Comment by danielweber | Hacker News Reader

Comment by danielweber | Hacker News Reader

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I didn't downvote, but I felt a mood-affiliation reason to downvote in that trying our darnedest to never contaminate Mars will stop us from colonizing Mars.

Separately:

Over the course of billions of years, rocks have moved from Earth to Mars and back. If colonization were a matter of just moving from one to the other, it would have happened already. In fact, answering that question seems very scientifically useful, so that's a good reason to use sterilization techniques. But since we haven't found any current life on Mars so far, it seems unlikely that it's trivial for life to gain a foothold, especially life adapted for survival in Earth environments.

EDIT It's a Mars orbiter, not a lander. If it somehow incorrectly tries to land on Mars, the Martian atmosphere will incinerate any bacteria that somehow survived the UV environment in space (plus any solar flares). NB: I haven't done the math to determine exactly how much heat would be put out by an unplanned EDL. If someone else could, that would be splefty.

I don't understand why colonizing Mars seems so important and urgent to you (and many other people around these parts, you're not the first one I see taking that approach) that you're willing to risk ruining evidence that could lead us to a better understanding of life itself.

I mean, I'm all for space exploration and everything, don't misinterpret what I'm saying, but let's say we manage to get on Mars, establish a colony. In the long run we manage to terraform the planet, maybe. Now what? We get a new retirement centre on Mars?

I mean, at this point it's just about planting a flag and "go team humans!"

I mean, we're currently in the process of ruining our perfectly fine planet, I'm not so sure I'm willing to believe we would be "improving" Mars in the long run.

As long as we don't have any reasonable solution for leaving the solar system we're basically stuck with a bunch of rock within reach, let's not ruin everything just so that we can build Disneyland Universe on Mars. That would seem a very selfish thing to do. Think of the Dodos.

> In the long run we manage to terraform the planet, maybe. Now what? We get a new retirement centre on Mars?

We might get new resources. There are many wars happening that are all about resources. Also, we might get space, which could reduce tensions on earth.

> I'm not so sure I'm willing to believe we would be "improving" Mars in the long run.

What could we possibly do to Mars, that in practical terms could make it worse? It's uninhabitable already. If it matters so much to you, then I ask you if the same applies to some planet a billion light years away from us.

> As long as we don't have any reasonable solution for leaving the solar system we're basically stuck with a bunch of rock within reach, let's not ruin everything just so that we can build Disneyland Universe on Mars. That would seem a very selfish thing to do. Think of the Dodos.

Or we could also work with what we can reach. I mean it's obviously bad, that Dodos are extinct now, but was life better a thousand years ago, when we were unable to reach and work with oil and gas, even though Dodos still existed?

> We might get new resources. There are many wars happening that are all about resources. Also, we might get space, which could reduce tensions on earth.

The problem is that we grow exponentially. How long would a 2nd earth last us at our current rate or expansion and resource consumption? Not to mention the massive amount of resources we'll have to take from earth in order to reach Mars and make in inhabitable.

> What could we possibly do to Mars, that in practical terms could make it worse? It's uninhabitable already. If it matters so much to you, then I ask you if the same applies to some planet a billion light years away from us.

It's uninhabitable for us alright, but it's not like we already knew everything about Mars. The whole point of my argument (and the reason NASA is careful about not contaminating marsian soil) is because we don't know what we could find.

And no, it wouldn't matter to me if mars was a billion light years away from us. If we could easily reach new and unexplored planets I wouldn't be objecting to messing with Mars (after all, there are billions of other specimen for us to study), but that's obviously not realistic in the short term (for a big value of "short").

> Or we could also work with what we can reach. I mean it's obviously bad, that Dodos are extinct now, but was life better a thousand years ago, when we were unable to reach and work with oil and gas, even though Dodos still existed?

I'm not sure what's the argument, do you think the colonization of Mauritius and the extinction of the dodo made humanity progress significantly?

As in all things, there's a middle ground to be found, we don't need to destroy in order to move forward.

Look, I fully agree with you, that ideally we should find a middle ground and learn not to destroy in order to move forward.

But my view on this issue is based on what is practical and what history teaches us.

We actually always destroy things, to move forward.

