NASA Funded This Crazy Project To Search For Life On Mars

[@IOSALive]

Fraser Cain, Your videos always make me happy, so I subscribed!

[@IOSALive]

Fraser Cain, This is fantastic! I subscribed right away!

[@benellison5668]

Hard core. The guy has "space" in his name

[@klondike69none85]

came here for this comment lol

[@Starman_67]

Always enjoy your interviews, Fraser. And this was another great one. Fascinating stuff. 🤘😎🤘

[@jimboAndersenReviews]

ALF sounds like a really good idea. That was a very fine interview and great news.

[@coolhand411luke6]

I love how he's like that's not really my problem. A true engineer

[@bimmjim]

Put the engineers in charge :: We'll fix all this $H!T real quick.

[@geoffgeoff3333]

@coolhand411luke6 You mean "Scientists" right? Engineers will design & build the machines to extract, process, and analyze the samples of Martian crust.

[@richardreumerman5449]

It's important to define the scope of your project.

[@Trollda1]

What an amazing interview, thanks Fraser! I am from the same country as Dr. Spacek and it's so awesome seeing someone from my country work on such a project. I hope to work on similar projects as well in the future! Good luck to Jan and his team, I hope all goes well!

[@MelindaGreen]

Thanks for the term "Shadow Biosphere". I've long wondered about this, and it's always helpful to find a term for such things to facilitate their discussion. For example we might already be aware of particularly interesting methods of mineral crystallization without anyone even wondering if it might be a sign of unfamiliar life. Unknown unknowns as it were.

[@DJRonnieG]

Name checks out 👍

[@ericfielding2540]

Great interview with Dr. Spacek. He has many interesting ideas and plans, with a deep respect for planetary protection.

[@NunoPereira.]

The Agnostic Life Finder (ALF) is such a good idea. If it returns positive results, this method can potentially be used in other places of the solar system.

[@XionUnjust]

Greetings from Poland 👍🏻 Great interview and I love the entire process on how to find signs of life for life as we know it

[@denijane89]

Great interview, thanks a lot to both of you!

[@Nicole-xd1uj]

I hope that ALF gets greenlit and is successful because it might actually be essential to making this discover before contamination but also because it would bode well for future space exploration with industry partnerships.

[@BitcoinMeister]

This man is great! I love his little dig at NASA! Private funding for the win!

[@d.o.6769]

Great interview! - Funny, I was looking at Alf just as you brought up the subject.

[@TzarBomb]

0:28 "...humans are filthy!" - Fraser, 2024.🙂

[@rogertulk8607]

You're not kidding, they've even found a ring around Uranus.

[@oldtimer2662]

Lol Humans are filthy 🤔”Annie Wilkes: I thought you were good Paul... but you're not good. You're just another lying ol' dirty birdy.” lol Misery (Stephen King)

[@oldtimer2662]

But seriously I hope the “filthy” humans on Mars have decontamination in the airlocks because if there is life on Mars it will probably kill them

[@hodor3024]

"This reality, whatever you want to call it, I can't stand it any longer. It's the smell, if there is such a thing. I feel saturated by it. I can taste your stink and every time I do, I fear that I've somehow been infected by it." - Agent Cain

[@fep_ptcp883]

It's as if Fraser somehow knew me

[@zippythinginvention]

I was listening at 1.5 speed and had to re-listen to the end. Because, I thought he said he got two rescue ducks. Lol. Super interesting interview. Thanks for all of these great windows into the fascinating world of genuine researchers at the bleeding edge of science.

[@nmxsanchez]

HEY Fraser! Long time viewer and member of the WSH crew since when I was in high school! Just moved to Bellevue/Seattle Washington for my dream job so we are practically neighbors now. Just wanted to say hey and how badly I wish you would bring the WSH back! I miss it so much.

[@Flowmystic]

We need follow up interviews.

