Martian soil appears able to support life

[justdrew]

on the SEI:
The study estimated SEI’s long-term cost at approximately 500 billion dollars, a truly staggering figure, even spread over 20 to 30 years. Although the Academy largely concurred with the NASA study, White House and Congressional reaction to the NASA plan was hostile, primarily due to the cost estimate. President Bush sought international partners, but the program was thought too expensive even for an international endeavor.

In August 1990 President Bush established a Committee, recommending that NASA should focus on space and Earth science, while transitioning human exploration to a “go-as-you-pay” strategy.
---

$500 billion in '89 dollars is $873.52 billion in 2008 dollars. So - basically the whole cost would have been covered by what we've spent on bush's Iraq failure. and we've spent that in 5 years instead of 20.

plenty of money to kill, virtually not a dime to open a new frontier. this is the recipe for human extinction.

[pepsified thinker]

About that militarization, I think you may have something there...

LEGO Mars Mission: MB-01 Command Base

Human astronauts have landed on Mars in their futuristic space shuttle in their quest to find energy crystals, but they have awakened evil aliens who want the crystals for themselves! The astronauts must defend their Martian base using the air-powered defense system! Turn the air pump to the right and transfer the aliens and energy crystals through the tunnels. Turn the air pump to the left and slam the pump to launch the foam missiles in defense. Includes command base, alien transport pods, alien attack ship, futuristic space shuttle, air pump system, foam missiles, 4 astronaut minifigures and 4 alien minifigures that glow-in-the-dark. 763 pieces total. Ages 8+.

Brands: LEGO
---------------------------------------------------

Lego Mars Mission 7691 ETX Alien Mothership Assault

Beware the Alien Mothership....

It’s the ultimate 4-in-1 alien strike ship! With its advanced weaponry, firing missile and three detachable attack vehicles, the giant ETX Alien Mothership will stop at nothing to steal energy crystals from the Mars Mission team. Can the astronauts fight back with their defense station’s launching air-powered missiles?

Somehow, it saddens me more that LEGO is involved in this.

[wintler2]

LEGO Mars Mission: MB-01 Command Base
.. quest to find energy crystals, but they have awakened evil aliens who want the crystals for themselves!

Rockin catch! doesn't say exactly why/how the aliens are evil, i'd say their competition for resources is the sufficient cause that is implicit and taught, but maybe its cos they're soft on terrorism.

[pepsified thinker]

It also struck me that with just minor editing, the LEGO scenario could be a propaganda version of why we're in IRAQ.

wintler2--I didn't catch this--it was a luck. My 5 yr. old wanted LEGOs for his birthday present and the wife got these for him. Only when the parts were assembled, with aliens captured in tubes (presumably the better to rendition them?) and the human astronaut's vehicle bristling with weapons, did I realize the nature of the toy's storyline--and it was impossible to miss or ignore at that point.

And that also kinda describes Iraq: for some folks, only after we got there and did what we did, did they realize what was going on.

But I hate to see this militarization of space exploration--this treatment of the issue of life on Mars. There is a sort of idealistic purity to the quest for knowledge beyond our own planet--as there is for the more general quest 'to know' (kinda why we're all here on this board, right?).
Funny how, as soon as there's some--any--life on Mars, going there falls into the familiar patterns of conquest. That we should take those patterns with us into the stars seems very limited and childish.

Makes me wonder about 'others' coming to visit us, here on this planet. If the assumption of superior technology (being able to travel to us from wherever they're from) = superior morality is true, it puts their flirting, evasive, skittish (as presented in the un-official official story line of alien visitation via MSM stories of UFOs) presence here in a different light--as compared the conquest version we seem to be following, that is.

[Jeff]

Study suggests Viking lander found organics on Mars
Re-enactment with soil from Chile repeats results reported 34 years ago

By Irene Klotz
Discovery Channel
updated 1/4/2011 12:40:40 PM ET 2011-01-04T17:40:40


More than 30 years after NASA's Viking landers found no evidence for organic materials on Mars, scientists say a new experiment on Mars-like soil shows Viking did, in fact, hit pay dirt.

The new study was prompted by the August 2008 discovery of powerful oxygen-busting compounds known as perchlorates at the landing site of another Mars probe called Phoenix.

Scientists repeated a key Viking experiment using perchlorate-enhanced soil from Chile's Atacama Desert, which is considered one of the driest and most Marslike places on Earth, and found telltale fingerprints of combusted organics — the same chemicals Viking scientists dismissed as contaminants from Earth.

