Perseverance rover's Mars samples must be brought back to Earth, scientists stress

[Admin]

Sedimentary deposits sampled by the Perseverance rover could contain evidence of past Martian life.

Perseverance rover's Mars samples must be brought back to Earth, scientists stress : Read more

 

[Rickycardo]

Otherwise we're just littering on an interplanetary scale.

 

[Broadlands]

This lengthly search for life on Mars has gotten way too expensive. To date there has been no evidence of any cellular remnants of microbial life. Sandstones and silts, but no laminated shale or slate rocks where organic carbon would most likely be found. No organic carbon fossils such as those found in the oldest rocks on Earth. So...until a rover finds any such evidence, going back to pick up a few rocks (no shales?) that hopefully "might" have some cellular carbon in them is very expensive wishful thinking. Time to "cut bait".

 

[lewac]

Why? Nothing organic there and probably never has been. And so what IF there is? We have a LOT more problems here on our home planet (where we evolved) than on some rock where we cannot possibly survive.

 

[Broadlands]

Why? Nothing organic there and probably never has been. And so what IF there is? We have a LOT more problems here on our home planet (where we evolved) than on some rock where we cannot possibly survive.

The Mars program has now basically become a make-work program for all those who would be out of work if NASA didn't keep looking for life. Finding that billions of years ago Mars could have been habitable is all that they could legitimately conclude. So wasting money going back to pick up some rocks and then draw the same conclusions is completely unwarranted. Follow the money?

 

[Unclear Engineer]

I'll post a disagreement with the first 4, here.

The amount of money spent on getting rocks back from Mars is paltry compared to the amount of money just the people in the U.S. spend on recreational and entertainment activities.

Arguing that we should stop scientific research to "support the poor" (or whatever charitable acts posters envision) seems rather silly when a tax on "wasteful spending" by individuals would raise more money for such "good causes".

So, just think of science projects as "entertainment for scientists" the next time you look up from your expensive video game and decide to say that scientists are wasting money trying to understand something that is real, rather than just playing with fictional stuff in games. After all, you would not even have video games if there had not be science projects that led to the understanding of many physical principles needed to make them.

 

[Broadlands]

I'll post a disagreement with the first 4, here.

The amount of money spent on getting rocks back from Mars is paltry compared to the amount of money just the people in the U.S. spend on recreational and entertainment activities.

Arguing that we should stop scientific research to "support the poor" (or whatever charitable acts posters envision) seems rather silly when a tax on "wasteful spending" by individuals would raise more money for such "good causes".

So, just think of science projects as "entertainment for scientists" the next time you look up from your expensive video game and decide to say that scientists are wasting money trying to understand something that is real, rather than just playing with fictional stuff in games. After all, you would not even have video games if there had not be science projects that led to the understanding of many physical principles needed to make them.

Whoa.. " and decide to say that scientists are wasting money trying to understand something that is real."
That's the whole point.. they have been spending years (and giga$$$$) trying to find out if life on Mars was real...actually there. And have come up with a blank. This is not a video game. It's real-life spending...time and money.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Broadlands, you seem to have missed the point entirely.

Science tries to answer real questions. Video games do not. Finding out if life really occurred on Mars provides some knowledge, whether the result is positive or negative. Playing a video game provides no knowledge. Stopping the process of studying Mars before it is completed would be the only outcome that would make the mission a failure. Arguing that it has already failed because it is not yet complete is a specious argument.

On the other hand, I do agree that costs seem to be getting out of control with too many of the contractors that we have been using. Comparison of the Boeing capsule to the SpaceX capsule is the best current example of too much financial waste and not enough scientific progress to show for it.

 

[Classical Motion]

Reasoning…… the concept of comparison manipulated by the concept of equivalence.

Reasoning might turn out to be unique and singular.

8 billion singularities.

Maybe a scale/norm can not be set.

Water heater busted last night. What a mess.

A new one by 6 this evening, so they tell me. $450 for new tank and $1318 for install and removal.

And I was told that was a reasonable price.

But it seems very singular to me.

 

[Broadlands]

Broadlands, you seem to have missed the point entirely.

