I believe Arthur C. Clarke had it right:
“All these worlds are yours, except Europa. Attempt no landing there."
I really hope we’re smart enough not to even chance messing with the first real alien ecosystem we discover.
I’m of two minds, if I didn’t have a lovely wife and pets, I’d still say yes. Yes, it would be small and cramped, and I suspect the food would be terrible. But it’d be a great excuse to loose weight, and thankfully, the sheer amount of entertainment that I could download and store one one or two electronic devices would likely be enough for me.
And hopefully, at the end of the two years when I’ve returned home, I could live of the results of the book I’d have ghost-written, or a sinecure of a job as the first (only possibly) person to talk on Mars with some space aligned business. Two years of dull boring keeping busy and then largely done working for a living? Again, if it wouldn’t be for the probably unspeakable loneliness without my wife and pets, I’d say yes.
Although I’d almost certainly have worries and regrets: my parents are in the their early to mid 80s, and my father has had several health scares in the last two years. Odds would be terrifyingly real that I’d never see him again if we left for Mars tomorrow.
Too many factors, and of course, this is us not fighting the hypothetical in the first place.
Gawd knows what possible freak gene I have that makes that be the case, but that’s the hypothetical.
My kids are adults and no grandkids. My wife would miss me but she’d be okay. I’d worry about her having a health problem while I was away and not being there to be there. Weighed against the ego trip of being needed to get us to Mars? Kinda cool to do something no one else has done. And the hypothetical assures completely safe … that better than the odds I have driving to work so I’ll take it!
Given all the crazy sh*t I’ve been through & seen already, my answer is “Sure . . .why not?”
. . . but only if I get to step off the lander in this. . .
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. . . or better yet, this:
It could be a bug-filled planet. You never know . . .
Tripler
Master of mixing sci-fi metaphors.
I loved that line. It resonates deeply with the idea that there might be a greater, universal purpose or intelligence that guides and protects mysteries in the cosmos. It sparks the imagination, making us ponder the existence of high, pervasive intelligence, not necessarily divine, but perhaps a form of advanced consciousness that respects and preserves the sanctity of alien ecosystems. It serves as a reminder that some places in the universe should remain untouched, allowing us to reflect on our responsibility as explorers to tread lightly and with reverence. IOW, Star Trek’s Prime Directive.
Maybe Earth is one such experiment. At this point in time, I think we can agree, we’re failing miserably.
All the replies seem like people would go to Mars, if they could make it like Earth.
The entire history of human civilization – and specifically, of conquest and colonization – suggests that we’re not. Especially if there’s anything in another land that’s worth taking. Maybe we will be in the distant future if and when we ascend to a new stage of evolution. Hopefully the vast distances in the cosmos will protect sentient alien life from human predation until we’re ready to interact with it responsibly.
Fortunately, the idea of significantly evolved life forms in the oceans of Europa or Enceladus are extremely speculative and very likely a real long shot. While I’m very optimistic about the existence of advanced alien life elsewhere, it’s very likely that Earth is the only life-bearing body in our solar system.
When I said it was safe, what I meant was “no enhanced risk”. You’re just as much at risk for random mischances as you are now, just the project itself doesn’t increase risk.
Maybe. I took it as simply: “Do not touch our electric fence or we will smite you for our own inscrutable reasons”.
IOW, Europa wasn’t a nature preserve. It was a honey pot with a warning sign to see if we could read and then control ourselves enough to heed.
Yes, that implies a civilization, or at least a something, much greater and older than our own. But I saw / see no need to invoke anything metaphysical in that. If the Mayans at first thought the Spaniards were gods, … well they thought wrong.
Since everything I know was learned from movies, I’m seriously thinking hard to see if I can come up with a movie where a voyage to Mars was a great and enjoyable experience. Maybe one where nobody at all died? One that really could be reduced to just some reasonable discomfort and boredom?
It would need to be a Carnival Cruise to Mars. But they would have to change the rules so I could smoke Cuban cigars on the balcony.
I will add that even a movie about faking a trip to Mars (Capricorn One) ends up with at least two astronauts dead. They never even got off the ground.
Someone famous once said “Movies are real life with the boring parts edited out”. The same applies to TV.
A real life safe two-year journey to/from Mars would be just about entirely boring and hence make a very short movie.
The body count of almost any drama far exceeds that of real life. For e.g. Victorian Romance novels lacking in violence, substitute “broken hearts” for “dead bodies” and the score remains the same: unrealistically high.
I wouldn’t. I get motion-sick too easily.
An arid, dusty, barren landscape, where you can’t even take a breath, much like Arizona without the lizards, and very, very cold.
Im staying here.
I’m not sure I would want to go, but I’m apparently the most suitable person for the journey, so I would feel like it was my duty. My background is mostly in journalism, so I guess I could start the first newspaper on Mars? I think I could get some decent weather stories out of that situation. But the sports section might be a little light.
Nothing is discovered by people who believe there is nothing to look for and no point looking. Your guarantee here could just be wrong - we only have one data point on how quickly multicellular life can develop. I’m not actually expecting that I would find seashells either.
