprised of man-made materials, such as polished metals. Thus, these facilities are highly selective for indigenous communities of microorganisms that resist desiccation, chemical sterilization agents, and high-energy radiation (36, 68). Interestingly, radiation resistance is observed in these communities even though the facilities themselves are not exposed to unusual radiation other than normal lighting. The local sources of microbes, however, are sometimes subject to high solar light intensities, and these sources provide the microbial forms that eventually are subject to the selective pressure of the cleanroom environment (49)."

Also popular articles about it here:
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2007/08/nasa-finds-unkn.html

As for the airlock the idea there was that it is an environment that sometimes has Earth air in it and sometimes has Mars air and sometimes a mixture of the two, and same for temperature. So will favour organisms that can cope with both environments and able to do the transition from one to the other. Also if left open to the Mars atmosphere for long periods of time, it would favour organisms that can survive on Mars particularly.

That is not a hypothesis, but a conclusion. ...  This is a management and engineering issue, not a scientific one.

Sorry, no I don't mean it like that at all, it's a hypothesis because I don't know if it is true or not. It's not a conclusion. It seems likely to me but needs more research to see if it is true or not. Also it isn't yet a management and engineering issue because we know so little about what Mars is like and we also know so little about extremophiles - don't even have a complete list of all the organisms that co-exist on a human body never mind a list of their extremophile capabilities. Also don't have a complete inventory of all the extremophiles that can be found on spacecraft, that paper made it very clear that the author was not able to characterise or identify all the extremophiles found, only the cultivable ones. And we know very little about how things can evolve left to themselves, the nearest we have got to finding out how life might evolve spreading over a whole planet is just to do experiments usually just in a flask or the like.

Most definitely a science question I say, at this stage.


The level of risk I am applying is the current standard for Mars missions, present and future, as laid out by COSPAR.  The current view, based on research and experience, is that we don’t need to sterilize spacecraft on the martian surface unless they are going to a special (i.e. potentially habiatable) region, and only then the tools and instruments that actually interact with it.

Again the COSPAR requirement is that any such spacecraft must not contaminate the target area in the case of a hard landing. No human occupied spacecraft can fulfill that requirement in the case of Mars.

As to the idea of just sterilising the tools, I don't see that that achieves much if a human is operating them with an unsterilised space-suit, and sterilising all the space-suits for 30 hours at wekll over 100C every time you use them - and that's just Viking level of sterilisation, considered nowadays to be inadequate. And even after you do that, if you can do it somehow, how do you get the astronaut inside the spacesuit without contaminating it again? It seems unlikely that an astronaut would survive the process if you do it with them inside the space-suit.

I can't see any way of a human expedition satisfying the COSPAR requirements. They are multi-level requirements, it's much less for visiting the Moon or an asteroid, humans could do that, but for Mars they are so strict it doesn't seem possible with current technology, only with ideas for future tech. that are science fiction at present. I do wish it was otherwise but that's what seems to be the situation.

None of the past, present, or future lunar or Mars rovers have been or will be sent to places that cannot be safely accessed by astronauts.

Well they could be though. When I said that, I had in mind e.g. underground caves where a rover could go into small spaces no human can get into.

Apart of course from the consideration that it's not safe for humans to visit Mars at all at this stage, but talking about actual physical - also a human expedition would most likely use a fair number of autonomous rovers anyway especially aerial ones to explore the planet beyond the distance they can travel in a day - they could fly themselves but that's much more costly and also risky - that you might lose an astronaut in an accident, far worse than losing a flying robot in an accident.

ROVs and AUVs have not really supplanted divers or crewed submersibles in underwater operations overall, they have complemented them. 
Ah there I had in mind the expeditions to the very deepest depths of the oceans. Those are nearly all by remotely operated robotic ships because humans can't get out of the ship anyway once down there, so it makes hardly any difference to send robots. And they are able to achieve a great deal. When humans go along they don't really achieve much more than they would operating them by telepresence from the surface.

It's quite similar to exploration of Mars by telepresence, the astronauts in orbit around Mars are not unlike the scientist in their ships above the ocean depths operating their robotic explorers remotely, could be a useful thing to study to help with preparation for exploring Mars by telepresence.

Unmanned overs on Mars will, by their nature, always carry fewer instruments of lower precision and accuracy than a crewed mission, will work far slower, and are far less flexible and adaptable.  Of course, if direct human presence is not possible then people have to live with the consequences of that.

True of the current generation of rovers, but in the future they are bound to get more autonomous, smaller, more sophisticated, and able to do more.

As they get more autonomous they will be able to move faster and do things  in real time more without supervision. The extra instruments - is that not mainly because a human mission would be better funded? If you took a human mission, and then replaced the humans by machines, and took out all the life support needed by humans and replaced it by more instruments and rovers, I think you'd end up with something not that different in its capabilities.

Of course have to live with the consequences if they do have to be slow but I think they will eventually get very productive.

Same also with the mars sample return. If you can return a crew of human astronauts from Mars, together with samples, you can certainly return an even larger amount of samples from Mars - you can ditch all the life support from the return rocket, and just have whatever is needed to get it home. The Mars direct approach generating fuel on the surface seems like just the sort of thing that could with a purely robotic explorer return large quantities of samples from Mars, similar to the material returned from the Moon by the manned expeditions there.

If you put as much research into ways of doing it with robots as goes into ideas for human exploration of Mars you could find a way of doing it I'm sure, and I think it would cost a lot less than a human expedition to return the same amounts.


Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #75 on: 06/12/2012 05:41 pm »
Also a few more things I found out today, here is a quote from Sagan in an early paper

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19670031109_1967031109.pdf

"In the absence of a large body of experience with Mariner and Voyager spacecraft, and in the absence of in situ studies of the Martian surface andsubsurface, we are very ignorant of the relevant parameters.
A single terrestrial microorganism reproducing as slowly as once a month on Mars would, in the absence of other ecological limitations, result in less than a decade in a microbial population of the Martian soil comparable to that ofthe Earth's."

and if you have a read of that paper it's clear he is very concerned at the possibility of Earth life contaminating Mars.

Also there is an international committee against sample return here and they are very concerned with both forward and backward contamination.

http://www.icamsr.org/

It brought up something I hadn't thought of before. Of course these sample returns are going to be returns to the Earth by aerobraking most likely, and what if the container fails, the parachute doesn't open etc.

That's already happened with that sample return from a comet where the capsule was meant to be caught in mid-air and wasn't and broke on the surface and was contaminated with Earth life making it a bit hard to know which of the dust particles came from the comet. Can't remember all the details but sure you must know the one I mean.

That does seem to me really unsafe at our current level of knowledge, if that can happen because at our stage of knowledge and what I've found out it does seem that there could easily be human pathogens on Mars, and the independent evolution could go either way, that they aren't adapted to us, or the other way, that we have evolved no defences to them. Maybe 50 / 50 chance??

Of course carrying along all the fuel needed for not just sample return but also braking into orbit around Earth makes it even tougher. But there are things you could do. Maybe repeated orbits around Moon and Earth, gravity slingshots would do the trick, or something of that sort. Also you could launch another rocket from Earth and accelerate it to the speed of the sample and catch it and come back to the Earth, again seems within the scope of human ingenuity.

Also for that matter, if you judge things just right, you could find an orbit around the Earth perhaps where you could match orbital velocity of the spacecraft with the incoming rocket with maybe just a bit of delta v and pick it up with a space-plane? And then just keep it in orbit while it is studied to see if it is safe to bring it back to Earth.

I feel that those people in that committee have a point and that we do need to take care especially with the first sample return when we don't know much about it.


Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #76 on: 06/12/2012 05:54 pm »
You do realize that this crazy idea of watching evolution unfold would require MILLIONS OF YEARS to bear fruit?

Just to say a bit more about it. I was looking at it the other way around, from the point of view of scientists who try to study evolution of life from pre-life chemicals in the laboratory. Even if it just went on for say a century or so it could be really interesting to see what happens.

However thinking about it some more, it's also something you could do in a large space habitat purpose made for the experiment.

It does seem a nice idea to me still though, but not want to make a big deal about it, not on a crusade to make it happen :).

But if you are more laid back - also - e.g. if human life expectancy increased, there seems to be no theoretical limit to life expectancy of a human when they study really old people and the numbers that survive to different ages. So it's possible in theory that humans could eventually live for thousands of years (something Asimov explored a bit in his sci fi stories).

Millions of years seems a bit out of reach somehow though :).

When you take a longer term view then with the possibility of habitats for humans to live in, to expand outside the Earth, and bearing in mind it's not going to help at all with overpopulation of the Earth as it would cost far too much to transport reasonable numbers of people from Earth to Mars, then I really don't see any reason why we have to terraform Mars at all. We can do it because we want to, because it's a nice thing to do, or because it's got benefits, but not because it solves any problems particularly here back on Earth.

If Mars is better left as it is because it is more interesting and useful like that, or if we can learn more by engaging in some large scale experiment involving the whole planet such as marsforming instead of terraforming, I really see no reason at all why we shouldn't do that.

That's my POV on the matter. :)


Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #77 on: 06/12/2012 05:59 pm »
The surface of Mars is a much safer place for the crew than being in Mars orbit. Plus experiments show that in exploration direct human presence outperforms telepresence by a factor of ten, even in those fields which can be done with telepresence. 


Just one more thing then I think that's enough for today :).

I'd say that Mars orbit is safer than the surface. Already humans have lived in the space station for years on end with no problems at all, the main hazards come from our own space debris in orbit.

So I think humans in orbit around Mars are much safer than they are on the surface - apart from the lack of gravity. A spinning habitat would deal with that, even one made of two rockets tethered together spinning around the centre of gravity.

On the surface you have the dust storms, corosion, and if you do any eploring at all as you surely will, issues of the space-suits malfunctioning (in the space ship you don't need to use space-suits at all unless you have to go outside to fix something and then it isn't for long) - also rovers getting stuck leaving humans stranded, and of course accidents, just minor falls much more dangerous on Mars.

And that doesn't take account of the possibility of mars based pathogens, also some think the mars dust might be not so good for human lungs if breathed in.

Anyway that's my $0.02 cents, thanks

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #78 on: 06/12/2012 06:12 pm »
Quote from: robertinventor
But a few mm is easily large enough to have some crevices and cracks for endospores to lodge in and survive, as endospores are really tiny...

I think you're trying too hard to hypothesize those endospores into coming out of dormancy. 

If they are to have a good chance of survival, they'd have to be well below the area affected by the weather and solar radiation.  The small moveable crevices you suggest don't stay in one place long enough for them to survive.  Those crevices that are shaded and thus amenable to the spores' dormancy, would have to be infected first, and you don't suggest a possible mechanism for the primary infection.  There's got to be a mechanism for the first microbes to get to the right crevice the first time.

Quote from: the paper you quoted
Thus, these facilities are highly selective for indigenous communities of microorganisms that resist desiccation, chemical sterilization agents, and high-energy radiation ...

Remember tho, that Earth has a huge cesspool of microbial candidates all vying for the opportunity to survive in this environmental niche, so it's easier for that to happen on Earth.  Right now, it doesn't look like Mars does have quite the cesspool, so it would be a rare microorganism and a rare failure of sterilization, and a rare opportunity of infecting us that must be accounted for with some known data.  Same with us infecting them, assuming that we implement sterilization procedures.

Sagan's speculation about the possiblity of a rampant microbial infection, kinda like Australia with the rabbits, doesn't come with any statistics, but there does seem to be a non-zero possibility of that occuring.   

So, I intuitively agree that MSR "does seem to me really unsafe at our current level of knowledge".
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline gospacex

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #79 on: 06/12/2012 07:23 pm »
If Mars is better left as it is because it is more interesting and useful like that, or if we can learn more by engaging in some large scale experiment involving the whole planet such as marsforming instead of terraforming, I really see no reason at all why we shouldn't do that.

I already gave you a reason why we shouldn't do that:

Mars surface is roughly equal to the surface of dry land of Earth. Eventually it can house a population of several billion people - an entire second human civilization. Its potential price (usefulness) is so vast it probably hard to quantify.

And you propose to just leave it alone?

We are very lucky Columbus has a different opinion when he went to discover new lands.
« Last Edit: 06/12/2012 07:23 pm by gospacex »

Offline gospacex

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #80 on: 06/12/2012 07:25 pm »
On the surface you have the dust storms, corosion,...

And this little insignificant thing called ISRU...

Offline Robotbeat

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #81 on: 06/12/2012 10:15 pm »
I hope Mars is barren of life, because it will make it easier to colonize.

I don't understand the extreme fear of pathogens. Any new cave may have unforeseen pathogens (and probably would be more likely to infect humans than something with a completely different chemistry), yet we don't stop exploring caves, in fact we pursue such exploration because they may also contain cures.

If Mars is so fertile to contamination from Earth's spores, then it's already contaminated by billions of years of meteorites, solar wind sweeping off particles and spreading them throughout our part of the galaxy. That's why I think we may well find life on Mars, life that originally developed on Earth (or possibly vice versa).

Our ancestors spread to new continents that were absolutely filled to the brim with new creatures and diseases. Are you saying we should have stayed in just that corner of Africa? Also, there are all sorts of Martian meteorites that have hit the Earth from Mars, so we are also contaminated by whatever hardy lifeforms Mars holds.

We can't just stay in the cradle forever.
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Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #82 on: 06/12/2012 10:21 pm »
Well just a quick reply.

First, JohnFornaro, there are those over 1000 different species on the human body and a large number of different species of extremophiles that are found in spacecraft assembly clean rooms to start with.

Also the numbers of individual organisms involved are truly huge. In actual numbers - one figure said is that there are more micro-organisms on and in your body than there are cells that make up your body, another figure, there are over 100 micro-organisms just on the skin of a single human than there are human beings on the Earth.

So a human occupied spacecraft will have many trillions of micro-organisms and probably several thousand different species of them, with many of the species not yet well known or much studied, and quite a few of them already extremophiles.

So - it's the huge numbers involved - I'm not suggesting the endospores come out of dormancy on the surface of Mars and then find the crevice, I just mean they get blown there on small currents of air, or fall there by chance when they aland on the ground, just one of them falls right down into a crevice in a pebble just by chance.

I don't know what the exact figures are to plug in here and probably has to be a bit of a guess anyway - but just for instance, if you have billions of the spores just because of a small leak, and ability to form spores in the airlock, then even 0.1% survival as they blow out of the spacecraft onto the surface and for a few minutes are exposed to the sun perhaps (and maybe they fall out on the shadowed side in that case most may survive)

- that will still leave tens of millions of them, and so as it steps down, maybe millions of those find a way into a shadow (must be lots of them around the spacecraft, and even all over the surface of Mars) and maybe a few thousand of those eventually are lucky enough to get lodged into a crack and get out of the light completely.

All that is from just one small release and you get lots of events like that during a human exploration of Mars.

Then later on you get a dust storm, and out of those few thousand, one of them
 ends up somewhere where it meets water - maybe several days into the storm not right away, gets picked up, falls, picked up, falls etc.

Or even, there's a drop of water near the spacecraft in the soil, and you don't need a large environment for life at this scale to grow long enough to duplicate.

I do understand that if it just comes out of the endospore and immediately meets hostile conditions then it will only help to kill it - but if e.g. the drops of water dry up gradually or freeze up gradually as the day progresses and warm up the next day.

It is the toughest step surely for it to find a habitat. But - the endospores are also amazingly long lived and if one of them is lodged securely out of harms way, it will remain viable perhaps for thousands of years even, so will easily outlive a few dust storms.

It's not just spores that could contaminate the surface, also non spore forming extremophiles that survive long enough to land on a spot where they can flouris.

Even that "Conan bacterium" - if there is just a bit of organic matter, then it's able to survive on granite cliffs in antarctica where there can't be that much for it to eat, also although aerobic, it survives fine without oxygen and might be able to find dissolved oxygen in brine beneath the Martian surface.

Now that I know about the possible warmth of the surface I wonder if some could already survive just in brine that melts for an hour or two on the surface in summer.

Do correct me if there is something I don't understand about these numbers involved and the number of endospores that could form if the conditions are right.

Anyway that's how I was thinking about that point, and anyway good to hear that you reckon more research is needed. Also  I agree with you, MSR does seem really unsafe at our current level of knowledge if it is returned all the way to Earth, didn't realise that yesterday because I hadn't thought through how they were going to do it, but that's what I think now.

It would be okay if it is returned to the Moon or to orbit.

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #83 on: 06/12/2012 10:37 pm »
I don't understand the extreme fear of pathogens. Any new cave may have unforeseen pathogens (and probably would be more likely to infect humans than something with a completely different chemistry), yet we don't stop exploring caves, in fact we pursue such exploration because they may also contain cures.

If Mars is so fertile to contamination from Earth's spores, then it's already contaminated by billions of years of meteorites, solar wind sweeping off particles and spreading them throughout our part of the galaxy. That's why I think we may well find life on Mars, life that originally developed on Earth (or possibly vice versa).

Our ancestors spread to new continents that were absolutely filled to the brim with new creatures and diseases. Are you saying we should have stayed in just that corner of Africa? Also, there are all sorts of Martian meteorites that have hit the Earth from Mars, so we are also contaminated by whatever hardy lifeforms Mars holds.
We can't just stay in the cradle forever.

The thing is that very very few species from Earth can ever have got all the way to Mars through that route, or vice versa. On the Earth then there is so much mixing of the air and the sea, and all the winds, that even if there are specialist micro-organisms in various places, e.g. because they depend on an animal host, they are mostly going to be closely related and a succesful genera is likely to be found widely spread throughout the Earth.

So - when we travelled from place to place on the Earth we took our micro-organisms with us, but the only ones that were of real concern were the pathogens - e.g. the way our flu viruses to this day still continue to kill off entire tribes of people in the amazon because they haven't developed resistance to them. The non host specific pathogens then for most of them we will have already developed resistance to them so don't need to fear encountering them on other continents or for that matter taking them with us (because the chance is high they are already there).

The best analogy we have then is with larger animals, like the rabbits in Australia, they are the equivalent of the microbes and Mars, because they can't get there by themselves and we take them with us. In the same way, we will take lots of microbes to Mars that maybe could never get there by themselves (aren't able to withstand thousands of years in vacuum conditions travel on a meteorite) - or else - just by chance never did get there.

Also any that have already got there have had millions of years of evolution over a whole planet. We simply don't have any experience to guide us to show us what can happen in that situation and it is far too large to simulate with experiments in the lab, or to try to model with computers. You can't scale up experiments with a few flasks of organisms in labs on the Earth over a few decades to a whole planet over millions of years and get any clear idea of what might happen there.

It's known that pathogens can develop without an animal host. So it's well possible that there could be pathogens on Mars that we have no resistance to. Especially that's possible if there has been some sharing of DNA between the planets in the past. They could also though just be dangerous because of their size and shape - e.g. like the way asbestos fibres cause disease in humans and they aren't even living, if they happened to have similar properties to asbestos fibres for some reason, the don't even need to be related to Earth organsims at all.

So - as I understand it those are the sorts of reasons why it's an issue.

It's the same also with the Martian meteorites that have hit the Earth. They only carry a small selection of microbes. It's possible that Deinococcus radiodurans originated from Mars originally, but even if not, it might well be a good example of the sort of thing that might return from Mars, with such an extreme environment you might well get new polyextremophiles like that. The ones that have already got here, are ones that life on Earth has already adapted to and learnt to deal with. Who knows, maybe some of them have already caused extinction events in the past, would be hard to know if they did. If it's usually the same species that survives the journey it might be millions of years between each new introduction of a species from Mars via meteorites.

Hope that's a bit clearer.


Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #84 on: 06/12/2012 10:59 pm »
I already gave you a reason why we shouldn't do that:

Mars surface is roughly equal to the surface of dry land of Earth. Eventually it can house a population of several billion people - an entire second human civilization. Its potential price (usefulness) is so vast it probably hard to quantify.

And you propose to just leave it alone?

We are very lucky Columbus has a different opinion when he went to discover new lands.

Yes I still think it's a nice idea to leave it alone or do something else with it other than terraform it.

Several reasons. First - I was a bit surprised even that you thought of billions of people living on Mars, I thought myself only in terms of maybe a few thousand, maybe a few million eventually - but if you do fully terraform it and manage to give it a close to Earth pressure atmosphere, so they can live anywhere just on the surface not e.g. only at the deepest places on the planet - I can see that you could end up with billions there yes, if it all worked out well.

But  that's a heroic enterprise, and for the same amount of effort you could have the same number of people living in habitats, thousands of them. They could spread out to inhabit the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud - in the not too near future then we will almost certainly have fusion in one form or another and able to turn ice directly into power most likely so can have miniature suns, artificial gravity through spinning the habitat, automated construction of most of the habitat using robots, you could potentially have Earth life throughout the Oort cloud, eventually even travelling in a very easy way to other nearby stars just when the stars get close enough so their Oort clouds merge as happens from time to time even without any interstellar travel partiuclary planned.

In fact I worry more that the population might get too vast that way if we do end up able to live in space, and am somewhat comforted that it seems that there is a tleast a reasonable chance that our world population will eventually peak as the rate of growth is slowing down and projections are for peak any time from 2050 at best case situation - or trending towards a maximum in 2100 otherwise, though it could also continue near exponential in worst case projections.

And in the near future then space habs I think are by far the best way to go if your aim is somewhere for humans to live other than the Earth. As for ISRU then you have everything you need on asteroids, many ways better than Mars. Even for Mars the astronauts in orbit could mine Deimos and get things there.

And for us there are those 900+ NEOs with radius between 1km and 32 km, which is a lot of material, and unlike the Moon they didn't form in collision of a body with the Earth, at least some will just be old comets indeed, so can expect reasonable amounts of water and ice there, if not on the surface then if you dig for it. That you can then turn into air and water for the habitat, and it is all controllable, and small. If something goes wrong biologically, then you have a reasonable chance of doing somehting about it which you can't do with Mars.

If your aim is to terraform Mars also I feel the first step, coming to that point of view more and more, is to terraform an asteroid into a liveable habitat first .If you can't make a success at that, or if you get issues doing that and problems that lead you to have to abandon the habitat because it is no longer liveable in - then there is no way you are close to the level of scientific knowledge you need for terraforming Mars yet, in my opinion.

It's not like Earth where we have grown up together and in many ways Earth is like "Mother Nature" that when we get things wrong as we so often do here, the oceans over fished, even introducing wrong species to continents - or chopping down large numbers of trees "the lungs of the planet" - can cause a lot of issues and so on but the planet has lots of self-righting mechanisms as in the Gaia hypothesis, if you take the lesser versions of the hypothesis then I think most scientists accept them, not perhaps the stronger Gaia hypotheses those are more controversial.

So our Earth is like self righting, a bit like a gyroscope, when you knock it off balance it tends to recover and it will take a lot to really mess it up, and if we do many think the most that is liekly to happen is that we just become extinct ourselves and the planet continues without us possibly after a large extinction event.

But - Mars doesn't seem to have developed it's version of Gaia, the atmosphere is pretty much in balance. So it's not going to be able to help us out and correct our mistakes if we get things wrong. In order to terraform it, we have to set it up in such a way that it develops it's own Gaia, give it a helping hand - I'm just using that as a shorthand for the weak Gaia hypothesis not necessarily the strong one.

So - that's why it can easily mess up if we just do maybe some small mis-step. It's such a complex thing getting a whole planet to work right with all the right feedback loops and so on, instead of going into some kind of runaway loop that we don't want. And we didn't evolve on Mars, so we have to not only make sure that it sets up some form of Gaia stabilisation but also make sure it's the right one for us, and not maybe instead the right form of Gaia for some kind of organism we would regard as an extremophile.

Again hope this helps make it clearer, and I find my own thought on the matter getting clearer too as I write this so it is useful to be challenged in this way, thanks.




Offline Dalhousie

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #85 on: 06/13/2012 01:23 am »

I'd say that Mars orbit is safer than the surface. Already humans have lived in the space station for years on end with no problems at all, the main hazards come from our own space debris in orbit.

Nobody has spent 900-1000 days in on the ISS or Mir on a single mission, which is equivalent to a Mars mission that teleoperates equipment, but dopes not land.  A crew on such a mission would have higher exposure to zero gravity and radiation, but risk factors than one that lands.

In return you get a ten fold increase in performance over remote control from earth and but the crew are still 100 times less effective that they would be on the surface.

Quote
So I think humans in orbit around Mars are much safer than they are on the surface - apart from the lack of gravity. A spinning habitat would deal with that, even one made of two rockets tethered together spinning around the centre of gravity.

Spin gravity is undemonstrated with unknown long term effects.  Proving it up would require an extensive program.  There is also

Quote
On the surface you have the dust storms, corosion, and if you do any eploring at all as you surely will, issues of the space-suits malfunctioning (in the space ship you don't need to use space-suits at all unless you have to go outside to fix something and then it isn't for long) - also rovers getting stuck leaving humans stranded, and of course accidents, just minor falls much more dangerous on Mars.

Every spacecraft that has survived landing on Mars has greatly exceeded its operating life.  We have more than 20 years of cumulative. experience in the surface.  So sign of corrosion and dust storms are easily managed.

Quote
And that doesn't take account of the possibility of mars based pathogens, also some think the mars dust might be not so good for human lungs if breathed in.

What pathogens?  The assumption in this thread (read the title) is that there is no life on Mars.

Dust is easily managed through air showers and filters.
Apologies in advance for any lack of civility - it's unintended

Offline QuantumG

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #86 on: 06/13/2012 01:28 am »
Nobody has spent 900-1000 days in on the ISS or Mir on a single mission

Nice hedge there.

Are there astronauts (not cosmonauts) who have had more than 2 years in LEO? How about 4 years? Who holds the current record for total time on orbit? Why don't we know these numbers and celebrate them?

