Microbes could help future Mars explorers make rocket fuel and oxygen on the Red Planet

[Admin]

Future Mars astronauts could make rocket fuel on the Red Planet using air, water and sunlight, a new study finds. The technology could fuel the astronauts' flights back to Earth.

Microbes could help future Mars explorers make rocket fuel and oxygen on the Red Planet : Read more

 

[newtons_laws]

I thought the rationale for using methane fuelled rockets for trips to Mars was that methane can already be produced on Mars from the CO2 in the Martian atmosphere and water from Martian ice in the ground? https://www.space.com/future-astronauts-methane-rocket-fuel-mars

 

[sam85geo]

Why go to Mars via other than robots? There's neither life nor resources there to exploit. And what about food, shelter, water and heating for any Earth visitors/colonists? Other than full time government funded employment for Earth bound scientific types and corporations, humans going to Mars seems "a very hard road to travel".

 

[Wolfshadw]

Why go to Mars via other than robots? There's neither life nor resources there to exploit. And what about food, shelter, water and heating for any Earth visitors/colonists? Other than full time government funded employment for Earth bound scientific types and corporations, humans going to Mars seems "a very hard road to travel".

If Mars was once a lush, green and blue planet like Earth, then there very well may be plenty of resources there to exploit. And of course, there's that whole extinction thing in a billion years or so (if not sooner).

-Wolf sends

 

[sam85geo]

If Mars was once a lush, green and blue planet like Earth, then there very well may be plenty of resources there to exploit. And of course, there's that whole extinction thing in a billion years or so (if not sooner).

-Wolf sends

I seem to recall that the longest lived hominin species was H. Ergaster/Erectus which was about 2 million years. Given the technologies and mental disposition of H. Sapiens, we don't have the luxury of such a time scale. H. Sapiens, or an evolving sub species, does need to leave Earth in about a billion years, preferably much sooner, (i.e. prior to the forecasted natural environmental changes). IMO, Mars just ain't the long term place to go, practice and learning notwithstanding.