Woa boy. See, this is very hard to get an answer to since the size of the Universe is just below infinite.
But lets say for arguements sake that you need carbon, oxygen and water to have life. You also need a planet thats small enough not to crush its inhabitants with gravity but big enough not to get crushed by every rock that comes flying its way. It needs a sun to give off just enough light to power photosynthesis while not frying anything alive. You need an atomosphere that will hold off cosmic rays and burn off meteorites. The planet needs to be close so it doesn’t freeze but far away enough not to burn. And most of all, you need some chemicals to by chance meld in just the right way to make organic components and then those need to develop in just the right way to make life.
Now, if you think, the chances of all these things coming together on one rock are astronomical. Earth is the perfect distance from the Sun and just the right size. You could have planets like this, but they may lack the carbon, or the atomosphere. This little planet we live on just got lucky, very lucky.
Now its resonable to assume that with the size of the Universe you will have at least one planet that has all the criteria I put above other than Earth. But having one life supporting planet next to an other life supporting planet is an insanly unlikely possiblity. So because of this, it seems a safe guess to assume that Mars is just one of those dead planets. It lacks the nessisary components for carbon based life, and as far as we’ve seen thats the only type of life.
As far as I’m concerned, Mars will be great for mining and junkyards but no one will have to worry about stepping martian bacteria.
Sorry, but the space program benefits me right now. Every time I look at a Hubble image, or stare at photos of Mars, or think about the discoveries made in the solar system, it makes me happy.
Tell me… Do you support public funding of the arts? How can you justify spending ANY money on art, when there are diseases still to be cured?
If we stopped exploring, stopped sending probes into space, cut back funding of astronomy, and in general stopped reaching for things greater than ourselves, the world would be much less interesting. It’s in our nature to discover what’s beyond the next mountain. It’s part of what makes us human. I live in North America because in the not too distant past, an ancestor of mine got tired of sitting around the village and decided to go see what was across that big ocean.
We are on the verge of discovering the fundamental nature of our universe. Our knowledge of our universe is doubling every few years. Possibly within my lifetime we will be able to look at images of earth-like planets around other stars. That’s exciting. Aside from all the practical benfits of such exploration, the reason for doing it is simply because it’s there.
The day we turn our gaze inward and focus on nothing more than keeping ourselves comfortable while we breed, grow old, and die, the human race will begin its long decline into oblivion. I’d rather look outwards, and see just how far our abilities can carry us.
Very well said Sam; to go beyond or languish looking at our belly-buttons.
Who could have said in 1957 that less than 50 years later we just couldn´t live without sattelites to guide us, connects us and teach us?
“Ho! the ruskies threw a blip-blip-blip thingy into orbit, what for? what a waste of time and money…” 
We must look forward, we need to seek new horizons to inspire our wills.
In any case, I will be very surprised if anything is found between single-celled organisms. While that will be interesting in several ways, I don’t know if that’d drive the public to demand more NASA funding.
Frankly, I say we send biological stuff to Mars now! I’m not talking humans (though that would be nice), but algae, bacteria, anything small, that we can stuff into a test tube and will survive the trip. Put it on Mars and see what happens to not only it, but Mars as well.
Saying that we should not pursue space exploration because there are still problems in the world is akin to a parent saying “Don’t eat all your food because there are starving children in the world”: not eating the food will not help one starving child. The amount of NASA funding is currently chicken feed compared to the national budget, and diverting its few billion dollars will not make a significant difference in any major endeavor. In fact, colonizing other planets or the moon may eventually increase food production and alleviate world hunger, since almost all arable land in the world is farmed. Hydroponic agricultural colonies on the moon or on Mars could provide the needed food. Additionally, while eliminating the ills of humanity is an important (though not totally attainable) goal, to say that we must either abandon the space program or give up all hope eliminating these problems is to present a false dichotomy.
Given the history of the effects of introduced species here on Earth (i.e., species from one place being introduced to another location), I’d have to vote against this one. We never seem to realize how badly we’re screwing things up until it’s too late to go back and undo the damage.
Screw the public! The chance to study a completely new form of life, however simple, that evolved by itself on an alien world is every biologists’ wet dream.