Science tries to answer real questions. Video games do not. Finding out if life really occurred on Mars provides some knowledge, whether the result is positive or negative. Playing a video game provides no knowledge. Stopping the process of studying Mars before it is completed would be the only outcome that would make the mission a failure. Arguing that it has already failed because it is not yet complete is a specious argument.

On the other hand, I do agree that costs seem to be getting out of control with too many of the contractors that we have been using. Comparison of the Boeing capsule to the SpaceX capsule is the best current example of too much financial waste and not enough scientific progress to show for it.

The original question was real. "Is there life on Mars?" But now it's not about life but all about habitability billions of years ago because they have found zero evidence of any cellular carbon at all. Bringing back a few essentially randomly selected rocks will not change that. The odds are strongly against it. They haven 't even seen, much less selected any dark shales or black slates where organic carbon residues would most likely be found. Sandstones and silts are notoriously bad for finding organic matter residues. The mission is not a failure in many other respects. But, going back to retrieve a few samples will make it one, even if they found a minuscule piece of carbon. What then?

 

[Unclear Engineer]

I have made my points and am not going to continue arguing with 3 new posters who have only a few posts to this forum. It looks to me like those posts are part of an influence campaign that will continue to post illogic because that is the mission, no matter what else is posted. I think you guys are going to have a hard sell to the participants in this forum, no matter what your motives. The people who frequent this site are interested in questions about how the Earth formed, how life began, etc. Calling that interest "wasteful" is not accepted logic. You would have to come up with a better, cheaper way to get the information, which you have not attempted. The Mars and other robotic explorers are already the type that some here tout as the most cost-effective way to study other planets, compared to human crewed missions.

 

[Broadlands]

I have made my points and am not going to continue arguing with 3 new posters who have only a few posts to this forum. It looks to me like those posts are part of an influence campaign that will continue to post illogic because that is the mission, no matter what else is posted. I think you guys are going to have a hard sell to the participants in this forum, no matter what your motives. The people who frequent this site are interested in questions about how the Earth formed, how life began, etc. Calling that interest "wasteful" is not accepted logic. You would have to come up with a better, cheaper way to get the information, which you have not attempted. The Mars and other robotic explorers are already the type that some here tout as the most cost-effective way to study other planets, compared to human crewed missions.

Yes, one of the motives is to stop spending massive amounts of the taxpayers money on what has become a "wild goose chase" That's illogical. The Mars missions have been a spectacular technological success, but a failure at the basic reason for using that technology....finding evidence for life. Not because they didn't try but because they wouldn't give up when it became clear that there was no life. There may be some very solid reasons to go back to Mars... terraforming , mining, moving people there, but not to retrieve a few rocks. That is wasteful. The funding could and should be diverted to other missions. Some where the many NASA Mars mission employees could make important contributions.

 

[Rickycardo]

I disagree. One of the purposes of these projects is to develop new technologies and those technologies have a direct impact to daily lives here on Earth. From mammograms to CD players and hard drives to communications and even microwaves derive from the technologies of space flight and space exploration. Its always more then worth it.

 

[Broadlands]

I disagree. One of the purposes of these projects is to develop new technologies and those technologies have a direct impact to daily lives here on Earth. From mammograms to CD players and hard drives to communications and even microwaves derive from the technologies of space flight and space exploration. Its always more then worth it.

New technologies can be and are being developed on Earth. No need to bring back a few rocks from Mars.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

This lengthly search for life on Mars has gotten way too expensive. To date there has been no evidence of any cellular remnants of microbial life. Sandstones and silts, but no laminated shale or slate rocks where organic carbon would most likely be found. No organic carbon fossils such as those found in the oldest rocks on Earth. So...until a rover finds any such evidence, going back to pick up a few rocks (no shales?) that hopefully "might" have some cellular carbon in them is very expensive wishful thinking. Time to "cut bait".

https://www.science.org/content/art...possible-signs-life-mars-there-are-lot-maybes

We won't know without doing some analyses that the rover cannot do there. The cheapest way to find out is to bring the samples back to Earth for detailed analysis.

Even with these samples brought back and determined to not be conclusive for life signs, the idea that we have thoroughly enough investigated Mars to conclude that there was never any life anywhere on the planet is just not a realistic assessment of what we can know by the amount of "looking" that has been accomplished to date.