Scientists Propose 'National Parks' On Mars 331
colonist writes "Microbiologist Charles Cockell and astrobiologist Gerda Horneck want to turn seven areas on Mars into 'national parks', conserved in their pristine state. 'It is the right of every person to stand and stare across the beautiful barrenness and desolation of the Martian surface without having to endure the eyesore of pieces of crashed spacecraft scattered across the landscape,' they write. Cockell is not against colonization, though. He says that setting aside some areas for conservation would free up the rest of the planet for settlement."
Saxifrage Russell (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Saxifrage Russell (Score:3, Funny)
Don't forget Anne, though.
Re:Saxifrage Russell (Score:2)
Re:Saxifrage Russell (Score:3, Informative)
Indeed (Score:3, Insightful)
Excellent
On the contrary... (Score:4, Funny)
Terminology please? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Terminology please? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Terminology please? (Score:5, Funny)
Most Americans aren't culinarily adventurous so they won't be willing to resort to cannibalism until after they're already the main course. Your average Middle Eastern resident is going to have to overcome double everybody else's religious qualms over 'long pig', with the same result. And as you point out, the Russians may be thrown out the airlock over their behaviour long before food stocks go low (or accidentally step out for a walk during a roaring drunk). That also is likely to happen to the Germans if they can't get over saying things like "Zat hydroponics pump vould nefer haf failed if it vass a *German* pump". Once any peacekeepers have been eliminated, the Japanese are likely to get tossed out the airlock by the Chinese as retribution for the Second World War.
So I'll bet on the Chinese or the French. Southern Chinese will eat any and all parts of any animal, and a good French cook will be able to whip a nice little burgundy, garlic, or herb sauce to make things palatable.
Re:Terminology please? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Terminology please? (Score:2)
Intersolar Historical Parks?
Interplanetary Historical Parks?
Re:Terminology please? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is this "designating national-park zones" somehow equivalent to the "free-speech zones", i.e. confining to a small space what used to be available everywhere, so that areas outside the zone can be exploited?
Re:Terminology please? (Score:5, Funny)
On the other hand, wouldn't Microsoft buy McDonalds before the holocaust as it expands in an ever-encompassing web of mediocracy? So...I guess it'd be "MSMcHostess MSInternational McHistorical McParks" or some similar variation.
What a joke (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What a joke (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What a joke (Score:4, Funny)
How could we have missed that??
Re:What a joke (Score:4, Funny)
L
I think you misunderstand (Score:2, Insightful)
It isn't that we're planning on paving the whole planet, it's that the planet doesn't have forests and such.
The result is that if you land one large spaceship it's visible a very, very, very long way.
The whiter a piece of paper is, the more you notice a single mark on it. The same is true of Mars. By the time there's significant colonization any talk of untouched wilderness will be pointless. It isn't like Yellowstone where you can find yourself a fairly tiny
well gosh, I'm glad that's settled, and (Score:5, Insightful)
pheww, I was worried it was gonna be a mob scene, but now I can rest easy, knowing that even after I get there, I can still go camping in the wilderness areas...
WTF IS THE POINT OF THIS!
get there first, make exisistence possible, wait until you reach a population of >50- then worry about running out of pristine areas.....
Re:well gosh, I'm glad that's settled, and (Score:2, Insightful)
Life was probably found on mars and is being covered up. Watch out for the "conservation areas" where spaceships aren't permitted to be all the sites likely to have native life that they don't want people to see. (Now, that's not necessarily Just Plain Evil - if there is life there, a honking great spaceship crashing down and bouncing around. with various terran contaminants in it, may not be exactly what said martian life needs...)
Re:well gosh, I'm glad that's settled, and (Score:5, Insightful)
You're right. We shouldn't be careful about how we arrive there. We should solve all the problems after we've caused them.
Re:well gosh, I'm glad that's settled, and (Score:4, Informative)
You're forgetting... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:You're forgetting... (Score:2)
"I dropped my mobile, it went *SPLAT*"
doesn't really work
It might work better if you dropped it from orbit at 300km
Re:You're forgetting... (Score:2)
Re:well gosh, I'm glad that's settled, and (Score:3, Insightful)
So... we don't know that we'll be creating problems, so we shouldn't worry about them despite the lessons we learned rather harshly here on Earth?
Who are "we"? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think it could be argued that most of "us" (in the global sense) have learned very few lessons...
Re:well gosh, I'm glad that's settled, and (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:well gosh, I'm glad that's settled, and (Score:3, Insightful)
Something tells me this would be much harder with national parks and having to preserve barren wastelands. Especially since this would pretty much eliminate terraforming mars so that we could go outside without an environmental suit.
WTF IS THE POINT OF THIS! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:well gosh, I'm glad that's settled, and (Score:3, Insightful)
First things first... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:First things first... (Score:3, Funny)
If I'd known I could get modded up so high for it I would have become a Republican a long time ago....
wait ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:wait ... (Score:3, Insightful)
You could a) turn on the gas, chop up the the vegetables, boil the rice, and then light the stove, thereby blowing up your block, or you could b) chop of the vegetables, boil the rice, and _then_ turn on the gas and light the stove and enjoy some nice, healthy stir fry.
