If we find a structure on Mars

tomBitonti said:

Since the locale is Mars, the life is probably (but not definitely) a different lineage than our own. Mars has very different qualities compared with the Earth: An organism adapted to live there might do terribly on the Earth. But, organisms might be adapted to Mars of a different era, and be adapted to a more similar environment.

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Except for the fact that it is there, as the place is now. So, unless you are going to postulate that the thing has gone dormant and can manage to remain viable for... centuries? Millennia? Eons? Then it is adapted for the current conditions on Mars. And that's *very* different from here, and even more different from the environment inside our animals or plants.

I am not kidding about oxygen being a poison. Oxygen *really* likes to burn things. If you don't have machinery to divert it to useful purpose, it combines with random molecules in your organism instead, and that organism dies.

Mars of a different era? Mars probably hasn't been warm and wet for a billion years or more. When Mars dried up, we didn't have multi-cellular organisms on Earth yet! You don't cling to your adaptation to an old environment *that* long. Evolution would have taken them to adapt to their current environment, not stalled them still looking for something from a billion years ago.

Or there might be that odd chance that the organism can handle an Earth environment.

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There is always a chance, yes.

If I change this around: Let's say a Rover scratches its way to a subsurface layer which is teeming with life. No alien structures, just an unknown but definite collection of biota. Should we plan on sending people to study it before sending probes to do a careful study beforehand?

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Nope. But, I think almost everyone active in the conversation is saying we go with probes first. We can set all the biological issues aside, though, as this decision is made by economics and engineering - we can probably do several rounds of developing and sending probes before we'd be ready to send a human. There's no reason to *stop* sending probes before the humans get there.

Also, note I mentioned upthread that the real risk is not in Mars contaminating us, but us contaminating Mars. Biological samples from mars will become very expensive trash if they get contaminated with Earthly organisms. And the same thing that will protect use from contaminating samples will keep the samples from contaminating us.

Morrus said:

While Russia, China, India, and the ESA busily colonise the planet.

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...I don't know that folks would actually colonize it, unless they find some valuable resources to mine.

was said:

...I don't know that folks would actually colonize it, unless they find some valuable resources to mine.

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Why did America do the moonshot? There are many reasons people - and nations - do things. It's not always just resources. There are private companies trying to colonise Mars already (not very viable ones yet though).

Morrus said:

Why did America do the moonshot?

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..The Cold War. The fear of Soviet satellites and moon bases raining down nukes was a major motivating factor.

..It may not be idealistic, but outside of defense, commercial interests have been the majority factor behind our continued expansion into space.

..Don't get me wrong, I'd applaud anyone who went into it with altruistic motivations. I just don't think that it is a realistic expectation nowadays.

was said:

..It may not be idealistic, but outside of defense, commercial interests have been the majority factor behind our continued expansion into space.

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And note how that hasn't actually led to expansion. We are still stuck in Low Earth Orbit, because that's where the money currently is. Heavy lift capacity, required to get to the Moon and beyond, is still far too expensive for colonization purposes.

was said:

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..The Cold War. The fear of Soviet satellites and moon bases raining down nukes was a major motivating factor.

..It may not be idealistic, but outside of defense, commercial interests have been the majority factor behind our continued expansion into space.

..Don't get me wrong, I'd applaud anyone who went into it with altruistic motivations. I just don't think that it is a realistic expectation nowadays.

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You added that "altruistic" bit yourself. I didn't say that.

In the 60s it was a Cold War with Russia. In the 2020s it'll be something else, maybe with China or somebody else. Mabe it will be a private enterprise. The point being, "resources" isn't the only reason to do something, as history has proved a thousand times.

Yup, there's also doing it for the sake of the technology that it helps to develop, as it did in the early days of the space race, when it was the only force driving technology that rivaled warfare. And you do it so that you control the high ground like a very, very bad Prequel Jedi.

The biggest risk of "alien contagion" isn't to actual humans in the form of a "Rigelian Fever" or "Space Herpes", but rather to our machinery in the form of a truly extremely alien biology. Something on the other end of the biological bell curve, an extremophile as compared to the typical terrestrial critter.

By that I mean setting something akin to things we've seen in some Sci-Fi before: something that isn't interested in flesh or maybe not even water, but rather, has biological processes dependent upon it consuming something like iron, or copper, etc. or involving acidic liquids instead of H2O (if such a chemistries are even possible).

And before that even becomes an issue, it would have to be a tough mofo to survive unharmed the return journey unprotected from the rigors of interplanetary space. Now, we know there are earth critters called tardigrades (water bears) that have done that...but AFAIK, not for the periods of time involved in the Mars-Earth trip.

Morrus said:

The point being, "resources" isn't the only reason to do something, as history has proved a thousand times.

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"Resources," isn't the only reason to do *something*, but the specific something of territorial expansion is historically pretty solidly tied to seeking resources.

Note that the Cold War didn't lead to colonization? It led to a couple of trips to prove we could do it, and they couldn't, and then we stopped. We weren't seeking resources, and couldn't have done it economically at the time if we had been seeking them.

Wikipedia has a list of Martian meteroites found on Earth. Their historical impacts here didn't introduce biological agents to wipe us out, as far as we know.

(Maybe the fiery descent through Earth's atmosphere burned all the malevolent critters to a crips crisp?)