Looking for life on Mars

[Woody's Workshop]

Here on Earth we have a large number of Salt deposits from where Oceans and Seas once were present caused by Tectonic Plate movement.
If there life on Mars in the past (and personally I believe there was) it seams to me we should be looking for Salt.
Because as we all know, life as we understand it, can not happen without water.
And large bodies of water have salt content.
But I guess it's all about the kind of life you are looking for.
Microbial or intelligent life.

 

[Funkworks]

There's quite a bit about what to look for in here: https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/

 

[Hobie1dog]

As one scientist said, " it's the perfect suicide mission", as it takes 6-8 months to get there in which you have to have enough food and water and oxygen to survive that trip. Then once you get there you have to turn right around and come back, otherwise you have to wait two and a half years before Earth and Mars get back to a reasonably close distance and then you have to have enough food, water, and oxygen to do the return trip, and that's if you spend one day on Mars. So definitely no intelligent life there, or here on Earth to do that trip. If you are exposed on Mars to the conditions there, your blood will boil completely away within 3 minutes. So there's your suicide mission.

 

[cls]

Seems unlikely that any human could survive the extended trip 4+ years of being unprotected from solar radiation. Especially during active sun years.

 

[Antares JS]

Protection from the elements, including from solar radiation, is an engineering problem with a solution, not an insurmountable obstacle.

 

[Funkworks]

Protection from the elements, including from solar radiation, is an engineering problem with a solution, not an insurmountable obstacle.

And unless there's some detail I'm missing, it was solved many decades ago. People have stayed over a year aboard the ISS. And with SLS and Starship in full swing and just about everyone in the business being a scientist, I'm not sure how an unnamed random one matters a single bit. The program is being so careful it's taking decades to move ahead. But human flight is not even the topic of this thread so I'm not sure what happened.

Manned missions are advanced engineering. Astrobiology is looking at spectrums, rocks, and data. It's the difference between being a geologist and an engineer. Not necessarily related. Pros either do one or the other (or something else).

https://mars.nasa.gov/?trk=public_post_main-feed-card_reshare-text#red_planet/1
Here's what looking for evidence of microbial life might look like. I remember quite well when this photo made the news:



Suppose you find a rock from Mars and that's what it looks like under a microscope. How do you explain it? That kind of problem is not human space flight, it's not engineering, and it's not astronomy. That's what they call astrobiology.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Hills_84001

 

[Tyeeking]

And unless there's some detail I'm missing, it was solved many decades ago. People have stayed over a year aboard the ISS.

ISS is in a low earth orbit and so receives a great deal of radiation protection from the magnetosphere.

 

[cls]

Protection from the elements, including from solar radiation, is an engineering problem with a solution, not an insurmountable obstacle.

What's your plan to protect humans on a 4 year round trip to Mars?

 

[Grog6]

We could locate a large superconducting magnet along the long axis of the cabin, and a water tank in the bore to help absorb high energy charged particles.
It doesn't do anything about the gammas, but they cause a lot less damage.

 

[Huxter]

Here on Earth we have a large number of Salt deposits from where Oceans and Seas once were present caused by Tectonic Plate movement.

Pretty sure Mars does not have, and never had, plate tectonics.

I would love to see what's in the jet trails from some of the moons around Jupiter and Saturn - the "Tiger Stripes" of Enceladus come to mind, or the seas of Europa!

 

[Antares JS]

What's your plan to protect humans on a 4 year round trip to Mars?

Generate an EM field around the spacecraft, or use lead or water shielding, or maybe some other ideas exist that I don't know about. I'm not saying I have the answers. My point is that there are possible ways to protect the crew, and acting like there are no solutions to the problems of a flight to Mars is silly. There is no reason why a solution cannot exist to the radiation issue.

 

[Marc_G]

My own view on sending folks to Mars is that I'd rather see us spend money on a fleet of truly awesome probes of a variety of forms. For what a manned mission would cost, we could send quite a few simpler robotic fleets of probes that could do more than any single human exploration.

