New Mars Forums

Wow, that really surprises me that there's actually somewhere on Earth that bacteria can't live. There must be something in the Atacama, we're just not looking hard enough. While the Beagle and MER missions certainly won't absolutely prove positively or negatively that there's life on Mars, it will bring us one step closer to the truth. Of course, if the Beagle actually finds live Martain bacteria, that will alomost completely prove that something exists over there, I'm sure that many people at NASA would be very happy.

From the evidence I've seen, Mars at one time was almost definately crawling with microscopic organisms. Then something made its core fizzle out, it lost its atmosphere, and the oceans got locked up in permafrost and polar caps. Granted, Mars is a nasty place now, but bacteria can live ANYWHERE, almost. Live spores were found on one of the poorly steralized Surveyor probes on the moon, after 5 years in zero atmosphere, after all. Even if nothing exists today, there must be some fossils around, but it might take humans with big brains and equipment to find.

This might be going a little off topic, but I recently discovered something that's a very good argument against life on Europa. Apparently, the European Ocean is constantly bombarded by free oxygen molecules coming off of Juipeter's magnetic field. Sure, virtually all life on Earth today depends on oxygen to survive, but it's deadly to life when it first starts out (Oxygen breaks down almost all organic compounds). Earth was practically oxygen free when life evolved, and the planet was more like Venus  than modern Earth. If this is true, life would've had a very difficult time getting started on Europa.

Well, there are two problems with this plan. One is that it would take a phenomenal amount of energy to move an object like Mercury into a different orbit. I did the math once, and it turns out that Ceres, less than half the diameter (And one fifth mass) of Mercury weighs over 5 quadrillion tons. That's a 5 followed by 12 zeroes, if you didn't know that. The amount of energy needed is staggering, more than that needed to reach Alpha Centauri in 15 years, I dare say! Unless we find a way to harness the sun directly for power, there's no way that'l happen.

The other problem is time. It took the Earth millions of years to cool after the event, and the Moon took over half a billion to coalese into something familiar today. Most people lack that kind of patience.

Here's my idea, why not take a smaller object, like Ceres (That's why I made the calculations), and somehow put it into an orbit that intersects with Venus. I assume that this would be around 500-700 years in the future, so methods like ion drive or M2P2 can maintain steady thrust for decades. Over the course of 30 years Ceres is slowly but surely transitioned into an eliptical orbit that intersects with Venus' atmosphere, but not it's crust.

Still maintaing an increadible amount of orbital energy, Ceres collides with the Venusian atmosphere, dropping as low as 5,000 feet AGL at one point. I think that Ceres would be able to withstand the titanic deceleration, but the pressure difference between the surface and space would cause it to spin so wildly it might tear itself apart. Meanwhile, a massive shock wave is formed from the asteroid's encounter, shooting 80-full-% of it out into a high terrestrial orbit.

Large bits of Ceres certainly would have broken off and impacted the surface. However, within a year or so the dust would settle, and for the first time in billions of years the sun shines on Venus' surface. I assume that the centrifugal force of Ceres' mad spinning would break it apart into millions of tiny chunks, also settling into an orbit like that of the former atmosphere. The result is a tourus of carbon dioxide like that around Io and the firs tever observed rings of a terrestrial planet.

With the atmosphere greatly reduced, huge spore coulds of genetically engineered bacteria could be released. These would then breathe in the carbon dioxide and release water vapor, a twist on photosynthesis. Granted, this would take quite some time, but perhaps it could be spead up by refiniries that do the same thing. I estimate that the entire job could be done in about 500 years, which is actually pretty good by terraformation standards. The problem, of course, is the ungodly high price and the "Why?" factor. Any thoughts?

I like your idea, Gennaro, although one problem is that the modules' gravity would be greatly reduced close to the to the hub. However, I doubt that very many people would complain about weighing less.   The reason I chose the wheel design is because of 1) lack of origionality, I have plenty but just decided not to use it here, and 2) it carries a certain elegance, you have to admit. Elegence never gets you anywhere in space, though, and I think the sunflower layout is a good comprimise that should stay intact the whole trip.

Actually, Bill, 4 rpm wouldn't have too great an effect on your inner ear when you're situated at least 688 feet away from the center of motion. Even if the effect was noticable, it would be a tiny hassile at most, and the inhabitants would quickly adapt to it. Come to think of it, aren't there bigger problems to an interstellar voyage than centrifugal force, and what does all of this have to do with a blue Mars?  ???

For the fist time, I actually did the numbers, and for 500 people a ship would not have to be THAT big. I read in an old book I have that Princeton proffesor Gerard O'Neill's origional plan for a space colony would be a mile-wide ring habitat capible of supporting 10,000 people. Of course, this book also claims that Voyager 2 will fly by Neptune in about six years, but that's beside the point. Anyway, if you scaled it down to my size, you'd need 12 cylindrical sections 300X360 feet to support 500 humans. The modules would form a ring 1,375 feet across that could spin four times a minute for a comfy 1 g.

I would assume that the floor plan for this would involve puting a floor/ceiling the bottom and top of the cylinders, making a floor on the bottom and a housing for equipment and lighting on the top. Your point that gravity would not be straight down at the tips of the sections is valid, but the maximum inclination you'd feel would be 15 degrees, amounting only to a slight downhill feeling.

One major problem you have to face no matter what layout you use is lighting. People often don't realise that Earth's biosphere is nothing resembling a closed system, it's powered at every turn by the sun. The only exception to this is at deep sea vents, but that won't be of much use to anyone other than interstellar tube worms. The simplest solution is to make standard electric lights, but these tend to wear out quickly. I like the idea of using nothing but biological systems because they have one universal advantage over artificial ones, they go on forever. I say genetically engineer some species like fireflies or anglerfishes to shine brightly all the time on a low calorie intake, and stuff a bunch in a mini-biosphere on the ceiling. Hey, by the time we have antimatter, genetics will be old hat!    

Going back to names, there are a few I'll bring up from the only sci-fi novel I've read so far that involves interstellar colonization, Chasm City. The five ships in their flotilla are named the Islambad, the Palestine, the Santiago, the Brazillia, and the Baghdad. Of course, the Islambad and the Palestine have some nasty accidents with antimatter, not very good for them. The planet they colonize at the end, around 61 Cygni A is named Journey's End first, nice and simple name, but is renamed Sky's Edge, out of circumstances you have to read the book to get. In two other colonization forrays, they name a moon in the Epsilon Eridani system Yellowstone, and a nice little planet around Delta Pavonis Resurgam.

I just want to say to anyone who's going to try to think of some names, don't mention anything like Tatooine, Courecant, Naboo, etc, just on basic principle. We're trying to be serious here, folks.

Nice idea. It reminds me of the Zond system developed by the Soviets during the space race. In it, six (Or something like that) fuel tanks would be flown into space on what I believe were R-11's. After that, a modified Soyuz would be launched and dock with the assembly, using the fuel to fire it onto a circumlunar path. The problem was, the Soviets hadn't yet developed a lander, so the setup would be strictly flyby.

It made several unmanned test flights starting two months before Apollo 8, carrying tortises and fruit flies (All of which came back in perfect health, mind you), but the government didn't trust the system and held back a manned flight untill the Americans and Wherner beat them to it. At that point it was determined that the only milestone left to beat us to would be an actual landing, which would require the touchy N-1, and we all know what happened after that.

I belive someone back there mentioned that the Proton's propellant is toxic. The fact is, yes hydrazine is toxic, but the Baiknour Cosmodrome is as close to the middle of nowhere as you can possibly get, it's nothing but open steppe all the way to the Aral sea.

As for countering 0-g, my idea is that if the capsule is at least about ten feet in diameter, just spin the whole thing up to about 20 rpm (Or whatever is needed) during the rest phases. This would provide seven hours a day of bone building gravity, and if one g isn't enough for healthy astronauts, then bring it up to 1.5 or even 2, although I think 1.2 would be plenty. You really only need this much exposure to gravity a day, and spining something like that while people are walking around would give you vertigo, so just keep the freedom of 0-g while everyone's awake.

I hope that last post I made didn't hurt my credibility too much, it was just the product of not actually bothering to look up a referance. According to an old popular science I dug up, disregarding relativity, if you could accelerate for a year at one g you would reach 90% of the speed of light.

I think it's reasonable to think that M2P2 could allow you to reach 40% of light speed before the ship exits the solar system. Although, you have to realize when doing uneducated guesses like that by the time you reach 33% of the light barrier you're traveling at one AU every 24 minutes. Starting from Earth that will take you beyond the heliopause in 40 hours. Come to think of it, that's probably enough time to reach 40%.

Moving at that rate, the 19.9 light-years between here and Delta Pavonis will be behind the ship in a mere 50 years. Add in a year for acceleration and decceleration, maybe three at the end for maping, examining, and low-end terraforming if necessary, and the time from departure to our first steps outside the solar system comes to about 55 years. Considering that the people picked to go will be in prime condition and their youth, most of the first generation will still be around, but the second, born and raised in interstellar space, would do the majority of the work.

I like using M2P2 as a drive system because no matter what, antimatter is extremely dangerous, and will so remain, even 500 years from now. By the same token, nuclear waste is still dangerous now, even though disposal technology is always developing. Solar sails wouldn't be as versitle because they're simply a big pain in the neck to erect and use, and flying a hundred-mile-across, 50-micron-thick mylar sheet over 20 light-years of god knows what kind of space is just asking for trouble. M2P2, by contrast, is compact, energy efficent, non-volitile, and might get rid of some of the risks of cosmic radiation. For more info check out this.

As for the question of which star system to go to, I say Delta Pavonis because it's about the sun's size, is very enriched in metals, and seems about the right age. However, I've just read that it might be about to become a giant star, and who would want to go to a system like that? Epsilon Eridani seems like another promising system to me, and it's much closer. By contrast, Eridani's problem might be that it is too young, and still in the protoplanet stage, like Vega.

Tau Ceti might actually have planets, but it's doubtful that it would be a system like ours. It only has enough metal to make one or maybe two small terrestrial planets, but if one of the gas giants is close enough to the star, its moons just might harbor life as we know it. Titan is very similar to how Earth used to be, and had Saturn formed about 1-1.5 AU from the sun it could have been the primary seat of life in the solar system, so I think life on moons is just as plausible as life on planets.

Isn't the correct answer to this question simply "Who cares?" Why should we go out of our way to decide the gender or other non-important qualities of the first person on Mars? I say whoever the mission commander is should be the first. Now, from past records this will probably be male, but who knows? We're getting more and more female astronauts all the time, so it's anyone's guess.

As for the psychological issues, I think that they're blown out of proportion. It was thought at one time that being on a planet other than the Earth, for example, the moon, for a few days would depress the astronauts so much they would be unable to function. Ahem, that didn't happen. Now, I can understand that people would be nervous about the idea of being away from radio contact and any sort of view of Earth, but the astronauts would adapt. I don't think that gender would really be an issue, but a 50-50 split would be ideal. However, I am NOT suggesting we take this in to account while selecting the crew. The last thing the world needs is more affirmitve action.

Who came up with this thread, anyway?

I don't think that now is the time to name specific star systems to go to. We just simply don't know enough about what it takes to get a planet like Earth, which star systems have these conditions, and which ones are aged just enough to harbor life. Granted, we may find life existing in ways totally unlike that on Earth out there, but to make it easy for colinization we should go to the most Sol-like system.

I actually knew at the time I said it that Vega was much to young a system, but I just used it as an example because it has a developing planetary system, is younger than the sun, and is a short drive from Earth. Tau Ceti's out, it's too light to carry enough material for more than a few gas giants. Alpha Centauri's a nice guess, but we have no way of knowing if it would've had any material left over from it's nebula to make planets after three stars formed. Of course, it certantly could have planets.

It's highly dboutful that humans will live long enough in just one star system to witness the demise of the solar system as we know it, there's just too many variables involved. However, if we spread our gene pool over four or five systems, I see it happening for our descendants (Which, mind you, would be totally unlike ourselves after billions of years of evolution). The new colonies need not be younger than our own, but they should be if we only colonize one star and we want to ensure survival after the sun goes gas giant. With multiple colonies, this is not a problem.

About antimatter drive, as of now that stuff's really expensive and cumbersome/dangerous to use. M2P2 drive seemed like something we know is cheap and could be made reliable, but in a few hundred years antimatter technology could get there. Fission did that in only two decades, but that was because of the Manhattan Project. Worth it?  ??? 

Realistically speaking, if humans live long enough, by nature we'll have to colonize new stars, and believe me, humans will almost definately live long enough. Dinosaurs were around for almost 200 million years, can't we live at least one 100th that time? Sounds reasonable to me.

The way I see it, if the MSR mission digs up some rock from a few meters down in the surface, preferably near an aquifer, and doesn't expose it to the atmosphere for too long, it will almost definately return some sort of bacteria to Earth. This is not a bad thing at all, just think about how many thousands of micro- and astrobiologists from around the world will be clamoring to get a hold of some life that came to being completely seperate from Earth. And if we keep the samples sealed airtight (literally and metaphorically, with lots of security), there is no cause for alarm about contamination. Unless, of course, the microbes get out.

Very soon after the samples return, the demand for Martain microbes might become so great that NASA will attempt to culture them and sell them to labs around the world. If just one of these cultures being transported has even the tiniest imperfection in containment, thousands of spores and live bacteria will spread, in this world where it's possible to get anywhere within 18 hours of right now, around the globe very quickly.

As the laws of natural selection predict, the species that grows up in the harshest conditions will be the most successful. Being from Mars, I see two possible scinerios.

Scinerio 1: The bacteria are obligate anerobes, and die within minutes if exposed to oxygen. On Mars this would be no problem, they live underground on a planet with practically no oxygen at all, but on Earth they have a very difficult time and are forced to reside deep underground, incapible of human harm assuming they live long enough to even get there.

