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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Bacteria has been present on this planet for billions of years and are incredibly adaptive and resilient. They thrive on and throughout our bodies and all habitats we have been able to impose on them.
Yes, they are, and you can't really 'impose' on them. You can, however, impose on the balance they live in in concert with our bodies, but they'll always trend towards some kind of equilibrium, it just might not be an equilibrium that's good for your immune system or you.
They'll continue their presence in us an around us in any extraterrestrial environment that we are capable of surviving, be it a bubble above or a cavern beneath.
This is where you go astray. They, and we, only survive together and you have it backwards - we only survive if they do and do so in a manner which will sustain an immune system.
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rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
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You ever change your kids dirty diaper, eh Werner? I'll tell you what: that is gross material, but like your kid, you embrace it and learn to love the nitty gritty of your path in this plain of existence. There is no one true path, but many.
What percentage of our bodies, h20 excluded, is composed of virals, bacteria, junk DNA, and the wastes expelled by the aforementioned Healy? My point is, of course we are composed of the full earthly evolutionary line, particularly the most ancient and adaptive. These ancient materials building blocks are plentiful throughout our solar system. The system is the local neighborhood and we are tightly related.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Ed, I could have sworn you mentioned affiliation with the Sierra Club,
you are wrong, never mentioned such an affiliation, and never had an affiliation... I did learn to rock climb taking a class from the RCS of the Riverside Chapter of the SC... and I have a lot of friends who are members...
had a role in tending our nuke stockpile,
certainly the primary mission LLNL is national security, and my work associated with the lab spans nearly the entire breadth of that mission space...
and wrote articles warning us that some routes (or even most) and earthly environs should be off limits lest we disturb the delicate lichen's or other micro ecologies. This, less than 3 years ago.
Given your reading comprehension, and the fact that you are quick to make an assumption based on your gut feelings, I might see how you could have concluded that (did you read the article?). But what I said was that we actually know very little about cliff ecosystems, and that when we go up there we have no idea what the consequences of our journeys are... that's basically it. Given that we assume we are making a balance in our incursions between what we want to do (put up a new route) and what we loose (taking out plants, soil, etc) we might be fooling ourselves that we can even make the calculation... that is at least what I feel. And so I am torn by the horns of this particular dilemma.
I'm sure you have no such qualms.
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rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
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No I don't. I've only had to "clean" one little bush and trundle one rock on the 20-25 new routes I've put up in the last few years. Of course, it's the desert and the ecologies are so few and my eyesight so poor they bother me not. You should try it out there with us. I promise, solid rock, clean rock, no conflict between desire to climb and disturbance of fragile ecologies-again as far as my poor eyesight can discern.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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...again as far as my poor eyesight can discern.
that's the point, you don't know... and it isn't just your eyesight. There is an ecology out there, because it doesn't resemble the gardens of Versailles doesn't mean the considerations of your impact are irrelevant.
In some ways, they are more relevant the less we know about the ecosystems.
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rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
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Now your talking microscopic. Can you twist yourself into tighter knots. Hell, are we going into the subatomic zoo next to protect the quarks.
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rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
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Now your talking DMT.
As far as disturbing the ecologies on the rock out there; come see for yourself. I think you'll agree we are impacting little to nothing. Some of cleanest rock I've seen this side of the glacial polish.
God willing, Bob and I will be new routing this weekend and with John perhaps monday.
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Brokedownclimber
Trad climber
Douglas, WY
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There is another concept that has gained some credence in astronomical circles: the question of Panspermia, the idea that the basic building blocks of life are everywhere. Possibly transported to Earth along with the water from cometary impacts (that's where all the oceans came from). Comets are primarily water; the Japanese comet probe brought back evidence of polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons in the cores. PAHs don't just "form out of randomness;" the process of synthesis and reactions required are relatively simple, given a simple benzene ring, along with long-chain fatty acids as starting materials. But--long chain fatty acids can be manufactured by LIFE FORMS, including bacteria. The presence of PAHs is evidence that some life exists elsewhere (everywhere?). This has been a great topic for discussion at our local Astronomy club (Central Wyoming Astronomical Society).
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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bdc, thanks for the incentive to wiki polynuclear in PAHs. Wasn't familiar with it, else forgot. Yes, panspermia is interesting hypothesis.
The only thing I can figure re healyje's argument is he must have a different definition of "self-sustaining artificial environment". Of course there are different ways of measuring and defining that.
Scott Kelly's been orbiting in an artificial environment for pretty much a year now, one that by many measures is "self-sustaining". The original interest was putting a man on Mars. A bump up from a man on the moon. That's all. As a first step. A baby step.
If it's an environment a few humans can live in for a couple years, eg the Hermes to Mars and back, then it should also be an environment whatever any essential microbes can live in as well.
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limpingcrab
Trad climber
the middle of CA
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The first 2/3 of the book, I felt, was excellent in approach; only when the chemistry arose was I somewhat disappointed in their commentary. Only when the authors descended into raw speculation on other forms of chemistry-based life forms did I shake my head. Totally agree and often note this problem. The chemistry of abiogenesis is what I often try to get people to think about (as I did earlier in this thread) but it's one that people just brush over because nobody has figured out how it could be remotely possible. "Meh, it could probably happen, let's spend money to figure out where!"
