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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Sep 29, 2016 - 06:48pm PT
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Moosie, you seem like a rational guy most of the time but I just don't get
why anybody would want to leave the only planet in the known universe that
has chocolate and coffee.
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
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Sep 29, 2016 - 07:23pm PT
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Without reason the people perish.
Ok, I'm in. Let 's take a collection, get this thing going, and tell Trump he'll be the "uuggest" hero in the history of mankind, load him up and send him up with a "uuge" party.
That would make a contribution to the planet. Maybe he'd like to travel with his buddy Putin, too.
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Brokedownclimber
Trad climber
Douglas, WY
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 29, 2016 - 09:36pm PT
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Reilly-
Moosie wants some of my Absolute Martian Mist; chemically refined directly from the Martian atmosphere with zero water to contaminate the stuff!
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Sep 29, 2016 - 10:07pm PT
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Irrational thinking is far more limiting, especially when the Golden Goose
has limited production. You dared to dream, but you were rational about it.
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aspendougy
Trad climber
Los Angeles, CA
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Sep 29, 2016 - 10:29pm PT
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A boy in Russia claims to have past life memories of a life on Mars several hundred thousand years ago. The Zulu keeper of the tales, says they have an oral tradition that the Zulu race was founded by a small group that escaped a great catastrophe on Mars, and landed in South Africa. The Celts have a similar tradition.
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Lorenzo
Trad climber
Portland Oregon
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Sep 29, 2016 - 10:53pm PT
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I thought that ark on the moon thing already made us an interplanetary species...
Or are we quibbling about the moon not being a planet?
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Sep 30, 2016 - 12:45am PT
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it is highly unlikely to encounter a human pathogen on an alien world
You don't need to encounter a human pathogen, most of the emerging pathogens here on Earth aren't 'human pathogens'. Basically we're a foodstock that delivers ourselves. And on any world with life where we could take off a suit we would be little more than a new item on the menu. What we and our symbiants wouldn't have is immune systems capable of fending off the myriad microbiological attacks which would be launched on exposure.
Again, complex organisms are an exquisite balancing act akin to standing a pyramid on it's nose. The 'systems' which are represented by complex organisms and their symbionts take thousands upon thousands of years to evolve in a processes that constantly 'tunes' the organism to it's ecology every step of the way. That inextricably weds and binds complex organisms to their planets of origin and they cannot be 're-tuned' for a new world. Throw enough of them at a foreign environment and you might get lucky mutation-wise, but it's incredibly unlikely. Plus, we industrial society humans have fairly degraded immune systems to begin with even for our planet, let alone ship them anywhere else.
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Brokedownclimber
Trad climber
Douglas, WY
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 30, 2016 - 07:30am PT
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Although your reasoning is decent, your model would require the pathogens to have an identical biochemical basis of life to our own; that is, D-carbohydrates and L-amino acids. Let's for sake of argument propose the bacteria or pathogens found are based on D-amino acids. Their enzymes would all be ready to feast on other proteins containing a.a.s of the same chirality. They would "eat," but get zero nutrients they could metabolize. Similarly, if the carbohydrate basis of their systems were of L-chirality, same outcome. The pathogens really aren't then pathogenic. I really suspect that Mars' surface is devoid of anything still alive; only in subsurface water supplies would anything still living possibly be encountered.
If we encountered a beef cow of D-amino acid based proteins, we could eat the whole damned thing and sh#t out totally undigested food with zero nutrients being absorbed by our bodies. The only exception would be the lipids (fats and oils), which are non optically active. I used enzyme specificity to resolve synthetic amino acids for years in my lab.
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Branscomb
Trad climber
Lander, WY
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Sep 30, 2016 - 08:39am PT
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I like Elon's work on batteries and the Tesla...that Giga Factory he's put together is just awesome and his effort to make the Tesla so affordable that Detroit will finally get on board with electric cars. The guy is an awesome genius... listen to him talk and I think he's he's got so much stuff going on in his head that he can't get it out all at once, so he sounds like he's stumbling along.
I'm not with him on this Mars thing...believing that there's nothing living there so we might as well terraplane it and exploit it for all it's worth. I think he's making a lot of assumptions about the place.
He's a very successful genius and has quite the ego to go with it. Maybe too much ego, but he's getting it done whereas most people are still stuck on a flat Earth.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Sep 30, 2016 - 09:54am PT
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bdc, moose, other steely-eyed adventurers...
bottom line, there's enough unknowns as part of the project either way. In part that is what the adventure is all about. Healyje speaks with a certitude, ime, that just isn't justified.