"Contrary to 30 years of perceived wisdom, Viking did detect organic materials on Mars," planetary scientist Christopher McKay, with NASA's Ames Research Center in California, told Discovery News. "It's like a 30-year-old cold case suddenly solved with new facts."

"If the Viking team had said 'Well, maybe there's perchlorate in the soil,' everybody would have said they're crazy — why would there be perchlorates in the soil? It was only by having it pushed on us by Phoenix where we had no alternative but to conclude that there was perchlorate in the soil. … Once you realize it's there, then everything makes sense," McKay added.

...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40910966/ns ... ce-science

[hava1]

Jeff I wonder why you are bringing this up I didnt quite follow the thread or the interest in Mars. However, a little personal testimonial as usual.
When I was a minor, I was kicked out of school, and my parents sent me to work. the child labor chamber dispatched me to work as help hand in the faculty of Agriculture, of the Hebrew U, in my hometown. I was assigned to help a researcher called Yudit (Judith) Rishpon, then a young scientist borrowed from the Weitzman Institute nearby. I didnt know anything about nothing, and she let me work on the viking experiments on soil. My job was to weigh soil samples from the Israeli desert, and then put them in tubes. In the tubes I had to hang a little tissue paper cut in triangle on the hook coming down from the cork, and drop some waters on the triangle. the "water" turned out to be readioactive, highly dangerous substance. I was made to do that without any warning, protection or anything designed to protect from radioactivity, needless to say, I was a minor, and paid something like a dollar a day.

In the end of the experiment, ehich lasted about 3-5 months , she came proudly to me to say I will receive 'reference", and indeed her paper, published at the time you quote here (with Prof Banin her chair) had a footnote in the end, thanking the "technician", with my name. She said I should be proud participating in the Mars viking mission, to explore whether the soil has life signs, or if its a chemical reaction that immitates the release of water from the ground. the ground she explored. She became very famous and now is a high profile Prof. in tel aviv u (who also worked at livermore lab in the USA).

http://www.springerlink.com/content/j23601j2t6231312/ this papers refers to the 1978 paper which I cite.

I realized years later that I was severely exploited and mistreated, with all violations of safety and labor laws. (one of a long list...), and this is the ONLY documented abuse. I found the paper, which is quite famous eversince, and keep a copy, with my early "career" as a guinea pig.

Your mention of this old experiment brought it up...and indeed "the world" expects me to be "proud" that I was exploited for this "important" experiment. I once watched a documentary about Mengele's victims. One of them, a lady who lives I believe in the USA or Australia, had a cheerful approach, spoke about forgivenewss that helped her recover. She said -I decided to give my experience as a present to the human race in the hope that the medical experiments help medical science develop and bring health to many.

Well....at least the germans recorded their abuses for future reference...while the americans do not, and do not consider compensation.

[stickdog99]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqiq3iCUAhM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1_Gvdom2nw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guhmVDM7XII
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5g6vnhbI70
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFE1xGhe5Os

poor old do-gooder

There are obviously living microbes on/in Mars right now.

Furthermore, geological life implies subterranean rock-eating microbial life.

[82_28]

Hava, I must apologize. I don't understand what you are talking about and what the above has to do with anything as per this topic.

It seems Carl Sagan, for instance, was a figure who believed there was at least a 50/50 chance that Viking did in fact discover microbial life. Which is to say he didn't know. He always held out that future advances in the science would put the issue to rest once and for all and/or open it up wide open again. He did however, side with conventional wisdom and maintained that as of yet, no, life has not been found on Mars. Absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence.

In and around this area of the janky-ass Google books offering of Sagan's Pale Blue Dot, you can find his thoughts on the matter:

http://books.google.com/books?id=9hzqn9 ... &q&f=false

[hava1]

i believe that ethics in the course of Nasa vikings experiments ARE and SHOULD be part of any discussions on the subject matter. You can disagree, I made precisely that comment in the end of my post, people expect the victims of ethical violations to be generous. I am. but i also think that this board should be mindful of the ethics. (athough I've noticed a tendency here to implicitly adopt the "breaking eggs for omelets" code here, which I see as a form of moral bankrupcy.

this board carries a statement against human experimentation (the MK, MC issues), I find it imperative to make clear the connections bn the "pure science" (and science fiction) and "the cost". especially around NASA and more so around the Mars expeditions. I will not maintain the schizoid regime we are supposed to adopt, in order to make the life of the abusers easy. let any scienrific debate, as "pure" as it is, mention with honor the ethical violations involved. if that bothers someone, you can always skip the post, or ban me.