Scinerio 2: The bacteria are so well adapted to the harsh Martian conditions they are capible of weathering anything, high  oxygen saturation, zero oxygen environment, extreme cold and radiation. On Earth they are wildly succesful, filling niche environments near the poles, in the upper atmosphere, there's even a strain that adapts itself to live in the human digestive system! Soon they become an intergral part of the Terran ecosytem.

Now, the only way I'm aware of that bacteria harm their hosts is by producing waste products that are toxic. The microbes really don't want to kill their host, as they'll probably die with it. We have no reason to assume that just because these bacteria are from Mars they will produce toxins specificallly capible of killing all forms of mamalian life. In fact, we really would only have to study the microbes in a contained environment for about a week or so to examine their waste products and see weither or not we have a doomsday scinerio at hand.

I'm all for the MSR mission, and don't like the way that bacteria and viruses are often protrayed as our enimies. Of all of the spices we know of, only an extremely small percentage of microbes are capible of causing more harm to humans than BO. Besides, if we do ever get a problem with extraterrestrial germs, perhaps our's would fight back, War of the Worlds style.    

Not that it would happen, but wouldn't that be intersting?

Actually, the tenth planet theory is just the only one I've heard of, so if you guys know of any others I'd be glad to hear them.

If the total mass of the asteroid belt is too small to equal a planet, what about a smallish moon then? If Mars formed with a moon around it, then concievablly the satelite could have been hit by an asteroid at just the right time in it's orbit to be slingshotted out of Mars' gravity and into interplanetary space. A small piece, only about 200-km across, could have done the job to Mars, and having a moon at some point would explain how life developed and why the days are so regular on the red planet. The only other places we know of where life exists (Earth and probably Europa) have had the asistence of tidal forces.

I still don't think we could have gotten to Mars untill about 1980, as no one would be definate enough about a reason to go there untill probes had proven that Mars would be a nice place to visit. The earliest point I can imagine a lander making it to Mars is late-60's-ish, as telescopes alone wouldn't be enough to cause a Mars frenzy. Once a lander nets a swarm of flying insects similar to fruit flies, though, (Sidebar in 1969 to the moon landing), the race would be on.

As for who would win the second space race, I honestly think the Soviets would get to Mars first, as they had more experience in working/repairing things in space, living there for long periods of time, and some downright brilliant scientists (Though the Americans had that, too). Plus, the shock at loosing the moon just might be enough to convince the Russians to claim Mars and the ultimate prize of the 20th century.

Not that the Americans wouldn't put up a fight, though.

This forum is inspired by that one about "What If Percival Lowell Had Been Right?" Instead I ask the What if: "What if the event that practically killed Mars had never happened and Mars had developed just like Earth?"

Now, the "event" I refer to is the most likely (In my opinion) theory about what happened to Mars. Aobut 1.7 billion years ago a collision with a huge asteroid broke apart a tenth planet in between Mars and Jupiter, creating the asteroid belt. Unfortunately, Mars happened to be in the way at the time and was struck with a rather large piece, creating an upthrust of volcanoes (The Tharses region), Olympus Mons, the Mariner Valley and after about 10 million years killed about all tectonic activity. Additionally, much of the atmosphere was sheared off.

The dust cloud wiped out virtually all cyanobacteria, and over the course of about 100 million years, the remaining monerans (minus a few extreme bacteria species) choked themselves on CO2. The result, a near-dead, red rock rotating around the sun just waiting for some intellegent creatures (ahem, humans) to come along and colonize it. But, what if this had never happened?

Well, first of all, it would never have been named Mars, but probably Neptune as it would have appeared blue, not red to the Romans. Later, Galileo (Or one of the astronomers) would have pointed his telescope over there and seen vast oceans and white clouds. Shock! We're not alone in the solar system!

I think that with conditions as good as Mars had, eventually multicellular life would have developed there, albeit in a totally different way then on Earth. However, I belive that the odds are increadibly slim of developing human-level intellegance under any circumstances, so Mars would be limited to vast undisturbed forests (At least ferns seem like a logical assumption) and other exotic life.

Later, astronomers would have seen this under higher-quality telescopes and realized that Mars would be a pretty inviting place to visit. 100 years later humans travel to the moon and, what? Where would we go from there?

I created this forum for you to discuss where the state of space travel (And our view of ourselves in the universe, for that matter) if that one event hadn't occured. I, for one, believe that we would have gone to Mars by now. While visiting a frozen desert wasteland doesn't seem to excite much public attnetion, visiting an alien world you could walk around in your shirtsleves in just might. Whadya think?