The rovers and other craft we’ve sent to Mars are truly remarkable pieces of technology, but even in a pressure suit, I’m pretty sure can do things they (currently) can’t - like turning over large rocks, splitting sedimentary formations, exploring caves and probably a bunch of other things too.
I call it “situational claustrophobia”. It’s not the small spaces that people usually define claustrophobia as, but the inability to leave. So you can have it on the deck of a boat in sight of land, a cruise ship at sea, a jumbo jet, the Hindenberg, or even an island. Or a starship.
I’m not sure it is clinically recognized, but I recognize it!
As to the OP, hell yeah! But I disagree with current design thinking. You want people to spend two years in a ship? Take the time and money, make it bigger, spin it for a percentage of normal gravity. You lock three people in an Apollo capsule-sized ship for a year and they won’t make it, they’ll kill each other first.
This is so very true.
But life that has developed structures that can leave visibly identifiable fossils are well beyond just multicellularity; it requires either complex vascular-type structures that can be per mineralized, a specific biochemistry that supports authigenesis (precipitation of minerals from mineral-rich water), or development of some kind of carapace or skeletal structure that will form fossils by recrystallization and replacement. The development of life with this degree of complexity is not as arbitrary as your statement suggests; although we only have the development of life on Earth (and can only really speculate on how it developed in first billion and a half years or so) we do understand enough about the various thresholds to make some credible estimates about how life will generally progress in an aqueous environment.
Any life complex enough to develop macroscopic structures that could support fossilization would require a well-developed metabolic capability, and likely an oxidative metabolism along with a distribution of mineral and biochemical compounds. Not only have we not found any signs of macroscopic fossils of any kind despite extensive exploration in lake beds and rivers, but there are no geochemical residues that would be expected from the deposition and weathering of fossil-containing sediment. If there were any complex life on Mars that was complex enough to form visible fossils, it must be buried deep enough in the regolith that it would not be exposed by eons of erosion, or else so delicate as to be destroyed by exposure to the unfiltered ultraviolet solar radiation.
Although the popular conception of pressure/EVA suits, as fed by decades of science fiction portrayals, is basically like a bulky wetsuit with a large backpack, any kind of standalone pressure suit capable of allowing the user independent movement is incredibly restrictive and awkward; these are less ‘suits’ than self-contained individual habitats which mass more then the occupant and require extensive training to do even simple activities. Even with advances over the A7L suits used on the Apollo lunar excursions, it is still nearly impossible to lean over, kneel down, make close visual examination of objects, or perform any kind of manipulation beyond grabbing tools and instruments with oversized holds and controls, and are exhausting to use.
The notion of an astronaut hiking around, doing rock hammer-type geology or “turning over large rocks, splitting sedimentary formations, exploring caves”, et cetera is just not realistic; for the mass and effort required to deliver an astronaut to the surface and sustain them, we could develop and deploy dozens of dedicated probes and rovers which could do the same things, with greater capability and endurance, and without the risk of putting an astronaut in hazard requiring extensive safety systems and potentially abandoning mission objectives in a desperate attempt to rescue an injured or trapped crew member. The only reason that Curiosity and Perserverence are so limited in their capabilities is because of the limit of mass that can be delivered to Mars surface and the power supplied by their radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTG), which are both issues that would have to be overcome to support crewed exploration. Until we have solved those issues along with miraculous advances in EVA suit capabilities or technomagically genetically engineer transhumans to survive unprotected in the near-vacuum environment of Mars surface, sending crewed missions to Mars surface is mere egotism without scientific justification.
Although films like The Martian make for cinematic drama, the real lesson that should be taken from the story is that having one crew member in mortal risk forced the loss of tens or hundreds of billions of dollars of money invested in the subsequent missions in order to rescue one guy (even if it is Matt Damon) versus just writing off a piece of hardware and sending another to continue the mission. Sending people on excursions to perform basic exploration that a rover can do is a poor value proposition.
Stranger
This perfectly describes the type of claustrophobia I experience. I always need an escape route, no matter where I am, and I avoid any place from which I can’t leave quickly. Airplanes are a no-go. Trains are manageable if there are frequent stops. Cars are fine as long as traffic is flowing smoothly. Before getting onto a highway or a long bridge, I always check Google Traffic. If the map shows red, I find an alternate route or just head back home.
This agoraphobia variant developed about 20 years ago after a traumatic experience. It’s not as severe as it used to be, but it still causes issues. I used to love flying and all sorts of adventures. Tight spaces aren’t much of a problem for me, as long as there’s a way out. However, being buried alive in a tight coffin? Not fun at all.
Long ago, when it was at its worst, I got stuck in an elevator with a weird lady and her poodle, during a hurricane. The elevator got stuck between floors, and the lights went out. It was a little used elevator, so I had no idea how long I’d be stuck in this small, dark compartment with the weird lady and her yappy pooch. I still get the willies thinking about it.
Before this started, I would have jumped at the chance to fly to Mars… but now, not so much.