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Curiosity Mars Landing In A Few Minutes


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Posted

MormonMason:

Just pulling your leg.

It's not deal breaker for me either . A Prophet is only a Prophet when acting as such. :)

It also goes to show that a prophet doesn't have revelation on everything.

Posted

Just a reminder of the main purpose of the mission:

Some history review: (that's Chris McKay not David McKay)

I don't know how accepted this conclusion is, but this is what kicked it off.

[media=]

This is Chris's life's work, as an astrobiologist at NASA Ames.

http://www.spacedail..._McKay_999.html

http://www.guardian....life-mars-video

The possible out for bible thumpers if life were to be discovered, so little will change..

http://articles.lati...minate-20120910

Posted

Life probably never existed on Mars.

http://library.think...ver_existed.htm

Thanks for posting this. I'd remembered only that the original claim had been debunked but I didn't know the details.

Amino acids and some other molecules can form in either of two mirror images. Like your own hands, both versions of these so-called "handed" chemicals look alike. But just as your left hand won't fit a right-hand glove, the opposite versions of handed chemicals are not identical. This distinction matters: biological systems only work if the handed chemicals are all in the same form. (On Earth, all amino acids used to make proteins are left-handed.)

Normally, you'd expect that the discovery of amino acids -- a foundation of life -- in a rock from Mars would be exciting news. But Bada's analysis showed that almost all of those amino acids were lefties -- just like life on Earth and other amino acids in the ice where the meteorite lay for 12,000 years.

Chirality though is not a refutation as mechanisms for left-handed preference exist. I posted an article about it a long while back but I might be able to dig it out again.

There's that mention of David McKay again. I assumed that to be a mis-reference to Chris as he was the only McKay I ever met at NASA Ames. But there is a David located at the Johnson space center.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_S._McKay

  • 2 weeks later...
Posted

Could this be used to fund the program? Charge people money to have a rock on Mars named after them?

http://www.theregist...o_analyse_rock/

Here's what's going to happen. Curiosity drills into the rock and finds the constituents of life. The excitement goes over the top. A bigger, better and more expensive sample and return mission gets underway. They retrieve the rock to earth where it is found to be a meteorite dislodged from Earth milenia ago..

Posted

...Send me there with a couple of center pivots and some farm labor and I'll have crops growing when the rest of the folks get there.

You would first have to deal with the peroxides in the soil. It snows peroxides on Mars. These are fatal to plants and can burn the skin of humans.

Posted

You would first have to deal with the peroxides in the soil. It snows peroxides on Mars. These are fatal to plants and can burn the skin of humans.

shhh! quiet! When we all get our own planets we had ERayR all lined up to take Mars as his planet.

milenia is the same way you spell misisipi when you've spent too much time on this board..

Posted

You would first have to deal with the peroxides in the soil. It snows peroxides on Mars. These are fatal to plants and can burn the skin of humans.

A little bit of plant breeding and we have something that will work. No body said it would be easy. By the way are we sure about those storms and are they planet wide or localized? Some of what I have read and some of the pictures indicate running water and lots of it but hat it is now underground.

Posted

A little bit of plant breeding and we have something that will work. No body said it would be easy. By the way are we sure about those storms and are they planet wide or localized? Some of what I have read and some of the pictures indicate running water and lots of it but hat it is now underground.

Yes, the storms and whirlwinds take place all over the planet, except, I think, for the poles. Plant breeding also won't take care of the perchlorates that are present there. These are harmful to humans and disrupt thyroid function. They are easily absorbed by plants. There will have to be massive cleanup in any area to be used for agriculture. And, it all will have to be done in specially constructed greenhouses or underground with full spectrum lighting.

Posted

Yes, the storms and whirlwinds take place all over the planet, except, I think, for the poles. Plant breeding also won't take care of the perchlorates that are present there. These are harmful to humans and disrupt thyroid function. They are easily absorbed by plants. There will have to be massive cleanup in any area to be used for agriculture. And, it all will have to be done in specially constructed greenhouses or underground with full spectrum lighting.

Thanks for the info. Bummer, the pictures looked so promising.

Posted

Thanks for the info. Bummer, the pictures looked so promising.

It gets pretty cold on Mars, too. Not too many crop plants like that. I know there is a kind of potato that can grow in the Arctic (I don't recall what it was called) but I wonder how many people are willing to eat a potato that has human genes spliced in to give it that ability?

If we are going to do anything with Mars, we will have to learn how to terraform worlds, thicken the atmosphere, clean up perchlorates and peroxides, and introduce organic matter and bacteria into the soil to make it viable for agriculture. I was bummed a number of years ago when I learned of the chemical composition of Mars and its weather phenomena.

I hate to be a party-pooper but it is better to know up front so we can figure out ways to surmount the problems. Another serious problem will be the cosmic radiation that bombards most of the surface from all around at all times. We will have to come up with some kind of shielding unless we can find some good, local magnetic fields strong enough to do it (the planet has no planet-wide magnetic field like Earth).

It is likely that any colonies on Mars will at first have to be underground.

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