Mars likely to have enough oxygen to support life: study • Hacker News Board

Re: Mars likely to have enough oxygen to support life: study

#61

Post by cbkeller » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 7:18 AM UTC

gizmo686 wrote: post #26

coldnose wrote: post #14

AFAIK, the ability to tolerate oxygen is an advanced property of terrestrial life — the simplest, oldest life forms were totally unable to survive in the presence of oxygen.

The Great Oxygenation Event [0]. Arguably the planet's first mass extinction. To say that nothing we have done to the planet is as bad for the environment as the Great Oxygenation Event would be to pat ourselves on the back for not literally poisoning the atmosphere. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxygenation_Event

Geologist here. Yeah, there are a few places you can find microbial survivors of the GOE:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_sulfur_bacteria

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_sulfur_bacteria

Obligate anaerobic photoautotrophs: they photosynthesize, and need light to survive, but don't produce (and are killed by) O2. Unfortunately for them, post-GOE, there aren't many habitats that are anoxic but still have much light!

There's at least one clade of "green sulfur bacteria" that apparently lives off the basically-invisible glow from a black smoker at a mid-ocean ridge: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1166624/

fascinating stuff!

Re: Mars likely to have enough oxygen to support life: study

#62

Post by throwaway8879 » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 7:18 AM UTC

EGreg wrote: post #54

ryanSrich wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have to start somewhere that isn’t earth. Interstellar travel over the next 100-1000 years will be a requirement for the next 5000-10000 years if humans expect to survive that long. Starting development now to understand terraforming and building out the primitives that allow for it in the future is something we owe to generations to come.

I am going to ask the philosophical question that is practically begging to be asked: Who cares? If no one is around to care, then who will care? Suppose we do discover ABC and achieve XYZ, if at some point things end then no one will be around anymore to care. So what was ultimately the point of doing any of it, I mean long term? Eventually everything will end in the physical universe. What’s the point of escaping t…

Most people don't care about the future of the species in the scale of thousands of years. But the accumulated effects of our individual selfish desires add up, and we can then say that humanity cares, even if that's just for the short term. And when all this adds up in 10k years, we will claim that humanity engineered their future, even though it wasn't a grand vision or anything like that.

I may not care individually about the specie or the planet, but I suppose all our desires/visions/goals add up in an objective sense. If that makes any sense.

Re: Mars likely to have enough oxygen to support life: study

#63

Post by rohit2412 » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 7:19 AM UTC

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #39

verelo wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But, why fixate on turning one planet into “habitable” while we do the opposite to the one we are already on? I’d like to see us address those issues of society first before we spread our influence across the literal galaxy.

Well people often argue that part of the reason we're making this planet inhabitable is because there are too many people on it, so they have a fanciful notion of moving some of those excess people to another planet. which is sort of nonsensical. However spreading your species across two self-supporting planets makes a planet ending catastrophe less likely to destroy your species. The knowledge gained from any large…

I doubt outside of gamma ray bursts if anything can actually wipe out all humanity. And even then, a nuclear bunker on the Earth is far more habitable than any non settlement.

In fact, I'll argue that any money spent on vanity Mars settlements is going to save more lives in a calamity if it is spent helping developing countries lift people out of poverty.

> although I have to think it should be easy enough to see how doing a trial run making mars habitable might translate into ways to save the Earth from becoming inhabitable.

That is hilarious. It is far easier to save the earth than make Mars habitable. It is far easier to study self sustainable pods on Earth than a settlement on Mars.

Atleast be frank why you are interested in a Mars settlement, it has nothing to do with saving humanity.

Re: Mars likely to have enough oxygen to support life: study

#64

Post by throwaway8879 » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 7:23 AM UTC

rohit2412 wrote: post #59

short_sells_poo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a school of thought that it is only a matter of time until an asteroid or or supervolcano causes another extinction event and unless humanity develops mass spacefaring and colonization capabilities, it won't matter how well we cared for our planet. I think both efforts are absolutely necessary for the survival of our species.

1) humans aren't going extinct, given how much we can change our environment to our comfort, human species will survive meteorites and volcanoes. And even if we do, a self sufficient colony in a nuclear bunker or in Antarctica or on the surface of the ocean is likely to survive these events too. Being spacefaring makes no sense for survival, it does for science, but not for survival. projects 2) I would argue that pu…

This sounds like a short-lived view to me and the exact kind of sentiment I hear in the climate-change skeptic circles. It is one thing to have a handful of humans survive in an underground bunker somewhere, and a whole different thing to have the species colonize the Galaxy. One is barely surviving and the other is thriving.

You cannot deny that our best bet for long-term survival is to get off this planet. Musk is perhaps a rich idiot, as you put it, but at least he has the right vision.

Re: Mars likely to have enough oxygen to support life: study

#65

Post by jamesrcole » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 7:29 AM UTC

ElBarto wrote: post #60

jamesrcole wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Robert Zubrin argues that Mars is a much better target than the Moon. A summary of the argument is in the second paragraph of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_for_Mars#Risks_confro... The full details here: https://www.amazon.com/Case-Mars-Plan-Settle-Planet/dp/14516...

The Moon is right next door. It is obviously a much better ground to learn to live in a self-sustained way on another planet. He writes "It is ultimately much easier to journey to Mars from low Earth orbit than from the moon". His argument is completely different and unrelated and not the point at all. No-one is arguing about where to start a journey to Mars from. The point is that settling on the Moon is an obvious…

> The Moon is right next door.

Yes it is.

What benefit do we get from this?

It means we could go there more frequently. I don't see why that itself is reason enough for it, once you consider all the other pros and cons.