I'd rather have us not spending so much energy on dominance and wars and instead on science and social systems, but the truth is that there is no sign that we will ever change our ways.

That's why I applaud any country whenever it puts some energy into something, that isn't just about wars and geopolitics.

Even if it's very limited resources they are investing, it's in my opinion still better than doing nothing at all, or spending the 70 million on a few tanks that will rot away somewhere close to the Pakistani border.

I just don't get why people think they, upon examining a problem for mere moments, think they can dismiss something as unnecessary or frivolous.

I trust the NASA engineers to know more about this problem than you (random commenter on the Internet) or I. Should I not?

Can you explain to me what your thinking is regarding your belief that you can glance at an issue like this and trump the thinking of dozens of field experts in moments?

I'm happy to criticize many NASA design decisions, like the entire Space Shuttle concept. (Which honestly has a lot to do with political requirements but are still bad decisions.)

But what do you think I've said in the comment you replied to that trumps NASA's design decisions? That sterilization is unimportant? I think NASA sterilizing the equipment it uses to detect life is obviously the right design decision. There are results from the Voyager program that are still uncertain because of incomplete sterilization.

I'm referencing specifically around your comments related to sterilization ("If colonization were a matter of just moving from one to the other, it would have happened already.").

It's simply baffling to me, that a person could sit in front of a computer with absolutely no education or understanding in a topic and call a litany of experts in a field all wrong within the same hour as learning of the specific problem in the first place, or even claim to know what is "obviously the right design decision".

It ought to be surprising to me that a total stranger would accuse me of having "no education or understanding of a topic", and then proceed to shit on me for daring to agree with NASA's practice of -- seriously, of all things -- sterilizing the equipment used to detect signs of life.

But, I'm not surprised. Welcome to Internet.

Firstly, this is about what you did, not about you. Relax, we're just folks talking about stuff on the Internet, I'm not calling you Satan or accusing you of treason! No one's going to die if we can't agree.

Secondly, you said this, "If colonization were a matter of just moving from one to the other, it would have happened already." I'm trying to understand why you feel you're qualified to make a statement like that. Are you an expert on this topic? If not, that's okay!

You say you're agreeing with NASA's practice, but I guess that's just the flip side of the same coin, isn't it?

What I'm trying to get at is why people (not just you, and you've hardly "sinned" at all here) do this broad stating of opinions on scientific topics like this. It seems to lend credence to the idea that all thoughts are equally important, when we all know that's not true.

To me, this feels like the same kind of thing that we get on the news, when we see "experts" deny climate change by pontificating broadly with the same level of apparent airtime as actual experts who argue in favor of it using their expertise and their experimentation results.

I think it should be clear by now that a lot of people think that their expertise in software automatically qualifies them to make authoritative statements on behalf of every other field of science and engineering.

That's actually one of the pieces of evidence that leads me to believe that software development is a form of engineering.

I think there is a 'meta' aspect to software development. We almost work one layer above other branches of engineering.

Which is what gives that feeling that you can ideally work on any problem and solve it. Because that is exactly what we do, look at the diverse domains that benefit from the use of computers and software.

http://xkcd.com/793/

I google, therefore I am.

I trust the Indian engineers to know more about this problem than you or I. Should I not?

As far as I can tell, no!

I didn't mean to say that NASA or the Indian engineers know more or less than one another, even if they disagree. It's just not for us, the folks who don't actually know much about this topic, to make determinations.

Or maybe it is. I was hoping to discuss that point.

Those rocks suffered a gigantic impact, a long period in the vacuum of space being bombarded by radiation, then a fiery re-entry.

I don't know for sure, but wouldn't that be a pretty effective way of sterilising rock?

If we don't sterilize our craft, how do we then verify either that life arose independently on a non-terrestrial surface or that ejecta carried it? Hopefully the value of sterilizing our craft becomes apparent as one considers the scientific value.

You'd think so, but the structures in the rock show it was never heated enough to be entirely sterilized. That was a possibility people had previously hypothesized about, but not something that had previously been proven.

You have pointed out how my third paragraph contradicts my second. Thanks. :)

Bacteria surviving on the rock would need to be buried deep inside to be shielded in such a way, and eventually break out to the surface.

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