I wonder if these numbers for cosmonauts have been beat:

Quote
Sergei Vasilyevich Avdeyev, 747.6 days on 3 flights.
Valeri Vladimirovich Polyakov, 678.7 days on 2 flights.
Anatoliy Yakovlevich Solovyov, 651.0 days on 5 flights.
Sergei Konstantiovich Krikalyov, 624.4 days on 5 flights.

http://www.allaboutspace.com/explorers/spacefirsts.shtml
« Last Edit: 06/13/2012 01:31 am by QuantumG »
Human spaceflight is basically just LARPing now.

Offline Dalhousie

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #87 on: 06/13/2012 01:52 am »
Nobody has spent 900-1000 days in on the ISS or Mir on a single mission

Nice hedge there.

Are there astronauts (not cosmonauts) who have had more than 2 years in LEO? How about 4 years? Who holds the current record for total time on orbit? Why don't we know these numbers and celebrate them?

I wonder if these numbers for cosmonauts have been beat:

Quote
Sergei Vasilyevich Avdeyev, 747.6 days on 3 flights.
Valeri Vladimirovich Polyakov, 678.7 days on 2 flights.
Anatoliy Yakovlevich Solovyov, 651.0 days on 5 flights.
Sergei Konstantiovich Krikalyov, 624.4 days on 5 flights.

http://www.allaboutspace.com/explorers/spacefirsts.shtml


I think the historic experience is very relevant for missions to and from mars with a landing in between. 

Nearly 30 people have cumulative flight times of more than a year with up to four long duration flights, including those you list.  Valery Ryumin's experience of (from memory) two 6 month missions 10 months apart is also very relevant.  This covers off reasonably well (IMO) for cumulative radiation and zerogravity exposure for conjunction class surface missions.

However we don't have any experience with single flight missions of 18 months duration.

Even with that experience we can still say that a surface crew will have lower total exposure to zero gravity (broke up into two periods) and over total radiation exposure.

It might be OK, but
Apologies in advance for any lack of civility - it's unintended

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #88 on: 06/13/2012 09:04 pm »
Nobody has spent 900-1000 days in on the ISS or Mir on a single mission, which is equivalent to a Mars mission that teleoperates equipment, but dopes not land.  A crew on such a mission would have higher exposure to zero gravity and radiation, but risk factors than one that lands.

Yes it's a point, longest mission on ISS or MIR is half of that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight_records#Ten_longest_human_space_flights

You are also right to point out that the land rovers have survived remarkably well on the surface of Mars, though they have had mishaps like the solar panels covered in dust or getting their wheels stuck. There would be issues and accidents too probably but shouldn't overplay that, it's probably a safer environment than Earth in some respects, though on the other side, it is obviously less safe in other ways that if you are on the surface wearing a spacesuit and have a fall that on Earth might e.g. just lead to a broken arm or even just a twisted ankle perhaps, on Mars it might damage the spacesuit and kill you, which may be low risks, but you don't have them at all in the space station. But all in all yes, perhaps from purely physical point of view, and just based on what we know or can guess, it doesn't seem very dangerous, just somewhat more chance of mishap, shouldn't overplay it.

But I think you've dismissed the tether idea rather too readily as it is one of the methods widely suggested as a way to get artificial gravity during spaceflight to Mars for the manned mission proposals. So, if it seems possible you can use it during spaceflight to the planet then you can surely also use it in orbit around the planet.  Obviously it needs research and is likely to turn up issues to deal with, e.g. how do you spin it up, and can you navigate with it spun up or do you have to spin it down again to navigate.

Here is one paper about research into it:
http://iaaweb.org/iaa/Scientific%20Activity/Study%20Groups/SG%20Commission%202/sg22/sg22finalreportr.pdf

"A variable length tether that could be unreeled in orbit and used to connect a space-craft to a counterweight has emerged as the most acceptable design for a large artificial gravity system. As envisioned for a Mars mission (Schultz et al. 1989), it would consist of a habitat module 225 meters from the center of mass, with a counterweight 400 meters beyond. The two would be connected by a tether and reel-out device. The total weight for this system would be about 21,000 Kg plus propellant.

One of the obvious concerns about a tethered artificial gravity system is vulnerability to tether breakage. For the Mars mission design, a tether in the form of a band 0.5 cm × 46 cm × 750 m would provide a dynamic load safety factor of 7, offering a working strength of 630,000 N. That concern has otherwise been addressed by using webbing or braided cable to maintain tether integrity, even in the event of a meteoroid collision. (The probability of tether impact with a micrometeoroid of mass greater than 0.1 gm was calculated as 0.001 for a mission of 420 days.) A second concern about a tethered system is dynamic stability, especially during unreeling and during spin up and spin
down. The interaction with orbital maneuvers is complex, whether the spin axis is inertially fixed or tracking the Sun to facilitate the use of solar panels."
"
In return you get a ten fold increase in performance over remote control from earth and but the crew are still 100 times less effective that they would be on the surface.

There you must be thinking in terms of rovers very much like the ones we have now, truck like vehicles with various attachments that trundle over the surface.

I'm thinking in terms of something much more flexible than that, and it's partly current technology we have already and partly technology that will be developed in the near future, and surely you'll take along the very best by way of telepresence gear and most likely commission new stuff especially for the journey.

So this sort of thing - it does look a bit gruesome and basic, but it's just prototypes mainly:



That's a human skeleton based robot, idea for telepresence, it would feel just like moving your own body, because the muscles and joints work in the same way as a human body



They call it "big dog" though doesn't look much like one. Anyway the thing is it is semi-autonomous. I imagine you would walk over the Mars surface in your telepresence robot, and it would travel along with you or might go rushing off like a dog to search out some interesting thing it sees to either side, probably could travel much faster than a human with a bit more work on it.

This isn't sci. fi. these things actually exist and it's real  machines in the video, you could take one of those with you on a space flight tomorrow.

A lot of it is due to military research obviously because they want to put non human robots into the battlefield, so it's not surprising they drive this research. Indeed there's a big research effort underway right now by Darpa to make a complete avatar of a human teleoperated, details very scarce at the moment as far as I can gather but you can imagine it might well be just the thing for Mars

http://phys.org/news/2012-02-darpa-million-avatar-robot-pals.html

There's also all the research into controllers for games and immersive experience of games like Kinekt

Also you have the omnidirectional treadmill,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnidirectional_treadmill

That means that you could in your virtual reality room in the orbiting spaceship - have the martian landscape displayed on the walls or maybe you wear glasses and see it directly as if you are there. Then you can walk, even run, in any direction across the landscape just as if you are there. Then you can pick things up and examine them again just as if you are there.

If a human is too weak for some work you want to do, just use a stronger robot with an exo-skeleton. If you want to explore something really small, get a smaller robot so you see everything as if it was ten times the height it would seem to a human. Or fly in the air like a bird in a light mobile aerial rover, and you can land and pick things up and fly off again all in virtual reality interacting with the surface by telepresence.

Even right now remarkable things are done by telepresence, such as the first surgery by telepresence, a surgeon in New York operating on a patient in France

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_surgery#The_Lindbergh_Operation

That's more than a decade ago and it's moved on since then, and operations by telepresence are fairly common now.

So - I think if you look at what current rovers can do operated from Earth and imagine them operated in real time from orbit - that's far short of what a human operated telepresence exploration of Mars could be like if you "pull out all the stops".



Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #89 on: 06/13/2012 09:15 pm »
This is just some interesting stuff I found today which shows how little we know about micro-organisms here on Earth.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaea#Species
Current knowledge on genetic diversity is fragmentary and the total number of archaean species cannot be estimated with any accuracy. Estimates of the number of phyla range from 18 to 23, of which only 8 have representatives that have been cultured and studied directly. Many of these hypothesized groups are known from a single rRNA sequence, indicating that the diversity among these organisms remains obscure.] The Bacteria also contain many uncultured microbes with similar implications for characterization.

Remarkably, says only 8 phyla have been cultured or studied directly - didn't realise we knew as little as that about the Archaea - whole phyla, same level of classification as Chordates (one above the Vertebrate classification) - and there are probably at least 10 whole phyla of Archaea that we know almost zero about. Some of those are extremophiles that you find in space ship assembly clean rooms, as the other paper I linked to several times talks about how hard it was to characterise them because of the large numbers that are uncultivable.

http://genomebiology.com/2002/3/2/reviews/0003


"It is a common misconception that microorganisms isolated in pure culture from an environment represent the numerically dominant and/or functionally significant species in that environment. In fact, microorganisms isolated using standard cultivation methods are rarely numerically dominant in the communities from which they were obtained: instead, they are isolated by virtue of their ability to grow rapidly into colonies on high-nutrient artificial growth media, typically under aerobic conditions, at moderate temperatures. Easily isolated organisms are the 'weeds' of the microbial world and are estimated to constitute less than 1% of all microbial species (this figure was estimated by comparing plate counts with direct microscopic counts of microorganisms in environmental samples; it has been called the "great plate-count anomaly"
...
For example, approximately 65% of published microbiological research from 1991 to 1997 was dedicated to only eight bacterial genera,
...
 And if more than 99% of microorganisms in the environment are unculturable using standard techniques, how representative are cultivated microorganisms of prokaryotic diversity as a whole?
"

(That's all part of the quote, not me summarising it)

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #90 on: 06/13/2012 09:21 pm »
Also just to say for completeness there's all the "uncanny valley" research into robotics in Japan. Mainly to do with making it possible for a human to show emotions and the like, which is perhaps not that useful on Mars - but it would mean you could communicate with the other astronauts on your mission in the field on Mars much as you do when you come out of your telepresence suit for your coffee break. In a long mission that might be more useful than you would expect as we are used to working with other humans, especially for people who are naturally social, and if they improve it futher to get over the "uncanny valley" thing.

Also though - in the process they are also making them able to walk in a very natural human like way. The US military has also researched into semi-automous robots that can walk and even run like a human. All likely to feed back to making telepresence easy and more natural and more like the real thing enough to do really effective exploration via telepresence.

 

Offline gospacex

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #91 on: 06/13/2012 10:50 pm »
First - I was a bit surprised even that you thought of billions of people living on Mars, I thought myself only in terms of maybe a few thousand, maybe a few million eventually - but if you do fully terraform it and manage to give it a close to Earth pressure atmosphere, so they can live anywhere just on the surface not e.g. only at the deepest places on the planet - I can see that you could end up with billions there yes, if it all worked out well.

But that's a heroic enterprise, and for the same amount of effort you could have the same number of people living in habitats, thousands of them.

It doesnt have to be either/or. We can live on Mars AND on asteroids.

Terraforming Mars is not necessary. We can build airtight, closed-loop habitats on Mars - just like we will have to do it on even less hospitable places (meaning: just about everywhere else). And these Martian habitats (I imagine they will be built mostly underground) can be vast - entire cities.
« Last Edit: 06/13/2012 10:50 pm by gospacex »

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #92 on: 06/13/2012 11:30 pm »
Okay thanks for explaining your idea, I can see how you could then hope to get billions of people living on Mars without fully terraforming it. Also based on what we know now, underground might be an easier place for humans to live on Mars than the surface.

If it's just a numbers game then you can get trillions living in habitats I'm sure, and it seems to me much easier to have more people living like that sooner, if you get started on mining the asteroids and sending materials from one asteroid to another for construction, and start close to Earth for easy supply and return to base on Earth.

But if you really want to colonise Mars for some other reason, then it makes sense. Certainly don't want to present this as "either / or" either. Maybe later on some reason for colonising Mars will present itself, who knows, maybe some really good reason for doing it, and we might then have a much better idea of how to do it, and understand the possible consequences too, and be able to have a clear idea of it all.

I've also racked my brain trying to think of ways that astronauts could safely land on Mars and explore it without contaminating it but can't come up with anything. The closest I've got is the idea that in the future we might have super-strong materials like graphite sheets, and maybe they could be so strong that a spacecraft made of them would survive even a hard impact on Mars without rupturing. The astronauts inside wouldn't survive but it would remain intact and could then be lifted up from the planet again at a later date.

If that was possible then the next stage is to try to get the astronauts into sterilised space-suits, and there, I can't think of any way to do it. The closest I got was the idea that instead of airlocks, it has the space-suits themselves attached to the outside of the ship. On the inside there is like a slit that opens, so the astronaut goes through it into the space-suit, and then it closes up behind. In theory it seems you could do it so that the opening "zip" as it were of the spacesuit has an inside and an outside and the outside is only ever contiguous with the outside of the space-craft and the inside only with the inside.

But in practise surely you would get leaks of some sort when the spacesuit detaches from the ship.

Or the other idea is to get into the spacesuit in orbit, and then it's made with it's own internal environment that is self sustaining, at least enough for several days on the surface so you never get out of it. Then you also make it of really tough material same thing can't be ruptured, and you also put some kind of heat resistant coating on the outside, and refrigerated on the inside, with cooling radiators - just for the dry heat sterilisation stage - and the astronaut sits inside through the whole process of sterilisation and just the outside needs to be done.

With like maybe a couple of decades only into the future maybe we will have the right materials to be able to do that.

But - still seems risky especially if we haven't yet even studied all the extremophiles and understand their capabilitiess. And exploring from orbit via telepresence seems much more pleasant and more civilised - and you can just take a coffee break and get away from the surface of Mars and you are back on the space-craft again.




Offline Dalhousie

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #93 on: 06/13/2012 11:38 pm »

But I think you've dismissed the tether idea rather too readily as it is one of the methods widely suggested as a way to get artificial gravity during spaceflight to Mars for the manned mission proposals. So, if it seems possible you can use it during spaceflight to the planet then you can surely also use it in orbit around the planet.  Obviously it needs research and is likely to turn up issues to deal with, e.g. how do you spin it up, and can you navigate with it spun up or do you have to spin it down again to navigate.

Here is one paper about research into it:
http://iaaweb.org/iaa/Scientific%20Activity/Study%20Groups/SG%20Commission%202/sg22/sg22finalreportr.pdf

"A variable length tether that could be unreeled in orbit and used to connect a space-craft to a counterweight has emerged as the most acceptable design for a large artificial gravity system. As envisioned for a Mars mission (Schultz et al. 1989), it would consist of a habitat module 225 meters from the center of mass, with a counterweight 400 meters beyond. The two would be connected by a tether and reel-out device. The total weight for this system would be about 21,000 Kg plus propellant.

One of the obvious concerns about a tethered artificial gravity system is vulnerability to tether breakage. For the Mars mission design, a tether in the form of a band 0.5 cm × 46 cm × 750 m would provide a dynamic load safety factor of 7, offering a working strength of 630,000 N. That concern has otherwise been addressed by using webbing or braided cable to maintain tether integrity, even in the event of a meteoroid collision. (The probability of tether impact with a micrometeoroid of mass greater than 0.1 gm was calculated as 0.001 for a mission of 420 days.) A second concern about a tethered system is dynamic stability, especially during unreeling and during spin up and spin
down. The interaction with orbital maneuvers is complex, whether the spin axis is inertially fixed or tracking the Sun to facilitate the use of solar panels."

It is not the ether as concept that is an issue but the lack of testing (actual tether tests to date have  often proved troublesome), the complexity and payload penalties they bring and the unknown consequences of long term exposure to people.   Not insummountable, but it adds obstacles, not removes them.

In return you get a ten fold increase in performance over remote control from earth and but the crew are still 100 times less effective that they would be on the surface.

Quote
There you must be thinking in terms of rovers very much like the ones we have now, truck like vehicles with various attachments that trundle over the surface.

I'm thinking in terms of something much more flexible than that, and it's partly current technology we have already and partly technology that will be developed in the near future, and surely you'll take along the very best by way of telepresence gear and most likely commission new stuff especially for the journey.

So this sort of thing - it does look a bit gruesome and basic, but it's just prototypes mainly:



That's a human skeleton based robot, idea for telepresence, it would feel just like moving your own body, because the muscles and joints work in the same way as a human body



They call it "big dog" though doesn't look much like one. Anyway the thing is it is semi-autonomous. I imagine you would walk over the Mars surface in your telepresence robot, and it would travel along with you or might go rushing off like a dog to search out some interesting thing it sees to either side, probably could travel much faster than a human with a bit more work on it.

This isn't sci. fi. these things actually exist and it's real  machines in the video, you could take one of those with you on a space flight tomorrow.

A lot of it is due to military research obviously because they want to put non human robots into the battlefield, so it's not surprising they drive this research. Indeed there's a big research effort underway right now by Darpa to make a complete avatar of a human teleoperated, details very scarce at the moment as far as I can gather but you can imagine it might well be just the thing for Mars

http://phys.org/news/2012-02-darpa-million-avatar-robot-pals.html

There's also all the research into controllers for games and immersive experience of games like Kinekt

Also you have the omnidirectional treadmill,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnidirectional_treadmill

That means that you could in your virtual reality room in the orbiting spaceship - have the martian landscape displayed on the walls or maybe you wear glasses and see it directly as if you are there. Then you can walk, even run, in any direction across the landscape just as if you are there. Then you can pick things up and examine them again just as if you are there.

If a human is too weak for some work you want to do, just use a stronger robot with an exo-skeleton. If you want to explore something really small, get a smaller robot so you see everything as if it was ten times the height it would seem to a human. Or fly in the air like a bird in a light mobile aerial rover, and you can land and pick things up and fly off again all in virtual reality interacting with the surface by telepresence.

I look at that and think why would anyone bother?

Even ignoring the hype surrounding this sort of work (why would you want to use humanoid form anyway, it just adds makes life difficult), the fact that. Almost as much as other robotic technology, they are over sold, and the fact that they are mostly very experimental, we need to ask some basic questions about the practicality of such systems.  Specifically:

How compatible is the system to the space environment, especially the electronics?

What is the mass of the system?

How much power do they require?

How is that power going to be supplied?

What is the mass of the power supply system?

How much external support is need to run the system on Earth?

How will that be provided on Mars?

Quote
Even right now remarkable things are done by telepresence, such as the first surgery by telepresence, a surgeon in New York operating on a patient in France

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_surgery#The_Lindbergh_Operation

That's more than a decade ago and it's moved on since then, and operations by telepresence are fairly common now.

Let’s take that as a case in point.  What was the mass of the telepresence system?

How much power did that use?

How many people are required on site to make surgery by telepresence possible?   Not only other surgeons in the case of system failure but also anaesthetists, nurses, medical technologists, pathologists, infection control specialists.  Plus the specialised technicians who make sure the telepresence devices are all working properly.  It is easy to focus on the gizmo and ignore the infrastructure that supports it.

Quote
So - I think if you look at what current rovers can do operated from Earth and imagine them operated in real time from orbit - that's far short of what a human operated telepresence exploration of Mars could be like if you "pull out all the stops".

I look at what is being done and it does not impress me.  But come with with the likely mission masses for telepresence systems with astronaut equivalent performance and we will see.
Apologies in advance for any lack of civility - it's unintended

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #94 on: 06/14/2012 12:00 am »
Oh, some of the military ones at least aren't that demanding at least that's certainly the eventual aim that they should be able to carry their own power supply for instance.

Here are the specs for the "Big dog"

http://www.bostondynamics.com/img/BigDog_IFAC_Apr-8-2008.pdf

The power supply is a water-cooled two-stroke internal combustion engine that delivers about 15 hp.
- so nothing that extraordinary.

Couldn't run it off solar power on Mars I'm sure, but no need to keep to those sort of limitations, if you use the Mars Direct technology and create your own fuel on Mars from hydrogen feedstock. That's what you'd do with a human mission anyway so might as well just do the same with the robots.

BigDog weighs about 109 kg (240 lbs), is about 1 meter tall,
1.1 meters long, and 0.3 m wide.

Travel speed for the crawl
is about 0.2 m/s, for the trot is about 1.6 m/s (3.5 mph), for
the running trot is about 2 m/s (4.4 mph) and BigDog briefly
exceeded 3.1 m/s (7 mph) while bounding in the laboratory.

The various humanoid robots are able to operate without any power supply - that one with the skeleton is a bit misleading because it's obviously a non mobile proto-type, but there are other fully autonomous humanoid robots, lots of different varieties, have no trouble walking like a human these days - a bit slower moving than a human but getting much faster already than they were just a short time ago.

I've seen quite a few technologies come in the last 40 odd years (I'm in my late 50s now) and they start off very cumbersome and develop with amazing rapidity sometimes. E.g. the first mobile phones were curiosities and so cumbersome. Before that I worked on one of the final generation of punched card operated computers - just the card punch machine was a huge machine, made a tremendous amount of noise when you operated it and must have used a lot of power to run. The computer itself we never saw and required many attendants to keep it going.

A few years later then first the PDP 11s in the university like remarkable small machine you could fit into a corner of a room, and then eventually when you got everyone using computers just for typing things out, when you were used to the idea that time on a computer was this immensely precious thing that you had to queue up to get a few minutes to run your program overnight.

So - also it's not like AI where it seems there is probably some fairly fundamental problem with some of the things they want to do, this is just technology, miniaturization, just the sort of things humans seem to be able to develop really quickly once we get started on it.

So - I wouldn't be surprised if in say 5-10 years this is commonplace, and seems really no reason at all why you shouldn't have fully humanoid robots operated by telepresence. Whether there would be enough AI development for them to also work as robots as in Asimov robots, that I find rather more sci. fi. seems unlikely because AI has proved such a very hard thing to do, also some theoretical reasons I feel true AI is an unachievable goal at least with ordinary software programming (but would be a big digression to go into that here).


Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #95 on: 06/14/2012 12:14 am »
As for the reason for using a humanoid form for telepresence, I see a few of reasons.

1. We are used to the way a human body moves. So can tele-operate it without much of a learning curve. This isn't like a really big deal of course, people learn to operate cranes, and all sorts of machines just as intuitively, but less learning involved for a humanoid robot telepresence, things that would maybe take years to learn to do it really fluently you can probably just do straight away (once the technology becomes seamless).

2. The human body has evolved to a pretty good shape for doing stuff, - again partly we are used to using it to its optimal capacity, but - it just works pretty well.

3. the machines we construct are designed to be operated by human forms. So you don't have to redesign the machines or learn new ways of operating them.

4. Can also interact with other operators of the humanoid robots on the surface in a familiar way e.g. when co-operating to do things.

But - if one is as happy operating other types of machines well so much the better, even more flexibility for working on Mars by tele-presence, presumably even better than operating a humanoid robot, which also presumably means, even better than being there yourself in person, assuming the humanoid robot technology develops as I think it will to the point where it is for purposes of getting work done, of this sort, close to identical to actually being there.

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #96 on: 06/14/2012 12:23 am »
Just my take on it, just ideas to think about :)

With the tether also the same thing, seems to me that if there is enough of a research effort into it, good chance all the issues will be solved - or some other method found.

Yes, as you say, the technology hasn't really been tried out, did a search and there was one early experiment so slow rotating that the astronauts couldn't feel anything but if you let an object go it would fall slowly.

Then also experiments on the ground where it was found that it coudl be withstood up to a certain diameter and rotation speed, after that most people began to get nauseous so you have to be careful it doesn't spin too fast which you can deal with by making the tether longer and the spin slower.

Don't remember any other actual experiments in space. Just plans for experiments that were never carried out.

So - yes agree, we don't know, but seems the best bet at present.

Offline Dalhousie

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #97 on: 06/14/2012 02:14 am »
Oh, some of the military ones at least aren't that demanding at least that's certainly the eventual aim that they should be able to carry their own power supply for instance.

Here are the specs for the "Big dog"

http://www.bostondynamics.com/img/BigDog_IFAC_Apr-8-2008.pdf

The power supply is a water-cooled two-stroke internal combustion engine that delivers about 15 hp.
- so nothing that extraordinary.

Couldn't run it off solar power on Mars I'm sure, but no need to keep to those sort of limitations, if you use the Mars Direct technology and create your own fuel on Mars from hydrogen feedstock. That's what you'd do with a human mission anyway so might as well just do the same with the robots.

BigDog weighs about 109 kg (240 lbs), is about 1 meter tall,
1.1 meters long, and 0.3 m wide.

Travel speed for the crawl
is about 0.2 m/s, for the trot is about 1.6 m/s (3.5 mph), for
the running trot is about 2 m/s (4.4 mph) and BigDog briefly
exceeded 3.1 m/s (7 mph) while bounding in the laboratory. [/quote]

“Big Dog” is amazing achievement, but is it useful?

15 HP = 11 kw.  Driving through a 10 hour day means you use 110 kwh, just to move about.  You are not going to supply that with onboard solar or an RTG.  So you need stored energy, be it batteries, fuel cells or an internal combustion engine. 

As you say we need some type of ISRU plant.  How big is it?  What’s its mass? How much power will it need?

Then there is the issue of onboard power storage.  If we assume batteries, and 0.2 kwh per kg , that 550 kg of batteries, for one day’s travel, five times the mass of the basic vehicle.   More realistically, most ground vehicles can carry about half their basic mass, so let’s say 55 kg for Big Dog.  That’s one hour’s power supply, if it was all batteries.

Then there is the matter of providing environmental protection for the computer (temperature control, radiation shielding) for the high end computer that runs Big Dog.  Then the communications system.  And we haven’t even looked at payload.

Quote
The various humanoid robots are able to operate without any power supply - that one with the skeleton is a bit misleading because it's obviously a non mobile proto-type, but there are other fully autonomous humanoid robots, lots of different varieties, have no trouble walking like a human these days - a bit slower moving than a human but getting much faster already than they were just a short time ago.

How does something run without power?

And why would you want a humanoid machine?

Quote
I've seen quite a few technologies come in the last 40 odd years (I'm in my late 50s now) and they start off very cumbersome and develop with amazing rapidity sometimes. E.g. the first mobile phones were curiosities and so cumbersome. Before that I worked on one of the final generation of punched card operated computers - just the card punch machine was a huge machine, made a tremendous amount of noise when you operated it and must have used a lot of power to run. The computer itself we never saw and required many attendants to keep it going.

