[rekenaut]

Potentially a much greater filter is going from unicellular to multicellular life, no? If it likely took billions of years to get from unicellular to multicellular life on Earth, and only (hundreds of) millions of years to get to life that can conduct spaceflight, then perhaps microbes wouldn’t be the best way to attack this problem (I’m assuming you’re talking primarily about unicellular microbes, of course).

[ChuckMcM]

Well in the talk the presenter was talking things like tardigrades which are multicellular. The challenge with tardigrades (and any multicellular life) is that you want it to be reproducing (and hence evolving) so it has to be able to do so under conditions on the body you drop it on too. Again, since the talk was speculative there were various speculative ideas such as ice penetrators to put them into the liquid under the ice of moons like Enceladus.

Evolvable being the key of course. Many, if not most, folks I've met in the scientific community are intensely opposed to this sort of open ended experimentation. NASA has a whole team that insures things we send to other bodies are not carrying any organisms (single cell or otherwise) for this very reason.

[palmotea]

> Many, if not most, folks I've met in the scientific community are intensely opposed to this sort of open ended experimentation. NASA has a whole team that insures things we send to other bodies are not carrying any organisms (single cell or otherwise) for this very reason.

That's the scientific community being parochial and self-interested, though. Their priority is writing more papers, and if that means holding the rest of us back, they're fine with it.

Didn't Carl Sagan (in Cosmos?) or someone propose leaving all of Mars as a nature preserve for the benefit of any microbes that happen to live there? That's just wasting the closest, best off-planet colonization opportunity.

[arunabha]

> That's the scientific community being parochial and self-interested, though. Their priority is writing more papers, and if that means holding the rest of us back, they're fine with it.

Is it? To me, this sounds awfully similar in construction to 'The devs are always worried about tech debt and architecture, but they just want to polish their resumes to hold back the product' speech we are prone to hear from PM/MBA types.

Why would you prefer to believe a random outsider's view (scientists are holding us back) over people who have built professional careers working in the field(a.k.a scientists)? Especially when you provide no evidence to back up your claims?

[Nevermark]

> To me, this sounds awfully similar in construction to [...]

I am not sure why you are replying to an opinion, with even heavier opinion, but treating yours as if it means more.

There are trillions of planets in the galaxy. Uninhabited and highly uninhabitable planets everywhere we look in the sky. Life on the other hand, is apparently incredibly rare. Certainly vastly more rare than uninhabited planets.

Not using our closest, most potentially habitable, planet for the continuity of life and civilization, it is by far most suited to over any other location, would be a ridiculous waste.

Where would we go instead? Just wall ourselves in?

Mars is going to become habitable, by some combination of us adapting simple life to it, adapting ourselves, our life support technologies, and/or Mars. Probably all the above. With the only caveat if humans manage to help themselves into extinction first. But if we go instinct due to AI, or AI survives despite another catastrophe, AI won't hesitate to use Martian resources either.

And Mars it turns out, doesn't have an opinion on this at all.

[palmotea]

> Why would you prefer to believe a random outsider's view (scientists are holding us back)

What "random outsider's view"? It's my view. I've heard what they had to say, and I think their priorities are wrong, at least when it comes to keeping places like Mars "pristine."

> over people who have built professional careers working in the field(a.k.a scientists)?

Scientists are not some caste of priests, in tune with the one true POV (though some treat them that way). They're dudes doing a job, and the priorities of that job aren't the only priorities. Stating their POV while watching pictures of galaxies with Vangelis playing in the background doesn't change that.

> Especially when you provide no evidence to back up your claims?

Huh? That's a misplaced demand if I ever saw one.

[bayindirh]

> colonization opportunity.

Some things are better left as-is. Not everything is up for grabs. Seeing the grappling effects of "seizing opportunities" on the Blue Marble and thinking that we can continue doing the same everywhere we can touch is...

telling.

