[X] My Assistant

[Bill Harris]

what are the chances that earth bacteria made it to Mars and is there now?

Bacteria/viruses are one thing, but what about terrestrial organic compounds like plastics and lubricants. Or DNA. Example: the heatshield uses a cork compound as the ablative material. What about the cork DNA introduced into the Martian environment?

I don't know if this is a technical issue, but it is a philosphical one.

--Bill

[mike]

No return on investment ever? How do you know something won't be found on Mars that can't be found on Earth, something incredibly useful?

[JRehling]

No return on investment ever?  How do you know something won't be found on Mars that can't be found on Earth, something incredibly useful?

There are lots of reasons why finding something there would never provide financial validation for human presence. Not gold, platinum, diamond, etc., is so valuable. Mars is not made of different isotopes than Earth. If any such thing were discovered, it would be an intolerable cost to have to move human labor to it on the surface of Mars as opposed to removing it robotically.

Grasping at straws, there may be a vanishing probability of such a thing, but that's a few orders of magnitude past Occam's Razor.

[dvandorn]

No return on investment ever?  How do you know something won't be found on Mars that can't be found on Earth, something incredibly useful?

There are lots of reasons why finding something there would never provide financial validation for human presence. Not gold, platinum, diamond, etc., is so valuable. Mars is not made of different isotopes than Earth. If any such thing were discovered, it would be an intolerable cost to have to move human labor to it on the surface of Mars as opposed to removing it robotically.

Grasping at straws, there may be a vanishing probability of such a thing, but that's a few orders of magnitude past Occam's Razor.

Well, of course, you're right -- there's likely no really good economic reason for settling off-planet. Except, of course, for ensuring the survival of the human race in the case of an extinction event on Earth. But, of course, if that happened, none of the people who put up the money for off-planet settlements would be around to worry about economic gains or losses, and since all that's apparently important in the universe is for rich people to keep amassing as much wealth as possible, then, of course, your argument is unassailable...

...*sigh*...

I have an idea -- let's let all the people for whom bean-counting and the amassing of wealth and power define the purpose of human existence stay here and play with their funny colored slips of paper. The rest of us can go to the stars...

-the other Doug