Outer space life could be so alien that our standard amino acids, eg, or even our particular chirality could be immediately toxic to it/them. That's one possibility. Another, a favorable one, is we could discover a changed internal complex ecology after a couple years on Mars that actually benefits our homeostasis and physiology. Wouldn't that be something. Who knows? The only way to know for sure is to get out ther and go for it.
It appears we are, it appears there is enough interest presently underway to make it happen. Despite the naysayers and debbie downers. First order of business: a viable interplanetary transport system just as Elon discussed.
I like the competitive spirit that's developed now between SpaceX and Blue Ocean. Sign me up!
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Sep 30, 2016 - 09:56am PT
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The point I take from Healyje is that the real culprit would most likely be the pathogens they take with them, in them. They will evolve and mutate - and there will not be the other earth-systems in place to otherwise keep them in check.
It would only take one key mutated symbiotic organism to kill the space prisoners.
That's just silly. Esp when posted with the certitude expressed here. Of all the factors that could be detrimental, it's silly to focus on these.
Hey dmt, what are S and R enantiomers? What is Aleppo? :)
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Sep 30, 2016 - 09:57am PT
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Although your reasoning is decent, your model would require the pathogens to have an identical biochemical basis of life to our own; that is, D-carbohydrates and L-amino acids.
If pathogens were that radically different then the odds are good the entire biome of such a world would likely not have been worth the trip.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Sep 30, 2016 - 09:58am PT
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the entire biome of such a world would likely not have been worth the trip.
Again, how silly. As if that's the main reason, or ONLY reason, for such a project.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Sep 30, 2016 - 10:04am PT
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Always the smartypants - if not monkey wrench, right? - when the posting gets a little more in-depth.
Meet the new, same as the old.
.....
First order of business... a viable interplanetary transport system. Go SpaceX. Go Blue Ocean.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Sep 30, 2016 - 10:09am PT
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You know, when you actually spend time on your posts, and think things through to the extent the subjects deserve, no one at ST writes better than you.
I wish you would do this more often. Esp in the science and applied science areas.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Sep 30, 2016 - 10:43am PT
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Again, how silly. As if that's the main reason, or ONLY reason, for such a project.
I'm not talking specifically about Mars, but rather to the notion humans can somehow escape Earth's eventual fate, that we can colonize other worlds, or that we can become an 'interstellar species'.
There are lots of good reasons to be in space. There are lots of good reasons to learn about space. There are few good reasons to bother attempting to go to other planets in person and fewer still for attempting to establish a permanent human presence in space.
And specifically Mars? It lacks an adequate magnetosphere to protect life, it's soils are rife with perchlorates, and it experiences 170 degree temp swings on a nice day at the equator. I mean really, what's the point? If it's a suck quality of life you're after, then we might as well colonize the Antarctic or our oceans for all the hassle. Need to make a couple manned missions there to poke around, get it out of our system and swing our dicks? Sure, fine, but expending resources to set up camp? To what actual end? What's the rationale?
And past Mars? For actual humans? Nada. Nothing. It's why we've invented robotics.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Sep 30, 2016 - 10:53am PT
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just a couple of points...
Musk titled his presentation "...Multiplanetary Species" the nuance is significant, he's proposing that humans might live on two planets, but the idea of regular passage between the two, like traveling on an interstate between them, is even more incredible than Musk's considerably expansive vision.
Similarly, Warren Harding and the team that pushed up the Nose over 50 years ago, had no idea what they were doing and no idea how to do it, they figured it out, but had the considerable luxury of returning to the ground, often... it was a mammoth accomplishment in the end, and while committing, hardly to the level of a Mars mission.
To that end, one can contemplate the issues without the silly boosterism some make on this (and other like) threads, consider the released movie today:
Passage to Mars
which is not about a passage to Mars, but about an adventure on Earth which was big enough adventure.
One might read this a bit more closely... it's hard to imagine this speech from either of the current candidates for POTUS, (or nearly any other POTUS) and while it provides an answer for the Moon mission, it is much more expansive. But one can legitimately ask, is this challenge, a mission to Mars the best way to "serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills"?
We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say that we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours.
There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again. But why, some say, the Moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?
We choose to go to the Moon! ... We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win ...
J. F. Kennedy - Rice University - September 12, 1962
[Click to View YouTube Video]
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Brokedownclimber
Trad climber
Douglas, WY
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 30, 2016 - 10:59am PT
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I choose to support various space initiatives as options to more arms races, and perpetual Jihads here on Earth--a place where all mankind could unify effort for an achievable goal.
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