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Comment by coenhyde | Hacker News Reader

It is very exciting in the equatorial regions as it was typically assumed that because of the high summer temperatures (~70°F), any ice would melt and the water would evaporate. Valles Marineris would be an excellent location for a human settlement because of these warmer temperatures and the higher atmospheric pressure in the canyon. If there is water there as well then it ticks all the boxes.

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> higher atmospheric pressure

But the pressure is still effectively nil. It's far below what would be needed for humans to venture outdoors, and makes a negligible difference to the strength required for pressurised buildings.

I believe it would make it easier to land supplies there though, since there is more atmosphere to aerobrake with.

Can you aerobreak all the way into the cannon though?

Every bit helps, right? Even if you're using retrorockets by the time you're that low, atmospheric drag should still be helping.

It is a few hundred kilometers wide.

Absolutely but every little bit helps. A thicker atmosphere also means less radiation, thus less radiation shielding required. I don't have numbers on hand but from what recall it is a significant enough of a difference to worthy consideration.

I am sure someone will eventually come up with the crazy idea to seal the canyon and pressurize it.

The Martian soil is still unsuitable for humans since it's full of toxins.

https://www.space.com/21554-mars-toxic-perchlorate-chemicals...

The same article makes it sound pretty manageable. Showers for the spacesuits, microbes that eat it, and useful properties.

Could human settlers on Mars adapt to progressively lower pressure levels over time (generations)?

Yes and no. Yes because there are people on Earth adapted to living at great heights (the Andes or Himalaya) and no because the pressure on Mars is far too low. At Mars' pressure, the boiling point of water is so low that our body temperature is too high and makes the blood boil.

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

I wonder how much difference it would make to the pumps sucking in Martian air to create fuel and pressurized atmosphere.

If we found microscopic life forms in the water though, would we create a settlement or not? It would be so easy to contaminate stuff with a settlement there. I could see people pushing for it becoming a reservation, only to be studied from very far away using hyper-sterilized robots. At least for a while until we are sure we've exhaustively cataloged everything.

Finding life would be huge, we're not going to just go settle on top of it willy-nilly.

Hasn't stopped us on the local planet.

To an extent, it depends on what we find. What kind of biology does it have? How many species are we talking about? Can we throw it in a bio-bank somewhere and move on? Will it outcompete any Earth life we try to seed? Could it be dangerous if it colonized the Earth?

Earth should be as unsuitable for them as mars is for us, except in the case of non alive organisms like viruses or prions. But to have viruses you need higher forms of life supporting them, those based in cells

If we found some alive in Mars and we could found it quickly if we found a cannon with water, we should call them in a distinct way. I will propose marteviruses:

Marte-herpesvirus, Marte-adenovirus, Marte-coronavirus, etc.

Another way could be putting before a M- prefix but would be less convenient to read

Which is what scares me. Yes it s cool to protect the local microbes but damn arent we also an important local life form of the solar system that would leap one level in evolution by just living on two planets ?

Should we lose that for the sake of microbs, as long as we can preserve them for study?

Contamination goes two ways.

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