[@montyiscool11]

Fascinating. Fraser, take a day off.😊

[@timhorton698]

42:34 Did I hear correctly -80 000 G's!!! Im sorry can you confirm I heard that right? Lemme see 800 000m/s^2 ..hmmm

[@jhspacek]

Yes, the probes were designed to operate at 80,000 g. For start read wiki en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Space_2 :-)

[@I-0-0-I]

Hey Fraser, another great interview! Also, I really appreciate the simultaneous podcast release. It’s nice to be able to listen to these in the background without having to pay KZbin extra money!

[@marvinmauldin4361]

We've been sending stuff there for so long that the Tardigrade Empire we send as stowaways has plans to use the hardware for the War of the Worlds. And they don't have to worry about immunity to Earth microbes.

[@Bluelagoonstudios]

The Doctor, is a Czech, speaking very well English, it's much more difficult for him, than for me, a Belgian. And interesting video as well. There are still very smart people out there, no matter where he/ she is from. I like the deeper insights in science and this channel gives me that, thank You, Fraser.

[@richb2229]

It was already found there, but when it happened the parameters that were established before the mission were thrown out and a new set of mission parameters that rejected the finding were forwarded.

[@YousufAhmad0]

Had to watch at 1.5x instead of my usual 2x, due to the accent, but man! What a brilliant interview! Loved it, more of these please!

[@richardreumerman5449]

I agree with him that defining life isn't very useful when you don't know what you're looking for. If we find eg the self-replicating RNA molecule he describes we can debate whether it's life or not but it'll be a huge discovery nonetheless. Reminds me of the definition of planet, where it looks to me people were just fitting the definition to what they already thought should be planets, not the other way around.

[@richardreumerman5449]

I also think this is a very exciting idea and I hope it goes somewhere. Good Luck!

[@tmuny1380]

I am so relieved ! I thought these projects were going to be expensive and complicated !

[@mattscott8961]

What about auto-rotation of helicopter blades - pull the pitch prior to impact and provide some lift to minimise impact?

[@Yutani_Crayven]

It's refreshing to see that he's pushing for more exploration before humans get there, rather than for less human exploration before life is or isn't found there. Ultimately, a human presence on the surface will make finding life easier, not harder. Until autonomous machines are sufficiently versatile and agile to do the same work that a human can.

[@Yutani_Crayven]

Yes, super long term human presence might ultimately more difficult to sort out potential indigenous lifeforms. But it seems likely that one of the highest priorities of any human presence there is going to be the search for life. So I really don't share this particular fear. The planet is vast, and the human presence would have to be extensive in scale and time in order to pollute all sources of water before they can be analyzed.

[@artisarium]

You should only invite space-people with the word "Space" in their names henceforth.

[@peterhladky5481]

How about while speeding through the atmosphere you spin up a drill bit with a massive fly wheel. This would both slow down the impacter and enable more efficient drilling on impact?

[@nilshibyhansen1969]

Jan SPACE-K❤

[@boriskaragiannis]

only by stating Agnostic is a very start for a science project

[@stuartreed37]

Best of luck! 🤞👽

[@jensphiliphohmann1876]

I'm excited about the possibility of complex molecules using concentrate sulfuric acid instead of water...

[@JamesCairney]

This was good

[@marcjohnson4884]

I wish the sample return mission wouldnt take so long. Seems like we ought to be able to do this faster.

[@jblob5764]

Where can I find a list or schedule of upcoming launches out of Vandenberg? I live on the west coast so thats my best bet of seeing a launch in person

[@GwegKnott]

We just need to double the space budget. Imagine what we could find out and create. This wouldn't even really make any difference on the rest of the government budget. I would send $1 a month to nasa, if the northamerican population did the same the would be 10's of millions that could go towards space research

[@oatlord]

Dang, Fraser, you left this man hanging cold several times with some decent jokes of his.

[@jhspacek]

❤

[@BabyMakR]

Thanks for the ear worm... 🎶Is there life on Maaaaaars...🎶

[@mj2745]

THIS is great! Thank goodness we have the brains enabled to put these things into practice. It seems a no brainer we should have done this from the start with Mars, but that the method could be used almost anywhere .... fantastic. Even the Venus scenario. Wherever we go we are going to contaminate the environment, we're a walking factory of bacteria.

