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Comment by snickms | Hacker News Reader

This mission is an incredible achievement. The images are as advertised (stunning) and I'm sure all the sciences - and even art - will benefit from the data.

What I find a little sad is that we seem incapable of doing this without leaving a particularly human signature wherever we go.

We arrived on Mars with jets of pollution https://mars.nasa.gov/resources/25672/black-and-white-smoke-... followed by the dumping of the two pieces of trash required to enable the landing.

For all the data we have gained, we have lost a pristine planet - which makes me wonder if we are doing this at the right time.

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I have an opposite view of this.

Cosmos and Mars, Sun whatever else was there long before us an will be still there long after us. From cosmic point of view humanity does not matter much.

From that 1000ft view humans and whatever we built is natural and not different than colony of ants. We are just sand grains that will be crushed when next big asteroid comes by.

Having pristine planet like Mars has no value besides human point of view "I want". Let alone planets are not pristine they are bombarded with space trash like asteroids all the time :)

Why do we use such anthropocentric view? It makes any difference if there is parachute on Mars? Pollution? Well we defined pollution because it is something we want to get rid of because it makes us sick. There is much more bad things for humans in space than you can count.

What if in the future we could examine the contents of a particular rock from space? Have instruments sensitive enough to detect the remnants of Vogon breath from their visit millions of years ago?

A pristine planet has value beyond 'I want this' IMO - it is an opportunity to perform experiments in an almost perfectly isolated test tube.

As a human, I also find it beautiful. As you say though, this is an anthropocentric view.

Well but it is potential value, what if we never get such sensitive instruments?

I expect Mars to be big enough that when we will have such instruments there still be a lot of stuff not touched to use those on.

That "jets of pollution" is the equivalent of a fart in the wind

We're disturbing all those pristine impact craters.

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