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jlf1961 -> RE: For those of you into Space Exploration and such... (6/22/2008 8:28:15 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Griswold
NASA sent up a little space / Mars probe the other day (well, actually, probably a year or two ago...or however long it takes from here to there)....and they found what appeared to be ice.
Gris, NASA knew about the polar ice years ago, this is the first time they got around to actually checking it out. In fact the entire surface of mars indicates that at one time there was flowing water on the planet.
quote:
ORIGINAL: Griswold
And, in the photo taken some hours later...it disappeared. Something that say, salt, wouldn't have done (unless there was possibly a Martian marguerita walking around just outside the camera lens that no one knew about).
Anyway...that clearly suggests water, which conversely suggests life as we've come to know it.
It suggests the possibility of life as we know it. In all the probes sent to mars, none have detected a trace of life.
quote:
ORIGINAL: Griswold
So, I was watching an old science show (Cosmos w/Carl Sagan..."Billions and Billions") on TV a while ago while doing some laundry, and a thought occurred to me; Clearly there are plants, algae, and other growing things that do well in the Arctic.
And as clearly, we can send robots up there to dig holes and send back scoops of dirt.
We can send cars to the moon that carry guys around so they can take a tee shot towards the next crater...and...by extension, we should be able to send a robot to Mars that could germinate a few hundred algae or some such and see if we could start a terra form or some sort.
The water's there.
A lot of folks think that's how life started on Earth. I'm not so sure I'm one of them, but it's fairly plausible actually.
So...if we did that, would the agency (in this case, NASA) need to get permission from some world consensus before we brought a "life" or living thing to another planet?
Is this something worth doing?
Kinda seems like an amazing concept to me.
Well Gris, it is not that amazing as it sounds. First we send up algae that can live in an oxygen poor atmosphere, actually any plant that can live in that kind of atmosphere, lichens, moss, algae, dont matter really. Just as long as it uses photosynthesis.
Once we get the oxygen levels up to say, the equivalent of standing on top of Mt Everest, we send up more complex plants, like desert tolerent grasses.
Of course, in theory we could speed things along if Europa is actually covered with water ice by sending out ships to that moon, mine the ice, ship it back to mars and melt it.
Now once there is a breathable atmosphere, we got to make it so that it will not allow any harmful radiation through, so we have to create an ozone layer. And we have to warm it up a bit... so we have to create a greenhouse effect.
Once all that is done, we figure out just who we are going to send up there as colonists, and ship off about a third of earth's population. By that time we should have space craft that can mine the asteroid belt, so we send another third to the belt as miners so they can try to get rich.....
That brings earth's population down to a more managable level....
So then Greedy can take over the planet........
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