A few years later then first the PDP 11s in the university like remarkable small machine you could fit into a corner of a room, and then eventually when you got everyone using computers just for typing things out, when you were used to the idea that time on a computer was this immensely precious thing that you had to queue up to get a few minutes to run your program overnight.

There certainly are big improvements in some fields, but this does not mean that improvements are linear across the board. 

Quote
So - also it's not like AI where it seems there is probably some fairly fundamental problem with some of the things they want to do, this is just technology, miniaturization, just the sort of things humans seem to be able to develop really quickly once we get started on it.

So - I wouldn't be surprised if in say 5-10 years this is commonplace, and seems really no reason at all why you shouldn't have fully humanoid robots operated by telepresence. Whether there would be enough AI development for them to also work as robots as in Asimov robots, that I find rather more sci. fi. seems unlikely because AI has proved such a very hard thing to do, also some theoretical reasons I feel true AI is an unachievable goal at least with ordinary software programming (but would be a big digression to go into that here).

Yes, AI is off topic. 
Apologies in advance for any lack of civility - it's unintended

Offline A_M_Swallow

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #98 on: 06/14/2012 05:00 am »
{snip}

And why would you want a humanoid machine?

Humans can climb vertically, wheels cannot.

A fork lift truck can pick things up and put them down but has difficulty turning them on their side.  A hand with fingers finds this easy.

A humanoid machine may also have these abilities.  Steel is stronger than bone so a machine can be build to lift heavier weights than humans.

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #99 on: 06/14/2012 08:11 am »
Humans can climb vertically, wheels cannot.

A fork lift truck can pick things up and put them down but has difficulty turning them on their side.  A hand with fingers finds this easy.

A humanoid machine may also have these abilities.  Steel is stronger than bone so a machine can be build to lift heavier weights than humans.

Yes exactly. You can go rock-climbing up cliffs in Mars with humanoid machines, no reason why you can't do the whole thing, abseiling down or climbing with a human partner.

There is a bit of an issue with a walking / running machine that if you operate it on a flat treadmill then what you feel with your feet doesn't match the terrain. The simplest solution I can think of there is that for locomotion, you make it semi-autonomous. So it moves the same distance at the same speed as you do on the treadmill but does its own independent calculations to find the best way to do the actual locomotion. It could even have four legs instead of two if that was a benefit.

The other option of deforming the treadmill to match the terrain seems achievable in the future perhaps, e.g. with smart materials but don't know of anything right now like that, and the idea of force feedback while fine for manipulating things with your hands, wouldn't work so well if you feel something, step on it, and expect it to support your weight,

So some degree of autonomy I see as the way to go, you could switch it on / off so walk normally if you were in an area of flat terrain. Same with climbing probably it would have to do it autonomously with you directing it.

As for strength, yes for sure, if you need it, it could be really strong far stronger than a human. You could make it as strong as the Army exo-skeletons, indeed just fit one of these exo-skeletons around your humanoid robot if you can think of no better solution.


High power militar robotic exoskeleton

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #100 on: 06/14/2012 09:00 am »
“Big Dog” is amazing achievement, but is it useful?

15 HP = 11 kw.  Driving through a 10 hour day means you use 110 kwh, just to move about.  You are not going to supply that with onboard solar or an RTG.  So you need stored energy, be it batteries, fuel cells or an internal combustion engine. 

As you say we need some type of ISRU plant.  How big is it?  What’s its mass? How much power will it need?


For the likes of Big Dog I had in mind using the same method as Mars Direct. If you are going to do a human visit to Mars you will carry many tons of equipment and supplies with you anyway so talking about a couple of orders of magnitude heavier than current rovers. Curiosity is 900 kg.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Science_Laboratory


Mars Direct delivers well over 100 metric tons to the vicinity of Mars.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Direct#Scheme
"
Once there, a series of chemical reactions (the Sabatier reaction coupled with electrolysis) would be used to combine a small amount of hydrogen (8 tons) carried by the Earth Return Vehicle with the carbon dioxide of the Martian atmosphere to create up to 112 tonnes of methane and oxygen. 96 tonnes of these would be needed to return the Earth Return Vehicle to Earth at the end of the mission, the rest would be available for Mars rovers.
"

So you have tonnes of fuel for your rovers. You would need them for human powered rovers anyway, the idea of exploring Mars sitting on the likes of Curiosity would be far too slow you'd be better off just pulling a cart with the equipment in it yourself by hand.

Batteries would probably be used as well also solar panels e.g. for things you deploy and leave in situ to do experiments.

Computers don't require a lot of power at all. You don't need anything high end. Nowadays a laptop running kinekt is pretty impressive for the controlling side of things.

With this next video, it's just because it's kind of nice view of the whole thing, shows someone controlling Nao via Kinekt to pet their cat, to show how minimal and lightweight it is. It's pretty slow but that's because he can't see too clearly, it's just a "proof of principle". But shows how light it can be - the chap is standing on a treadmill, you need the kinekt system cameras to look at you, a laptop and the robot, and that's it.



A high end system need be no larger or heavier, just higher quality components.

Here is a video tutorial for Kinekt and MotionBuilder and you can see how you can easily control virtual bones in real time using Kinekt, very smooth no hesitation, and all you need for this is a modern laptop and some small cameras, and software.


The various humanoid robots are able to operate without any power supply ...
How does something run without power?

That's just quick typing, and you can't go back an edit your posts after you post them, I mean, without any external power supply of course.

By the robot self powered, I just meant carries it's own power around inside it. Human location is quite efficient, I think eventually as they improve the techology, it could end up more efficient than wheels over rough ground especially if you use the elasticity of the foot and the muscles capturing and releasing that energy, and kind of "bounce along" as we do.

A wheel I'd expect to outperform over ideal conditions especially if it is slightly down hill where it can just roll and not expend any energy at all, but even then - do you know those walking toys that you just let go and they automatically walk down a steep slope? You could walk down a hill in the same way expending no energy at all with a really well designed robot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_performance#Energy_efficiency

On firm, flat ground, a 70 kg person requires about 30 watts to walk at 5 km/h. That same person on a bicycle, on the same ground, with the same power output, can average 15 km/h, so energy expenditure in terms of kcal/(kg·km) is roughly one-third as much.

So - if your robot is using more than 30 watts to travel at 5 km/ h then there is definitely room for improvement as technology improves.

Then there is the matter of providing environmental protection for the computer (temperature control, radiation shielding) for the high end computer that runs Big Dog.  Then the communications system.  And we haven’t even looked at payload.

I think I've answered that. It's not high end any more. If you said this say fifteen years ago then it would be true but nowadays you are just talking about the equivalent of a modern consumer laptop. Would need shielding of course, but I think entirely feasible.

The various humanoid robots are able to operate without any power supply - that one with the skeleton is a bit misleading because it's obviously a non mobile proto-type, but there are other fully autonomous humanoid robots, lots of different varieties, have no trouble walking like a human these days - a bit slower moving than a human but getting much faster already than they were just a short time ago. [/quote]

How does something run without power?

And why would you want a humanoid machine?

There certainly are big improvements in some fields, but this does not mean that improvements are linear across the board. 

Indeed, of course. I can think of a couple of examples right off. Nuclear Fusion which is what the team I was in was working on indeed way back in the Culham Labs in the 1970s (I was just there as a school leaver on a year off before going to university) - that's taken far longer to mature than anyone expected originally, definitely getting there, already reached "break even" and they are in the process of building the demo reactor in France, the last stage before they start work on actual reactor designs - it just took longer. But the whole thing is taking decades rather than say ten or twenty years as they might have expected then.

Another one is computer recognition of objects, and for that matter this kinect optimistic people thought you'd have equivalent stuff much sooner than now.

Yes, AI is off topic. 
Agreed. Don't want to talk about it here, it's my experience that it leads to a long discussion almost inevitably, and you can't just give a "sound bite" summary.

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #101 on: 06/14/2012 11:14 am »
Someone new to the topic just posted to the newmars forum, and it was obviously going to be a case of doing the same discussion all over again, so I thought it was an excellent time to do like an oveview of all the things I've found out in these discussions over the last few days

So here it is, especially for anyone who is entering this discussion here for the first time it might be helpful, also just as a summary of it all.

http://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?pid=113495#p113495

The post begins with mention of Carl Sagan's paper, he said that it's an early paper and questioned if it is still valid so that's where it takes off from, also questioned the authority of ICAMSR.


Offline gospacex

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #102 on: 06/14/2012 11:26 am »
I've also racked my brain trying to think of ways that astronauts could safely land on Mars and explore it without contaminating it but can't come up with anything. The closest I've got is the idea that in the future we might have super-strong materials like graphite sheets, and maybe they could be so strong that a spacecraft made of them would survive even a hard impact on Mars without rupturing. The astronauts inside wouldn't survive but it would remain intact and could then be lifted up from the planet again at a later date.

If that was possible then the next stage is to try to get the astronauts into sterilised space-suits

You are clearly fixated on "don't contaminate Mars!!!!" thought. I don't see the point in discussing it with you any longer.

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #103 on: 06/14/2012 12:25 pm »
That's fine no problem, I learnt a lot from the discussion, thanks :).

Offline jnc

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #104 on: 06/14/2012 03:46 pm »
"Once there, a series of chemical reactions .. would be used to combine a small amount of hydrogen (8 tons) carried by the Earth Return Vehicle with the carbon dioxide of the Martian atmosphere to create up to 112 tonnes of methane and oxygen. "

Oooh, very clever. Only take the (low molecular weight) hydrogen with you, use ISRU for the bulk of the mass. I like it.

Noel
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(old bumper sticker)

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #105 on: 06/14/2012 04:49 pm »
"Once there, a series of chemical reactions .. would be used to combine a small amount of hydrogen (8 tons) carried by the Earth Return Vehicle with the carbon dioxide of the Martian atmosphere to create up to 112 tonnes of methane and oxygen. "

Oooh, very clever. Only take the (low molecular weight) hydrogen with you, use ISRU for the bulk of the mass. I like it.

Noel


Yes indeed it's a truly brilliant idea.

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #106 on: 06/14/2012 05:01 pm »
A couple of quotes from Sagan's paper found while writing that thing today

"The Martian surface material certainly contains a substantial fraction of ferric oxides, which are extremely strongly absorbing in the near ultraviolet. In fact, apart from the ferric oxide identification, the red color of Mars clearly indicates major electronic transitions at short visible wavelengths. A terrestrial microorganism imbedded in such a particle can be shielded from ultraviolet light and still be transported about the planet."

So - just the idea I'd thought of, of the micro-organism imbedded in a dust grain,
and he says that the iron oxide would strongly absorb ultra-violet - that suggests to me that the dust storms also would do the same and so add extra protection.

Also he gives a pretty good method that could lead to micro-organisms growing on the surface and spreading:

"Equatorial daytime temperatures range up to 20 or 30" C (corresponding to saturation vapor pressures of 25 mb and higher. A pool of liquid water exposed on Mars at temperatures = 273" K will evaporate initially at a rate N 10 g/cm /sec. The evaporation is so fast that vertical and horizonta l transport of water away from the pool will be the rate-limiting steps in the early phases of vaporization. Because the saturation vapour pressure at these temperatures is of the same order as the total pressure the pressure difference will lead to hydrodynamic flow, and winds will carry the vapor away. The transport rate has not, to the best of our knowledge, been calculated. Before long, however, the high latent heat of vaporization of water should result in freezing the upper surface of the pool, cutting down the vaporization rate substantially.
exposed during the hottest part of the day, and sealed for the remainder of the day.
"

So - an endospore could land in a puddle that has just melted briefly in the mid-day sun. But then the top rapidly evaporates and gets covered in ice as he says. Then it has plenty of time to re-activate and reproduce sheltered by the ice - it could be in shadow by then too, maybe part of the puddle is in the shadow of a rock. Then next day the sun melts the ice again so it is briefly exposed to the atmosphere, new endospores form, and get blown away by the escaping water and by winds, and the process repeats.


(BTW I've taken the day off work today, as self employed person I work irregular hours and often work all the way through most weekends and then taking time off occasionally mid-week.)

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #107 on: 06/14/2012 05:35 pm »
BTW there is a plus side of all this for those who want to terraform Mars.

If we do ever get to the point where it seems safe and wise to terraform Mars, and also we know how to do it, the actual process might be very rapid at least the part involving life.

(that's also the downside of course seen from point of view of accidental terraforming)

It seems that you could transform the entire climate of Mars in a decade by introducing the right organisms. Introduce the wrong ones and you make it worse than it is now, but introduce the right ones, and you could fill the atmosphere of the planet with powerful greenhouse gases in just a decade surely.

Once the ground is covered in life, then if it is similar to the Arctic tundra, then the methane production could be 0.075 grams per m2, which for surface area of Mars means 144798500*1000*1000*(0.075/1000)*356 kilograms a year (just doing it like that so I can put it into the google search results which I use for calculator)

I make that 3,866,119,950,000 Kg a year or 3,866,119,950 metric tons or 0.03 terratons.

By comparision Mars atmosphere has a total weight of 25 terratons

But with methane such a powerful greenhouse gas I think 0.03 terratons would make quite a difference to the climate, and if it kept getting added and not used up, over a century you would have 3 terratons of methane in the atmosphere, and the supply of CO2 and Hydrogen (in water) to make it is for these purposes pretty much inexhaustible.

Might be a bit slower because of the distance of Mars from the sun, reduced solar flux, and not sure how you work out the effect on climate of that change.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Mars

Offline Robotbeat

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #108 on: 06/14/2012 06:58 pm »
BTW, have you seen Prometheus lately? Maybe that explains the slightly irrational fear of extraterrestrial organisms. ;)
Chris  Whoever loves correction loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid.

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Offline Dalhousie

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #109 on: 06/15/2012 03:24 am »
A couple of quotes from Sagan's paper found while writing that thing today

"The Martian surface material certainly contains a substantial fraction of ferric oxides, which are extremely strongly absorbing in the near ultraviolet. In fact, apart from the ferric oxide identification, the red color of Mars clearly indicates major electronic transitions at short visible wavelengths. A terrestrial microorganism imbedded in such a particle can be shielded from ultraviolet light and still be transported about the planet."

So - just the idea I'd thought of, of the micro-organism imbedded in a dust grain,
and he says that the iron oxide would strongly absorb ultra-violet - that suggests to me that the dust storms also would do the same and so add extra protection.

No.  There is a difference between a continuous layer of particles that fully blocks UV and a suspension of particles that don’t.  Even the most severe martian dust storms are unable to block light and they happen only once every few years.


Quote
Also he gives a pretty good method that could lead to micro-organisms growing on the surface and spreading:

"Equatorial daytime temperatures range up to 20 or 30" C (corresponding to saturation vapor pressures of 25 mb and higher. A pool of liquid water exposed on Mars at temperatures = 273" K will evaporate initially at a rate N 10 g/cm /sec. The evaporation is so fast that vertical and horizonta l transport of water away from the pool will be the rate-limiting steps in the early phases of vaporization. Because the saturation vapour pressure at these temperatures is of the same order as the total pressure the pressure difference will lead to hydrodynamic flow, and winds will carry the vapor away. The transport rate has not, to the best of our knowledge, been calculated. Before long, however, the high latent heat of vaporization of water should result in freezing the upper surface of the pool, cutting down the vaporization rate substantially.
exposed during the hottest part of the day, and sealed for the remainder of the day.
"

So - an endospore could land in a puddle that has just melted briefly in the mid-day sun. But then the top rapidly evaporates and gets covered in ice as he says. Then it has plenty of time to re-activate and reproduce sheltered by the ice - it could be in shadow by then too, maybe part of the puddle is in the shadow of a rock. Then next day the sun melts the ice again so it is briefly exposed to the atmosphere, new endospores form, and get blown away by the escaping water and by winds, and the process repeats.

This is what you get from quoting ancient literature.  The surface pressure on Mars is not 25 mb, it averages 6.  We have no evidence that even transitory pools exist for spores to land it. Even if they were hospitable You are clutching at straws to defend you exaggerated concerns about “contamination”. 
Apologies in advance for any lack of civility - it's unintended

Offline Dalhousie

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #110 on: 06/15/2012 03:32 am »
{snip}

And why would you want a humanoid machine?

Humans can climb vertically, wheels cannot.

A fork lift truck can pick things up and put them down but has difficulty turning them on their side.  A hand with fingers finds this easy.

A humanoid machine may also have these abilities.  Steel is stronger than bone so a machine can be build to lift heavier weights than humans.

Why would you want to climb a vertical cliff?  if you do there are easier ways of accessing a cliff than building a humanoid machine.

A forklift is much better, than a artificial hand for a wide range of operations.  It is simpler and cheaper.  if you do need hand-like dexterity, why does it have to be humanoid or attached to a humanoid platform.

We don';t need humanoid machines to lift objects too heavy for a people to lift. 

I really don't understand the obsession with humanoid machinary.  IThey appear cumbersome, inefficient, and unneccessary.

There are far easier ways to go about operations.
Apologies in advance for any lack of civility - it's unintended

Offline A_M_Swallow

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #111 on: 06/15/2012 04:54 am »
{snip}

And why would you want a humanoid machine?

Humans can climb vertically, wheels cannot.

A fork lift truck can pick things up and put them down but has difficulty turning them on their side.  A hand with fingers finds this easy.

A humanoid machine may also have these abilities.  Steel is stronger than bone so a machine can be build to lift heavier weights than humans.

Why would you want to climb a vertical cliff?  if you do there are easier ways of accessing a cliff than building a humanoid machine.

Cliffs are not the only thing that are vertical, so are ladders.  The LEM had a ladder.

When operating on more than one floor humans tend to incorporate stairs and ladders into their buildings.

Having said that wheels are better for long distances.

Quote
A forklift is much better, than a artificial hand for a wide range of operations.  It is simpler and cheaper.  if you do need hand-like dexterity, why does it have to be humanoid or attached to a humanoid platform.

Hands work best when connected to arms and shoulders.  They can move over larger distances.

Whether you need a head and chest is a different but related question.

Quote
We don';t need humanoid machines to lift objects too heavy for a people to lift. 

I really don't understand the obsession with humanoid machinary.  IThey appear cumbersome, inefficient, and unneccessary.

There are far easier ways to go about operations.

When deciding this it is important to know how many other machines you have.  It may take 9 or 10 machines to replace a humanoid.

Offline Dalhousie

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #112 on: 06/15/2012 07:11 am »

For the likes of Big Dog I had in mind using the same method as Mars Direct. If you are going to do a human visit to Mars you will carry many tons of equipment and supplies with you anyway so talking about a couple of orders of magnitude heavier than current rovers. Curiosity is 900 kg.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Science_Laboratory

I am not interested in how many tonnes a crewed mission to the Mars surface will need.  I can look that up.  I am interested in how many tonnes of teleoperated machinery and ISRU plant is needed to replicate what those missions can achieve.

Quote
Mars Direct delivers well over 100 metric tons to the vicinity of Mars.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Direct#Scheme
"
Once there, a series of chemical reactions (the Sabatier reaction coupled with electrolysis) would be used to combine a small amount of hydrogen (8 tons) carried by the Earth Return Vehicle with the carbon dioxide of the Martian atmosphere to create up to 112 tonnes of methane and oxygen. 96 tonnes of these would be needed to return the Earth Return Vehicle to Earth at the end of the mission, the rest would be available for Mars rovers.
"

So you have tonnes of fuel for your rovers. You would need them for human powered rovers anyway, the idea of exploring Mars sitting on the likes of Curiosity would be far too slow you'd be better off just pulling a cart with the equipment in it yourself by hand.

Batteries would probably be used as well also solar panels e.g. for things you deploy and leave in situ to do experiments.

Is this a tacit recognition that you would need a similar orber of mass as a crewed mission?  That’s OK, but I woulkd expect at least a basic break down of the masses required.I have been asking all along for this.

Quote
Computers don't require a lot of power at all. You don't need anything high end. Nowadays a laptop running kinekt is pretty impressive for the controlling side of things.

Numbers please, in kwh

Quote
With this next video, it's just because it's kind of nice view of the whole thing, shows someone controlling Nao via Kinekt to pet their cat, to show how minimal and lightweight it is. It's pretty slow but that's because he can't see too clearly, it's just a "proof of principle". But shows how light it can be - the chap is standing on a treadmill, you need the kinekt system cameras to look at you, a laptop and the robot, and that's it.



A high end system need be no larger or heavier, just higher quality components.

Here is a video tutorial for Kinekt and MotionBuilder and you can see how you can easily control virtual bones in real time using Kinekt, very smooth no hesitation, and all you need for this is a modern laptop and some small cameras, and software.


Doesn’t address the issue.

Quote
That's just quick typing, and you can't go back an edit your posts after you post them, I mean, without any external power supply of course.

You can edit your posts.  Click “modify”.

Quote
By the robot self powered, I just meant carries it's own power around inside it.

Still takes space, has mass, and needs a specific number of kwh to run.

Numbers please.

Quote
Human location is quite efficient, I think eventually as they improve the techology, it could end up more efficient than wheels over rough ground especially if you use the elasticity of the foot and the muscles capturing and releasing that energy, and kind of "bounce along" as we do.

Let’s deal with machines as they are or we can reasonably extrapolate, not wish might be.

Quote
A wheel I'd expect to outperform over ideal conditions especially if it is slightly down hill where it can just roll and not expend any energy at all, but even then - do you know those walking toys that you just let go and they automatically walk down a steep slope? You could walk down a hill in the same way expending no energy at all with a really well designed robot.

We are talking about very complex systems hear, not toys.  Which is why I keep asking for numbers.

Quote

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_performance#Energy_efficiency

On firm, flat ground, a 70 kg person requires about 30 watts to walk at 5 km/h. That same person on a bicycle, on the same ground, with the same power output, can average 15 km/h, so energy expenditure in terms of kcal/(kg•km) is roughly one-third as much.

So - if your robot is using more than 30 watts to travel at 5 km/ h then there is definitely room for improvement as technology improves.

Unfortunately just because there is room for improvement does not mean so say they will be.  What’s a realistic amount of power to run a teleoperated machine that can carry out the functions of people on Mars?  They don’t have to be humanoid, they just has to be able to do the work.  Likewise how massive will they be?  No arm waving, just realistic numbers.

Quote
I think I've answered that. It's not high end any more. If you said this say fifteen years ago then it would be true but nowadays you are just talking about the equivalent of a modern consumer laptop. Would need shielding of course, but I think entirely feasible.

You have not answered the question at all.  Regales of which end of the operational spectrum they are, computers of that level of capability are going to need temperature control and radiation prtotection just to function.  How much power does it take to do this, how much volume, how much mass?

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The various humanoid robots are able to operate without any power supply - that one with the skeleton is a bit misleading because it's obviously a non mobile proto-type, but there are other fully autonomous humanoid robots, lots of different varieties, have no trouble walking like a human these days - a bit slower moving than a human but getting much faster already than they were just a short time ago.

You don’t get it do you?  Just because the power is onboard does not mean they run without a power supply. The famous Asimo robot  has a ~200 wh battery and runs for an hour.  It then needs to recharge. And that is just  a gimmick and does nothing useful.

DEXTRE, which does do useful stuff (although less than the hype it would seem) masses 1.5 tonnes and uses 1.5 kw to run. Over a 8 hour EVA it consumes 12 kwh.
« Last Edit: 06/15/2012 07:25 am by Dalhousie »
Apologies in advance for any lack of civility - it's unintended

Offline Dalhousie

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #113 on: 06/15/2012 07:18 am »
Cliffs are not the only thing that are vertical, so are ladders.  The LEM had a ladder.

When operating on more than one floor humans tend to incorporate stairs and ladders into their buildings.

Why would you want a ladder and floors on an unmanned mission?


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Having said that wheels are better for long distances.

So use wheels, not this nonsense of mcehcanical legs


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Hands work best when connected to arms and shoulders.  They can move over larger distances.

You have have arms and shoulders without being humanoid.

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Whether you need a head and chest is a different but related question.

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We don't need humanoid machines to lift objects too heavy for a people to lift. 

I really don't understand the obsession with humanoid machinary.  IThey appear cumbersome, inefficient, and unneccessary.

There are far easier ways to go about operations.

When deciding this it is important to know how many other machines you have.  It may take 9 or 10 machines to replace a humanoid.

And that is the point I keep getting at.  It is silly for people to keep saying (as they do) "we don't need people on the surface, we can do it call with telepresence" unless they actually design a mission that does it.

There are plenty of crewed missions tduies out there, with mass and power budgets and capabilities you can extrapolate.  I have yet to see any study where people have done the same with a telepresence mission to the same detail.  Until they do it is just wishful thinking.

I want to see numbers, power, mass, volume, needed to achieve the same as a human mission.
Apologies in advance for any lack of civility - it's unintended

Offline Dalhousie

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #114 on: 06/15/2012 07:36 am »
I really don't understand the obsession with humanoid machinary.  IThey appear cumbersome, inefficient, and unneccessary.

There are far easier ways to go about operations.
Well just imagine if President Kennedy had said, "We choose to go to the Moon, not because it is easy, but because it is hard.  But to make the design reviews a little more smooth - we are only going to take the easiest/most efficient way to do this".

But imagine he then said we are goping to do it the the most complex and ineffective way possible, which is what, IMHO, tring to explore Mars using only telepresence is.  Well, not quite.  Trying to explore it only with unmanned spacecraft controlled from Earth is worse.

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Come on!  Everybody wants a fully autonomous/fully anthropomorphic Robonaut from Mars.  It's good for merchandizing!

I know you are tongue in cheek, but I don't want an "autonomous/fully anthropomorphic Robonaut from Mars".  I  think such approaches are gimmicky wastes of time that confuse people and trivialise what robots can and cannot do.  They are not surrogate people, no matter how many facebook pages and twitter accounts they have, they are just tools, with specific abilities and limits.  But that's another story.
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Offline A_M_Swallow

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #115 on: 06/15/2012 09:00 am »
Cliffs are not the only thing that are vertical, so are ladders.  The LEM had a ladder.

