Alkanes on Mars

Was reminded of that too (currently re-reading another classic Heinlein) but if they were going for that, you'd think they would have stuck with "of" rather than "on"

Podkayne of Mars is often taken to be one of Heinlein's juvenile novels (based on the story) but that was not his intent, and he said the "moral" was aimed at adults.

Does anyone know if these hydrocarbons are in "useful" concentrations, or "detectable" concentrations (ppb).

It will probably take a long time still. Might mot even be on our generation.

Maybe if research gets more investment we could get there faster

Note that we see a lot of complex polyaromatic hydrocarbons in interstellar dust across the galaxy. And we know these can sometimes have quite long alkane chains attached or "inside". I don't think we can rule out stuff like that decomposing at those GC/MS conditions and giving the same signal. And that's even before the leap to fatty acids which may or may not have a biological origin.

There is sufficient circumstantial evidence for bacterial life on Mars.

The (perhaps religiously) conservative science establishment refuses to conclusively accept it.

When a robotic mission is sent to Mars with the express purpose of finding current life, then it will become obvious that hardened bacteria spores not only survive in our solar system's space, but thrive in the most difficult environments. And what about that stuff growing outside the international space station?

The question about why certain bacteria on earth are very resistant to the sun's harmful radiation is waiting to be solved.

The threat to some of the world's religions is the hypothesis that the simplest life did not originate on this planet first. So what?