[pfannkuchen]

Spreading into new territory is a fundamental human instinct. It’s how we ended up being spread out across the entire planet. Tut tutting ain’t gonna change that, people are still going to follow the instinct. See: religion’s attempts to control sexual instincts in humans. We would at least need to respect the instinct and give it a robust outlet, not just expect people to suppress it for the good of… some rocks?

[bayindirh]

> for the good of… some rocks?

This is a perfect portrayal of what I'm talking about:

    - Forests: "some" trees.
    - Water bodies: "some" water.
    - Agricurtural land: "some" soil.
    - Causalities: "some" people.
    - Whole ecosystems: "a couple of" animals.

Minimizing our bad influence on our planet and wanting everything for oneself caused the problem we're currently in. Most humans know no moderation, and putting it out as "this is our instinct, innit? We can't do anything about it but to follow it, eh?" is the biggest continuous mistake we're doing as a species.

If we assume that we're the most advanced organism on this planet (which I doubt) which is meant to rule it once it for all (which I doubt), we shall do a hell of a better job of not burning it end to end and make it inhabitable for ourselves and everything else living on it.

This is shortsightedness, veiled as a god syndrome.

A god which cooks itself to death. For more money. A bitter irony.

[WalterBright]

Your analogy doesn't work because there is no life on Mars. There is no ecosystem there. No other life has been detected in our solar system.

[throwpoaster]

Space is big. Colonize colonize colonize!

[kjkjadksj]

Uhh this is completely different. You will notice that humans spread into territory where they have the evolutionary capability to survive. Look at population distribution maps and this is obvious.

We are not adapted at all for eva or really existing anywhere else in the solar system. This is far more challenging conditions than even Antarctica.

[WalterBright]

Mars is a dead rock. There is no point or need to save it from human use.

[lukan]

Ah well, I want to share a part of Red Mars by Robinson about this topic, where the protagonist have that debate. (starting with Ann, a "red" who stronglopposes

"Here you sit in your little holes running your little experiments, making things like kids with a chemistry set in a basement, while the whole time an entire world sits outside your door. A world where the landforms are a hundred times larger than their equivalents on Earth, and a thousand times older, with evidence concerning the beginning of the solar system scattered all over, as well as the whole history of a planet, scarcely changed in the last billion years. And you're going to wreck it all. And without ever honestly admitting what you're doing, either. Because we could live here and study the planet without changing it-we could do that with very little harm or even inconvenience to ourselves. All this talk of radiation is bullshit and you know it. There's simply not a high enough level of it to justify this mass alteration of the environment. You want to do that because you think you can. You want to try it out and see-as if this were some big playground sandbox for you to build castles in. A big Mars jar! You find your justifications where you can, but it's bad faith, and it's not science." Her face had gone bright red during this tirade; Nadia had never seen her anywhere near as angry as this. The usual matter-of-fact facade that she placed over her bitter anger had shattered, and she was almost speechless with fury, she was shuddering. The whole room had gone deadly quiet. "It's not science, I say! It's just playing around. And for that game you're going to wreck the historical record, destroy the polar caps, and the outflow channels, and the canyon bottoms-destroy a beautiful pure landscape, and for nothing at all." The room was as still as a tableau, they were like stone statues of themselves. The ventilators hummed. People began to eye one another warily. Simon took a step toward Ann, his hand outstretched; she stopped him dead with a glance, he might as well have stepped outside in his underwear and frozen stiff. His face reddened, and he cracked his posture and sat back down.