When operating on more than one floor humans tend to incorporate stairs and ladders into their buildings.

Why would you want a ladder and floors on an unmanned mission?

Who says the mission is unmanned?


A ladder is the easiest way of climbing up to the side hatch on a Dragon.

Offline Dalhousie

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #116 on: 06/15/2012 09:43 am »
Cliffs are not the only thing that are vertical, so are ladders.  The LEM had a ladder.

When operating on more than one floor humans tend to incorporate stairs and ladders into their buildings.

Why would you want a ladder and floors on an unmanned mission?

Who says the mission is unmanned?


A ladder is the easiest way of climbing up to the side hatch on a Dragon.

This discussion was in response to claims about humanoid platforms for telepresence, i.e. unmanned surface missions.

Even with a manned mission, why would use use it for machinary?

And what's Dragon got to do with it?
Apologies in advance for any lack of civility - it's unintended

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #117 on: 06/15/2012 10:48 am »
Dalhousie, what I had in mind is a human mission to Mars, but to operate the robots on the surface by telepresence from Deimos in a "shirt sleeves" environment onboard a spaceship. It would have artificial gravity with e.g. two parts connected by tether or struts or whatever.

So that's why I referred to the human mission plans, because you could just adapt those to give an idea for how it would work.

So, if you take the Mars Direct mission, and then replace all the stuff that is destined for the surface in that mission with robots for telepresence and whatever is needed for orbit, then you get a similar mission with mixture of humans and robots. Given the weight needed for the surface you have many tonnes extra to spare for telepresence. Also you have many tonnes of fuel - 112 tonnes for the surface rovers to use to get about, so the power constraints aren't anything like those for our current rovers depending on solar power. A power consumption of even a few kw an hour would be fine.

It would be a very expensive mission of course. But I feel with all the robots on the surface, and replacing equivalent weight of human habitat with rovers it would be just as productive as a human mission to the surface.

Before then doubtless more rovers like Curiosity but more capable.''

Curiosity is using an RTG which produces 2.5 Kwh per day so it would be able to drive a rover requiring 0.1 Kw  easily, but couldn't go far with a 1 kw + rover
http://wordpress.mrreid.org/2011/12/14/curiosity-rover-nuclear-batter/

So, at our current level of technology it doesn't seem to make sense to send the equivalent of Curiosity with legs. But that may well change too.

Since humans use only 30 watts to move around, then it's obvious that something using 1 kw just to walk around has a lot of room for improvement, so in future expect these to improve. I understand your point that it might not  be able to achieve quite human levels of efficiency, at least for quite some time, but suppose it is say a third of human efficiency like 100 watts that's achieved.

I'm sure it will go down at least from the current 1Kw + you quote, they probably haven't even focused over much on efficiency yet as 1 Kw + is fine for most situations on Earth.

It's not a major point. If it's better to use rovers fine, that's what we have to do, and at least we can have literally thousands of them exploring Mars if you include miniature rovers and have them included in the payload of a human mission to Mars operated by telepresence.

Good point about the Sagan paper, yes I see. With lower pressure of the atmosphere it's not going to be so easy for water to remain liquid for long.

But it still seems not impossible, I remember reading reports of a drop of water forming on one of the legs of a rover, and also a report of a bit of soil that seemed to be muddy. Do you know more about those?

You would need only a small droplet to melt briefly and then freeze with the endospore inside, it doesn't need to be like a big puddle that you can see easily with the eye, could even be just a mm or so across.

That's just the easy way for it to happen. If that's not possible you still have the endospores getting stuck in a crack in a pebble protected from UV, and eventually ending up in a cave or some other hospitable habitat for life wherever they exist on Mars, it's going to slow it down but not stop it and when you have exponential growth potentially - once the endospore finds a habitable spot anywhere on Mars, then it's going to produce trillions of copies eventually and won't need that much habitat to do that.

With the dust storms - do you have any references for what you say? Please - some actual figures, like the 99% of light blocked for the solar panels during a dust storm. What % of ultraviolet light is blocked by a Mars sand storm, are there any papers that have studied this, or measurements from the rovers or spaceships? (I didn't find anything in a brief search).

It's just interesting to know. It's not going to make it safe because even without a dust storm giving extra protection, you still have the potential of an endospore in a crack in a pebble, can't see any way of getting around that.

As for fear - it's not that really. I see it as like the first Moon missions when they put the astronauts in quarantine. Now we know that isn't necessary, but at the level of knowledge we had of the Moon at the time it was the right thing to do, indeed they didn't really do enough to keep out anything that might come back from the Moon.

So - now with Mars, and you have both ways possibilities of contamination, at our current level of knowledge, I say that we have to protect against it. As for the pathogens, it's almost impossible surely to put a figure on it, but I think the figure of the risk is more than zero at least.

I think there's even a risk of human extinction resulting from it - suppose that there is a Mars pathogen that we have no resistance to, that can live in a human lung, and is spread by sneezing. Then it might infect everyone before we have a chance to develop an anti-dote, maybe all except a few small isolated tribes and gets to them eventually too if it has other vectors of transmission or e.g. through birds and animals.

If a pathogen does return, maybe more likely something that makes some people very ill and kills some people but others are resistant to it.

But - I may be over optimistic there - if there's even as much as a one in trillion chance of extinction of humans as a result of the Mars sample return, I don't want to bet on those odds until we know more. And you don't want to risk the more limited type of pathogen either.

I'm not trying to scare anyone with this example. Just want to encourage a level headed assessment of the situation, and not to be carried away the other direction by ones enthusiasm and imagination and all the stories in science fiction of successful trouble free colonisation of Mars.

The successful colonisation scenarios are as much sci fi at present as these other more problematical scenarios such as human pathogens, or Mars going belly up as a result, or that we find out too late that as a result of introducing Earth organisms to Mars we have lost something of incalculable value that existed on Mars right up to the date of the first manned landing on Mars.

So - anyway hope this answers everything you've said, and makes it clearer what I have in mind. I won't try to answer things like the actual figures for extra weight needed to make a laptop type chip work on the surface of mars in a rover - computers are used for the rovers at present, and you aren't talking about massive amounts of CPU, no super computer, just an ordinary chip, will have to go through all the space hardiness testing etc and so it lags behind modern technology I know, but by the time this expedition is underway then surely current laptop chips will give a level of computing power that's available for missions to Mars?

I'm not trying to plan out an actual mission to Mars, way beyond my expertise anyway and won't attempt it, so this is the best I can do, others will need to take ideas like these and develop them into a fully worked out mission at a later date, assuming that it is eventually accepted that humans shouldn't land on the surface of Mars right away.

I do hope that they don't because nothing anyone has said here has dealt with the major concerns.

Particularly, simplest problem of all, if a human crewed mission crash lands on Mars because of a failure of the descent rocket or the parachute, then that absolutely, with current technology, is the complete end of planetary protection of Mars, with all those other possible issues and possible scenarios that may play out from there.

BTW for those who want to terraform Mars eventually, thought of another reason you don't want to introduce new life to Mars yet. To terraform Mars with life, you will want to introduce very particular life forms, at various stages in the processs. To start with you might want them to produce lots of methane for instance, to warm up the climate. If there are lots of existing organisms there in many different species, they might eat or outcompete the methane producers you are trying to introduce, or maintain a completely different compositon of atmosphere from the one you want - while if there is nothing there then there is no competition and the whole process is easier.

Just another thing to help convince, if you aren't convinced already by the pathogens and risk of making Mars dangerous to human life, and destroying existing life already there - and destroying also interesting organic deposits and maybe even early forms of life that may still exist on the planet from 4.5 billion years ago.

BTW thanks for pointing out the link to modify the message, missed that and I've corrected a couple of small mistakes in this post.






« Last Edit: 06/15/2012 11:00 am by robertinventor »

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #118 on: 06/15/2012 12:48 pm »
I've just found a page here, rather old now 2003 but brings together lots of links on perils of Mars sample return.

It is a bit journalistical in its presentation so you need to chase up the references to check what they really said, but has loads of information.

http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/archive/ci/31/i08/html/08digregorio.html

Has this quote for instance from Carl Woese who first defined Archaea as a third domain of life in 1977

"When the entire biosphere hangs in the balance, it is adventuristic to the extreme to bring Martian life here. Sure, there is a chance it would do no harm; but that is not the point. Unless you can rule out the chance that it might do harm, you should not embark on such a course"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Woese

That is exactly what I feel about Mars sample return now that I know that the idea is to return the sample to the Earth's surface.

It needs to return to an orbiting laboratory in a high orbit e.g. geostationary - or to the Moon - one of those seems the only safe place to return it, in my opinion - at least until it has been really thoroughly studied.
« Last Edit: 06/15/2012 01:00 pm by robertinventor »

Offline gospacex

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #119 on: 06/15/2012 01:31 pm »
"Once there, a series of chemical reactions .. would be used to combine a small amount of hydrogen (8 tons) carried by the Earth Return Vehicle with the carbon dioxide of the Martian atmosphere to create up to 112 tonnes of methane and oxygen. "

Oooh, very clever. Only take the (low molecular weight) hydrogen with you, use ISRU for the bulk of the mass. I like it.

Noel

Yes indeed it's a truly brilliant idea.

No, it is not particularly clever. No Mars, it's better to produce CO + O2 fuel/oxidizer pair: no hydrogen needed at all. Only energy.

Offline jnc

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #120 on: 06/15/2012 02:00 pm »
gimmicky wastes of time that confuse people and trivialise what robots can and cannot do.  They are not surrogate people, no matter how many facebook pages and twitter accounts they have, they are just tools, with specific abilities and limits.

This reminds me of an old Dilbert cartoon:
"You're immune to both romance and mirth. You must be a.. a.."
"That's right, I'm an engineer."
I hear you, but much as I wish everyone thought that way, they don't. If the plucky liitle Mars robot explorer boosts public interest in, and thus support for, extra-planetary exploration, I will grin and bear it.

Noel

« Last Edit: 06/15/2012 02:00 pm by jnc »
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Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #121 on: 06/15/2012 02:43 pm »
Okay did a bit of a search, obviously don't expect the level of detail of a manned mission when there has been so much funding etc for research into manned missions.

But did turn up this paper

http://journalofcosmology.com/Mars121.html

which goes into practical issues of a Mars telepresence mission in some detail, and with lots of references.

Unfortunately it's published in the "Journal of Cosmology" which is a bit of a crank site sometimes, a mix of perfectly valid scientific papers with more wayout fringe stuff.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_of_Cosmology

But this one certainly reads like a sober scientific paper.

This is their summary

"Telesupervision of multi-robot systems has great potential to increase science return, and human safety and productivity when we send humans to explore Mars. Appropriate sharing of risks and workload among humans and robots will allow human attention to stay focused on critical tasks. Our experience in developing a telesupervision architecture for Lunar and Martian exploration using a homogeneous fleet of mineral prospecting robots (Podnar et al. 2006; Halberstam et al. 2006; Elfes et al. 2006; Dolan et al. 2005) demonstrated some of these benefits. The experiences gained from this initial NASA-supported work, as well as a project on telesupervision of multiple surface craft for Harmful Algal Bloom detection (Podnar et al. 2008), have allowed development and testing of some of the enabling technologies, including high-level mission planning, hazard and assistance detection, and high-fidelity telepresence including geometrically-correct stereoscopic remote vision systems.

Augmenting human abilities with robotic systems is crucial to achieving the long-term goals of human space exploration. Employing the described telesupervision architecture provides formal integration of multi-robot coordination and multi-level robot-human autonomy. Initially deploying humans on orbit rather than on the Martian surface will increase safety while allowing round-trip communications times compatible with effective telesupervision. Testing the technology in low Earth orbit and on the Moon prior to Mars will contain risk and costs."

Obviously a lot more research into the topic is needed. Maybe it has been done and I just haven't managed to turn it up?

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #122 on: 06/15/2012 02:55 pm »
Okay here is a better reference, a Nasa paper on a proposed telepresence mission to Mars called HERRO

http://telerobotics.gsfc.nasa.gov/papers/Oleson2012.pdf

"This paper presents a concept for a human mission to Mars orbit that features direct robotic exploration of the planet’s surface via teleoperation from orbit. This mission is a good example of Human Exploration using Real-time Robotic Operations (HERRO), an exploration strategy that refrains from sending humans to the surfaces of planets with large gravity wells.

HERRO avoids the need for complex and expensive man-rated lander/ascent vehicles and surface systems. Additionally, the humans are close enough to the surface to effectively eliminate the two-way communication latency that constrains typical robotic space missions, thus allowing real-time command and control of surface operations and experiments by the crew. Through use of state-of-the-art telecommunications and robotics, HERRO provides the cognitive and decision-making advantages of having humans at the site of study for only a fraction of the cost of conventional human surface missions.

It is very similar to how oceanographers and oil companies use telerobotic submersibles to work in inaccessible areas of the ocean, and represents a more expedient, near-term step prior to landing humans on Mars and other large planetary bodies.

Results suggest that a single HERRO mission with six crew members could achieve the same exploratory and scientific return as three conventional crewed missions to the Mars surface."
« Last Edit: 06/15/2012 02:57 pm by robertinventor »

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #123 on: 06/15/2012 03:48 pm »
First, a bit of stationkeeping:

Well just a quick reply.

Try using the "reply with quote" feature.  It makes it easier to back track answers and so forth.  You don't need to use it all the time, I certainly don't, but it is a very useful feature.

[quote Bob, later on]That's just quick typing, and you can't go back an edit your posts after you post them.[/quote]

Yes you can.  There's a "Modify message" feature as well, available if you're logged in.

***********

I don't understand the extreme fear of pathogens.

Because you could die, since you'd have no natural pre-existing resistance to an infectious pathogen?  Carl Woese is absolutely correct:

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Unless you can rule out the chance that it might do harm, you should not embark on such a course.

Quote from: Bob
So a human occupied spacecraft will have many trillions of micro-organisms...

No doubt, but you're still overlooking the mechanism by which these mircrorganisms, specialized to the human body, are placed in martian sweet spots, and thrive to such an extent as you are concerned with.  On the surface, every last one of them is likely to be killed.  The only mechanism you allow so far is the possibility that "just one of them falls right down into a crevice in a pebble just by chance".  Which isn't sufficient for too much concern, I'd say, which you partially acknowledge:

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It is the toughest step surely for it to find a habitat. But - the endospores are also amazingly long lived ...

But the human ones are less likely to have such amazing lives of dormancy.  We should certainly be very careful about backward contamination; somewhat less so for forward contamination.  Even so, we should study Mars from orbit for a good while before attempting to land.

In return you get a ten fold increase in performance over remote control from earth and but the crew are still 100 times less effective that they would be on the surface.

Unfortunately, these are made up numbers.

Quote
Spin gravity is undemonstrated with unknown long term effects.  Proving it up would require an extensive program.

As always, I insist that a 900m, 1rpm, 1gee ring station, would solve all gravity related problems, and would have no severe coriolis effect problems.  I do realize that there could be a mass effect for biological creatures.  Living bodies may need a nearby massive planet, and the mass of a ring station just wouldn't cut it.  But I don't know that anybody is even proposing this possibility.

As to extensive programs:  I think that objection applies to any program not already demonstrated.

Robert the Inventor:  BigDog Rox!  Thanks for sharing.  When the guy kicked him, he was able to maintain his footing!  Same on the ice!

True, as you point out in a later post, "Human location locomotion is quite efficient".  However, it is the robot which mimics human locomotion which is not.

I trot out again, heh heh, my idea of horses on the Moon, and Mars by extension. Yes, they'd need spacesuits, already demonstrated for humans, readily conceived scalable for horses.  All of the software, thanks to evolution, is included in the horse itself.  Several paces, low energy consumption, self balancing, intelligent and easily trained, strong.  What's not to like?  Possibly even cheaper to keep in operating than a robot of similar capability.  Not only that, why not dogs?  They could carry samples and tools, and be quite useful.

We are talking about very complex systems hear, not toys.  Which is why I keep asking for numbers.

Well, I hear you loud and clear.  Robert the Inventor is thinking, by my thinking, outside the box, and generating ideas, some of which have merit.  He is not yet able to provide numbers for these ideas yet, and that is a problem with some of his suggestions.  But he is not suggesting the use of toys; he is giving examples of toys which have already solved some important problems of calculation.

Literalitudinity.  You tend to be obstreperous, to the point of confusing the issue deliberately:

Cliffs are not the only thing that are vertical, so are ladders.  The LEM had a ladder.

When operating on more than one floor humans tend to incorporate stairs and ladders into their buildings.

Why would you want a ladder and floors on an unmanned mission? ...

I want to see numbers, power, mass, volume, needed to achieve the same as a human mission.

You fail to realize that if there were a human tended base with more than one floor, stairs and ladders would probably be incorporated.  You get that Andrew's not talking about an unmanned station?

Your call for numbers, etc. is valid, but not easy to answer.



Why would you want to climb a vertical cliff?

People who don't want to explore don't climb vertical cliffs.

Whether you need a head ... is a different but related question.

I keep my brain in mine, but hey.

Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #124 on: 06/15/2012 08:27 pm »
Quote
It is the toughest step surely for it to find a habitat. But - the endospores are also amazingly long lived ...

But the human ones are less likely to have such amazing lives of dormancy.  We should certainly be very careful about backward contamination; somewhat less so for forward contamination.  Even so, we should study Mars from orbit for a good while before attempting to land.

Ah - but how likely is your "less likely"? Out of 1000 species in 19 phyla on the human skin.

Also many Archaea some so hard to study we don't even know how many phyla there are. Though not endospore forming, some extremophile may be able to survive without metabolising for a long time on the surface of Mars protected from UV. If all you have of some of the extremophiles on the spaceship are some RNA sequences you were able to duplicate, you can't say anything really about what they might do on Mars.

"less likely" just isn't good enough. You need to prove it can't happen.

I agree we need to care about backward contamination. But the risks are so high both ways, with backward contamination you risk at worst the human race or more, so that's of course a higher risk in a sense, but the other way you risk messing up a whole planet and losing much of incalculable value.

I don't really myself want to call that a "lesser risk" as if it doesn't matter so much.

As for the grain of dust, you haven't convinced me that it can't happen, so many endospores, so many grains, gigantic on the scale of an endospore, not only does it seem possible, just seems a matter of time before it actually happens.

There are so many other ways it could happen too, it's like the many headed hydra. If you finally manage to show that one vector can't happen another will just pop up in its place. So - in the air, on a pebble, lands in a drop of water, falls into a shadow, is trodden into the ground by an astronaut or the wheel of a rover, gets stuck to the wheel of a rover, gets stuck to a fleck of material from the parachute and blown away in the wind, gets buried deeper into the ground during an excavation, down to level of permanent briny water possibly.... That's just a selection there are probably many other ways it could happen during a human mission to Mars.

Just one oversight, one vector missed, and one endospore that gets through all the problems unscathed all the way to a habitat where it is able to survive, and that's the end of your planetary protection policy. Like with one of the early Moon missions when they opened the space capsule door by mistake when it was in the ocean, so any micro-organisms inside would have immediately found a nice warm vast wet habitat to reproduce in.

It's really not up to me to prove it can happen, not with something with as long term consequences as this. Just to suggest ways that it might happen, so long as it is at least semi-plausible it can happen, it's up to those who still propose that humans do visit Mars to prove rigorously that it can't happen. A hunch even a well informed one is just not good enough as they can be like the anaerobic halophiles that that expert said couldn't exist when he recommended dropping planetary protection protocols for Mars before Sagan's paper.

Also no-one has answered the issues with a human occupied spacecraft crashing during the landing on Mars. Until that can be solved, I think Mars has to be a no-go area for humans, even if you do somehow solve the issues to do with what happens when you get there.

Why run those risks at all.

Seems to be lots to like about telepresence, and really nothing much to prefer about humans on the surface except that natural feeling that humans like to be there, and wanting to see other humans walking about on the surface of Mars.

I feel that natural feeling too, imagination fired by the idea of humans walking on Mars. It would be great to colonise Mars, would be so interesting and exciting, I'd be following every step like with the Moon landings when I was young.

But you and I won't feel so good about it any more if a decade later we discover that the climate of Mars has started to change, and that the surface is covered in organisms of Earth origin, that some of the organisms there are become pathogens, and that humans can no longer hope to safely live on the surface of Mars.

Then perhaps you find out that there was some amazing life form living on Mars in some particular secluded spot, and organic deposits 4.5 billion years old - and now they are all just a slowly decomposing mass of Earth bacteria plus a few intriguing fossils of the hard parts of the organisms that no-one is quite sure how to intepret.

Someone should make all this into a blockbuster movie, it might create quite an impact. Or a good sci fi story at least. I wish I could write one, but though okay at expressing myself in writing, I've tried and just don't have the knack to write a good story like that, not yet anyway.

It might not happen. The worst outcomes there might even be low probability. But right now we simply don't have any way to be sure, and that's not good enough in my book.

Sorry to keep saying the same thing, seems a bit that I am. I should probably stop soon, especially as I feel I'm beginning to repeat myself :).

This is the sort of conversation where sometimes its good to take a break from it and try again later when everyone has had a chance to reflect on it more.

The main thing in my book is there should be extreme caution for the first human mission to Mars, also for the first mars sample return.

If the first mission to Mars with humans is done from orbit and with telepresence, and the first MSR is done to high orbit or the Moon, that will satisfy the likes of me for the time being.

Then we will learn so much about Mars from that.

Hopefully also there will be more research into the contamination issues. Maybe also ways will be found to study the Archaea. Also with large quantities of Mars samples returned, e.g. to the Moon, similar quantities to the return of the Moon rocks to Earth, can actually study, with real Mars samples and with simulated Mars atmosphere, in detail, what is likely to happen to it when Earth life is introduced to it.

So in various ways we can study Mars, and study what the contamination issues really are in more detail and maybe we can have this conversation again when we all know more about it.

I can imagine the live feed from Mars explored by telepresence would be pretty interesting too. Agree that a cute anthropomorphic robot or dog with big camera lens eyes operated by telepresence would probably increase the audience ratings :). But - if they just move more quickly than the current rovers, and can travel long distances like hundreds of Km even, that would make it more interesting too, if when you see an interesting rock on the horizon and drive there the same day instead of weeks later.

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Robert the Inventor:  BigDog Rox!  Thanks for sharing.  When the guy kicked him, he was able to maintain his footing!  Same on the ice!

True, as you point out in a later post, "Human location locomotion is quite efficient".  However, it is the robot which mimics human locomotion which is not.


Yes it does doesn't it, I was impressed by that too.

With the human locomotion, - the ones like Asimo obviously could be more efficient than they are, but probably limited in how much better then can get yes, if just based on simple engineering.

My thought there is based on that chap who is imitating the human skeleton, and including even the way the muscles are able to absorb energy and re-release it just like ours do. A robot that incorporates that could be much more efficient at walking, if it incorporates those same tricks our body uses to reduce the amount of energy needed, perhaps it could be nearly as efficient as we are.

Sorry I didn't explain that well but hopefully it is clear now.

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I trot out again, heh heh, my idea of horses on the Moon, and Mars by extension. Yes, they'd need spacesuits, already demonstrated for humans, readily conceived scalable for horses.  All of the software, thanks to evolution, is included in the horse itself.  Several paces, low energy consumption, self balancing, intelligent and easily trained, strong.  What's not to like?  Possibly even cheaper to keep in operating than a robot of similar capability.  Not only that, why not dogs?  They could carry samples and tools, and be quite useful.

For mars at a later stage in terraforming, if the decision is made that it's okay to go ahead, I like the idea of using mammoths, which we might well be able to clone by then.

They have special adaptations of the blood to really cold conditions

http://news.discovery.com/animals/woolly-mammoth-blood-bacteria-cold.html

As for suits for animals, or better suits for humans, this one using "lines of non extension" would be much easier to use than modern spacesuits which are basically "miniature spaceships"

http://mvl.mit.edu/EVA/biosuit/

Just that I wouldn't use it for Mars astronauts quite yet, obviously.

I've got the same adventurous and imaginative spirit when it comes to space as I expect the rest of you have, read the sci fi stories and imagination fired up by them. Go back say twenty years and I thought there were no problems at all with colonising Mars, hadn't heard of these issues and if I was posting on a board like this then I'd say just what you are saying. I'd be all for an immediate manned mission to Mars.

But nowadays, after what I've found out about the issues, there is no way I'd advocate colonising Mars at present, not until all these concerns and issues are laid to rest.

So anyway for a quick summary of what the issue is.

The one about a spacecraft rupturing on landing I think is the most convincing, as it's the one that you can never argue out of.

You can argue this way and that about the endospores, and it really needs more reseach to understand it clearly and we may never get a concensus opinion about what exactly is likely to happen.

But it is easy see that there is nothing at all you can do to protect the planet in the event of a crash landing of a human occupied spaceship.

And - of course backward contamination is the highest risk of all if it could mean extinction of the human race. But forward contamination is risking so much as well in my book.

BTW did you know as a result of this thread, literalitudinity has become briefly a Googlewhackblatt and coincidentally also has the same number of letters as Googlewhackblatt :)

Won't last for long as there are three posts here now using the word.
« Last Edit: 06/15/2012 08:51 pm by robertinventor »

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #125 on: 06/16/2012 01:42 am »
Quote from: Bob the inventor
Ah - but how likely is your "less likely"?

As it turns out the counter is: "How likely is your likely?"  So we're at an impasse pending verification.

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You need to prove it can't happen...

Further impasse.  You also need to prove that it will happen, in spite of efforts to control it.

The impasse is where the political extremophiles make their money, but also where progress is not made.

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Just one oversight, one vector missed, and one endospore that gets through ...

True, but where does the fear mongering begin?  More importantly, where does it end? I agree with the principle of conservation, but you have not yet provided a mechanism whereby safety can be proven or not.  I quite understand if that specific proof is beyond your payscale at the moment.  But so far, the planet looks more barren than teeming.