[@thedenial]

The nanopore Jan's talking about isn't just denoting the size of the pore but a sequencing technology from @OxfordNanoporeTechnologies

[@cacogenicist]

If there's any life on Mars, very likely it has a common ancestor with Earth life, and it's a _deep_ biosphere. Any microscopic critters there won't be bothered by us.

[@jtjames79]

Who do these scientists think they are. Because it seems like they want to be kings of the solar system. Going to Mars is poaching on science lands! Off with your head!

[@oatlord]

"Morningstar" Man I can't wait for all the conspiracy videos about this one. Fun times.

[@Robbadobbsoldier]

Is it possible to direct or neglect gravity? All other sorts of waves can be redirected or even blocked. Is there a graviton? ( ihope its ok to ask questions in these types of show to )

[@MyLostToys]

Elf!

[@cyrusthevirus9878]

Can't you extract oxygen from water ice or is it more work than it's worth using a condensation system?

[@RufusAufderhar-s4l]

fantastic

[@cheesedoodlefeeder]

Wow , was just reading one claim that UVC is a hazard to life even at high latitudes on Mars. So possibly digging down below the surface to find remnants of life in the past when Mars might have had a more reasonable protective atmosphere might be the way to go?

[@-Thauma-]

Gordon Shumway! 😀

[@alfonsopayra]

so his last name is actually SPACE(k)

[@thedenial]

If Mars has no life then it's also an opportunity to see how Earth lifeforms take hold.

[@2150dalek]

Can't be any crazier than funding Starliner.

[@frasercain]

I wonder when it'll launch.

[@zapfanzapfan]

Loved the TV-show! Send a cat to Mars, that'll draw ALF out of hiding 🙂

[@TheJadeFist]

Even if we find evidence of related life on mars, that doesn't make it less likely to find other life out in space that evolved from unique separate origins. It wouldn't be a proof positive of life able to start in much different environments, but it's not a proof negative either. It would also raise many questions on its own.

[@bluesteel8376]

Finding life on Mars without humans will be a lot more difficult than if we go there in search of it. We can't just avoid the planet for decades or longer until we are absolutely certain no life is there. If it is there, it will be underground or under the ice sheets at the poles.

[@billynomates7714]

I like your interview series Fraser, but when the audio is bad they become difficult to listen to - and Dr Jan Spacek's audio is bad. Do you not do sound checks so you can get this sorted before you record?

[@ylette]

With a last name like that I guess you have to choose something space related as a carreer.

[@SocksWithSandals]

We need to make a 2035 deadline for finding life before humans go to Mars. No doubt we will send biochemistry experts anyway.

[@tristan7216]

If we find life on mars next year, we don't know if it was transferred there from Earth due to an asteroid impact that kicked material off Earth into solar orbit and eventually Mars. So finding life on Mars may not tell us much about the probability of ETL outside of our solar system.

[@jhspacek]

Finding it only (eg Labeled Release experiment) might not tell us. But studying it a bit more should tell us about its origin. And then we can speculate...

[@erickansa5498]

The Mars penetrator probes sound like they go from a orbital velocities to a full stop via "litho-breaking". :)

[@jhspacek]

They usually break a bit in the atmosphere as well... But yes :-)

[@FutureAIDev2015]

Something tells me that humanity isn't necessarily being honest in searching for whether there was life on Mars, rather we want it to be true so much that we are searching almost as though we collectively believe if we search hard enough it'll just materialize

[@ReinReads]

I would argue more people assume, or want, there to be no life off of Earth. So we should stop looking even though we have barely even started the search on our nearest neighbors that are leading candidates. We are decades out from ruling out life on Mars or Venus.

[@robwalker4548]

@@ReinReadsi am ready to state right now there is none on Venus.