PAHs don't just "form out of randomness;" That's fun to discuss how that could have gotten on asteroids. I'm no astronomer but from a biological point of view I'd agree with the cometary impacts hypothesis. I mean, how else!?
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Scott Kelly's been orbiting in an artificial environment for pretty much a year now, one that by many measures is "self-sustaining". The original interest was putting a man on Mars. A bump up from a man on the moon. That's all. As a first step. A baby step.
ISS is certainly a sealed environment, but one which is aggressively replenished from the ground. There is nothing self-sustaining about it as new supplies go up and the garbage and waste come down (or burn up on reentry). They do a pretty good job of recycling fluids, however. But the ISS is just overhead in low-earth orbit so we can resupply it easily. Here's a link to a short blurb on some of the microbiological profiling happening with the ISS: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/10/international-space-station-home-potentially-dangerous-bacteria
And your house is an 'artificial environment', I'm talking about what are known as closed-cycle, closed-loop, or closed ecological systems. Any form of long-term space travel or planetary colonization would ultimately fit the definition in that it's either going to be a long time or never between replenishments. In reality they are fiendishly difficult to even attempt and the link I posted earlier to the MELiSSA project / Loop is worth catching if you're interested in the topic. Again, the problem is mostly one of scale - establishing (and sustaining) a 'minimum viable ecology' in very small spaces.
You often hear the among those who follow such things that the Earth is the only true closed-loop system we know of.
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limpingcrab
Trad climber
the middle of CA
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Intelligent design?
Moose Lol, stick some biological-looking molecules on an asteroid just to screw with people.
Intelligent Design s like 'joker's wild' in Crazy 8's. Its the lazy man's way out of The Big Question. Every time its gets a little bit tough to tease out a solution its all... I've spent close to 15 years trying to find the hard man's way out, but everyone takes one of two easy ways. 1) We know it happened because there's life, someone else will eventually figure out how. 2) Intelligent design.
"I believe the impossible because I refuse to believe the alternative."
Anyway, that's a topic for another thread. I just like to discuss how life can originate because I want to learn more and it's a fun topic that nobody ever wants to discuss :( That's why I brought it up earlier when we were talking about the possiblity of life on the "other earths" and stopped by after it came up here again from brokedownclimber.
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rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
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"The Earth is the only closed loop system".
Hardly, the whole system is an open billiard parlor. Just look at the Moon, Mars, and just under Earth's active surface. The galaxy slowly rotates, solar systems entertwine to share their nebulous parts, the galaxies collide, life always on the move. Doesn't really matter if it was on purpose or accident, it slowing colonizes the void with or without intelligence.
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rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
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There problem is that they lived in an artificial closed loop. For relatively short in system travel there problems would not be the travelers problem. For the colonists of Mars their closed loop problem would be alleviated by processing the local resources. So the whole experiment is non applicable to anything but true closed loops of an interstellar voyage. And even then it wouldn't apply to a crew in hibernation mode.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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hibernation mode?
what is that?
I think you're discounting a very important attempt to create a closed ecosystem... Mars has no ecosystem.
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rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
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Your quite certain of that Ed? I wouldn't be without visiting and extensive excacations.
At any rate, do I have to repeat myself again. You bring your own ecosystem and augment your supplies by what you process off the land, air, and what appears to be significant aquafiers of the mostly solid kind.
Hibernation: an unconscious state of greatly reduced metabolism with cellular degradation retarded.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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There problem is that they lived in an artificial closed loop.
Exactly.
For relatively short in system travel.
Last I checked there was nothing short about travel to Mars other than in comparison to interstellar travel.
You bring your own ecosystem...
Except you don't, and that is the problem. This is similar to the problem of how do you bring enough equipment and supplies to cover all the bases necessary for establishing a minimum viable capability for sustaining resource utilization on Mars. It's that scale problem again, whether you're talking ecosystems or infrastructure.
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Brokedownclimber
Trad climber
Douglas, WY
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As for the Earth being a "closed biosystem," all the water on the planet was brought here by cometary impacts in millennia past. We are continuously being bombarded, on a daily basis, by micrometeorites, and sometimes they reach the surface without being consumed by entry heat. There are huge meteorites in museums, and the interiors of these can be further analyzed. Mostly, they are Iron meteorites, containing lots of Nickel.
My primary reason for sending an expedition to Mars, is although we have sophisticated robotic laboratories being built, most experiments don't give true answers; they simply give rise to more questions. I know this firsthand, having worked in chemistry R & D laboratories most of my adult life. No matter how sophisticated we build the robotics, nothing beats the good old "Mark I Eyeball" directly on the scene.
Even the evidence of past bacterial or protozoan life forms on Mars would be HUGE! Ditto, checking out the subsurface oceans on Europa for bacteria, fungi, protozoans, etc. would, to me, be worth a lot of our national treasure...
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Gary
Social climber
Where in the hell is Major Kong?
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Water now proven on Mars.
Jupiter's moon Europa, possibly also Callisto
All these worlds are yours except Europa. Attempt no landings there.
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