Terraforming Mars!

[Umbran]

This is going to happen. Maybe by a private organization, but it is inevitable. Why not just DO it and put the issue to rest?

Because, scientifically speaking, you risk killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.

Think for a minute - if you find life on Mars, life that is native to Mars, it will be the first extraterrestrial life found. For all we know, it might be the only such life we'd ever get to examine. The possible gains from studying it are unimanginable (whereas a new place for humans to live is thoroughly imaginable). You don't go eradicating something unique until you've sucked every tiny little bit of information you can out of it.

Patience. Terraforming a world is a multi-century (possibly millennial) project. We can wait a few decades or a century to make sure there's nothing more to be learned from the planet.

 

[Mark]

Because, scientifically speaking, you risk killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.

Your timidity is suspect. What are you hiding from us on Mars?

 

[Angel Tarragon]

Think for a minute - if you find life on Mars, life that is native to Mars, it will be the first extraterrestrial life found.

The possibility of finding alien life within our own Solar System mot likely lies on the moon of Io, rather than mars, I believe.

 

[Krieg]

Patience. Terraforming a world is a multi-century (possibly millennial) project. We can wait a few decades or a century to make sure there's nothing more to be learned from the planet.

Exactly.

At this point we are still a long way off from seriously talking about terraforming the planet.

Regardless of what we find on Mars, when we do get to the point where terraforming becomes a realistic possibility....just imagine the uproar it will cause among the environmentalists around the world.

Needless to say, they will not be happy.

 

[Umbran]

Your timidity is suspect. What are you hiding from us on Mars?

A better question might be - what am I not hiding from you on Mars. The stuff on Mars is, effectively, a year and a half round-trip away. I don't have easy access to it. But if I'm hiding it there, I have some access, right? What does that imply?

The possibility of finding alien life within our own Solar System mot likely lies on the moon of Io, rather than mars, I believe.

Io is trendy. Trendy doesn't make it a better candidate.

We have good reason to believe that Mars may at one time have had similar conditions to what we had. Io's conditions have always been completely different. We have good reason to believe that Earth and Mars have traded rocks, and that implies the possibility of cross-contamination in one or both directions.

And, honestly, Mars is closer and easier to work with. We're more likely to find it on Mars simply because we can give Mars more attention.

 

[Abstraction]

How about the two-birds-with-one-stone solution? Let's ship our pollution to mars!

 

[Krieg]

How about the two-birds-with-one-stone solution? Let's ship our pollution to mars!

Cost prohibitive. It is just too expensive to lift stuff out of Earth's gravity well at this point.

 

[Desdichado]

Io? Are you sure you don't mean Europa? Io seems a far-fetched candidate for life.

 

[Mark]

A better question might be -

Even if there was a debate, I would not let the likes of you shape it! The highway to Mars will be littered with the corpses of you and your cowardly kind. Onward! Onward, I say!

 

[Abstraction]

There is actually very little reason to believe that Earth microbes would be harmful to life on Mars, or any other planet. Microbes are highly specialized little buggers that evolve with their target hosts. A few microbes can infect more than one species, but there aren't any that infect, say, all mammals. It would be astronomical odds if Earth microbes harmed aliens. The real reason for disinfection is so that Earth microbes aren't mistaken as alien by probes. There could be an issue where an organism from Earth finds itself in an environment that it can thrive in and outcompetes local organisms, but that would take something more complex than a microbe. An algae at least, I think.