If the decision that the planet is barren is made, and that soon, there is still the possibility of error some decades later, when a new life form is discovered.  If there is a permanent human outpost on Mars, I fully expect there to be a one way planetary quarantine put into effect, until the finally discovered lifeform, or its mutation, can be adequately understood.

If we farouk up (pardon the Arabic) the intial planetary protection, even then we would have discovered a new life form, and would have determined second genesis.  Not ideal, but for me, acceptable.  I'm not being cavalier (even tho I'm a wahoo), I'm trying to be pragmatic and perhaps even apologetic in advance.

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But it is easy see that there is nothing at all you can do to protect the planet in the event of a crash landing of a human occupied spaceship.

Here is where the perfect becomes the enemy of the good enough.  That risk cannot be eliminated, it can only be better understood and then estimated.  By my take, Mars is too far into the future for too much planning, pending actual experience in the cis-lunar space.  While gaining that experience, we can learn more about the martian systems.

Quote
BTW did you know as a result of this thread, literalitudinity....

I am taking over, and have calculated all.  Resistance is futile.

Literalitudinity is.
« Last Edit: 06/16/2012 01:46 am by JohnFornaro »
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Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #126 on: 06/16/2012 09:17 am »
Actually I have just found a study of exactly what we want to know, endospores survival on the Mars surface, it's here

http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/ast.2011.0737

In the Expose E experiment on the space lab, says there was a second experiment which studied survival of endospores on the surface in a simulated Mars environment. The results were remarkable - the experiment ran for 3000 hours (125 days).

In that time period, 5% of the endospores survived on the surface in multi-layers. Less than one in 10^-6 survived in monolayers, but still some survived even like that exposed to the full sunlight on Mars (which was simulated by filtering the light from the sun to Mars intensity). In shadows on the simulated Mars surface, 75% of the spores survived for 125 days.

« Last Edit: 06/16/2012 09:25 am by robertinventor »

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #127 on: 06/16/2012 09:43 am »
I can sort of understand where you are at, but for me, a one-way quarantine protection of Mars is just not good enough.

It's not just a risk for the astronauts who are landing on Mars you see - if that was all they could make their own decision about whether to take the risk or not.

But it's also risking the whole planet for all the scientists who want to study it, all the discoveries that might be made as a result of those discoveries, and all the inventions that would arise from those discoveries.

Indeed, also all the future generations of people who might live there if it is successfully terraformed once we know how to do it properly and if it is found out that it is okay to do it. (That's because if we just let life do its thing without much knowledge of how to set up the right populations of organisms and feedback loops , it could change the climate and the micro-organisms population in a way that prevents easy terraforming or evolves pathogens making terraforming for humans to live there just impossible).

So - all these other people who would be impacted need to have their say as well, and need to be taken account of.

So anyway that's what I think, put in a nutshell. Probably shouldn't say any more, if I've got nothing new to add.

I agree it is too far in the future for much planning at this stage. Except for the first Mars mission, that is reasonably imminent maybe in the next decade someone will do it, or next couple of decades.

So, it is good to do more planning of tele-presence for that, and proper complete mission planning continuing that paper I quoted above.

http://telerobotics.gsfc.nasa.gov/papers/Oleson2012.pdf

Also, if there is any way to make sure people can see the advantages of tele-presence, for the first few missions at least, and the possible disadvantages of human landings at our current stage of knowledge.

If any of the groups planning a human direct landing on Mars in the nearish future do go ahead with their plans, I will be even a bit scared at what might possibly happen to the Earth when they come back, and feel really sad for what might well be lost on Mars as a result of their exploration. So - that's the one milestone in the future, I very much hope the first human mission to Mars is by telepresence. Then after that then we can make new decisions and see what happens based on what we know then.

It might be that by then when we see in practise how much can be achieved by telepresence, and given that by the time the first human expedition returns from such a mission that telepresence capabilities and technology will have moved forward enormously from the way it is now, that it might just be established as the norm to continue with telepresence, and people might even wonder why anyone wanted to land on the surface in the first place.

Anyway will see what happens then :)

Before then then of course the first Mars Sample return, I think we are both agreed that shouldn't be returned to the Earth's surface.

If anyone does go ahead with plans for a Mars Sample Return direct to the Earth's surface, I'll be speaking out as loud as I can to try and stop them doing it, the risk however small it is, if not proved safe is just something you can't even contemplate. In something like that, the burden of proof is to prove it safe, not to prove it unsafe.

I read somewhere that Carl Sagan suggested (I think a bit tongue in cheek) that the scientists planning that type of Mars sample return test it first with a container filled with Anthrax spores - with the idea that on the basis of our current knowledge what you bring back from Mars could be far worse than Anthrax spores. Not surprisingly no-one took him up on the challenge.

BTW answering something you said earlier, yes I found the reply with quote button, only after quite a few posts. It's funny how you can miss something like that just because it's in a different place from the place you are used to, I came here after posting in the newmars forum and it was in a different place, that's how I missed it, if I'd gone in the other direction I'd have missed the one there most likely too, so there's probably nothing you can do about it.

But anyway found it, and I've been using it. Works well. As you say, though, don't need to use it all the time, and I find sometimes though it's just easier to answer with a new post, as after a while it can get a bit hard to read if you quote every sentence you respond to.
« Last Edit: 06/16/2012 10:01 am by robertinventor »

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #128 on: 06/16/2012 02:04 pm »
Actually I have just found a study of exactly what we want to know, endospores survival on the Mars surface ...In that time period, 5% of the endospores survived on the surface in multi-layers. Less than one in 10^-6 survived in monolayers, but still some survived even like that exposed to the full sunlight on Mars...

Interesting.  Again, this is about survival, not "thrival", which is to minimize to some extent, your concerns about rapid widespread forward contamination of Mars with a carefully selected subset of our endospores.

Still needed in your conjectural proof is the mechanism by which these endospores, a subset of all endospores, are inadvertently carried to Mars, in spite of precautions; and the mechanism by which the subset of those surviving endospores, contaminates the entire planet in relatively short order.  The discussion rapidly turns to a listing of those particular endospores, which I turn out to know nothing at all about.  They may very well exist, as you surmise, but their actual existence and survival rates, is something you, or somebody else, must provide.  In short, there's a lot of research yet to do.

I can sort of understand where you are at, but for me, a one-way quarantine protection of Mars is just not good enough.

Moi?

Quote
It's also risking the whole planet for all the scientists who want to study it, all the discoveries that might be made as a result of those discoveries, and all the inventions that would arise from those discoveries.

The risk is that subset of a subset of organisms, and the particular mechanisms by which they would be known to spread versus the containment procedures to be implemented to prevent that spread.  I'm talking myself into believing that it's a small number, but I don't know.

As to the discoveries, you can only be talking about the discoveries of new life forms and the determination of second genesis, which has a lot of value, I agree.  As to inventions, I can only envision the possibility of say, new vaccines, which would take advantage of the similarities and/or differences between terrestrial and possible martian life, which also could have potential value.

Quote
Also, if there is any way to make sure people can see the advantages of tele-presence, for the first few missions at least, and the possible disadvantages of human landings at our current stage of knowledge.

If any of the groups planning a human direct landing on Mars in the nearish future do go ahead with their plans, I will be even a bit scared at what might possibly happen to the Earth when they come back, and feel really sad for what might well be lost on Mars as a result of their exploration. So - that's the one milestone in the future, I very much hope the first human mission to Mars is by telepresence. Then after that then we can make new decisions and see what happens based on what we know then.

Pretty much totally agree.  I plug again the 900m, 1rpm, 1gee manned ring station orbiting Mars, with a Mars-gee intermediate ring, and a fleet of lab and tool equipped rovers performing a comprehensive survey looking for life.

There is no rush to get to Mars, unless there is found to be signs of intelligent life.
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Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #129 on: 06/16/2012 03:31 pm »
Actually I have just found a study of exactly what we want to know, endospores survival on the Mars surface ...In that time period, 5% of the endospores survived on the surface in multi-layers. Less than one in 10^-6 survived in monolayers, but still some survived even like that exposed to the full sunlight on Mars...

Interesting.  Again, this is about survival, not "thrival", which is to minimize to some extent, your concerns about rapid widespread forward contamination of Mars with a carefully selected subset of our endospores.

Still needed in your conjectural proof is the mechanism by which these endospores, a subset of all endospores, are inadvertently carried to Mars, in spite of precautions; and the mechanism by which the subset of those surviving endospores, contaminates the entire planet in relatively short order.  The discussion rapidly turns to a listing of those particular endospores, which I turn out to know nothing at all about.  They may very well exist, as you surmise, but their actual existence and survival rates, is something you, or somebody else, must provide.  In short, there's a lot of research yet to do.


Yes of course lots of research to do yet. I'm not a researcher in this field, I can prove mathematical theorems, but it's not for me to prove this sort of a result, and as I said, already, if you can show a possibility of contamination, show that the probability of contamination is non zero, then the proof should be the other way, that it is safe.

But the vector of the endospores caught in a dust grain and carried in the Mars dust storm - that seems like a pretty easy way for it to happen now based on these figures. The dust grain gives UV protection to endospores in its cracks, and there is more from the dust storm itself.

There may well be liquid just briefly on the surface as a water drop did seem to form on a lander leg during one of the missions. They weren't able to analyse it just images it but it looked like a water drop.

If not then a bit under the surface - or in a cave.

Once it finds a habitat anywhere on Mars, and been able to thrive there, then by same method, won't take that long to spread to all similar habitats throughout Mars. Because once it starts living on Mars itself it produces millions of Endospores probably every day.


Quote
It's also risking the whole planet for all the scientists who want to study it, all the discoveries that might be made as a result of those discoveries, and all the inventions that would arise from those discoveries.

The risk is that subset of a subset of organisms, and the particular mechanisms by which they would be known to spread versus the containment procedures to be implemented to prevent that spread.  I'm talking myself into believing that it's a small number, but I don't know.


Good that you say you don't know :). I don't know either. But it is plain that no-one actually knows, and that despite all the massive advances of the last century, still research into micro-organisms has huge gaps into it with even whole Phyla (in the case of the Archaea) completely unknown to science.

My plausibility reason is that though many micro-organisms are specialised to particular habitats, others are generalists like the polyextremophiles, and so organisms that thrive on human skin, some will only be able to survive there, but there will be others that can survive almost anywhere.

It's like in your garden, some flowers need special soil conditions and special care. But others can grow anywhere in the garden, usually the "weeds", and they are often more vigorous if anything.

So some of those 1000 micro-organisms in those 19 phyla could easily turn out to have extremophile capabilities. I wonder if anyone has studied the extremophile capabilities of organisms in the human microbiomes..

Then there are always those clean room extremophile Archaea including the ones that nobody yet knows anything about except that they exist.


As to the discoveries, you can only be talking about the discoveries of new life forms and the determination of second genesis, which has a lot of value, I agree.  As to inventions, I can only envision the possibility of say, new vaccines, which would take advantage of the similarities and/or differences between terrestrial and possible martian life, which also could have potential value.


Ah I had much more in mind than that.

The thing is, that micro-organisms are like miniature factories or nano-technological marvels. They are immensely complex and way beyond anything we can make ourselves at that scale.

So they can make things. Not just vaccines. Look at all the ways they are used in our modern society, micro-organisms are used everywhere, for food, biochemicals, crops, fertilizer.

Or - could be useful for turning light into energy, or might be able to digest materials no Earth organism can handle, or could be able to clean up radioactivity or various kinds of toxic chemicals.

Or make new materials, with new properties. New types of structures.

I think that in the future micro-organsims will be used more and more for this sort of thing.

The more different it is from Earth life the wider the range there.

So if it is really early life or it has evolved along a completely different path from Earth life, then there's almost no limit to what we could learn, seems to me. Because then it's like all our biochemistry and life science on Earth rich and amazing as it is, is all just different ways of combining the same bases C G T A and based on DNA and RNA.

If you found life that worked in a different way, different bases, or the same bases but different structure of DNA, it's like you have added a whole new extra dimension to everything, if you have two completely different forms of life to look at.

That might be some direction that life took in the very early years of the solar system before DNA and RNA took over, with the surface of Mars so ancient, it's seas so localised with no continental drift, and the whole planet was probably never covered with water, just parts of it only were covered by large shallow seas. So, there might be actual undisturbed deposits of those remains as the actual organics, not decomposed at least, maybe damaged by radiation or whatever, but if covered from the sunlight, and in the deep freeze of Mars and if no decay bacteria, it could be more or less unchanged from 4.5 billion years ago. Even might be able to bring it back to life again, like cloning mammoths.

Or it might even still be alive in some relic population at the bottom of maybe one tiny dried up sea bed with maybe some geothermal heat or whatever.

Or - could be none of those. But if it was there, and it's gone already when you first explore Mars, you might never even know what you lost.

Hope that's a bit clearer, that's what I had in mind, not just vaccines or the like.

Quote
Also, if there is any way to make sure people can see the advantages of tele-presence, for the first few missions at least, and the possible disadvantages of human landings at our current stage of knowledge.

If any of the groups planning a human direct landing on Mars in the nearish future do go ahead with their plans, I will be even a bit scared at what might possibly happen to the Earth when they come back, and feel really sad for what might well be lost on Mars as a result of their exploration. So - that's the one milestone in the future, I very much hope the first human mission to Mars is by telepresence. Then after that then we can make new decisions and see what happens based on what we know then.

Pretty much totally agree.  I plug again the 900m, 1rpm, 1gee manned ring station orbiting Mars, with a Mars-gee intermediate ring, and a fleet of lab and tool equipped rovers performing a comprehensive survey looking for life.

There is no rush to get to Mars, unless there is found to be signs of intelligent life.

Great so glad you agree there. It's the most pressing point after all, the rest we can find out more and decide later as you say. Yes, sounds like just the way to do it. Maybe eventually a Stanford Torus in orbit around Mars constructed from the materials of Deimos.
« Last Edit: 06/16/2012 03:37 pm by robertinventor »

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #130 on: 06/17/2012 01:42 pm »
Quote from: RobertInventor
So if it is really early life or it has evolved along a completely different path from Earth life, then there's almost no limit to what we could learn, seems to me.

There's a very influential group of people here, who insist that should we stay home, contemplate our navels and meditate, that there would be "almost no limit to what we could learn".  I'm less inclined to accept either hand wavy raison as justification for how we should proceed.

Well, at this point, you and I are starting to repeat ourselves, and I'm not sure what newness or resolution there could be should the discussion continue.
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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #131 on: 06/17/2012 02:55 pm »
Yes I agree when you start to repeat yourself, that's a clear sign that the discussion has reached the point where you probably aren't going to learn much more, but it's been a really good discussion and I thank you all for taking part.

Maybe we can take it up again once we learn more, either if Curiosity comes up with interesting results or later on.

Also hope I have given you all some interesting things to think about, as you have too in your responses.

I have certainly learned in observing your stream of consciousness reporting along the way of your researching this subject.

Oh.  And speaking of literalitudinity and other useful terms.  Try snarkasm.  I think I invented that one too...
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Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #132 on: 06/17/2012 08:37 pm »
Removed both the original message and my reply, don't want to be hurtful.

Try a shorter one. Also to say sorry for the sarcasm which was due to clumsiness in expressing myself and not intended as sarcasm. Reading it back afterwards and after reading your reply, I can see easily how it would be understood that way.

So, just to say, about the "influential group of people", okay I understand these things can happen.

I'm not influenced by any of the other people here, or indeed anyone else at all, not originally, so this is a completely independent point of view.

It just came out of concern after reading recent news stories about possible human Mars missions, raising a concern I had already from quite a few years ago, through independent thought about the matter.

I can say that with confidence because two weeks ago didn't even know there was anyone else as concerned in the way that I am about Mars contamination by humans both ways.

I'm all for adventure in space myself, keen on space exploration and human exploration of space too, so am not a "stay at home". Just someone who is concerned particularly about the issues involved with exploring planets that either might have life on them or might be habitable for life. It is a concern that has developed gradually over my life.

For other forms of space exploration such as space habitats, or the asteroids, moon, ice on Mercury at its poles etc. where humans might go then I'm all for it (so long as it's reasonably certain there's no life there).

Where there's life or might be or possibility of life or terraforming then I'm all for telepresence as a way of exploring the surface, at least for now until we know a lot more.

Since you also like the idea of exploring Mars from orbit at least to start with then we aren't so far apart, and it's rare you totally agree with anyone and the differences of opinion are what makes discussion interesting and worthwhile.

Then, here are the two links I mentioned in the deleted posts, still of interest,

====================

BTW I found a couple of other links the other day, this study from 2001 about the possibility of thin films of water on the surface of Mars. Basically - in some parts of Mars the pressure is high enough to raise the boiling point of water to 10C. It's still hard for water to form on the surface because the air is so dry that it would evaporate, just as water on Earth always evaporates unless the air is 100% humidity. Also the places where it is easiest for water to form are the driest places on Mars (i.e. with least amounts of ice to melt to form the water). But he points out that salt reduces the melting point of the ice and makes it easier for water to form.

http://ebookbrowse.com/haberle-water-on-mars-2001plw-pdf-d276815460

That suggests the idea that a short way below the surface, so protected from evaporation to some extent then the water could form more easily (maybe heated by the rocks warming in the sun).

Then I found this recent paper which was published just two months ago (Mar 15):

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08120099.2011.591430

I'll put the whole abstract, better than just quoting a short sentence.

"The correlation between liquid water and life may be our most reliable tool in the search for extraterrestrial life. To help develop this tool, we explore the complex relationship between liquid water, partial pressure, and solute freezing point depression on Earth and Mars and discuss the conditions under which liquid water is metastable on Mars. We establish the physical conditions for the existence of saline aqueous solutions in the pores of the martian near surface substratum. We find that thin films of near subsurface liquid water on Mars at –20°C could provide a viable niche for terrestrial psychrophilic halophiles. Since some martian salts can suppress the freezing point of aqueous solutions with minimal suppression of the water activity, some martian liquid water environments with a water activity above 0.6 may also be able to support terrestrial life at temperatures as low as −30°C, 10°C lower than the limit of terrestrial life."

This is a slightly different situation from the previous one, subsurface films of water so easier to form, also well below 0C. So seems such habitats could be widespread on Mars.

If those films do exist, that would give your habitat that you asked for earlier when you asked for a method by which the life could thrive and spread once it reaches the surface of Mars.

Still needed in your conjectural proof is the mechanism by which these endospores, a subset of all endospores, are inadvertently carried to Mars, in spite of precautions; and the mechanism by which the subset of those surviving endospores, contaminates the entire planet in relatively short order.

As for how they get there, could just be the endospore falls to the surface. Then it has those 125 days + it can survive there even exposed to sunlight if part of a monolayer - and probably survive for years in shadow.

Some time in the mission then an astronaut steps on the soil the endospore fell into and it gets trodden a bit into the subsurface layer and so encounters that film of cold salty water. If it happens to have the capability to live as an anaerobic psychrophilic halophilic autotroph (doesn't need to be it's only habitat) then it will thrive on Mars.

As for how it gets onto the spacecraft, there are all those different extremophiles in the clean room analysis.  There are all the organisms that live on humans, and there are the endospores that just get carried in the air and the air in a human occupied ship can't remove those completely (even in an operating theatre, then they just aim to reduce them to say a hundred or so colony forming units per cubic meter). Also organisms in the food for the astronauts too for that matter - sterilisation to make sure it doesn't go off won't be good enough for this sort of thing.

Then the final thing that is really hard to do anything about at current stages of knowledge, there are all the non cultivable archaea even complete phyla we don't even know anything about except they exist and some of those could easily be of the desired type (or rather undesired type :( ), if we don't know anything about them and know that many of them are extremophile enough to survive in spacecraft clean rooms and indeed the Archaea are particularly noted for the number of extremophile species you get. As I understand, they don't form endospores but some can have very robust dormant states that could do the trick just as well, just survive without growing or reproducing until they encounter a suitable medium to grow.

This isn't a proof because it's not maths, so I can't provide what I would call a proof which is a mathematical certainty. I don't know how you set about proving results in this field. But it's enough for me to be concerned that it could very well happen, for me even a small probability would be enough to be really concerned about the possible outcome.

Don't expect you to agree with me completely but do you understand how I might feel the way I do about it?

And I suppose the thing that makes me most concerned is that people who have clearly thought about manned missions a lot don't seem to have given these matters a tremendous amount of thought. Not just you. All the people involved in manned missions to Mars including the ones that have become media celebrities, talking on TV about it including also famous astronomers. Here in the UK for instance heard Brian Cox (very famous as a media celebrity scientist here in the UK) and Patrick Moore talking about manned missions to Mars and they have never raised the subject in any of their programs about it. The inventor of that mars suit. All the articles about manned missions to Mars in the astronomy magazines. The people from Mars One in this video that got me concerned about it this time around:



Lots of people just never seem to address it. Intelligent clever people, with nobel prizes and the like, just don't understand why they don't talk about it.

Just a few well known people have worried about it as I now know such as Carl Sagan and Carl Woese, and as you read those articles you find other researchers here and there who are also clearly concerned about it. Also e.g. Carl Sagan clearly found that many of the scientists he talked to didn't really see why he was so concerned about it.

Yet when you go and ask for details in a place like this forum, it is clear that no-one else has even researched into it. Here I've turned up lots of research that none of you here had the slightest idea existed as you asked for evidence for things I said, which then turned up in these various papers.

So it seems the reason for this silence on the matter in the media isn't because they have a superior knowledge and understanding of the matter and know things that weren't clear to an outsider like myself. It seems to be just that they don't think about it much. That's the most worrying thing of all for me, I shouldn't have to raise these issues, you should all be well aware of it already. It's not for me to do the research, well out of my field. But someone should be doing it certainly, and though some are, they should also be listened to more.

Sorry if this is a bit of a rant, I'm rather passionate about it, and the more the rest of you seem to treat it as not much of an issue the more concerned I get about it.

I don't see it as your fault, not blaming anyone, it is natural like the crowd instinct in humans, if everyone else around you says it is okay we have a great tendency to assume it must be okay.  You are certainly in very good company, plenty of other extremely clever, thoughtful, and well respected people you can follow, and say "I think just like them".

(Not being in the least bit sarcastic here, and understand it, if it is that.)

If it is that, then it changes gradually, as more people around you become concerned about it, and as celebrities or people you respect start to talk about such issues more, as there is a "sea change" in how people think about things, you begin to realise there is something in it after all. I have seen several such changes happen in my own lifetime, and remember how it happened. (In most of them I took as long to adjust and see what was happening as everyone else)

I suppose with my job then there is a premium on inventiveness and thinking "out of the box" as you mentioned, so maybe I have to be just a little immune to that herd instinct to be able to do what I do. In one or two areas anyway.



« Last Edit: 06/18/2012 01:32 am by robertinventor »

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #133 on: 06/18/2012 01:24 am »
Sometimes a few pictures are worth many words.

Here is something I uploaded to facebook. As you can see, I'm no artist, but it seems to work :).

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=4119192579818

Offline Patchouli

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #134 on: 06/18/2012 04:37 am »
If no life is found on Mars bad news for the hunt for extraterrestrial life but it would mean good news for those who wish to colonize it.
No staying clear of what might be the best locations for a base and no worries about contamination with Earth life.
Personally I think the fears of cross contamination are unfounded as Mars and Earth have exchanged materials in the past.
« Last Edit: 06/18/2012 04:46 am by Patchouli »

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #135 on: 06/18/2012 08:33 am »
If no life is found on Mars bad news for the hunt for extraterrestrial life but it would mean good news for those who wish to colonize it.
No staying clear of what might be the best locations for a base and no worries about contamination with Earth life.
Personally I think the fears of cross contamination are unfounded as Mars and Earth have exchanged materials in the past.

I understand what you are saying, but do think about it some more.

Only a small number of species have made the crossing at most, the ones that can survive the journey for probably thousands of years in vacuum. The last new species to come to Earth or get to Mars that way is probably millions of years ago.

Maybe there were extinctions on Earth last time it happened, we probably weren't around last time a new species came to Earth from Mars.

Ditto on Mars, if there are "living fossils" and only a few species made it, then there is a chance they could outcompete the life that's got to it from Earth so far. But if life able to survive on Mars did get to Mars on a meteorite, it will certainly get there on a human occupied spaceship, many new species.

Then it's like all the problems we have here on Earth when species get into habitats where they don't belong. Here on Earth anything that can enter a dormant state and be carried in the wind has a global distribution, so you don't get the same issues with the micro-organisms humans carry with them from one continent to another when they explore. But on a mission to Mars, then those micro-organisms are making a journey on the spaceship that they are extremely unlikely to do by themselves, and most of them could never do it at all without human help.

As for inadvertent terraforming and thinking that's a good thing, think about that some more too.

The life you introduce might well interfere with attempts to terraform Mars. E.g. you try to introduce methane forming micro-organisms to warm the atmosphere of Mars, but they get out competed or eaten by the life already there. Or as you try to oxygenate the atmosphere, something already on Mars takes all the oxygen out as soon as it forms. Or you try to melt the ice on Mars, and something on Mars creates vast clouds over the surface that cool the planet down and make the water freeze again. Or something on Mars creates methane or other gases in quantities that make the air unbreathable for a human.

Here on the Earth we have evolved to like the atmosphere as it is, and there seem to be many feedback loops that keep it in its current state so even when there are volcanoes erupting putting much more CO2 into the atmosphere than usual, then that gets moderated by life. The temperature on the surface of the Earth is much lower than it would be without life, if the CO2 all went into the atmosphere and stayed there we would go the same way as Venus.

Also the oxygen in our atmosphere is all the result of life here, and feedback loops that keep it at the right level so that animals can breath it, yet not create worldwide fires that burn up the forests because there is too much oxygen.