[@thetobyntr9540]

The scientists are being honest, and there could easily be a very fragile biosphere there that we'd immediately threaten upon sending people. The Moon is closer, safer, definitely uninhabited, easier to supply, we can mine the far side all we want and send the resources back to Earth with no negative impact for us or the night sky, and you most likely won't get stuck there for the rest of your life, which can be said for Mars. Also you can fly under your own power relatively easily in Earth density air on the Moon. If any life from Earth got there in the past then it would be there today, we have microbes and even worms living far enough under the surface on Earth for the rock to be perpetually hot, and that far under the surface a thick atmosphere doesn't really matter. Life got started before the late heavy bombardment, which sterilized Earth's surface multiple times, they either lived in the crust, or survived in debris that later came down after a few centuries. Tons of microbes can survive in space, and the most widely distributed microbes include space tolerant ones, many of which apparently spread everywhere billions of years ago. There's just no apparent signs of life there on Mars, and that's all we can say for sure. For all we know life could have started there, since Mars cooled first it was an ocean world for a decent chunk of time before Earth could have cooled enough to have liquid water. While we can't prove it yet there's nothing indicating that this couldn't have happened, and it would explain why life seems to have been on Earth just after oceans first formed. If life is there then it could include the most unique life that we are related to in he whole universe, it would be a one off opportunity for Mars to tell us about how life could spread elsewhere in it. If life made it from Earth then we will be able to investigate why and when just by looking at it's DNA, and if there's anything from another abiogenesis then it will tell us one of the most important components of the Fermi paradox, as well as giving us tons of more unique chemistry to figure out and potentially utilize. If life is brought to mars by us and the native life is sparse then we could easily drive it extinct, or make it near impossible to get a clean sample.

[@HaplessIdiot]

​@@ReinReads let's be honest the search is for complex life not cellular life and in that regard we aren't going to find much of anything unless the frozen waters in saturns moons have sea squids or something of merit

[@thetobyntr9540]

We gotta be careful, or we could do some serious damage to what could be the oldest biosphere in the solar system. All we know about life on Mars is that we don't really know for sure if it exists, but the only tests meant to find it sent there were ambiguous at worst, and the inner planets have exchanged surface rocks for their whole existence. Most microbes can survive if in a rock in space, and earth has microbes and even worms deep enough for the rock to be above body temperature, so life could have spread to or from Mars and would likely be there still if it ever had any. Mars cooled first, and life was present on Earth just after the oceans formed so it looks like it could easily have been brought to earth from Mars. We don't know how often abiogenesis is, and we also don't know for sure if panspermia works at all, and Mars is going to help us understand that a lot even if there's no life there, but it's best not to contaminate or drive extinct what could be very scarce and very unique, Earth microbes can survive under simulated martian conditions. A rock landing after decades in space is much less contamination than any human presence would be. Also we can go to the Moon, or one around mars much safer and use robots to bring samples back.

[@kazeshi2]

ugh, please no clickbait titles. this channel is better than that.

[@NicholasNerios]

The poles do seem the most likely place to find bacterial life, if water is frosting the surface, it will rinse the regolith of perchlorates providing a habital zone.

[@hodor3024]

0:31 wouldn't that pretty much rule out martian life, because how could it be overwhelmed by life which isn't adapted to the place?

[@joshzeffren2752]

Good question. I think the important thing here is to differentiate between current life and dead life. ALF will take samples from melted icecaps which may be several million years old. That life might not be able to thrive unfrozen on Mars today, but it would have in the past. If we could determine if Mars had flourishing life in the past, that would be a huge discovery. It’s hard to detect ancient Martian life if the tools we use only detect modern life from Earth

[@jimgraham6722]

Ask Gil Levin (RIP).

[@RonColeArt]

I suspect there's life all over the freaking place out there, including inside our Moon in caves where it's warm and there's enough water in the soil for life to emerge. I also suspect there are plant seeds that make interstellar journeys as well as plants that grow in space. My personal saying has always been "the universe is so old... it's moldy". I realize it's just my "gut" but, I simply can't believe that not only is there life on Mars but we will find underground forests of it. Life is just chemistry. One last thing... People seem to instinctively always be looking specifically for animal life. Anytime you mention the topic, people talk about microbes, germs, viruses, single celled organisms, worm, etc. But wouldn't molds and plants be more abundant than animal life in the cosmos? If life evolves independently on a world, wouldn't molds and plants evolve first before any kind of critter? Are there differences between plant and animal DNA that are worth thinking about when planning to look for them? I have no clue, just throwing it out there.