It's all about timing.
Well look at that. (Score:4, Interesting)
Someone is thinking ahead. For once. Refreshing to see.
There are, in fact, already treaties regarding space colonization. Just because it's not possible -yet- doesn't mean we should wait until it starts happening to consider how we want it to go.
Re:Well look at that. (Score:2, Funny)
Don't Bet On Those Treaties (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Well look at that. (Score:2)
I don't think you read my post...
Nowhere in it did I say that the -current- regulations are a great idea, I haven't even seen them in detail, and they would be changed quite a bit by the realities of life on Mars in any case.
What I did say was that I'm glad to see the thought process starting right now, instead of 5 years after it's already started happening.
Re:Well look at that. (Score:3, Funny)
Well, for future reference, I'm a liberal, social democrat, and I don't consider the word "liberal" to be a curse. And no, I didn't grow up in Massachusetts or California, Colorado actually. However, I still have no idea if the regulations are good or bad, since I haven't looked at them in depth for myself.
Too early to for parks (Score:4, Insightful)
Ideally these parks would have no value other than for eye candy.
Re:Too early to for parks (Score:5, Interesting)
It's brand new. It's totally pristine. It contains applications of geology, meteorology, and maybe even biology that have never been seen before.
I'd be all for scientific expeditions to Mars, even long term ones, but I can't see the point in sending anybody there to live for any purpose other than science. Take a couple of centuries and watch the climate change without significant human interference. Humanity has waited millions of years to get there; a few centuries won't make any difference.
(Especially if you're talking about "terraforming" it. We don't have the slightest idea what's on that planet and we're already talking about making it look just like here. Please, please, please let the geophysicists and soil chemists and wind science guys have a good solid look at the place before you start changing its chemistry permanently.)
Re:Too early to for parks (Score:3, Insightful)
But your opinion and mine may actually be closer than it appears. I said in the grandparent post that I'm not opposed to exploration. Sending up ev
Terra-forming? (Score:4, Insightful)
Mod parent up, insightful. (Score:5, Insightful)
The question is - which makes more sense economically? Terraforming the entire planet, refusing to colonize it altogether, or building biodomes all over its surface? Right now, the third option is pretty much out of the question, so we have a long-term decision to make about whether Mars is more valuable as the red planet, or as a green one.
Re:Mod parent up, insightful. (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm curious - has any serious science been done on the feasability of this concept? Generally speaking, I think manned spaceflight is a giant waste of time and money and a Mars mission would be a stupid idea, but IF we could actually make the surface inhabitable that might justify the enormous expense of transporting people there. However, I haven't seen any proof that it's possible to raise the temperature to standards tolerable for agr
Re:Mod parent up, insightful. (Score:4, Interesting)
On this note, you should really look into the research done for it before you say it is a waist. Especially some of the medical research done to help support it. Also, once we get a space elevator up,the cost will come down dramatically.
raise the temperature
We crash several comets into the atmosphere to make it denser. Then start making greenhouse gasses (i.e. Carbon Dioxide) to hold in the heat.
how warm might we expect the equator on Mars to be? Does it have seasons?
How warm do you want it to be is a better question. Mars gets 1/4th as much light as earth. Given that earth radiates/reflects away a lot of heat/light that we get from the sun we can give it earth temperatures. Mars does have an axial tilt so it does have seasons. Read here [nasa.gov] for more on it's seasons.
Re:Mod parent up, insightful. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm saying it's a waste precisely because I have looked into the research, and come away thoroughly unimpressed. And pointing out that we had to do lots of research just to put men into space is circular reasoning; if that research was worthwhile, it could be done on its own for a fraction the cost.
As for the "research" that goes on in manned spaceflights, it's a joke. (I work in one of the fields that has b
Re:Mod parent up, insightful. (Score:3, Informative)
Sure some of this stuff might of been discovered without NASA. But it probably would have been decades later or in some cases we might still be waiting. And judging from some of the stuff listed it's helped save lives already. Example? Better Firemans Air Tanks.
My favorite?
BREAST CANCER DETECTION - A solar cell sensor is positioned directly beneath x-ray film, and determines exactly when film has received sufficient radiation and has been exposed to optimum density. As
Re:Mod parent up, insightful. (Score:4, Interesting)
Due to the lesser gravity the atmosphere would slowly shrink and get lost to space. Earth atmoshphere is being lost the same way only it is much slower due to the hgiher gravity. However, as I understand it one we got Mars up to a high enough atmospheric pressure (say, 1/2 an atmoshpere [airplane cabin cruising pressure I am told]) You might have to add another comet once every, say, 10,000 (yes ten thousand) years.