Similarly salinity of the sea.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_hypothesis#Details

Though not everyone agrees with the stronger Gaia hypotheses, nearly everyone accepts the weaker one that life here on Earth plays a part in regulating things such as temperature, oxygen concentration (of course there wouldn't be any oxygen without life also), CO2 levels and salinity to keep them within reasonable levels.

We just take that for granted. But on Mars there won't be any of those feedback loops, so when we try to make a good atmosphere for humans there, there is no reason at all why it should go the way we want it to go, and not, for instance, create an atmosphere which is just fine for some extremophile organisms that like a different atmosphere on Mars.

Just so you understand the reasoning there, I've found out enough to see that they need more thought, it's not as simple and obvious as it seems at first. Do think about it some more, and if you still feel as you do now, come up with some reasons why you think so.

And in my cartoon in the case of pathogens developing on Mars or already existing there, it is almost immediate (perhaps in a decade) bad news for the astronauts, for anyone else who wants to visit Mars and possibly also for humans on Earth.

Again if you don't think there is any chance at all why that would happen, do research a bit and come up with reasons why it is impossible. No-one has showed that it is impossible for that to happen as far as I know, and the likes of Carl Woese and Carl Sagan and many less known scientists do think it's possible.

And the point is it is a false dichotomy, not a case of scientific research getting in the way of colonisation. You get more research done with the HERRO approach, so find out more about Mars which you also want to do for colonisation. You get a lot of infrastructure on Mars in the form of rovers and robots and plants for generating fuel for the from the Mars atmosphere.

If it keeps going, you get a colony in orbit around Mars (supplied from Deimos and from spaceships from the surface of Mars for any useful materials on Mars itself) - and meanwhile you find out a lot about Mars and about life, which will be useful if you eventually decide to terraform Mars.




« Last Edit: 06/18/2012 08:51 am by robertinventor »

Offline gospacex

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #136 on: 06/18/2012 09:15 am »
No-one has showed that it is impossible for that to happen as far as I know

How do you imagine someone can conclusively prove a negative?

"An asteroid can gouge out Paris in a month from now". Can you prove that it's impossible?

We got that you think that human landing on Mars and introducing Earth life to Mars is a big no-no. We really got it. (Whether people agree with your fears or not is another matter). No need to write five screenfuls of text to reiterate your points for the fifth time.
« Last Edit: 06/18/2012 09:16 am by gospacex »

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #137 on: 06/18/2012 01:04 pm »
JF]Still needed in your conjectural proof is the mechanism by which these endospores, ... contaminate the entire planet in relatively short order.[/quote]

Quote from: Robert
As for how they get there, could just be the endospore falls to the surface. Then ... it will thrive on Mars.

Editing both quotes fairly.  The mechanism that you could demonstrate, illustrating the chances of such a hypothetical widespread, quick contamination would need to be more specific.  That is, you would need to apply some numbers.

True, the theoretical generalities of what you propose could happen, but the discussion simply cannot proceed to the next level without quantification, which you demonstrate that you do understand:

Quote from: Robert
This isn't a proof because it's not maths, so I can't provide what I would call a proof which is a mathematical certainty. I don't know how you set about proving results in this field. But it's enough for me to be concerned that it could very well happen, for me even a small probability would be enough to be really concerned about the possible outcome.

Don't expect you to agree with me completely but do you understand how I might feel the way I do about it?

Again, we're at an impasse, you and I, on this matter.  I've talked at least myself into tentatively accepting that the risk of forward contamination is very low indeed.  Each of the steps you mention, does not appear to have a high liklihood, and the necessary precondition that they all must take place sequentially seems pretty darn low, although it would be a positive risk.

I quite understand your feeling.  Do you understand mine?  Policy shouldn't be made by two blogists expressing themselves politely.

Quote from: Patchouli
1) If no life is found on Mars bad news for the hunt for extraterrestrial life but it would mean good news for those who wish to colonize it....

2) Personally I think the fears of cross contamination are unfounded as Mars and Earth have exchanged materials in the past.

1) Agree.

2) We've exchanged solids, but not liquids, which reduces chances of cross contamination significantly, as does the distance and radiation between the two worlds.

Quote from: Robert
Removed both the original message and my reply, don't want to be hurtful.

BTW, I was just making a general comment about snarkasm; apparently you missed that.  If I said I liked carrots, would you conclude that I was a vegan?  That googol term that you mentioned above was interesting.



« Last Edit: 06/18/2012 02:49 pm by JohnFornaro »
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #138 on: 06/18/2012 02:22 pm »
Okay thanks both of you, good to know that you understand how I feel if you don't agree with it completely.

Also, John,, glad to hear what I said wasn't hurtful, perhaps I'm a bit overcautious in these matters.

I've provided all the evidence and proof I can, so, haven't got anything new to contribute. I've updated the Wikipedia critique section with all the material found so far, and including taking account of the various criticisms and requests for evidence, it's the best I can do. As far as I can tell, it fairly presents the point of view of those concerned about forward and backward contamination, in a reasonably objective way, not going over the top, you might find it interesting perhaps.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manned_mission_to_Mars#Critiques

And once again to say it's been a great discussion, there is nothing like some criticism to help refine your ideas, and thanks for contributing.

I do think I understand where you are at. Basically you are really keen on human colonisation of Mars, and feel that the risks of planetary contamination in the forward direction are low, that the possibly low probability of scientific return from discovery of unusual forms of life on Mars shouldn't be used to hold up human colonisation, that the benefits of such discoveries are low enough to be of not much account  and can be balanced by the other types of discovery that would come from colonisation, so again are not enough to be used to hold up human colonisation. Also, that the other possible consequences I've mentioned, though some of them are indeed dire, are so low probability as not to be a matter of concern at all.

In the backward direction you do recognise a potential danger and feel like I do that caution is needed.

I hope that's a fair summary. Just summarising what you've said as best I understood it, and if I haven't understood it quite right do correct me.

In my own case I couldn't see the point in the world wide web when it was first "invented", or email. For many years, long after nearly everyone else I knew at university was using the web and was engaging in email with each other, I didn't even have an email address or a web page. Eventually I realised its value.

So ideas do change. I think it will be towards more appreciation of the need and value for planetary protection, but the future will show.

« Last Edit: 06/18/2012 05:32 pm by robertinventor »

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #139 on: 06/19/2012 06:26 am »
gospacex, I've just found a good quote by Carl Sagan which might answer your question about when do you decide it is okay to colonise Mars, he is talking about back contamination here

"Because of the danger of backcontamination of Earth, I firmly believe that manned landings on Mars should be postponed until the beginning of the next century, after a vigorous program of unmanned Martian exobiology and terrestrial epidemiology. I reach this conclusion reluctantly. I, myself, would love to be involved in the first manned expedition to Mars. But an exhaustive program of unmanned biological exploration of Mars is necessary first. The likelihood that such pathogens exist is probably small, but we cannot take even a small risk with a billion lives. Nevertheless, I believe that people will be treading the Martian surface near the beginning of the twenty-first century."

So his " after a vigorous program of unmanned Martian exobiology and terrestrial epidemiology" - that's what's needed.

You might never prove mathematically that it is completely safe, but at the moment we are nowhere near knowing enough to assess the risk level. With Curiosity the first Mars rover to look specifically for life since Viking then we have only just started on that program, so are decades behind the schedule he hoped for.

John, I just remembered this quote, which I've put into the article, from the Nasa workshops on forward contamination in event of a human landing,

"Conclusions from these workshops recognize that some degree of forward contamination associated with human astronaut explorers is inevitable."

It then goes on to say " Implementation guidelines include documenting and minimizing contamination of the exploration targets" - basically suggest we do our best to minimize contamination and if it does occur be sure to study it well. Wherever the humans go on the surface of Mars then even if the life they bring doesn't thrive, they will leave traces of Earth life in the soil that will confuse any tests they do to try to find out if there is native life there or not.

That immediately to my mind brings to mind the picture in the cartoon of a Mars astronaut calling back to Earth "Mission control, we have discovered life on Mars!" when what he has found is life brought there on his own spaceship :).

However much you might convince yourselves, the things you've said here have come nowhere near to allaying the concerns of those who are really worried about the subject, like myself, if you think about the things you said, none of them were particularly re-assuring for someone who is deeply concerned at the possibility.

So - why not go for the orbiting telepresence HERRO idea, for more science return, for less cost, avoids issues of planetary contamination and the complaints by nuisancy worriers about forward contamination like myself, and helps gather the data you will need to convince those worried about it that colonisation of Mars is okay to do?

It's a "win win" situation for everyone, hard to find anything not to like about it.

I'm not alone, there are all those scientists in diverse disciplines, and as the time approaches if there is enough publicity of the matter there may be many in the general public who also care about it. When I discussed this over at the newmars.com forum, amongst others who are just as keen on Mars surface exploration as yourselves (I include myself there too), we quickly came to a consensus that care was needed, that was quite a short discussion thread, in time anyway just a day or two.

That's amongst people who are keen on space exploration. So, I think many of the general public would have similar concerns to myself if they were made aware of the issues and about what might be risked if it went wrong. They probably won't need proof or high estimation of probabilities to worry about it as much as I do.

So even if you think we are a bit silly to worry so much about it, you agree the risk isn't totally zero, so just for pragmatic reasons, why not go for the likes of HERRO first and see what we discover that way.

Here is my latest version of the Critique section with these new quotes from Sagan and some more references.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manned_mission_to_Mars#Critiques






« Last Edit: 06/19/2012 07:54 am by robertinventor »

Offline QuantumG

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #140 on: 06/19/2012 06:29 am »
gospacex, I've just found a good quote by Carl Sagan which might answer your question about when do you decide it is okay to colonise Mars, he is talking about back contamination here

Sagan should have stuck to astronomy and chatting up girls at parties.

What is it with astronomers that makes them such know-it-alls?


Human spaceflight is basically just LARPing now.

Offline QuantumG

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #141 on: 06/19/2012 06:59 am »
Now we're searching for life on Mars and astronomer parties!  Muhahahaha!

Stephen Hawking was speaking last weekend about inviting time travellers to a party after it was over.  Something about proving backwards time travel is not possible BECAUSE NOBODY SHOWED UP!  Oh!

*cough* Roger Penrose *cough*
Human spaceflight is basically just LARPing now.

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #142 on: 06/19/2012 01:10 pm »
You might never prove mathematically that it is completely safe, but at the moment we are nowhere near knowing enough to assess the risk level. ...

However much you might convince yourselves, the things you've said here have come nowhere near to allaying the concerns of those who are really worried about the subject, like myself, if you think about the things you said, none of them were particularly re-assuring for someone who is deeply concerned at the possibility.

First, the esoterica of mathematic proof of safety:  If it's not zero, then, by definition, it's unsafe.  Say that Mars has been colonized for a hundred years, and there is a vigorous two way traffic between here and there.  One day, a wierdo virus pops out of a rock somewhere, and infects the human portion of the two planet ecosystem within a month, and all humans die.

Could happen.

The numerically challenged, here, could conclude, on the basis of this hypothetical example, that no risk would ever ensue by not going in the first place.  End of analysis.  End of discussion.  End of program. 

In a very real fashion, the act of having the discussion, to them, actually increases the risk of such an infection.  There's a relationship here between the "kill the messenger" mentality which plays such an important part in human affairs and this hypothetical infection.  It is not based on logic.  Think about it this way:  If it were safe to go to Mars, why are they making such a big deal about safety?

So, when you suggest that "however much [we] might convince [ourselves]" that a manned mission to and from Mars is safe, there will still be a vocal group here on Earth who insist that since the risk is not zero, that it is not safe.  Although you an are willing to at least consider another opinion, your policy recommendation puts you squarely in the camp of those who would not go for any reason.

In fact, what I would call the arrogance of some rocket scientists, engineers, astronomers, and what have you, serve the purposes of the "stay home" proponents.  The arrogant ones claim that "This is rocket science.  It's hard.  We know what we're talking about.  Trust us.  Do what we say."  The first two sentences are true and the last three are false.  Since there have been so many big ticket failures in the field of space hardware development, there is a palpable lack of trust in the recommendations of this arrogant "priesthood".  The lack of trust also extends to matters of safety regarding back contamination.

All of this is a wordy way of saying:

Some people will never be convinced.  You sound like you're a member of this group.

None of what I have said is to suggest that we know enough already to make the claim that backwards contamination from Mars will never happen.


Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #143 on: 06/19/2012 01:15 pm »
Quote from: that Wiki article
...destroy geologically interesting deposits such as those in the dried up ocean beds...

Give up on that notion. It strains credulity to think that a rapid, massive disruption of martian geology could happen on the scale that is imagined.
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #144 on: 06/19/2012 01:36 pm »
Quote from: that same Wiki article
...one bacterium to weight of the Earth in less than two days dividing every 20 minutes...

It is clear that such a thing cannot happen on Earth, even after several billion years of evolution.  It cannot happen anywhere else either because of the simple fact that the preexisting food, equal to a good bit more mass than Earth to account for metabolic waste, must exist on a planet which has collected that food by simple operation of known planetary formation methods.  In addition, the evolutionary model would have to be fundamentally restructured to allow one bacterium which ate that food, to spontaneously evolve, and eat all the available food within two days.  It is a nonsensical suggestion at best and has no basis in reality.

To insist that this theoretical mathmatical exercise has any validity at all to the problem of forward contamination of Mars is to deliberately spread false and misleading information, while also pandering to a vocal group of people who are firmly convinced that mankind should stay home for all time.

This is an example of why Wiki articles cannot be trusted at all without external verification.  This particular argument fulfills my snarkastic definition of a "Peace of God" argument:  It passeth all understanding.
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #145 on: 06/19/2012 04:10 pm »
Quote from: that Wiki article
...destroy geologically interesting deposits such as those in the dried up ocean beds...

Give up on that notion. It strains credulity to think that a rapid, massive disruption of martian geology could happen on the scale that is imagined.

John, I'm talking about flooding and melting of the ice, caused by release of methane. With methane such a powerful greenhouse gas it is well possible, has been suggested as a way of deliberately terraforming Mars.

I'm also talking about decay of organic deposits. We had this discussion before. But I didn't edit that part of the article after our discussion, have done that now, hopefully it reads better.

To insist that this theoretical mathmatical exercise has any validity at all to the problem of forward contamination of Mars is to deliberately spread false and misleading information

Okay, that mathematical exercise is just a way to show how rapidly microbes can evolve, of course no-one for a minute would suppose that it would ever actually happen like that. It's often used as an illustration to show how rapid growth of micro-organisms is, so don't feel I'm doing anything wrong by putting it here, it's just like using it in any other context where you talk about microbial growth.

But - it probably doesn't help matters, it is a case of repeating oneself, as Carl Sagan's quote expresses it far better in this context so why not leave it out? I've done that.

His one is valid for Mars as he qualifies it carefully with "in the absence of other ecological limitations" and the rate he suggests of one doubling a month is well within the range of even slow reproducing psychrophilia - as I understand it, there are extremely slow reproducing ones that reproduce only once a century or so, but it's reasonable enough to assume one that reproduces once a month in the conditions on Mars especially if there are those subsurface briny films on the rock and with the warm midday sun.

As for the merits of Wikipedia, well all encyclopedias have their problems, someone did a comparision of Wikipedia with Encyclopedia of Brittanica and found similar numbers of errors in both.

But I'm not here to defend wikipedia, people who don't like it can just ignore it.

But what I did was entirely within the spirit of the way Wikipedia works, this is how it's done, whether you like it or not. I find it really useful myself. It's not error free, but if there is something I want to know for sure, then I just follow up the references in the article to find out more.

It's the same for any encyclopedia, you can't use it as a primary source for research.
« Last Edit: 06/19/2012 04:25 pm by robertinventor »

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #146 on: 06/19/2012 04:17 pm »
Some people will never be convinced.  You sound like you're a member of this group.

None of what I have said is to suggest that we know enough already to make the claim that backwards contamination from Mars will never happen.

Okay just to be clear,  I am ready to be convinced in the right circumstances. Two or three decades ago I didn't even think it was an issue. I want humans to colonise Mars if it is possible, my first choice would be to do that. But if it's not wise to do that at this stage then it makes better sense in my book to go for space habitats first and see what happens.

Then also the more I think about space habitats and how they could be used, the less important it becomes for humans to physically walk on Mars especially if they can walk on it via telepresence from close orbit above Mars.

Also the more you think about what might happen on Mars if you introduce Earth life to Mars then the more issues there seem to be and it can seem an almost intractible problem.

But that's not because I want it to be an intractible problem and if someone finds a way through this all so that humans can live on Mars and not cause all these issues that it seems to me must arise if they do - then I'll be absolutely delighted.

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #147 on: 06/19/2012 04:19 pm »
QuantumG

Not sure if you are serious or joking, doesn't sound too serious to me, at least partly in jest, but if by posting these things I get flack directed at Carl Sagan, I'm happy to take it :). Probably an excellent sign that I'm on the right lines actually...
« Last Edit: 06/19/2012 04:49 pm by robertinventor »

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #148 on: 06/19/2012 04:39 pm »
First, the esoterica of mathematic proof of safety:  If it's not zero, then, by definition, it's unsafe.  Say that Mars has been colonized for a hundred years, and there is a vigorous two way traffic between here and there.  One day, a wierdo virus pops out of a rock somewhere, and infects the human portion of the two planet ecosystem within a month, and all humans die.

Yes I understand that. You can't reduce it to mathematically zero probability, I understand that.

I'm not familiar with how you should set about things in this area, the main thing is that if people are actively thinking about it, and researching into it, and it is high in the agenda to find a solution, then there's a much better chance that they can make the right decisions.

In my case the mathematical background doesn't help here, but my programming does. Programmers are much more pragmatic than mathematicians, the main thing is that it works. There are ways of proving correctness for programs, but the result is very slow programming, and also there's still the problem that there could be a mistake in your design for the program.

So, for instance nearly all the programs you use in your life including probably the code used to run this forum and the internet browsers etc are not proved to be correct. They are just tested using large numbers of test cases. Also although there are ways of testing the programs exhaustively, you can't do that in practise either - because the test cases rise to vast numbers for even fairly simple programs.

So you program as carefully as you can, and you also do as many test cases as you can and try really wild unlikely types of user input, and that's the best you can do.

So - for exploring Mars, if the risk is as large as that back contamination of Earth, or in the case of forward contamination,  making the planet inhabitable for the future you need a very high degree of confidence that it is okay. Higher levels of confidence than you have for e.g. medical software or for software used to control nuclear reactors, there aren't many things on the Earth that have such a vast potential risk so not sure what the right requirements are for assessing it.

But that's something that can be worked on once it's agreed it is an issue, and is put high on the scientific and political agenda when planning missions to Mars. That's all I ask for, that people think about it, and that something is done about this current climate where the issues aren't even mentioned or much thought about by most people even by many astronomers and space scientists.

« Last Edit: 06/19/2012 04:43 pm by robertinventor »

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #149 on: 06/19/2012 04:46 pm »
Quote from: Robert
I'm talking about flooding and melting of the ice, caused by release of methane.

Which would be an instantiation of that rapid, massive disruption of martian geology that I suggest could never happen on the scale that is imagined.  While true that some suggest that such a methodology could be deliberately invoked to provoke such a change, in the interests of terraforming the surface of Mars, these methodologies or suggestions are not widely accepted as being feasible.

IOW, the people who want to terraform Mars this way aren't in the majority of those who want to terraform Mars or those who simply want to colonize Mars.

Quote from: Robert
...it's reasonable enough to assume one that reproduces once a month in the conditions on Mars especially if there are those subsurface briny films on the rock and with the warm midday sun.

The widespread presence of those films and warmth have not yet been found, therefore, such an assumption is not reasonable by my take.  There's not enough food for these things to eat, even if they could find it.

Quote from: Robert
But what I did was entirely within the spirit of the way Wikipedia works...

True, but it is a spirit of limited utility, easily and readily negated by those who search that service solely for the purpose of finding arguments which they already agree with.  In this case, the very wide faction of people who want for humanity to stay home and fill up this planet.

Quote from: Robert
I am ready to be convinced in the right circumstances.

If you say so, but I don't sense it.



Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #150 on: 06/19/2012 05:12 pm »
Which would be an instantiation of that rapid, massive disruption of martian geology that I suggest could never happen on the scale that is imagined.  While true that some suggest that such a methodology could be deliberately invoked to provoke such a change, in the interests of terraforming the surface of Mars, these methodologies or suggestions are not widely accepted as being feasible.

Oh right I didn't understand you when you objected to it before. Yes, that's a reasonable point. So you don't think that introduced Earth life, even if it does become widespread on the surface of Mars, would be able to produce enough methane to change the climate enough to cause flooding.

I've removed it for now and it just says decay of remains of early life and organic deposits, still kept the section on life interfering with deliberate terraforming, as that seems quite possible once it is terraformed enough to have Earth levels of micro-organisms.

I suppose the main objection to the idea of inadvertent terraforming or indeed deliberate terraforming using life at an early stage is that you just couldn't get life that could colonise the surface in large enough numbers to do it. Because later on if you suppose that there is life able to produce methane in the quantities e.g. that it's produced in the permafrost regions of the arctic, over the surface of Mars, then it would produce huge amounts of methane, terratons a year, I think it was if I remember rightly. (I don't mean release of stored methane by global warming but actual production of methane by micro-organisms).

But the question is whether extremophiles living on Mars just as it is now, even if adapted to lower temperatures, could expect to have the same productivity. I'll do a bit of research but imagine it's probably not been researched much, so would be speculative, and so not suitable for wikipedia.

See your point there. If I do find a paper suggesting it can happen then I can put it back in as a minority point of view.
« Last Edit: 06/19/2012 05:21 pm by robertinventor »

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #151 on: 06/19/2012 05:27 pm »
The widespread presence of those films and warmth have not yet been found, therefore, such an assumption is not reasonable by my take.  There's not enough food for these things to eat, even if they could find it.

Ah - you see, they are autotrophs. The ones that could live on Mars just as it is now are primary producers, so don't need food in the usual sense, just CO2 and water and similar inorganic ingredients. There are many types of autotroph and many of the psychrophilic halophiles are autotrophs. This is a very good NASA paper about some of the possible organisms.

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20100002095_2010001804.pdf

Many of them will do just fine in plain very cold salty water with a CO2 atmosphere.

As for the warmth, as the films are postulated in the near subsurface layers, then they can be warmed by the midday sun.

There are other layers where life could form deep underground at 150 meters plus where the pressure of ice pushes the triple point high enough to form liquid water in the presence of geothermal heat, so after first developing in the upper layers, then later on maybe through caves or the like some would probably also migrate to those lower layers as well.

The upper layers particularly though - those could be widespread if they exist. Of course just a hypothesis at present, to be researched more, maybe we will find out more with Curiosity?

Though that's just one rover on one spot on Mars, it can study them if they occur near to where it lands, but mightn't be able to say much if it doesn't find them, as it could just be in a particularly dry spot for these films, might need to wait for another future mission.
« Last Edit: 06/19/2012 05:33 pm by robertinventor »

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #152 on: 06/19/2012 05:41 pm »
If you say so, but I don't sense it.

Yes I am. If I was against colonisation of Mars I probably wouldn't even post here, don't suppose you get many people who post here who aren't at least pretty keen on space and spaceflight.

- oh correction remember you say that you do. Oh well, can only just say how I feel, and can understand your scepticism if there have been others posting here with hidden agendas etc. But I don't have any other hidden agenda, the concerns are just the ones I posted here.
« Last Edit: 06/19/2012 05:43 pm by robertinventor »

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #153 on: 06/19/2012 05:50 pm »
Quote from: Robert
...as the films are postulated in the near subsurface layers...

Postulated but not proven.

Quote from: Robert
There are other layers where life could form deep ...

Could, not does.

Quote from: Robert
The upper layers ... could be widespread if they exist...

If, not since.

Policies cannot and should not be determined on these shaky premises.
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #154 on: 06/19/2012 05:58 pm »
Sorry, in this case policies should be based on things that might happen and can't be proved yet - until we know more about the situation on Mars.

It just isn't right to ask me to find a proof in this situation, that's unfair, when the very problem is that we don't know enough.




Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #155 on: 06/19/2012 06:23 pm »
Also just a little thing to say, unlike Carl Sagan, I wouldn't personally want to go on a spaceship to Mars myself, - because I wouldn't be able to keep up with the programming, would miss my relatives, am very happy here. Also, I suffer a bit from claustrophobia so the idea of several months in a spaceship with nowhere to go except a couple of small rooms, if that, doesn't exactly appeal, although the view from the windows would appeal :)

Don't know if that is somehow coming over in these posts.

But I'd love to see other human explorers do it just as I thought it was great when I watched the moon landings, and a great shame when they stopped it just as it got to the point when they sent their first scientist to the Moon.

So that's the sense in which I'd love to see it happen, if there were any way around these issues.

But like Sagan says in his quote, it still seems like we are at least some decades away from that happening, though habitats in space and telepresence seem very hopeful indeed, those could happen with enough will in the near future even within a decade or so, and also safely for all concerned, as safe as you can be in space exploration.

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #156 on: 06/19/2012 06:26 pm »
Sorry, in this case policies should be based on things that might happen and can't be proved yet - until we know more about the situation on Mars.

It just isn't right to ask me to find a proof in this situation, that's unfair, when the very problem is that we don't know enough.

Again, it's not a matter of proof, it's a matter of determining acceptable risk.  Nobody can prove safety in this case.  Preliminary evidence indicates it is a hostile planet.  The plan I have sketched out would be a good one to follow for the next several decades.
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #157 on: 06/19/2012 06:44 pm »
Preliminary evidence indicates it is a hostile planet.

But did you not see the quote from the NASA workshop that some forward contamination by humans is inevitable? And some of those locations like the deep down ice one, that just depends on sufficient heat it's surely pretty sure that such conditions occur somewhere on the planet. So it's not totally hostile for sure, caves also reasonably likely but the most certain of all is deep underground, there must be sources of underground heat on Mars, it's not geologically completely inactive yet. 