[@RockinRobbins13]

Well, heck, you already know so we don't have to look. We should just nuke Mars and the Moon just in case it's there. Humans always do the same thing when they discover life that isn't human. We kill it. Why stop now?

[@jhspacek]

Good point about not looking for animals. The expected microscopic life on Mars might not be related to any of the life domain we know from Earth.

[@Spherical_Cow]

0:33 you won't need no life support packs on your Mars EVA suits; we're SpaceX and you're welcome!

[@BigTimeRushFan2112]

Space Karen tell you that lie?

[@Spherical_Cow]

@@BigTimeRushFan2112 that snippet is excerpted from a video made and published by SpaceX itself: clearly, stupid old-space legacy considerations like life support just aren't part of the grand new-space Mars colony vision. The main thing is obviously just getting there; what happens 30 seconds later isn't of much concern to a true visionary...

[@petterbirgersson4489]

He has an appropriate last name.

[@gemstone7818]

well there is no reason for humans to go to mars since we have robots that can do any experiment that humans could do, unlike the 1960s

[@doncarlodivargas5497]

Soon Elon Musk have intelligent robots, next year, they can easily replace humans, we simply send them to Mars and they call back when they have accomplished their task

[@deltalima6703]

No reason for robots, since humans will be there soon, along with plants and animals, and fungi, and who knows what.

[@gemstone7818]

well if it was true that the deadline for these robots is next year then it wouldn't make any sense for them to put resources into trying to make human space travel viable like they've done with the space suits

[@doncarlodivargas5497]

@@gemstone7818 - Elon Musk said so, besides, we have A.I. everywhere, even on our mobile phones, when men can have their own A.I. girlfriend now having some intelligent robots doing simple tasks on Mars being within our reach

[@ReinReads]

Because Mars is just an early stepping stone for humanity becoming a spacefaring species.

[@BigTimeRushFan2112]

Going to Mars is not only a pipe dream, but a waste of money. Its a dead planet, zero ability to take enough with us to actually live there. ever.

[@SchwuppSchwupp]

All kind of tourism is a waste of money, but it is a great inspiration nonetheless.

[@inthefade]

I've become skeptical too. At least on any reasonable timeline. But I don't mind people trying.

[@fep_ptcp883]

Let me quote an influential man in an interview to an old newspaper: 13 February 1914 Orville Wright, who, along with his late brother Wilbur, pioneered aviation in America, has said that the men planning to make transatlantic flights were ‘absolutely foolish’. Mr. Wright believes that no engine has the capacity at present to stand the strain of flying at more than 100 miles per hour for 17 or 18 consecutive hours: ‘I should not dream of attempting it.’ Despite the reservations of Mr. Wright, Rodman Wannamaker, who is currently promoting the flight in tandem with the engine maker Glenn Curtiss, remains optimistic of success and says that Mr. Curtiss has ‘something up his sleeve’ in respect of the engine.

[@hmasplace]

Where do you see humanity in 1,000 years? While I personally believe that the technologies we develop going to Mars will benefit humanity in the near future, it seems like even if it is completely dead, it is the next step in a journey of human exploration that will take us far beyond.

[@rogertulk8607]

If life on Earth occurred based on the building blocks of organic molecules that were rained on the Earth but formed in space, wouldn't you expect Life on Masto have some generic similarities to life on Earth?

[@jhspacek]

I would, but would not be surprised by the opposite result showing completely different biochemistry.

[@andyspoo2]

If intelligent life existed or exists on Mars it would live underground so unless you are looking for caves then you'll never find the goods. The fact that 'greys' (grays) have huge eyes so suggests that they live in the dark or near dark.

[@davidhess6593]

Of course.

[@bludragonproject9677]

Yes this is tricky situ. Truly all we need do is look what happened to the Americas when Columbus landed here. The spread of bacteria, disease and viruses almost destroyed all the indigenous bacterial, insect, and human life on this continent. (Side note: That is what opened the road to colonization, and the idea of Manifest Destiny.)

