ESA Conducts Mars Terraforming Experiments On ISS

geegel writes "Space is a hostile environment for living things, but small organisms on the Expose-E experiment unit outside Europe's Columbus ISS laboratory module have resisted the solar UV radiation, cosmic rays, vacuum and varying temperatures for 18 months. A certain lichen seems to be particularly happy in open space."

Let us get this out of the way...

[sznupi]

I, for one, welcome our Mars-terraforming lichen overlords.

fuck they gonna get cosmic ray powerz

[jollyreaper]

Then come back to earth and take us over. Underworld: Rise of the Lichen. Gonna net to get some space reindeer to save us.

Of the space variety

[PlasmaEye]

I guess you could say that fungus was lichen space. *crickets*

Re:fuck they gonna get cosmic ray powerz

[Chris Burke]

Yeah, exposure to gamma radiation is going to cause the lichen to turn into a giant green(-er) beast of unstoppable power whenever it gets angry.

Fortunately, lichens are pretty mellow.

Re:Of the space variety

[snspdaarf]

Man, oh, man. You owe the internet an apology for that one.

Re:fuck they gonna get cosmic ray powerz

[IdleTime]

The Hulks is in reality a lichen?

Who could have thunk?

Re:Mars

[TheRealMindChild]

Imagine it! A dyson sphere [wikipedia.org] of kudzu [wikipedia.org]!!!

Re:fuck they gonna get cosmic ray powerz

[kehren77]

We'll be fine as long as their powerz level isn't over 9000.

Re:Venus

[MachDelta]

Why go to venus when we can simply terraform earth to have a venus-like atmosphere? We're already well on our way! Mars is a much better place to escape to... I mean, investigate.

Re:Venus

[TheDarkMinstrel]

Men are running the program - we just want to go home! We're from Mars, ya know?

And now, thanks to the ISS, we'll have both topping for our pizza and athlete's foot when we get there.

Re:fuck they gonna get cosmic ray powerz

[Tristanic]

Day of the Triffids wasn't a movie, it was an omen!

Re:fuck they gonna get cosmic ray powerz

[Anonymous Coward]

Swamp Thing

Re:fuck they gonna get cosmic ray powerz

[biryokumaru]

Underworld: Rise of the Lichen

It's funny because you likened the lichen to Lycans.

Re:Mars

[eleuthero]

I'd like to see them just seed Mars with the lichen now. If it turns out to be problematic, it isn't like it is our own planet (or like it even has life to speak of that we need be concerned about). Put some kudzu cells in the lichen and maybe we can even have Mars go all greenfly on us and then we can spend more on spaceflight in order to be able to flee the galaxy consuming super-lichen

Meanwhile...

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama cancelled NASA.

Re:Venus

[Fred_A]

I don't think there's much point to trying to deal with Venus as it is, so the excess atmosphere has got to go.

The solution is obvious, the atmosphere that is in excess on Venus should be moved to Mars.
Then both problems are elegantly solved at once.

I'll leave the trivial implementation details to you.

Re:Mars

[SnarfQuest]

The real goal of this research is to understand the limits to life in extreme environments.

Next test coming up: kittens and puppies. How well do they do in a vaccuum?

Re:Mars

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Pardon the Star Trek analogy here, but wouldn't that be like flinging water balloons into a dry riverbed?

Re:Of the space variety

[LS]

* vacuum, vacuum very much! *

Re:Mars

[mrchaotica]

(including, the shuttle was a bad idea)

What, we hadn't figured that out yet by the time ISS construction started?