[hava1]

BTW 82, i had the same impatient response in the thread about veterans treated with drugs - MDMA - for PTSD. I had mentioned that the experiments were infested with ethical violations world wide, and as a result all the "drugs are cool" crowd ganged all over me, as if i were a party pooper. Sorry, but you cant really object fascism and nazism and condone massive human experimentation and ethical violations "in the name of progress". doesnt pass with me. sorry.

[stickdog99]

Jeff I wonder why you are bringing this up I didnt quite follow the thread or the interest in Mars. However, a little personal testimonial as usual.
When I was a minor, I was kicked out of school, and my parents sent me to work. the child labor chamber dispatched me to work as help hand in the faculty of Agriculture, of the Hebrew U, in my hometown. I was assigned to help a researcher called Yudit (Judith) Rishpon, then a young scientist borrowed from the Weitzman Institute nearby. I didnt know anything about nothing, and she let me work on the viking experiments on soil. My job was to weigh soil samples from the Israeli desert, and then put them in tubes. In the tubes I had to hang a little tissue paper cut in triangle on the hook coming down from the cork, and drop some waters on the triangle. the "water" turned out to be readioactive, highly dangerous substance. I was made to do that without any warning, protection or anything designed to protect from radioactivity, needless to say, I was a minor, and paid something like a dollar a day.

In the end of the experiment, ehich lasted about 3-5 months , she came proudly to me to say I will receive 'reference", and indeed her paper, published at the time you quote here (with Prof Banin her chair) had a footnote in the end, thanking the "technician", with my name. She said I should be proud participating in the Mars viking mission, to explore whether the soil has life signs, or if its a chemical reaction that immitates the release of water from the ground. the ground she explored. She became very famous and now is a high profile Prof. in tel aviv u (who also worked at livermore lab in the USA).

http://www.springerlink.com/content/j23601j2t6231312/ this papers refers to the 1978 paper which I cite.

I realized years later that I was severely exploited and mistreated, with all violations of safety and labor laws. (one of a long list...), and this is the ONLY documented abuse. I found the paper, which is quite famous eversince, and keep a copy, with my early "career" as a guinea pig.

Your mention of this old experiment brought it up...and indeed "the world" expects me to be "proud" that I was exploited for this "important" experiment. I once watched a documentary about Mengele's victims. One of them, a lady who lives I believe in the USA or Australia, had a cheerful approach, spoke about forgivenewss that helped her recover. She said -I decided to give my experience as a present to the human race in the hope that the medical experiments help medical science develop and bring health to many.

Well....at least the germans recorded their abuses for future reference...while the americans do not, and do not consider compensation.

You should watch the videos I linked, then look up that old guy and kick his ass.

[lupercal]

^ hava1, it's a great story, why not start a new thread with it?

p.s. sticky nice to see ya here!

[hava1]

^ hava1, it's a great story, why not start a new thread with it?

p.s. sticky nice to see ya here!

thanks lup, watching, indeed this is relevant, i am in number 2 now.

[hava1]

i've done 4 parts. you are saying this is the Kapo ? (he is definietly Jewish, and perhaps sub contracted his glorious work to his cousins back in the holy land). It could be a number of others, but he is defeinitely a prime suspect

One incriminating comment from him, which resonates with me. He is saying, early on in the recording that "people" objected to the use of radioactive CO, because of "myth", and only he knew better , that the amounts of radiation is below level of danger. ....this is a careless comment, because I did check the regulations at PRESENT, when we are all smarter, and the levels of radiation in the "radioactive nutrient", is considered "dangerous" in terms of labor and safety laws, and warrants strict measures of protections (special dress and periodical blood/urine counts). So, the man indeed sounds like he would approve SOMONE ELSE being at risk, at the time. Definitely, it was illegal even back then to hire minors for work with radioactive substance.

The factual question is whether it was HE who subcontracted the trials, or NASA directly. In any event, the intentional, cruel and premeditated recuitment of a minor to bypass safety regulations/exposure to legal risk, is criminal, and refects on the orgnaizational environment of this project. Surely, with all the billions spent (and gained), they had to use forced labor of minors to do the lab work. yeah right. I would say there were side gains to my illegal employement, but I cannot prove that.

however, I will email this "old american uncle", and if he ever responds will post here.

[pepsified thinker]

to give the thread a requisite movie-that's-more-than-just-a-movie:







http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1305591/