It does not mean it requires less fuel to get there. The fuel requirements are primarily for getting into orbit. Once there it doesn't really matter the distance you travel.

> It is obviously a much better ground to learn to live in a self-sustained way on another planet.

It is not obviously so. The wikipedia link I provided goes into this a bit, and Zubrin goes into much more detail in his book.

If it's so obviously better, why don't you outline the reasons why it's meant to be better.

> The point is that settling on the Moon is an obvious first step.

But you haven't argued this point, aside from saying it's closer to us and asserting that "It is obviously a much better ground to learn to live in a self-sustained way".

Re: Mars likely to have enough oxygen to support life: study

#66

Post by lrem » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 7:36 AM UTC

njarboe wrote: post #44

jacobwilliamroy wrote: post #4

Things I know about Mars: >No oceans >No plants >No phytoplankton >Massive planetwide dust storms lasting several months >Average surface temperatures at or below freezing >Space suit required Things I know about Earth: >Drinking water falls from the sky >Food grows on trees >Breathable atmosphere >Clothing optional in most areas >I can feel actual sunlight on my face every day

Things I know about Mars: No established legal or social framework. Things I know about Earth: Probability of finding a place to be left alone with a small group of like minded people. 0 A certain type of person is interested in living a life where they have a large amount of control over the political and social systems they live with. The American frontier was an ideal place for such people to move to. Many took ad…

Terraforming is an interesting concept. Are there even ideas how to keep the thin atmosphere near the surface?

Re: Mars likely to have enough oxygen to support life: study

#67

Post by thecopy » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 7:40 AM UTC

onion2k wrote: post #55

njarboe wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things I know about Mars: No established legal or social framework. Things I know about Earth: Probability of finding a place to be left alone with a small group of like minded people. 0 A certain type of person is interested in living a life where they have a large amount of control over the political and social systems they live with. The American frontier was an ideal place for such people to move to. Many took ad…

No established legal or social framework. Not true. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty

And where are the weapons to enforce this?

- "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun"

Re: Mars likely to have enough oxygen to support life: study

#68

Post by biffq » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 7:42 AM UTC

throwaway2048 wrote: post #58

enraged_camel wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> But surely terraforming a barren wasteland is going to be easier than terraforming a (relative) oasis of life! Actually, terraforming a barren wasteland might indeed be easier than preventing the oasis we have from being turned into a barren wasteland.

anything we use to make mars more habitable can be used 1000x easier on earth.

I’m sorry I haven’t made it obvious that I’m committed to working for this sinking ship rather than pitching quantum computers, consciousness transference in mice, or antimatter cubes, all of which i’m assuming most ppl who hack are aware of.

Re: Mars likely to have enough oxygen to support life: study

#69

Post by TangoTrotFox » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 7:42 AM UTC

verelo wrote: post #6

dymk wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But surely terraforming a barren wasteland is going to be easier than terraforming a (relative) oasis of life! But in all seriousness, the point of colonizing Mars is not to be a replacement for Earth (although redundancy is quite motivating). It's because colonization and population growth has been our MO for the last 200,000 years.

But, why fixate on turning one planet into “habitable” while we do the opposite to the one we are already on? I’d like to see us address those issues of society first before we spread our influence across the literal galaxy.

Imagine for a moment that tomorrow we create a technology capable of safely and completely filtering out all unwanted greenhouse gases from human carbon emitters tomorrow, and then expelling them into space - all for a price that was practically $0. And now consider what would happen following that. It's not like suddenly we'd be living in a world where everybody's happy and peaceful with no outstanding issues. Instead we'd just promote one of our countless other issues to the top of the zeitgeist. Maybe rising cancer rates, decreasing fertility rates, increasing mental/psychological disorder rates, increasing obesity rates, decreasing educational outcomes in certain nations, maybe it's just the whole slew of issues afflicting places like Africa, or whatever else. Whatever it is, it'd be something. And it'd be pretty grim.

Taking in mind that we'd simply come up with a new clear and present enemy #1 to focus on, would you then suddenly become supportive of interplanetary colonization just because humanity's contribution to climate change was curbed? We will always have issues, and indeed dire issues.

Re: Mars likely to have enough oxygen to support life: study

#70

Post by coldtea » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 7:45 AM UTC

njarboe wrote: post #44

jacobwilliamroy wrote: post #4

Things I know about Mars: >No oceans >No plants >No phytoplankton >Massive planetwide dust storms lasting several months >Average surface temperatures at or below freezing >Space suit required Things I know about Earth: >Drinking water falls from the sky >Food grows on trees >Breathable atmosphere >Clothing optional in most areas >I can feel actual sunlight on my face every day

Things I know about Mars: No established legal or social framework. Things I know about Earth: Probability of finding a place to be left alone with a small group of like minded people. 0 A certain type of person is interested in living a life where they have a large amount of control over the political and social systems they live with. The American frontier was an ideal place for such people to move to. Many took ad…

>Probability of finding a place to be left alone with a small group of like minded people. 0

Probability of doing the same on Mars, where even getting there means submitting to all kinds of established legal and social frameworks to be accepted on a mission, and where you'd need to stick close to other members (whatever minded they are) to survive and constantly report back home: below zero.

>A certain type of person is interested in living a life where they have a large amount of control over the political and social systems they live with.

Mars is the last place that type of person should be concerned with.

(On top of total establishment control of any "political and social systems" there for the next 100+ years, they'd also relinquish control over the environment to whatever capsules of livable space said establishment can build and give them in its own terms).

There's always Western Sahara and Antarctica, much more realistic (and already habitable) places, with internet and everything.