 

[Sooner Boomer]

Generate an EM field around the spacecraft, or use lead or water shielding, or maybe some other ideas exist that I don't know about. I'm not saying I have the answers. My point is that there are possible ways to protect the crew, and acting like there are no solutions to the problems of a flight to Mars is silly. There is no reason why a solution cannot exist to the radiation issue.

You do NOT want to use lead as shielding. Water and polyethelene are good. The problem with using metals as shielding is something called Bremsstrahlung - braking radiation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bremsstrahlung

​

 

[Alan15578]

My own view on sending folks to Mars is that I'd rather see us spend money on a fleet of truly awesome probes of a variety of forms. For what a manned mission would cost, we could send quite a few simpler robotic fleets of probes that could do more than any single human exploration.

Mostly, but you may want to send some technicians to service the robotic probes.

 

[Alan15578]

Pretty sure Mars does not have, and never had, plate tectonics.

Scientists like to be more than "pretty sure". Scientists learned a lot more about the Earth and moon after examining rocks returned from Apollo missions. I don't know if Mars ever had plate tectonics, as we do on Earth, but Mars does have a dominant volcano and one giant rift that aught to be explained.

 

[Grog6]

There's a huge volcano, so at least some plates are stationary If there are any.

 

[Sooner Boomer]

Scientists like to be more than "pretty sure". Scientists learned a lot more about the Earth and moon after examining rocks returned from Apollo missions. I don't know if Mars ever had plate tectonics, as we do on Earth, but Mars does have a dominant volcano and one giant rift that aught to be explained.

No. Mars does not have plate techtonics. Nor does it have much of a magnetosphere. It lacks the molten metal core Dirt has.

 

[teepot]

I have given this some thought in the past. I would use a double hull design. Between the two hulls would be a lot of water. I think to make a ship to Mars we would need to produce artificial gravity either by spin or some other way. If we could come up with sci-fi artificial gravity I like a ship that is similar to a submarine in size and design. If I could have one wish I would like the ET's to give us a way to control gravity. We could build our spaceships on the ground and make them any size we wanted and just float them up to orbit. Imagine a ship the size of an aircraft carrier. I would be happy to volunteer for a one way flight if only to see what is under the Face on Mars.

 

[Antares JS]

I would be happy to volunteer for a one way flight if only to see what is under the Face on Mars.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but this is what the so-called "face on Mars" looks like when the light isn't hitting it that exact specific way to make the shadows look like a face. It's just a hill.

https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_60.html

 

[bjphoenix]

As one scientist said, " it's the perfect suicide mission", as it takes 6-8 months to get there in which you have to have enough food and water and oxygen to survive that trip. Then once you get there you have to turn right around and come back, otherwise you have to wait two and a half years before Earth and Mars get back to a reasonably close distance and then you have to have enough food, water, and oxygen to do the return trip, and that's if you spend one day on Mars. So definitely no intelligent life there, or here on Earth to do that trip. If you are exposed on Mars to the conditions there, your blood will boil completely away within 3 minutes. So there's your suicide mission.

This is somewhat the subject of the book and movie "The Martian". I found the book interesting but maybe it goes into detail too much. There are some scientific inaccuracies in the book that are obvious, maybe others if you know enough about the technology.

 

[teepot]

Sorry to burst your bubble, but this is what the so-called "face on Mars" looks like when the light isn't hitting it that exact specific way to make the shadows look like a face. It's just a hill.

https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_60.html

I have seen the more recent pictures. But I still want to see it myself or at least have a rover or flying vehicle look at it closer. I think the whole Cydonia region is worth a closer look. If only to put to rest the theories and speculations.

 

[Rob Campbell]

Sorry to burst your bubble, but this is what the so-called "face on Mars" looks like when the light isn't hitting it that exact specific way to make the shadows look like a face. It's just a hill.

https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_60.html

There's a lot of symmetry in the "face" parallel lines on the long sides and matching curves on the short ends. It's definitely worth a closer investigation.