Sax Russell rose to his feet. He looked the same as ever, perhaps a bit more flushed than usual, but mild, small, blinking owlishly, his voice calm and dry, as if lecturing on some textbook point of thermodynamics, or enumerating the periodic table. "The beauty of Mars exists in the human mind," he said in that dry factual tone, and everyone stared at him amazed. "Without the human presence it is just a concatenation of atoms, no different than any other random speck of matter in the universe. It's we who understand it, and we who give it meaning. All our centuries of looking up at the night sky and watching it wander through the stars. All those nights of watching it through the telescopes, looking at a tiny disk trying to see canals in the albedo changes. All those dumb sci-fi novels with their monsters and maidens and dying civilizations. And all the scientists who studied the data, or got us here. That's what makes Mars beautiful. Not the basalt and the oxides." He paused to look around at them all. Nadia gulped; it was strange in the extreme to hear these words come out of the mouth of Sax Russell, in the same dry tone that he would use to analyze a graph. Too strange! "Now that we are here," he went on, "it isn't enough to just hide under ten meters of soil and study the rock. That's science, yes, and needed science too. But science is more than that. Science is part of a larger human enterprise, and that enterprise includes going to the stars, adapting to other planets, adapting them to us. Science is creation. The lack of life here, and the lack of any finding in fifty years of the SETI program, indicates that life is rare, and intelligent life even rarer. And yet the whole meaning of the universe, its beauty, is contained in the consciousness of intelligent life. We are the consciousness of the universe, and our job is to spread that around, to go look at things, to live everywhere we can. It's too dangerous to keep the consciousness of the universe on only one planet, it could be wiped out. And so now we're on two, three if you count the moon. And we can change this one to make it safer to live on. Changing it won't destroy it. Reading its past might get harder, but the beauty of it won't go away. If there are lakes, or forests, or glaciers, how does that diminish Mars's beauty? I don't think it does. I think it only enhances it. It adds life, the most beautiful system of all. But nothing life can do will bring Tharsis down, or fill Marineris. Mars will always remain Mars, different from Earth, colder and wilder. But it can be Mars and ours at the same time. And it will be. There is this about the human mind; if it can be done, it will be done. We can transform Mars and build it like you would build a cathedral, as a monument to humanity and the universe both. We can do it, so we will do it. So-" he held up a palm, as if satisfied that the analysis had been supported by the data in the graph-as if he had examined the periodic table, and found that it still held true- "we might as well start.""

[bayindirh]

I recommend you to read Hyperion Cantos then. All four volumes. Takes a couple of months, but it's worth it.

It demands the reader to pay attention and think about what they read, though. I need to warn.

To add:

> Science is creation.

No. Science is knowing. How & why. You can create something with that knowledge, but it's up to you. You shouldn't create everything you can create (e.g.: mirror life, biological weapons, etc.).

> We can do it, so we will do it.

This mentality brought us up to here, but it's now harming us more than benefiting us. Maybe we should revisit this.

[lukan]

> We can do it, so we will do it."

This mentality brought us up to here, but it's now harming us more than benefiting us. Maybe we should revisit this."

But if it comes coupled with this:

"The lack of life here, and the lack of any finding in fifty years of the SETI program, indicates that life is rare, and intelligent life even rarer. And yet the whole meaning of the universe, its beauty, is contained in the consciousness of intelligent life. We are the consciousness of the universe, and our job is to spread that around, to go look at things, to live everywhere we can. "

I very much agree to it. But thanks for the recommendation, will look into it.

[N19PEDL2]

We should consider using Mars as a lifeline to preserve life in case we end up destroying Earth.

However, we should also consider the need to avoid contaminating other worlds unless absolutely necessary.

One solution for both of these problems could be to launch some probes carrying a selection of extremophile bacteria and place them into Martian orbit. These probes would be capable of landing autonomously and releasing the bacteria onto the surface, but they don't do it as long as they receive a specific command from Earth at least once a year or so.

[WalterBright]

> Many, if not most, folks I've met in the scientific community are intensely opposed to this sort of open ended experimentation. NASA has a whole team that insures things we send to other bodies are not carrying any organisms (single cell or otherwise) for this very reason.

Their self-loathing of terran life, possibly the most fantastic thing that ever happened in the universe, is sad to see.

What is the point of a universe if there is no life to appreciate it?

[bayindirh]

> What is the point of a universe if there is no life to appreciate it?

How can you know? The absence of evidence is not an evidence of absence.

[WalterBright]

> How can you know?

The same way we know that ghosts don't exist and you have not been abducted by aliens and Superman is a fictitious figure.