The ice sheets at both poles are believed to be kilometers deep (with some solid CO2 on top in the case of the South pole) - and that is near certainty as certain as we can be at present of course can't be totally sure.
and just 150 meters down is enough to reach the triple point due to the pressure of the ice, and get stable liquid water forming in the presence of heat.

So it's certainly not totally hostile for life, near 100% sure - if I've understood it right. The main problem against it is that there is no evidence of actual activity on Mars right now - in the last million years or so but not at present. But you don't need a full eruption to melt the ice, just heat near the surface. Also in all that discussion about the methane on Mars, whether it is from life or not, then scientists hypothesized that (if it existed) it could be living in just this sort of a habitat, ice deep down heated by geothermal gradients.

It's more a matter of whether any of the possible habitats for life are easily accessible from the surface (or from dust blown in from the Martian dust storms). For instance are there geysers somewhere where underground heated water gets to the surface, or are those mysterious gulleys that form over short timescales  due to water flooding or CO2 or something else?

The films, who can attach a probability to that? The one thing that is likely to happen at this stage is surprises. Like at Io where one researcher published a paper suggesting volcanoes on Io just before they were discovered.

Hope this is a bit clearer.
« Last Edit: 06/19/2012 09:22 pm by robertinventor »

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #158 on: 06/19/2012 08:52 pm »
I've done a fair bit more work on the Critique section of the wiki article, mainly removing anything that seems like "original research", also making it clearer, and deleted a couple of entire sections that basically say the same thing twice.

It's probably not perfect yet, by any means but I think has helped with the main objections.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manned_mission_to_Mars#Critiques

Offline veblen

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #159 on: 06/19/2012 10:06 pm »
Also just a little thing to say, unlike Carl Sagan, I wouldn't personally want to go on a spaceship to Mars myself, - because I wouldn't be able to keep up with the programming, would miss my relatives, am very happy here. Also, I suffer a bit from claustrophobia so the idea of several months in a spaceship with nowhere to go except a couple of small rooms, if that, doesn't exactly appeal, although the view from the windows would appeal :)

Don't know if that is somehow coming over in these posts.

But I'd love to see other human explorers do it just as I thought it was great when I watched the moon landings, and a great shame when they stopped it just as it got to the point when they sent their first scientist to the Moon.

So that's the sense in which I'd love to see it happen, if there were any way around these issues.

But like Sagan says in his quote, it still seems like we are at least some decades away from that happening, though habitats in space and telepresence seem very hopeful indeed, those could happen with enough will in the near future even within a decade or so, and also safely for all concerned, as safe as you can be in space exploration.

What is coming through to me in your posts is that you are not really a fan of the human exploration of Mars and your main interest lies in restricting who would get to go to the Red Planet, if you would let anyone go at all.

I don't care about the non-existent bugs on that planet and the obvious safety concerns with getting there. That shouldn't stop the people who really want to go from going. People all over terra die doing various recreational stuff every day, even in the nanny states. So what.

Ready to receive voluminous objections citing wiki or whatever.

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #160 on: 06/19/2012 10:35 pm »
What is coming through to me in your posts is that you are not really a fan of the human exploration of Mars and your main interest lies in restricting who would get to go to the Red Planet, if you would let anyone go at all.

I don't care about the non-existent bugs on that planet and the obvious safety concerns with getting there. That shouldn't stop the people who really want to go from going. People all over terra die doing various recreational stuff every day, even in the nanny states. So what.

Sorry thought you were John for some reason, you are new to this thread aren't you, first to post here anyway.

Yes the difference is with recreational risks then you risk your own life, and sometimes also the lives of the rescue services who come to get you out of trouble.

Here though you are risking the lives of other people, and many of them don't even know what you are doing, some even today don't even know that NASA exists or that humans have gone into space (talking about uncontacted tribes there) - though I suppose if the pathogen was one spread by coughs or sneezes they might end up the only ones left alive on the Earth.

As for my own interests, can just repeat myself. I don't know why it's not coming over in these posts, as I would like to express it.





« Last Edit: 06/19/2012 11:08 pm by robertinventor »

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #161 on: 06/19/2012 11:51 pm »
BTW there is another reason that I am reluctant to terraform Mars right now. It's completely unrelated to the life question, and it depends on whether it's true that a biosphere for Mars would last for only 10 - 100 million years (time scale on which the CO2 is expected to deposit out of the atmosphere as it slowly returns to the current conditions).

So - if you have issues with this as I expect you will, it's nothing to do with the life reason for postponing terraforming Mars for maybe a few decades until we know more about what's there.

That seems a vast time scale to us almost inconceivable. But the beings who live on Mars in 100 million years from now would consider it their "present" and for them Mars as it is then is just as important as Earth is to us now.

So, is it right to generate a biosphere that is maybe dooming future life on Mars to extinction, that's the first thing.

But the other thing is, that Earth itself is eventually going to warm up as the sun gets hotter. It might happen quite soon, in geological terms, or maybe not for a billion years or longer (and may depend on what happens to the feedback loops on the Earth over those long timescales). But it will certainly happen at some time in the future. And again just as befoe, I don't see any reason why the beings who live then in the future are less important than we are now.

So, way in the future then when the Earth is uninhabitable, Mars might be just the place we need as a second home for - can't say human race exactly as probably we've evolved by then - but some beings or other.

At that point then 100 million years of a habitable second home to Earth might be worth a lot more than it is to us now. Later we might then migrate say to Jupiter's moons as the sun gets even hotter and even Mars is uninhabitable.

Just a thought, to mull over. It's not a problem if somehow the Mars terraforming can be made permanent over longer time scales like billions of years.
« Last Edit: 06/19/2012 11:53 pm by robertinventor »

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #162 on: 06/20/2012 01:32 am »
Just realised, maybe part of the reason you think I'm anti manned missions is because of the first paragraph in that "Critique"

" In 2004, the Special committee on the funding of Astrophysics, a committee of the American Physical Society, stated that "shifting NASA priorities toward risky, expensive missions to the Moon and Mars will mean neglecting the most promising space science efforts...."

I didn't write that paragraph and haven't edited it.

It's just the main part of the original "Critique" section as it was, before I started on the article. In fact had more or less forgotten about it - you know when proof reading something there's a tendency for the eye to glide over things you've read before?

I don't agree with it myself, not particularly, and in any case it rather obscures the point, as it's not really an important reason for not going to the surface of Mars. It's a reason for not doing manned spaceflight at all. So though it's true some people do argue that way, this isn't the place to put it.

Also it rather makes nonsense of the para. at the end about Herro.

So, anyway I've just removed it for now.

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #163 on: 06/20/2012 10:00 am »
Hi Mr. Scott,

Thanks glad you find it interesting :)

Can just say as I understand it, modern theories do indeed suggest that the early solar system was one of "interplanetary billiards" as it were. An object the size of Mars is thought to have hit the early Earth and formed the Moon in the process. The tilt and rotation periods of other planets in the solar system also suggest that there were many impacts of the early proto planets with each other. Also study of other solar systems the "hot jupiters" are so close to their stars they could only get there, in simulations, by similar processes. The "hot jupiters" are thought to have formed further out similarly to our Jupiter (not necessarily quite as far out) and gradually migrated in towards their star, hitting and absorbing the other planets or proto-planets in their solar system in the process. That's because they must have formed beyond the "frost line" where it is cool enough for hydrogen compounds to solidify into grains.

In the case of the asteroid belt though - there is no reason at all in principle why it couldn't be debris from these collisions in the early solar system, and part of it might be, e.g. no reason why some of the debris from the collision that formed the Moon could have ended up in the asteroid belt. Also really early on smaller near planet size objects could have formed in many parts of the solar system and not just in the region of the asteroid belt. But the modern understanding of the asteroid belt from simulations and theoretical work is that it's due to the perturbing influence of Jupiter. So something could have orbited there really early on before Jupiter was fully formed. But once Jupiter formed, then the "resonance orbits" with jupiter, orbits that are multiples of Jupiter's orbital period, prevents formation of large bodies there.

It's somewhat similarly to the way Saturn's rings formed, so the asteroid belt you can think of as a bit like a huge and very thin version of Saturn's rings around the sun. Similarly Saturn's rings - they may well get replenished through collisions from other objects that hit the rings or moonlets, or collisions of moons of saturn with each other. But it's not thought that they are the remains of a single large body that originally orbited Saturn, they are just material from minor bodies that never formed into anything large.

In the long term future as we understand it the solar system isn't entirely stable . There is a small but distinct possibility that long term one of the inner planets such as Mercury or Venus will be ejected from the solar system through the slow change of the orbital parameters as the objects gravitationally interact with each other. These planets could also hit each other, or indeed with any of the other planets on their way out of the solar system, so there is a very remote possibility that Earth could eventually collide with Mercury or Venus - but that's so minute not to be worth losing any sleep over it, and not going to happen on the near millions of years time-scale.

Of course our knowledge of these matters is continually evolving, and though that's been the "status quo" for most of my life, some of this understanding is more recent. The gradual appreciation of the long term chaotic nature of the solar system in the future and during it's formation is a relatively recent development, in the last couple of decades.

As for life in the early universe, the thing there is that micro-organisms as we know them on Earth are extra-ordinarily complicated with vast numbers of components, those who don't research into them often don't realise how complex. The structure of a cell has been compared to the complexity of an entire eco-system. So the question is, how did such complex structures arise? We are nowhere near able to create them by evolution from the raw ingredients in a test-tube.

So though the first few billion years of life with only micro-organisms seem uninteresting when you think in terms of animals, plants, and multi-cellular life, there was a huge amount going on at the level of micro-organisms. Also there is evidence that life started off within the first billion or so years on the Earth. So either it got introduced to the Earth already formed via comets or meteorites, or else it is possible for life to evolve quickly within just a few hundred million years from raw materials.

Both those possibilities suggest a pretty high probability of life on early Mars, since conditions were suitable for life on Mars in the early years for at least that long.

So life there does seem likely on modern understanding. If it did get started on Mars, and given that there have been habitats suitable for life probably almost continuously since then (especially if there is internal geothermal heat, and its known that Mars has been geologically active in the last two million years so there is probably at least some geothermal heat in places not far underground), it's a bit hard to see how it got lost. And if it did then it seems almost certain that there must be near pristine frozen remains of early life still on Mars.

It's not too surprising that rovers on Mars haven't discovered it yet, if it is there, as the surface is extremely cold, and dry, especially the top layer exposed directly to the atmosphere which is all that they are able to examine. In areas where it is warm as for spirit rover, the surface tends to be dry and free of ice.  In areas where it is cold enough for permanent ice, it tends to be too cold for the ice to ever melt. Also the low triple point means that water "boils" on Mars at a very low temperature, the highest temperature it can reach without boiling at the deepest parts of Mars where the atmosphere pressure is highest is 10C. The air is also very dry as well, 0.016 percent, compared to the earth’s average level of about 2 percent, so that any water that does form will evaporate quickly.

This means any life on the surface is almost certainly in some dormant resting state at least most of the time, and apart from the Viking experiments nothing we have sent there would have any chance of detecting it. Even the Curiosity rover, though it has a "hand lens" - it's not got quite enough resolution to be able to see any endospores and detect them directly.

There is some chance of habitats just below the surface where we can't see it in extremely thin films of salty brine over the pebbles that melt in warm weather, even on the surface there's a chance of occasional formation of drops of water, but these conditions are hard to achieve on Mars, so that's why there is all this discussion about whether there is any habitat on the surface, easily accessible, for life to survive in. Basically the jury is out on that one at present.

Also - in the case where life on Mars only got a short way, and then became extinct, and never developed modern sophisticated methods of survival such as endospores, then remaining life if it exists, or the organic remains of it, may be deep underground or in rare exposures of organic remains of early Mars.

In between those two possibilities, there is the chance that life on Mars might occur only in some rare habitat and still be thriving there, e.g. in the equivalent of the modern day "black smokers" and "white smokers" in some habitat that occurs in just a few locations on Mars. For instance, it might occur as methanogens only able to survive at least 150 meters underground where the ice is under enough pressure to form permanent liquid water in the presence of heat. In that case there might not be much material evidence of it on the surface of Mars to find.

As for the other things you say, yes some think there may still be a brown dwarf orbiting in the remote reaches of the solar system, it hasn't been completely ruled out yet, and binary systems are very common.

What I'm presenting is the concensus amongst many astronomers and scientists world wide, so not localised in any nation or any country's politics. Whether it is true or not is hard to know, it's just the best understanding we have at present.

I can provide links for all these things I've said if you want to find out more, but if you do a google for the key words, the material is easy to find. Do say if you want to know where to find out more about any particular thing said here.


« Last Edit: 06/20/2012 10:29 am by robertinventor »

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #164 on: 06/20/2012 01:08 pm »
Quote from: JF
Preliminary evidence indicates it is a hostile planet.

Quote from: Robert
But did you not see the quote from the NASA workshop that some forward contamination by humans is inevitable?

Indeed I did.  Robotic or manned, the only, only, only "solution" to forward or backward contamination (FC or BC) is not to go in the first place, and hope, hope, hope that the several hundred thousand bacteria on Spirit and Oppy don't run amok and melt all that ice.

With today's level of precautions in place, it would be more likely that a manned program would result in FC, since in time (many decades hence) somebody's going to rip a suit and spill blood.  with the same precautions, probably amped up a bit, since I'd suggest a large fleet of rovers, unmanned FC is unlikely.

So I agree that FC is inevitable in principle, if we continue to visit, particularly if we send up humans. 

A short refresher on my scheme:  Set up the orbiting manned ring station at Mars, which includes pricey hotel rooms, mints optional.  Heck, maybe it could be a cycling orbit between Mars and Phobos, just to get the "rock stars" to support my idea.  Study the planet thoroughly with a carefully implemented rover plan.  This will take many decades to implement.

Should life be obvious down there, then a plan for dealing with the ecosystem and how that would inform a human landing mission could be made sooner.  Should the planet prove barren to the best of our knowledge, we should land, in as sterile a fashion as possible.  Ya simply don't have to worry about hundreds of people landing.  It may well be that extinct life forms may be found, but they will be dead, and thus classified as barren.  There should be some kind of quarantine for the first landers, probably at least a decade.  This would obligate the continued support of the ring station and surface supplies, to both government and industry.  Should it be considered that the ring station be 100% privately owned, then somebody otta get crackin' on getting funding from the world's billionaires.  But the quarantine would give time for studying the facts on the ground, and determining how to deal with them. 

If that effort should fail, then it would fail.  The failure would inform policymakers here that maybe raping our planet is not the best policy.  But even that can't be guaranteed.

While all of this is going on, as the data are collected, the risk factors of FC and BC can be refined.  In the case of barrenness, we run the risk of an Earthly virus running amok in the closed hab, but this medical emergency will have to be solved as much in advance as possible for the ring station and the lunar colony as well.  If it is conceived that an Earthly bacteria will mutate into a super-flu, because what, the combination of UV and Beryllium is perfect for this possibility?  Then what?  It seems quite a bit less likely than us getting our own rightly feared super-flu back on Earth.

If there is extinct life, and it is thought that somehow this dead alien DNA will infect and mutate our bacteria to some new form, then it must also be totally accepted that Jurassic Park is right around the corner.  The only way dead alien DNA could successfully meld with Earthly DNA is thru deliberate manipulation by living humans, 'cause it certainly can't be done by dead aliens.  I can't see this as the problem forbidding human colonization.

If there are living ecosystems there already, there is a very compelling argument to keep orbiting and observing for a long time.  I don't have a "plan" for this.  In my defense, I've been criticized roundly for thinking far in advance.  But hey: I've got limits as to how far I'd project my speculations.

As always, if the rovers should find a stone axe or a calculator, all bets are off.

As to the Wiki page which you have made yourself the major contributor.  Perhaps you can now see that a "crowd" of one, has limited knowledge to share.  What everybody seems to be overlooking in this crowd sourced, hive minded document, is that the whole is only as good as the pieces.  There are a lot of faulty pieces making up this whole.

This gets into another subject, which I'll touch on briefly.  Our children are being specifically taught that the intertubes and the googols make finding knowledge easy.  This is a fundamental error, first because finding knowledge is hard, and second, because each bit of knowledge is not created equal.  The proof of this is readily summarized, but lengthily discussed:

Eat poop: 100B flies can't be wrong.  The internets is easy, everybody sez so.  But I digress.
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #165 on: 06/20/2012 01:27 pm »
...there are no significant resources that can sustain/support life of an unreasonably large population.

Fixed that for ya. 

It took thousands of years for us to overcrowd our planet, so I wouldn't worry about Mars.  At all.  It will certainly support a fairly large human population, given the will to solve the problems needed to be solved.  It simply won't be solving our population problems at home.

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You need to transform the environment somehow to enable the manned colonization.

Naaahhhh.  That's what Venus is for.  On Mars, just build one dome at a time, call it a colony.

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I've also determined in other posts that the search for microbes/other dormant life will not be conclusive.  The agenda for finding life is dependent on conditions that existed in Mars more than 4.5 billion years ago before Mars lost its magnetosphere.  There is no indication of complex life on Earth during that time.  So this effort on Mars is really running on fumes. 

Pretty much agree, noting that should life be found, then those fumes will have been proven potent.  That they're now trying to move the goal posts to Europa tells me that they're bored with the grunt like details of actually looking for life, preferring instead the profitable billions in building hardware.

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Nobody really believes that life on Earth was started by microbes on meteors.  There is simply NO evidence of this.  NASA has been duped into performing missions of only philosophical/anti-religious value, that will never be clearly achieved by their stated objectives.  There will always be some argument with their results. This is not inspiring kids into science, technology and math....  and I don't blame them.

I know, and that story about terrestrial arsenic based life being falsely attributed to alien origin is a case in point.  I quibble that NASA has been duped; rather it is that NASA has been taken over by a scientificist faction which actively forbids even the asking of fundamental questions regarding purpose.  Their stated intents ring hollow.
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #166 on: 06/20/2012 11:17 pm »
Your scheme sounds good to me, in general lines :). Will just respond to the things where perhaps I have something of interest to say.

In the case of barrenness, we run the risk of an Earthly virus running amok in the closed hab, but this medical emergency will have to be solved as much in advance as possible for the ring station and the lunar colony as well.  If it is conceived that an Earthly bacteria will mutate into a super-flu, because what, the combination of UV and Beryllium is perfect for this possibility?  Then what?  It seems quite a bit less likely than us getting our own rightly feared super-flu back on Earth.

Okay good point. The point about evolution of new micro-organisms on Mars is the same as the reason you could get native micro-organisms that are pathogens.

I don't know what the organisms they used in that study of human pathogens that evolve independently of animal hosts and it's relevance for Mars. But, leprosy is quite a good example actually, if I understand it right, the one Carl Sagan uses in his quote as an example of a pathogen with a long incubation period so it's hard to know for sure if it is a pathogen or not at the early stages of infection.

I mean, not a good example of an organism that would live on Mars particularly, but to show the way a human pathogen can arise in an unexpected way in evolution from a single mutation.

It's closest relative is Mycobacterium vaccae which occurs in the soil and is non pathogenic, no animal hosts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycobacterium_vaccae

It's hard to study as it is one of the currently "uncultivable" organisms.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leprosy#Mycobacterium_leprae

It was recently discovered (2005) that all leprosy came from a single clone originating in East Africa.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/308/5724/1040

How it got to humans is a bit of a mystery,

Don't seem to know how far back in time that was but could be relatively recent, infected humans at earliest nine million years ago but seems likely that in fact it infected some other host, perhaps an insect, and then from there went on to infect humans at a later date.

http://nyu.academia.edu/CatalinaIVillamil/Papers/431418/The_Origins_and_History_of_Leprosy
http://johnhawks.net/weblog/reviews/genomics/disease/leprosy-monot-2009-phylogeography.html

So the organisms we take to Mars would spread out through the surface, and would evolve very rapidly as micro-organisms do, because of the horizontal genetic transfer between them, and the relatively short generations. Studies have been done using just small colonies in flasks and they evolve into distinct versions with different traits in a fairly short time on the years time scale, not the longer time scales of animals etc.

So with the whole of Mars in place of the flask of the laboratory experiments, and with many diverse habitats there to try to colonise, then you could get many new species evolving rapidly, some just small differences from the originals and some larger differences.

So - then they have evolved without any of the usual restraints of the rest of the eco-system you get on Earth (as they are on their own and in a very different climate). It's a bit like the way in Madagascar lemurs have evolved their own versions of the hedgehog (the "tenrec") and rat etc, they would radiate to fill the various ecological spaces and so create brand new versions of the organisms we have in those niches here on the Earth. Of course primary producers would evolve first if none there yet, and then micro-organisms that can eat those would start to grow once they have something to eat (already there in endospores which revive).

So - that's why you might get new pathogens evolving as a result of introducing some new organisms to Mars, then just go away and come back again a year or two later.

It seems hard to say which is most likely to be a problem, organisms that have evolved completely independently for millions of years on Mars, or organisms that have rapidly evolved over a decade or so from micro-organisms that already have adaptations for human spacecraft and humans.

They wouldn't need those capability on Mars, but there is a chance they would still retain them, and so return to the returning astronauts with the same liking of human habitats, combined with new capabilities and features.

So, that was the main idea there. They don't have the millions of years of independent evolution of native Mars microbes. But they have enough time for significant changes, and because of the novel environment and large size of the planet, that's why it seems a concern.

But it's not a very important part of the article. Didn't want to present a "thesis" there, just put it in as a "hook" for future expansion if someone expert in the area edits the article or new research comes along.

Obviously the article should say something about what happens to life introduced to Mars and mention the chance it could evolve to new pathogens, seemed to me you can't just leave that out and not mention it at all. The only thing is what to put there as it's not the sort of thing likely to have much research done into it yet, as we just don't have data to base the research on.

Certainly not appropriate to go into this sort of detail as that's too much like "original research" and also too speculative. But leaving it out altogether also seemed wrong to me too. Anyway if the reader decides like you that it is an unlikely possibility that doesn't really matter, after all it's the sort of thing we would find out in future research on the topic.

As for authoring this section of the article, well, someone had to do it. Recently I was reading another article, about the Carbon cycle. I know didley squat about the geological carbon cycle. But there was no mention of it at all in the article, except in a kind of table at the top of the page, you would get the idea from the article easily that it's not important at all, when it's the most important element and the only reason that our planet isn't hot and roasting with a dense atmosphere like Venus. I went to the talk page and saw a list of posts there by people saying "why is there nothing in this article about the geological carbon cycle?". But nobody had done anything about it.

It is textbook stuff, so I just did a google and found a couple of textbook like links to back it up and put in a short paragraph describing the cycle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_cycle#Geological_carbon_cycle

So - so far no-one has edited my contribution but someone will sooner or later, who is more expert on it. Meanwhile what I put is a lot better than having nothing there at all.

Generally people tend to be too timid with wikipedia, and don't take up the invitation to dive in and be bold, especially in these science areas (while in other areas like politics they might be too bold I suppose). That is apart from trolls and vandals of course. But it is meant to be an encyclopedia that anyone can and should edit, and if you happen to know about something, you don't need to have degrees after your name in that area of research or to have spent years of your life studying it. It's just how it works, the idea is that by encouraging many people to work in this way then it gradually gets more and more accurate and authoritative, and it does seem to work, the articles continually improve with time.

Hopefully mine will be improved in the same way. It's been helped a lot already by posting here and getting your various comments and criticisms. Chances are I won't do much more on it now that it's there and others will do the rest of the work needed.

If there is extinct life, and it is thought that somehow this dead alien DNA will infect and mutate our bacteria to some new form, then it must also be totally accepted that Jurassic Park is right around the corner.  The only way dead alien DNA could successfully meld with Earthly DNA is thru deliberate manipulation by living humans, 'cause it certainly can't be done by dead aliens.  I can't see this as the problem forbidding human colonization.

Agree that doesn't seem very likely to me. There might be micro-organisms there that periodically wake up every few tens of thousands of years for the occasional equatorial snowfalls when they happen - but they would be in dormant states in between, not dead.

If there are living ecosystems there already, there is a very compelling argument to keep orbiting and observing for a long time.  I don't have a "plan" for this.  In my defense, I've been criticized roundly for thinking far in advance.  But hey: I've got limits as to how far I'd project my speculations.

As always, if the rovers should find a stone axe or a calculator, all bets are off.

Yes agree. Yes I suppose very remote chance of early intelligent life. It would have to get off to an impressively fast and early start on Mars. Since we really know nothing much about how easy it is for intelligence to develop,... wouldn't say absolutely no myself, but extremely unlikely on basis of what we know so far :).

As to the Wiki page which you have made yourself the major contributor.  Perhaps you can now see that a "crowd" of one, has limited knowledge to share.  What everybody seems to be overlooking in this crowd sourced, hive minded document, is that the whole is only as good as the pieces.  There are a lot of faulty pieces making up this whole.

Yes of course. Already the "wikignomes" have been fixing the typos and spelling as I go along, and changing 35C to 35 ⁰C and creating links to other parts of Wikipedia etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiGnome

There is a lot of well researched material about Mars on Wikipedia so I think a fair number of reasonably expert people editing it. So if there are any mistakes in my contribution then they should find them sooner or later.

It was just an omission that for some reason no-one else had noticed this "request for expansion" on this Critique section of the article with the necessary background to do anything at all about it. I had enough knowledge and background to make a start on it and do the necessary research to create a first draft of it. The rest will need to depend on others.

You don't see the "crowd sourcing" benefits of Wikipedia straight away. But for example another article I wrote on the Hexany has been there for a long time and gets a fair number of edits from experts in the field, and it's great to go back to it some years after I wrote it, and see how much it has improved from my first version.

