Mission to ancient Martian Space Station?

[wubblie]

I think that one way of telling if a planet ever gave rise to an advanced technological civilization would be to look for the presence of moons that were not formed of coalesced material, but were instead captured asteroids. My assumption is that a suitably advanced civilization would make its orbiting space stations by interdicting passing asteroids and nudging them into planetary orbit. Once in orbit, the asteroids would provide the raw materials, and "ground" for a self sufficient space colony. This is especially true if the planet has no natural moon of its own. Think for a minute. Imagine that the earth did not have a moon. What would our space program be like? Undoubtedly, our Apollo program would instead have centered around landing on a NEO. Eventually, as our technology developed, we would capture one of these objects and orbit it as I described. Maybe if we did not have a moon to be the focus of our attention, we would have gone in this direction and already have orbiting asteroid moons.
I bring this up, because Mars has no "true" moon, but has two objects assumed to be captured asteroids in its orbit. Astronomers are especially interested in these asteroid moons (phobos and deimos) because they have unusual trajectories, almost as if they were placed in orbit artificially.
If Mars had an advanced civilization millions of years ago, the only realistic options for their manned space program would be to visit the earth, or visit the asteroid belt beyond Mars. The asteroid belt is closer, and as we are seeing with the VSE, objects without any appreciable gravity well are easier to visit by an order of magnitude at least. So the Martian space program would be much more advanced in dealing with asteroids and NMO's (Near Mars Objects) than we are.
So, if we visit Phobos, will we really be visiting an ancient Martian space station?

 

[bushwhacker]

The only way to tell is go there and look for obviously artificial objects.

 

[MeteorWayne]

This does not fit the definition of a Mission or a Launch, so will be moved. It's pure speculation based on an idea.

The possible fora are The Unexplained (which was my first instinct), SS&A, and AtA.

For now I'll stick it in Space Science and Astronomy and see where it leads....

 

[Couerl]

So, if we visit Phobos, will we really be visiting an ancient Martian space station?

No, because the key word is "almost".

 

[Archer17]

Phobos is too ugly to be a space station.

It is an odd moon, I'll give you that. It has a crater (Stickney) about half it's width and whips around Mars faster than the Red Planet rotates.

 

[BigBangBong]

wubblie, I think that this would imply that we are marsians descendants here on earth. Otherwise where did they go ? Assuming that there were similar condition as here on earth eons ago on mars, but even if environment was completely different I guess they still could find a nice outpost in solar system rather than going for a voyage to other solar system leaving nothing here, but then who knows what they might have found there using their high tech telescopes and having capability of near c travels....

Anyways if we are their descendants, where is all of their technology, all their know-how ? Do you think they came to earth and decided to abandon all tech - "Battlestar galactica style" ?

 

[wubblie]

Because our gravity well is so extreme compared to that of Mars, colonization would have represented a huge challenge for them. Who knows if our society will last long enough to send even one manned mission to Mars. The way it looks right now, I would not be surprised if we never manage it. So it is not implausible that any Martian space program would have been unable to colonize earth. One possibility, though, is that their plan was to terraform Earth using bacteria before starting a permanent colony. But that would have taken hundreds of years, and before the terraforming was complete, their home society had collapsed.
However, it is very plausible that they would colonize nearby asteroids. Maybe there are abandoned martian outposts out there waiting to be discovered.

 

[SpaceTas]

The idea that the moons of Mars particularly Phobos goes back about 60 years. A Russian astronomer using early (and so not so reliable) measurements of the orbit of Phobos found that the orbit was decaying. The only way to explain this decay was if Phobos had a very low density == hollow == artificial. Of course the measurements improved the orbital decay was not real. Now we have detailed images, detailed measurements of the size, and mass, for both moons. Phobos has a mean density of 1.88 grams/cm ie low density rock, or higher density rock with voids (ie Phobos is a rubble pile). The pictures show nothing artificial about them; no hatch; no unusual bumps ...

wikipedia has a reasonable article.

Phobos and Demos are small (few kilometers), and we have been observing Mars in great detail for 50+ years, so would have found any even smaller satellites natural or otherwise. Maybe a dark colored station the size of the ISS could have been missed ... but that's not very grand is it?

Nice what if? scenario ...... you're probably right in that the best place to look for a dead space faring civilization is in space rather than on planets. How much of all our stuff could be found after a billion years; maybe a layer of concrete+ steal+ rubbish at the sites of large cities or would that be a layer of shoe leather ala the the Shoe Shop catastrophe in the Hitch-Hikers Guide ....

 

[Valcan]

Cool idea but no we did not come from mars or anywhere else. Evolution has proven it threw both archeological and biological record (the stuff inside all living things, our dna is infact mostly viruses). So no.

However i see no reason not to use Phobos as a bas of operations for a future mars colony :mrgreen:

There was a book you might like i think called boundry its on baen books site webscriptions. Try that it might be in the free library. :ugeek: