New Mars Forums

Hi Darkangel_neptune!
    I join Martian Republic in welcoming you to New Mars. Don't be too discouraged if your posts don't get immediate responses. I note you waited 27 minutes after your first post before posting again for a reply. Sometimes you can wait literally for days before someone notices you've written something, not because people are stand-offish here but because there are so many members and so many discussions going on. It's nothing personal!   

    Just read up on a few threads to get yourself up to speed and then throw in a comment! Most of us here are very friendly and quite willing to accommodate new ideas and suggestions. Give us a chance to get to know you and I'm sure you will enjoy New Mars very much. I know I do!
                                                   

Hi Mad Grad!
    Your last post was very well put, I thought, but it seemed to get crowded out somewhat and didn't get the recognition it deserved.
    I tend to be a little more optimistic about Earth's biosphere than some, but your thoughts on this are cogent and I respect your concerns. For one so young, I am impressed with the balance in your outlook between conservation of what we have here and the building of something new and good on Mars.
    I tend to get a little gung-ho on the topic of terraforming, probably because I'm romantically in love with the whole concept and get very defensive of it if I see it under attack. I recognise this as immaturity on my part, at least to some extent, like the reaction of a child threatened with having a toy taken away from him/her! It's a visceral thing.
    But then I read something like your last post and I'm struck by the contrasting maturity in it from someone half my age or less. Nice work, MG ... keep it up!
                                             

What are those dark streaks down the sides of the yardangs?
                                                  ???

A great first post, Odyssey. Welcome to New Mars! 

    And, Anatoli, I agree with you and with Dr. Z.  Bringing a thriving biosphere to Mars is a noble goal.

No no, Cindy, my post followed on from yours but I didn't intend to single you out as a social engineer or political orchestrator!
    Mine was a generalisation about the popular "Martian Politics" topic, which has attracted a lot of attention over the years.
    I was just making the observation that detailed plans for the social order on Mars seem premature to my way of thinking, that's all. And that's why I have tended to avoid the subject - there's just too much time and too many variables involved between now and when martian politics will actually be formulated.

    Incidentally, as far as I can tell, Bob Zubrin isn't suggesting that martian colonists will be like Americans today but, rather, that they will be comparable to Americans in the late 18th century and the 19th century in terms of their hardiness and practicality.
    Just because a lot of anti-American leftist loons, backed by rabid reds in the media (at least here in Australia), have succeeded to some degree in tarring the U.S. a very deep shade of black, doesn't mean we should shy away from praising the hard work and fortitude of pioneers who built a nation on the continent of North America. That's a profoundly unfashionable thing to say but I couldn't care less - it's how I feel about it. (I know, I know ... there was the indian problem; a bad business all round. But there are no indians on Mars! And please, let's not start on the inalienable rights of bacteria again.)
    And, if it came right down to it, you'd have a much better chance of recruiting me for a trip to Mars if the joint were being run by Americans than if it were under the control of Afghan warlords, Islamofascists, The People's Republic of China, Fidel Castro, or Kim Jong-Il.
                                                 

Sheesh, Josh ... you sure have a convoluted way of expressing yourself at times!   

    I think I detect the opinion that life probably did survive the asteroid bombardment and probably still exists on Mars today. Am I right? Is that what you're saying?
                                        ???   

Thanks, Ian.
    Although a person (say, like myself for instance .. ! ) might be reasonably sure of the logic of something they believe to be true, there's nothing quite like the reassurance of finding someone else who corroborates that belief. In other words, it's good to get a 'reality check' once in a while!   

    I'm very much in agreement with your stated position. I believe any life found on Mars will almost certainly be the same type as we find here and, although it would be fascinating to find truly indigenous life-forms, that would be the worst possible outcome from a terraforming/colonisation standpoint. We'd be in a "Prime Directive" quandary and Mars would probably be off-limits indefinitely.
    I was interested to see that you leave open the question of whether Mars may have given rise to life-forms of a higher order than mere bacteria. Now wouldn't that be cool?!! 

Josh:-

    I'm not trying to make a big thing out of this, so forgive me if I seem to be harping on it, but I'm intrigued at your change of opinion.
    As you know, I've been pushing the 'life on Mars' barrow for years now and I know from the stony silence I've encountered in most cases that many people agree with the old NASA party-line that Mars is sterile. I'm always interested in the prospect of identifying a new ally!

    It's interesting, too, that your belief in a sterile Mars was based more on intuition (a hunch) than on the results, say, of the Viking experiments. I think I can understand your position because almost any amount of evidence is probably insufficient to prove a negative - though that didn't keep NASA from promptly declaring, on what turned out to be a pretty shaky basis, that Mars was not only lifeless but that its regolith was a highly effective sterilising agent!
    What I was hoping for, in your reply, was an indication of what has caused you to change your mind. I wondered whether you might have a list of factors which, while not conclusive evidence individually, had been persuasive enough, collectively, to sway you.

    I guess I'm just curious as to how convinced you are now that Mars harbours life.  ???   
    As for myself, I'm about as close to absolute certainty as you can get without being absolutely certain!   

I always have plenty of time for an honest-to-God optimist, Rik, and I've always liked your style!   

    What I was thinking was that inner solar system objects have had too many close encounters with the Sun and have lost most of their volatiles due to evaporation/sublimation. Anything coming in from the outer solar system of its own accord is already travelling too fast for realistic course-correction; too much delta-V required.
    Our best bet is to analyse and catalogue bodies of a suitable size in the Kuiper Belt and choose one or two with the required constituents. Just a little nudge in the right direction at the right time should do the trick, with only small course corrections needed as the body spiralled sunward. I visualise judicious use of Jupiter's deep gravitational well being made to help slow the iceteroid into a highly elliptical martian orbit, whence it should be relatively easy to bring it down at the right spot on the surface.

    In all of the above, I share your optimism, Rik. I have no doubt at all that it could be done, just as I have described it. But I think the lead up to actually doing it would be longer, at least in my mind, than you seem to imagine.
    The exploration by robotic probes of the Kuiper Belt probably won't even commence for some decades and will take some decades beyond that to produce an adequate inventory of what's available out there!

    Even if we're in a position to crash iceteroids into Mars in only 60 to 70 years, there may be enough infrastructure there by then to make the capability entirely irrelevant.
    Or am I overestimating the disruption to the martian environment of a 100 km diameter icy body entering the atmosphere at, say, 4 or 5 km/s? Could it be done without wrecking everything that has been built up before its arrival?
                                                    ???

It is indeed a fabulous image and I bet we're in for more pictures over the coming months which will knock our socks off, and make this one look tame!  :up:

    I'm struck by how similar this scene on Phoebe looks to scenes of our own Moon, though on a much smaller scale of course. In all the space books I used to soak up like a sponge as a child, terrain on various moons, including our own, was always portrayed as starkly jagged - very dissimilar to the heavily eroded landscapes common on Earth.
    I still find the rolling hills of Luna amazing ... and now this, on Phoebe!
    I guess you don't have to have an atmosphere to have erosion.
                                           

Even 8 lunar distances is close enough to remind me how vulnerable we are and to make me feel nervous!
                                               

Yes, Anatoli.
    The results of the orbiting centrifuge experiment on the 'mousetronauts' will be absolutely fascinating! I can't wait to see what happens because it has such a direct bearing on the colonisation of Mars.

    My feeling is that mammals will probably cope well enough with martian gravity but I'm not entirely sure - which makes me a little nervous!