Offline TomH

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #167 on: 06/21/2012 02:52 am »
I saw an episode recently, I believe on Discovery Science channel, and a biologist who studies microbial life forms living in harsh environments stated that data from the MSO shows methane levels emanating from ancient volcanic vents on the surface to be consistent with large underground colonies of bacteria.

Even if the planet were totally lifeless, there is great value in the geology as well as the potential for terraforming.

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #168 on: 06/21/2012 07:39 am »
I saw an episode recently, I believe on Discovery Science channel, and a biologist who studies microbial life forms living in harsh environments stated that data from the MSO shows methane levels emanating from ancient volcanic vents on the surface to be consistent with large underground colonies of bacteria.

Even if the planet were totally lifeless, there is great value in the geology as well as the potential for terraforming.

Yes, that's right. The MSL's Tunable Laser Spectrometer (TLS) is designed amongst other things to analyse the methane and try to find out if it is of biological or geological origin, by measuring carbon and oxygen isotope ratios.

A bit more background about the methane on Mars here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_on_Mars#Methane

It could be life or geological, as there are geological processes that can create methane too. For Mars it seems, the most likely geological source might be from meteorites. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature11203.html

With the meteorites idea it even might account for seasonal changes too, by heating the materials from meteorites on the surface first to release the methane
http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/05/methane-made-from-meteors-may-explain-mars-mystery/

Another "nobody knows the answer" type thing at present.
« Last Edit: 06/21/2012 08:19 am by robertinventor »

Offline gospacex

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #169 on: 06/21/2012 08:42 am »
So the organisms we take to Mars would spread out through the surface,

Correction: MAYBE they will be able to.

Quote
and would evolve very rapidly

Correction: MAYBE they will be able to evolve rapidly.

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as micro-organisms do, because of the horizontal genetic transfer between them, and the relatively short generations. Studies have been done using just small colonies in flasks and they evolve into distinct versions with different traits in a fairly short time on the years time scale, not the longer time scales of animals etc.

So it happens even now, on Earth. Shock! Horror! Run for your lives!!!

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So with the whole of Mars in place of the flask of the laboratory experiments, and with many diverse habitats there to try to colonise

That's ridiculous. You state as a fact that there are "many diverse habitats" on Mars, but it's far from being a fact!

We don't even know whether there is even ONE place on Mars where ANY Earth bacteria can survive and multiply.

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So - then they have evolved without any of the usual restraints of the rest of the eco-system you get on Earth

What "restraints"? Abundant food? Water in liquid form? Shielded from radiation? That's "restraints"???

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So - that's why you might get new pathogens evolving as a result of introducing some new organisms to Mars

As we told you a dozen times already: the risk of this happening on Earth is VASTLY bigger than on Mars.

For any Mars-adapted bacteria typical Earth environment where humans live is a hellishly hot, chemically deadly place. How it's going to survive and able to infect humans?

Your hysteria becomes tiresome.
« Last Edit: 06/21/2012 08:43 am by gospacex »

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #170 on: 06/21/2012 08:59 am »
Okay the whole thing isn't a big issue as I see it, minor part of the whole picture.

But just for clarification, by diverse habitats, I just meant in the same sense that in the experimental evolution experiments different locations in the flask count as diverse habitats. So you get many more of those on Mars, e.g. if the subsurface brines exist, then for micro-organisms it's not a single habitat, it will be different depending on where you are on Mars, what type of rock formation the ground was formed from and so on, so you'd expect adaptive radiation for them, also development of all the species you get in a micro-ecology of just a single habitat.

Also, because micro-organisms can adapt to live in more than one habitat, even more than one extreme habitat in the case of polyextremophiles, you can't say that because it adapts to live on Mars that it won't be able to survive on humans or in a spaceship.

If you could say that then the whole back contamination thing would indeed be a non issue.

As for how extensive habitats are for life on Mars we simply don't know at present, could be that there are habitats world wide either just sub surface or the 150 m down type habitats. Or could be that there are just a few spots on the planet where life can survive, at least easily accessible, in caves near geological hot spots. In that latter case of course adaptive radiation would be less likely surely, in near term anyway, though you'd still get an ecosystem forming in that location from introduced Earth life.

As I understand it anyway. Hope this helps, it's not hysteria, and you are right to say that it is all qualified with "maybe". Was just describing the scenario as a whole, and it gets boring if you qualify every single statement with maybe, that should be understood from the context, which is describing a possible scenario, that's all, and we don't know enough to be able to judge it's probability eyt.


Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #171 on: 06/21/2012 09:01 am »
It is similar to a situation where a researcher on Earth is creating new micro-organisms by experimental evolution in a laboratory. You wouldn't want him to release them "into the wild" in that situation either, and doing that is similar to returning the evolved organisms from Mars back to Earth.

It would be hysteria if I said the probability is high. Just saying the probability is unknown, and that when you risk so much, even a tiny probability can't be contemplated.
« Last Edit: 06/21/2012 11:58 am by robertinventor »

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #172 on: 06/21/2012 02:09 pm »
Generally people tend to be too timid with wikipedia, and don't take up the invitation to dive in and be bold, especially in these science areas (while in other areas like politics they might be too bold I suppose).

It is interesting that such a timidity exists, especially with the promise of anonymity that Wiki offers.  As an interesting, to me at least, digression, I believe that the crowd sourced online model would work if the sources were actually people.  As it is, the sources are anonymous avatars, who supply misinformation at voluminous rates.  Some of us only have 24.7 hours in the day, and there's simply not enough time to fix Wiki.

Quote from: Robert
...very remote chance of early intelligent life. It would have to get off to an impressively fast and early start on Mars. Since we really know nothing much about how easy it is for intelligence to develop,... wouldn't say absolutely no myself, but extremely unlikely on basis of what we know so far

Mankind has no idea how long that process takes, and a sketchy idea of how long it took in our case.  Our particular circumstantial past, complete with extinction events, is not by any stretch the only theoretical path that the genesis of self conscious intelligent life could take.  As far as that idea goes, we could not tell if there is an intelligent species of our advancement on Andromeda, just to pick a galaxy at random.

So it is with the genesis of life itself.  We have one data point to go from, and the scientificists have no mechanism at all to hypothesize about its origin.

Nut the general sense is that Mars is barren.  I have no idea what the truth of the matter is.

Quote from: Robert
So if there are any mistakes in my contribution then they should find them sooner or later.

Good to see that you said "should", not "will".

It would be hysteria if I said the probability is high. Just saying the probability is unknown, and that when you risk so much, even a tiny probability can't be contemplated.

Unfortunately, you use the hysterical term, "can't".  The risk needs to be determined so that we "can" contemplate a manned landing on Mars. 

Unfortunately, NASA is pre-occupied with insisting that terrestrial life, in some new and unusual cases is actually alien life, that is, when they're not building rockets to nowhere, or retiring rockets that work.  Thus, they are content to look merely for "signs" of life elsewhere, and are happy to move the goalposts to more distant locations, like Europa, bleeding funding from a quicker, more productive development of cis-lunar capabilities.
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #173 on: 06/21/2012 03:33 pm »
Generally people tend to be too timid with wikipedia, and don't take up the invitation to dive in and be bold, especially in these science areas (while in other areas like politics they might be too bold I suppose).

It is interesting that such a timidity exists, especially with the promise of anonymity that Wiki offers.  As an interesting, to me at least, digression, I believe that the crowd sourced online model would work if the sources were actually people.  As it is, the sources are anonymous avatars, who supply misinformation at voluminous rates.  Some of us only have 24.7 hours in the day, and there's simply not enough time to fix Wiki.

Yes, unfortunately also amongst the more knowledgeable also. One reason might be that there are many on wikipedia who are really keen at deleting stuff often without looking at it too closely.

So if you post something that everyone in your field knows as "textbook" stuff, but don't add a link to a source for it, then there is a chance someone will delete it without looking any further. What they should do is add a request for citations.

That's what happened to my article on the Hexany in fact, that there was a proposal to delete it soon after I put it in, but after myself and others more knowledgeable than me about the subject added loads of references and citations and a list of composers who use the Hexany in their works, then the discussion was very short and came to the conclusion "keep" quickly.

So there is a kind of "learning period" as you get used to the wikipedia way of doing things, how you need to be sure to add those citations.

You also need to make it clear that your contributions aren't "original research" which is the other thing, especially e.g. in Maths you can say things that are easily seen to be true by any mathematician but if they aren't backed up by links to published stuff, again you might fall foul of someone crying out "original research". Or rather, they aren't particularly vocal about it if it is just a contribution to an article, they just delete it with a note such as "speculation" or "original research" or whatever.

That's definitely a drawback of letting anyone edit the material. Though it's much better now than it was a few years ago, I find (unless it's just that I've got used to how it works...)

There's another thing you get with wikipedia too which puts some people off I think, are the "proposals for deletion". It's a big scary looking notice you may get on a new article. If you read it, all it says is basically, please add some citations to make clear why your article is "noteable" and remove this notice.

But if you are a newbie can easily get put off that, I have occasionally "patrolled" the "proposals for deletion" and often you can just find almost right away with a google search enough citations to make clear it is notable, and can just add in those citations, and remove the notice. If anyone removes the notice even the originator of the article, it can't be put back again, and if someone still thinks it needs to be deleted it has to go to a proper debate.

If no-one removes that notice then the software just automatically deletes the article after 14 days with no further human intervention. You can see why it's done like that with lots of people wanting to add vanity articles about themselves or a friend who has just staged written and staged a play they liked at their local school (to take an actual example of a proposal for deletion which I left as I could turn up nothing to show notability) or whatever.

Quote from: Robert
...very remote chance of early intelligent life. It would have to get off to an impressively fast and early start on Mars. Since we really know nothing much about how easy it is for intelligence to develop,... wouldn't say absolutely no myself, but extremely unlikely on basis of what we know so far

Mankind has no idea how long that process takes, and a sketchy idea of how long it took in our case.  Our particular circumstantial past, complete with extinction events, is not by any stretch the only theoretical path that the genesis of self conscious intelligent life could take.  As far as that idea goes, we could not tell if there is an intelligent species of our advancement on Andromeda, just to pick a galaxy at random.

So it is with the genesis of life itself.  We have one data point to go from, and the scientificists have no mechanism at all to hypothesize about its origin.

Nut the general sense is that Mars is barren.  I have no idea what the truth of the matter is.

I agree competely. Also that life could take forms that we are unable even to imagine at present.

There are all these hypothetical types of biochemistry for instance:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothetical_types_of_biochemistry

Why might there not be life on Titan for instance, or Triton even for that matter, we can't imagine any way it would work at present, but physics and biology are full of surprises.

If you think about it, life based on DNA isn't something you could derive just from knowledge of the properties of Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen and so forth, even given the capability of Carbon to form long chains easily.

Quote from: Robert
So if there are any mistakes in my contribution then they should find them sooner or later.

Good to see that you said "should", not "will".
It would be hysteria if I said the probability is high. Just saying the probability is unknown, and that when you risk so much, even a tiny probability can't be contemplated.

Unfortunately, you use the hysterical term, "can't".  The risk needs to be determined so that we "can" contemplate a manned landing on Mars. 

Oh right, see what you are saying there. I mean "can't" at our present level of knowledge. If as in your scenario we really did understand the planet extremely well in the future, then your idea of first landing colonists on the planet in a one way journey so they can't return until we are pretty confident that any incubation period is over would be a way ahead.

That depends also on whether we want to terraform it first as human colonists could get in the way of terraformation if that's the eventual aim, you might want to introduce selected micro-organisms first before adding the full human micro-biome to Mars.

Or whatever, but if based on a really thorough understanding of Mars it's felt okay to do it, then the next thing I would imagine is to do a controlled version of back contamination in some way, introduce Mars life to a selected small colony of Earth life.

First to a habitat without humans, and then later on with human volunteers, that could be a reasonable way to do it on current technology, and with future technology there might be other ways of doing it we can't figure out yet.

You could also do the same the other way, before sending colonists down to Mars, first bring up some soil from Mars and simulate it and the atmosphere and see what happens, with the infra-structure of an orbiting colony of Mars and rocket fuel generated on the surface of Mars and rockets shuttling back and forth that should be an easy and inexpensive thing to do. Obviously originally to a facility isolated from the main colony but with vacuum of space should be able to do that fairly easily.

That could test forward and backward contamination in one go without the need to potentially contaminate the planet first to find out what happens.

Depending how it all goes, letting myself get a bit carried away by my imagination and it might go much quicker than that who knows, depending what we find out about the planet.

Unfortunately, NASA is pre-occupied with insisting that terrestrial life, in some new and unusual cases is actually alien life, that is, when they're not building rockets to nowhere, or retiring rockets that work.  Thus, they are content to look merely for "signs" of life elsewhere, and are happy to move the goalposts to more distant locations, like Europa, bleeding funding from a quicker, more productive development of cis-lunar capabilities.

Could be. With Mars whatever you think about the Viking culture experiments, I've no idea myself if they were purely chemical reactions or if life could have been involved in some way, but it is surprising that no attempt has been made yet to build on them and find out on Mars what actually happened.

It seems to make sense to try to simulate the conditions of the more clement periods on Mars with selected samples on Mars to try to "wake up" any dormant organisms there might be and see if anything happens. Just add "snow" and let it melt in one of the experiments to simulate the occasional equatorial snow you get every so often in geological time.

That has the advantage that it doesn't presuppose anything about how their life chemistry works. Even if it is something that evolved completely independently of Earth, still you'd expect changes in the composition of the nutrient, or you might see visual evidence of colonies growing or whatever.

The main assumption it makes is that the life requires water. That is an assumption as there are those theoretical bases for alien biochemistry that don't require water.

In the near vicinity of Earth I do wonder about ice on comets and asteroids that used to be comets. If comets delivered life or its ingredients to early Earth, then comets may still contain those ingredients, or the life itself, so seem worth investigating. That's not assuming any hypothesis about what you would find, just seems an interesting target for research.
« Last Edit: 06/21/2012 04:05 pm by robertinventor »

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #174 on: 06/21/2012 03:56 pm »
BTW just found a paper, it's by Carl Sagan again, where he talks about that idea of future Mars becoming a second home for Earth life as the sun gets hotter.

As usual it's an old 1970s paper so the actual details have changed but the basic idea seems still valid:

http://courses.washington.edu/bangblue/Sagan-Faint_Young_Sun_Paradox-Sci72.pdf

"For AL = 30 percent, this event occurs about 4.5 aeons in our future; for
4L = 50 percent, 3 aeons in our future. Earth will then resemble contemporary
Venus, but with an atmospheric pressure of 300 bars of steam. It is difficult to imagine what could be done to prevent this runaway, even with a very advanced technology (perhaps a progressive Increase in atmospheric aerosol content), but at the same epoch the global temperature of Mnrs will become very similar to that of present day Earth. If there are any organisms left on our planet in that remote epoch, they may wish to take advantage of this coincidence."
« Last Edit: 06/21/2012 03:57 pm by robertinventor »

Offline gospacex

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #175 on: 06/21/2012 04:05 pm »
I am curious how would you stop private colonists from going to Mars.

I sure hope US government will not become some sort of dictatorship which prohibits its citizens from exploring and settling outer space.

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #176 on: 06/21/2012 04:12 pm »
I am curious how would you stop private colonists from going to Mars.

I sure hope US government will not become some sort of dictatorship which prohibits its citizens from exploring and settling outer space.

I don't know, and I wouldn't like that either. It wouldn't work anyway. There are many nations planning missions to Mars, and private companies would most likely have multi-national support and could launch from anywhere.

Actually I worry more about private missions than the public government ones, you could easily imagine if the budget is tight then just like the Apollo 11 return but for different reasons they could be tempted to skimp on the budget for planetary protection and research into the issues.

Maybe not the project scientists for private projects, but the managers of the project, as happened in case of Apollo 11 where an executive decision is made on the spot that ignores the scientific advice.

The nearest I can think of is if it gets some kind of international protected status, similar to Antarctica, probably some kind of international treaty that no-one is to land on it for the time being.

Indeed the Antarctic treaty might be a good model to follow, probably the closest we have to something like that at present.

http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/about_antarctica/geopolitical/treaty/

It works, even tourist ships to Antarctica are bound by the measures to protect the Antarctica environment. So private investors would be and if the reasons for the treaty are well understood for Mars, as they are for Antarctica, I think in practice you would get no-one breaking the treaty.




Offline gospacex

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #177 on: 06/21/2012 04:19 pm »
The nearest I can think of is if it gets some kind of international protected status, similar to Antarctica, probably some kind of international treaty that no-one is to land on it for the time being.

With potential cost of Mars real estate and resources of immeasurable trillions of dollars, good luck keeping people out. Especially that you apparently want to protect some Martian bacteria. Bacteria now have more rights than humans? Gosh...

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #178 on: 06/21/2012 04:43 pm »
Quote from: Robert
That depends also on whether we want to terraform it first as human colonists could get in the way of terraformation...

Well, after you've inherited a swamp in Florida, you don't first design the entire house down to the gold plated toilets, then verify whether or not it will fit the site.  First, you visit and study the site carefully, and then design the house.

So it should be, and most probably will be with any martian terraforming.  A couple of bases here and there, which slowly grow, hopefully.  Should it turn out to be a worthwhile endeavor in a century or two, ya terraform it.

Quote from: JF
NASA is pre-occupied with insisting that terrestrial life, in some new and unusual cases is actually alien life...

Quote from: Robert
Could be.

Couldn't be.  That's an extraordinary claim demanding extraordinary proof.  Until I am proved wrong in this contention, all life on Earth is presumed to be terrestrial life.  Thus saith John.

I am curious how would you stop private colonists from going to Mars.

EZ.  First, place Mars a couple of millions of miles away from Earth...

With potential cost of Mars real estate and resources of immeasurable trillions of dollars...

For sale:  Cheap, fixer-upper planet in desireable location within habitable zone of nearby star...

« Last Edit: 06/21/2012 04:48 pm by JohnFornaro »
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #179 on: 06/21/2012 04:50 pm »
The nearest I can think of is if it gets some kind of international protected status, similar to Antarctica, probably some kind of international treaty that no-one is to land on it for the time being.

With potential cost of Mars real estate and resources of immeasurable trillions of dollars, good luck keeping people out. Especially that you apparently want to protect some Martian bacteria. Bacteria now have more rights than humans? Gosh...

It works with Antarctica, there are valuable natural resources there such as coal, but all exploitation is banned until 2048.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctica#Geology_of_present-day_Antarctica

Yes it might take a while for the public to understand why it is necessary to protect Earth from backward contamination and protect Mars from forward contamination.

It took a while for nations to agree on the treaty for Antarctica and for humans to realise the continent needed to be protected.

Anyway I'm no politician far from it, just thoughts and ideas, may be far off the mark maybe some other approach is better, maybe there is a better way of doing it than an international treaty. It's just the best idea I can think of right now :)

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #180 on: 06/21/2012 04:58 pm »
Quote from: Robert
That depends also on whether we want to terraform it first as human colonists could get in the way of terraformation...

Well, after you've inherited a swamp in Florida, you don't first design the entire house down to the gold plated toilets, then verify whether or not it will fit the site.  First, you visit and study the site carefully, and then design the house.

So it should be, and most probably will be with any martian terraforming.  A couple of bases here and there, which slowly grow, hopefully.  Should it turn out to be a worthwhile endeavor in a century or two, ya terraform it.

Yes, true. With the terraforming you still have the issue that introduced life is going to start transforming the planet anyway, just a little to start with. Then there's the issue that the introduced life might start up feedback loops that go the opposite of the direction you want it.

So - as you increase the atmospheric CO2, the introduced life might just take it out of the atmosphere again. As you raise the temperature then it might form nuclei for clouds and so increase the cloud cover more than expected so the planet cools down again or doesn't warm up as much as you want. As you attempt to introduce oxygen, then it might just consume it as quickly as it is generated, and it could add gases like methane in quantities that make the air unbreathable for humans.

It's going to be tricky anyway to get the whole planet working like that. The sources I looked at about terraforming say that the only way it's going to work over any long period of time is if the planet itself sets up its own biological feedback cycles to keep it on track.

One of the papers suggested that you need to introduce micro-organisms in a particular carefully thought out order in order to achieve terraforming. Which makes sense. So that's what that's based on.

Another source pointed out "When we look at our own planet's most challenging environments, we are really looking for clues to what may be the normal conditions on other planets. We want a hint of what we may be searching for when we investigate those other worlds for signs of life.".

So just having feedback cycles doesn't by itself guarantee that it will stabilise to an Earth type climate, as it might instead stabilise to an environment normal for some kind of an extremophile. You may well have to do things to "nudge it" in the right direction to get there.

If you just introduce colonists without thinking about the effect on terraforming then it might be that you are making it much harder to terraform the planet. You might decide that doesn't matter, that you are never going to terraform it anyway. So, I'm just saying there, that's a decision that has to be made through proper thought and discussion, not just by accident because you didn't think it through in advance.
« Last Edit: 06/21/2012 05:09 pm by robertinventor »

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #181 on: 06/21/2012 05:33 pm »
With potential cost of Mars real estate and resources of immeasurable trillions of dollars...

For sale:  Cheap, fixer-upper planet in desireable location within habitable zone of nearby star...

Nice way of putting it.

Actually another thought, if purely commercial, a commercial company if it's motivated by that rather than wanting to be in the media spotlight or privately funded by enthusiasts - then a purely commercial one I think would either be space tourism - in that case habitats orbiting the Earth or at the most on the Moon first, because flights to Mars would be too expensive initially, and anyway need to be a really keen tourist to want to spend several months travelling in a cramped spaceship to get there (probably different later on once conditions are easier for the travel and travel times are less).

The other would be exploitation of minerals and those almost certainly near earth asteroids are the way to go (easier even than the Moon to return the materials to the Earth) though with current costs it's probably not worth doing but as prices come down for space travel, also whether you like it or not, I think that might be the most likely commercial enterprise to develop in space.

The two might be combined, the same operation could mine an asteroid and use profits from the enterprise and also materials from the same asteroid to create space habitats for the tourists (initially) - and then maybe eventually those develop into independent space colonies.

You could convert an asteroid into a Stanford Torus type space habitat, and in the process also mine it to find valuable minerals or whatever is valuable at that point, which you probably don't need for the habitat, and use the ice and the other materials which are valuable in space but not valuable on the Earth to make the habitat.

Same of course also used for the Mars orbiting habitat - but I think initially that's not likely to be a commercial company doing it solely for profit, more likely to be sponsored by governments or very wealthy or large numbers of space enthusiasts who just want to do it for other reasons and make a loss on the enterprise in the near term like the first few decades at least.

Just a thought. Could be wildly wrong.
« Last Edit: 06/21/2012 05:38 pm by robertinventor »

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #182 on: 06/21/2012 08:06 pm »
Quote from: Robert
That depends also on whether we want to terraform it first as human colonists could get in the way of terraformation...

...  First, you visit and study the site carefully, and then design the house.

So it should be, and most probably will be with any martian terraforming.  A couple of bases here and there, which slowly grow, hopefully.  Should it turn out to be a worthwhile endeavor in a century or two, ya terraform it.

Yes, true. With the terraforming you still have the issue that introduced life is going to start transforming the planet anyway, just a little to start with. ...

It's going to be tricky anyway to get the whole planet working [properly.]...

If you just introduce colonists without thinking about the effect on terraforming then it might be that you are making it much harder to terraform the planet.

You worry too much young Paduan.  As Jeff Greason mentioned in his recent ISDC talk:  Twenty year plans don't work.  Terraforming Mars will be done by trial and error, should it ever come to pass.

Study the planet carefully from above.  Eventually, should it so be decided, send a group down to try out the planet.  If that works, send some more.  Repeat every two years or so for a hundred years.
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #183 on: 06/21/2012 11:06 pm »
You worry too much young Paduan.  As Jeff Greason mentioned in his recent ISDC talk:  Twenty year plans don't work.  Terraforming Mars will be done by trial and error, should it ever come to pass.

Study the planet carefully from above.  Eventually, should it so be decided, send a group down to try out the planet.  If that works, send some more.  Repeat every two years or so for a hundred years.

Could be :)

Though I wonder if successful terraforming of a planet might be something that few ETs manage to do successfully in the first few centuries after they attain capability for spaceflight? It can seem a fearfully advanced and high level of technology when you think of all the potential feedback loops.

It might be something that an ET usually fails at, until they reach the point where they can take on not only 20 year plans but 100 thousand year plans. Possibly when they have really long lives...?? Or just racial maturity.

Anyway but I may be worrying unnecessarily as you say, who can say at this stage indeed :).

Like - I've been following nuclear fusion just on and off partly out of interest and partly becuase I was involved in it as a right at the bottom of the heap coding "dogsbody" in a year at Culham before going to university. Anyway that's gone through many ups and downs. At one point just before I had that year at Culham (1971-2 was when I was there if I remember right) - at one point it seemed that it might never be achieved, until the Russians made a breakthrough with their "Tokamak"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power#The_tokamak_is_announced

Their idea lead to an immediate 10 - 100 times improvement, such a huge improvement that the international community of scientists researching into it were highly sceptical of their claims. I can't remember too clearly now but I think when I did my year at Culham it was probably just a year or two after that had happened and it had been accepted that the breakthrough was indeed a genuine one.

So I dare say there will be breakthroughs like that with terraforming which we can't anticipate at this point.

Robert
« Last Edit: 06/22/2012 12:27 am by robertinventor »

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #184 on: 06/22/2012 12:38 pm »
Quote
...that year at Culham (1971-2 was when I was there if I remember right)...

Okay.

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

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #185 on: 06/23/2012 12:15 am »
Quote
...that year at Culham (1971-2 was when I was there if I remember right)...

Okay.

Old Paduan.

:)

Offline robertinventor

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Re: What if Mars is barren of life?
« Reply #186 on: 06/23/2012 12:27 am »
Video presentation of HERRO by Geoffrey Landis to the Mars Society (4 part video)


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