Semantics aside; that is great news if there is water on Mars... This way when we start sending people there, we won't need to resupply them with water every few months.
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Semantics aside; that is great news if there is water on Mars... This way when we start sending people there, we won't need to resupply them with water every few months.
If you say so.
Personally I think Planets are over rated.
I suppose I would have to agree if we just end up screwing that one up too.
what do you mean 'we' whiteman?
Hadda LOL at that.
Nonetheless, I confess to having done my part in screwing up my fav planet, Earth. In my youth I lumbered in the timber mines, slaughtered innumerable fish for commercial purposes, and similar and sundry occupational depredations.
However, I didn't start the fire. I was offered the option to be warmed by it, or die of exposure, because of vile management.
Is 'just following orders' a valid excuse for criminal acts when not following orders is a death sentence? Lumbering and fishing per corporate models were considered (and still are) lawful occupations. While that doesn't make doing those tasks in those ways right, I am unable to conceive of functional alternatives to me at the time.
Now, with the wisdom that comes of myriad failures, I would do things (and do) differently. Almost everything I build nowadays I use recycled lumber. I have built 6 decks this year, and only one of them used any new lumber at all, and that was the choice of the homeowner.
It would be nice if we could look forward to improved management of the next planet's environment we impact. I have no doubt Musk will do a better job as an autocrat than the competing pirates running Earth have.
What if there are living things in that water? It would be a crime beyond extant legal conception to inflict on extraterrestrial life present commercial and industrial extractive mechanisms.
We'll never know until it's too late, however, as unless we actually see living Martian organisms (and can recognize them as alive) we can only guess based on such data as we can acquire.
Some years ago Russia drilled to within a few feet of an Antarctic lake that had been sealed off from the surface for (presumably) millions of years. The reason they didn't just drill right in is that we cannot prevent living things from hitchhiking on our equipment, not to mention various other impacts our industrial methods would have on such an ecosystem.
Presently we have no certainty that there is native life on Mars. However, we didn't know there was a massive submartian lake either. IMHO, if we are going to act in a lawful and just way regarding potential life on Mars, we need to study far more carefully prior to digging latrines there.
We have already delivered living creatures to Mars. NASA cannot clean our probes of all life, and we have landed probes. There is no doubt at all that Tardigrades presently live on Mars.
There's a pic of the first Martian we can be certain is there.