[@jhspacek]

Since we are discussing unlikely black swan events: this might be a "reverse Manifest Destiny", where Martians will find Earth polar regions as their promised land, when brought back with the astronauts 🙂

[@bludragonproject9677]

@@jhspacek 🤣😂

[@sulljoh1]

I like Mars. Don't hate on Mars 😳

[@senamy424]

I have a question . Lets chopped up different DNA ( humans , monkeys ...) make a soup from it . And...how those chopped DNA would connect again ? can we inject this DNA into cell and create new life ? Just asking . I hope this is not a stupid question ?

[@jhspacek]

Guided "chopping up" is how we prepare transgenic organisms. See DNA cloning. And yes, we can make new life by adding new DNA into cells. It is more complex than that, but in essence it has been done. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycoplasma_laboratorium

[@richardsylvester6483]

Isn't there already earth bacteria and such that got on the rovers we already sent?

[@joshzeffren2752]

Between sterilization before the mission begins and the continuous high-energy radiation from the sun, I would say it’s unlikely that there is earth bacteria on Mars. At the very least, I would say that Fraser Cain is right that the window to detect life on Mars closes when humans reach Mars, as we would bring far more terrestrial life with us than the rovers have.

[@TheGhungFu]

'Big Ugly Bags of Mostly Water' think Martian water is theirs for the taking.

[@seanhewitt603]

Does anyone else find it odd that currently, Uranus is the Only planet rotating on its side?, I mean to say, with the way planets can change their obliquity over aeons, why is it that only one of eight planets axis of rotation isn't flat to the plane of orbit?

[@AndreasPeters-r3e]

I believe venus is pretty far out og plain, too. Even to the point where it´s retrograde.

[@robwalker4548]

Everyone wonders about that.

[@robwalker4548]

@@AndreasPeters-r3ethe inclination of Venus is not overly odd and it has nothing to do with retrograde which is only a visual illusion we see from earth. If you look at the inclination with the sun’s equator for the terrestrial planets earth is the one you might call the odd one at 7.25 degrees.

[@seanhewitt603]

@@AndreasPeters-r3e it's still relatively close to inline with its orbital track.

[@frasercain]

Venus is rotating upside down. That's pretty significant.

[@marksusskind1260]

Minding our Ps and Qs, and our Gs,As,Ts,&Cs

[@e-memers9441]

1:25 what do you mean screen out dna mars life wont not have dna but something like that. Now that think about that you could find that it 100% from earth if it doesn't have dna

[@joshzeffren2752]

This is why Jan brings up the Polyelectrolyte Theory of the Gene. It’s not just DNA, but any molecule that could perform the same function.

[@DrDeuteron]

there is life on mars now, but it's sealed up somewhere in the spacecraft(s).

[@hawkdsl]

underground. Too small to see without a microscope.

[@robwalker4548]

You are most likely correct. No matter how clean you think get a spacecraft something is always missed. I suspect almost nothing sent by Russia had much cleaning under taken.

[@penderic3415]

Big, really big, soap bubbles made in space! Well, maybe not soap, maybe some plastic resin that becomes elastic with exposure to space radiation. Soap bubbles, lots of them, make foam! What could a cloud of space foam be used for? Huh?

[@AliHSyed]

How seriously does NASA consider forward contamination on Mars? It seems almost inevitable that mars will become host to life that hitchhikes with us and yet we’re still pushing forward with plans to go there.

[@jhspacek]

This is a good question. NASA has an internal conflict between departments. For robotic exploration of Mars NASA is very serious about planetary protection. Crewed Mars exploration negates these efforts.

[@marknovak6498]

At this point, I think we are just not able to send more than a corpse to mark I think the window is better than 20 years despite all the claims. Hopefully, they will not opt to crash any arriving corpse on one of the moons of Mars or use the remaining Delta-v to send the to a lower orbit.

[@jhspacek]

I do not share this skepticism, but even if we have 50 years, we better start the search now.

[@caldodge]

Banning human exploration for mythical Martian microbes is nuts.

[@RockinRobbins13]

Destroying Martian life because we are so self-centered and selfish would be completely immoral. I'd much rather be nuts than evil. "Are we alone in the Universe" is a central question of our existence. To destroy our one chance in all of our lifetimes to answer that question because we were in too damn much of a hurry would be a crime. I can see the headlines, news release title now. "LIFE FOUND ON MARS. WE KILLED IT." Mars has waited for us for over 4.5 billion years. It will still be there in another ten years. Or twenty. We need to answer the greatest question in our universe before we lose that chance possibly forever.

[@JohnMuz1]

Crazy, not crazy. :-)

[@davidvoncken1319]

If Mars has life, we should stay away

[@allurbase]

We are totally contaminating Mars, we are not even keeping Earth as a wilderness.

[@OliverGrumitt]

I wonder why anyone would want to travel to Mars, given the environment there and the dangers of getting there in the first place and one mistake could kill you. Mars is not a place that people can live permanently and it would be extremely challenging to stay there even for a very short period of time. While it may be true a geologist could do more science in an afternoon than all the robots we have sent there, even this advantage simply is not worth the huge risks and costs of sending people there and there is no rush to conduct science. There is no urgency to discover all there is to know about Mars, and science often works better by going in slow steps rather than big ones. As it is, robots have taught us so much about the planet and I hope this will continue. But given the desperate problems on Earth, people are bound to ask why so much effort and money needs to be spent sending people to a world that can never be permanently inhabited. Real space flight is not like Star Trek and never will be. Spaceflight really belongs to robots, not humans, as robots do not have the huge problems of exploring space as humans do.

[@seasonallyferal1439]

I kinda hope there isn't modern lifeforms on Mars. It would greatly slow any progress of becoming multiplanetary.

[@nekomakhea9440]

"all life requires biopolymers to store information" *laughs in prion*

[@mbj__]

Interesting topic but difficult to follow due to bad audio 😔

[@lostinfrance9830]

So go to Mars and instantly start mining the place.... Yep Humans will never change

[@JamesCairney]

You are upset about a mining operation on a totally dead planet that has no life that anyone can find, and digging some holes on a totally empty planet is bad is it? Will we make a mess of the dust? I suppose that you are also upset about the "mess" humans have left on other planets, yeah? You sound like a human hater.

[@cavetroll666]

👽 👾 👽 👾 👽

[@BitcoinMeister]

If Mars life is found it should NOT become a clean room planet! There are so many potential "clean room" bodies in this solar system that humanity can take its time getting to. Fraser- you say you are ambivalent about human exploration of Mars due to the contamination factor, but it appears your default is to automatically distrust private exploration.

[@frasercain]

I don't distrust private exploration, but I don't think their primary objective will be science and exploration. Their primary motivation will be profit, with environmental concerns being secondary.

[@BitcoinMeister]

​@@frasercain There is nothing wrong with them not fixating on environmental concerns when there are so many other bodies out there that can be studied. If profit is the number 1 goal and they figure out how to be profitable then the amount of competitors and missions (of all sorts) will immediately skyrocket and humanity will be propelled to a new era.

[@RockinRobbins13]

@@BitcoinMeister So far as we know life in the solar system only exists on Earth. What if the only OTHER life only existed on Mars and we killed it, forever losing the opportunity to study it? THAT would be humanity's most egregious crime in all history. How many people could die because we didn't learn the lessons Martian life might teach us? We have found drugs that save tens of thousands of lives from plants and animals living in the worthless unexplored rain forests of equatorial Earth. But lots of people like the people in this comments section think mining for gold or destroying the rain forest and all its ecology to plant bananas is the greater good, meaning "more profitable." This rapacious mindset of exploitation is ready to be unleashed on Mars. Evil exists and that is its ultimate expression. Yeah, let's grab a few dollars today and deny possible fortunes in the future. It's like the rationale for carjacking... Who cares if we have to shoot some old lady?

[@frasercain]

I understand that. It all depends on whether we want to know if life evolved independently on Mars or not.

[@RockinRobbins13]

@@frasercain Unfortunately many do not require evidence to disregard the possibility and immediately begin harvesting the resources without a thought.