Mars is currently uninhabitable for humans anyway, so there is no problem with “badly screwing things up”.
Terraforming would drastically alter the Mars environment anyway, so it would be a good idea to send plants to Mars now and see what happens (to see whether terraforming is possible at all).
As for humanity tampering with nature: I think (opinion) there is a whole lot more hysteria than actual negative occurances.
Yes, but is it currently uninhabited now? That is the problem they are mainly referring to. You don’t want to inadvertently destroy alien life forms when they can provide so much to society.
Huh? Isn’t “just below infinite”, by definition, also infinite?
Let’s say that these are very big assumptions based on a sample of 1.
Again, you are making very big assumptions about the physiology of the inhabitants based on a sample of 1.
Assuming that life is 100% reliant on photosynthesis, as it is in our sample of 1.
Assuming that our inhabitants don’t find cosmic rays invigorating and healthy.
Assuming our inhabitants don’t find the compound H2O in liquid form ridiculously hot.
Which, for all we know, may be a dead certainty the universe over, given enough time. We just can’t tell from a survey of 1.
That’s right, just right for us. This is hardly coincidental. Are you sure you’re not getting cause and effect reversed here?
Based on a measurement of the ‘luck’ of how many other planets?
Why? Sounds to me that the existence of life on one planet instantly raises the probability of life on the other.
And just exactly how far have we looked? We’ve hardly started looking at either of our nearest neighbours, yet already you’re drawing conclusions for the entire universe and then applying the results to them!
I’m not saying that life on Mars is likely, or that your assumptions are without any foundation, it may be as astronomically unlikely as you suggest. But to draw an conclusions based on our extremely limited experience and sample is folly. We simply can’t tell.
Which is why exploration of Mars can never be considered a waste of time. Pursuit of knowledge never is.
It is blatently a futile effort. We would last maybe 3 days before the martians photon-ed us.
-Jadoku himself
I agree with this, but does that mean we should be pursuing knowledge in a place it takes 6months to get to?? Isnt their enough interesting things we still dont know about this planet?
We are researching earth as well, and education, and disease. NASA is not pulling vital resources from other, more useful scientific endeavors. Most likely, the money NASA uses would otherwise be used to buy more tanks or pad some politician’s pocket. I’d say space is the best place to invest right now, when we still don’t fully know what’s out there.
That one may come back to bite you. Reading from some of the essays in space command , it looks like the next thirty years of space exploitation will be by the military for space superiority purposes.
Declan
Not quite true, methinks. In 1957 the ruskies threw a blip-blip thingy into space ,PRECISELY BECAUSE it went blip-blip, and they knew it would have very practical uses in the immediate future–relaying radio messages for the military.
Yes, there’s a need to do pure(= useless) research, on the hope that something practical might come from it.That’s what universities are for. But the enormous costs of space research produce very little return on the investment. Velcro is great, but it could have been invented without astronauts.
i consider the question: “Why arent there any little folk in MY house?” a pretty stupid question
Yeah. Same thing happened with the interent. What if they had listened to your kind of advice then, and pulled the plug before it could take off?
Futile Gesture, I don’t disagree with you. I was going based on the assumption that life can only exist how it exists on Earth. Yeah, I have no doubt that life can exist in some other fashion but thats a whole other debate. All I was trying to get across is that if you assume there is life on Mars, you’ll have to assume life exists on all other planets in some form. Why do we even think that theres is life on Mars? Well, mostly because its the most Earthlike planet around these parts, so people assume that if its Earthlike, then life could be on it. I don’t think thats the case.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t go to Mars. I am completely for it. If I could I’d sign up for the trip right now. I just think looking for life on Mars is a waste. Sure, it would be really cool to find a patch of green on the surface but I’m not holding my breath. But I do think we should head over for the sheer thrill of it all.
Well, that’s assuming there is life on Mars, and that it would somehow be wiped out by anything we brought. If there is life on Mars, it’s had a couple of billion years to adapt to the conditions there, whatever we send is going to be at a distinct disadvantage. Additionally, terraforming is a process so slow as to make “glacial” look positively warp speedish, so anything on Mars is going to have plenty of time to adapt to the changing conditions.