Oh, and moons are supposed to help strip off the atmoshpere faster. But the two little asteroids Mars has for moons are too small to do much for that. It was mostly Mars's lower gravity that caused the loss of atmoshpere so much more quickly than earths.
Re:Mod parent up, insightful. (Score:3, Insightful)
How can you possibly imagine that planetwide terraforming is cheaper than building enclosed habitats?
Or even less than 20x as expensive, for that matter? What kind of technological dream world do you live in "right now"?
Re:Mod parent up, insightful. (Score:3, Informative)
Remember, time is literally money. If one spends money on something, one doesn't just need to pay for the direct costs, but one also has to take into account the numbe
Re:Terra-forming? (Score:4, Interesting)
We might have Reds vs. Greens before we even go there...
An obvious plot to keep us away from the martians (Score:3, Funny)
Who is this guy (Score:5, Informative)
Red Mars? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Red Mars? (Score:3, Interesting)
Colonisation versus Conservation is a major part of the story in the "Mars Trilogy". Basically the ecologists breakaway and combine with the geologists to try to keep Mars as pristine as possible.
I always thought this a bad plot device and resented the sympathy that Kim Stanley Robinson held for the 'Red Mars' antagonists.
Initial developments in the colonisation of Mars will be necessarily of quite small scale.
See? (Score:5, Funny)
conserve mars now ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Here we go (Score:4, Funny)
is it that... (Score:3, Insightful)
I think someone is conceptualizing Mars wrong. It's a whole PLANET. It costs billions of dollars to send a single probe. We aren't going to be littering it any time soon, nor are we going to land humans on it any time soon.
What we should worry about is not contaminating it with terrestrial microorganisms.
Mars: You can't camp here (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, what if we find a huge system of underground caves, like exist all over the Earth. Maybe they're too close to the surface to even put a city. That would be a better choice, rather than marking 1000 square miles saying "This is park."
Not that it really matters. We haven't sent person #1 there yet, much less colonists. Really, the rules will be established by whoever gets there first, and then be redefined by whoever takes power there first. If a country puts a big freakin' space gun on Mars, and starts shooting down other countries landers, that leaves that country in control to say what a park is. Or more like, if the colonists decide that they're independant (with the big freakin' space gun to prove it), they get to declare their parks.
That's what the U.S. did. They told England, "This is ours". It doesn't matter what they declared as what before the colonists came over, it's all been changed since then. The only big differences are the distance, and the space gun.
Re:Mars: You can't camp here (Score:2)
In that analogy, then, they're proposing setting up "smallpox and pillaging-free" zones in North America so that when the Jamestown colonists arrive in a couple of decades, they won't wipe out the natives...
Am I correct in thinking.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re: Am I correct in thinking.. (Score:2)
Re:Am I correct in thinking.. (Score:2)
Of course it's our birthright as a nation to own everything...and if you're thinking you can put that colony on pluto instead...think again, that's ours too.
'National Parks'? (Score:2, Insightful)
How about evaluation of the planet first (Score:5, Insightful)
Face it people, if there was not life on Mars before there is a very high probability that there is life there now. As careful as we try to be keeping the various probes clean before launching them there will be a varity of microbes, bacteria, and viruses that hitched a ride on the probes and probably survived both the trip and reentry. So colonization has begun on the microbial level at least.
Lets get there first and find out what is really there then we can set aside areas as national parks.
colonization... (Score:3, Informative)
those are Valles Marineris and Hellas Planitia
- first, because canyons provide a very good place for underground houses - you have just a window on the side of a canyon
- second, because Hellas is the lowest place on whole planet, which results in twice the atmospheric pressure (Mars has 6hPa on average): 14 hPa. Pressure has big influence on water phase - in Hellas you would expect water to b
Re:colonization... (Score:3, Insightful)
Oooooohhhhh....
I agree, vastly impractical (Score:2)
I don't think the authors have a reasonable appreciation of the size of plannets or explorational navigation. The chances are that a human eye would not be able to see "the eyesore of pieces of crashed spacecraft" when they "stare across the beautiful barrenness and desolation of the Martian surface." Planets are big places and well meaning exploration craft are both expensive and tiny. Also, a space craft that is "crashing" has little
rights vs wishes (Score:5, Insightful)
People throw around the concepts of 'rights' too easily. What religious or natural philosophy would include property rights on another planet? Such a bloated sense of importance and entitlement..
Wrong day (Score:2)
Yogi bear wants to know... (Score:3, Funny)
"it would free up the rest of the planet for (Score:2)
exploitation and claim-staking, which might encourage these nations to sign up to the system."
HUH?
Maybe a little effort in the direction of a planetary space race rather than the nationalism we have now. Sure, we can still race, but the race and national pride could be in development of components of exploration, mining, nuclear fusion, etc. rather than a race for total planetary domination.
UAC? (Score:4, Funny)
damn reds... (Score:4, Insightful)
Cool, so who's paying for my ticket? It IS my right to go there, after all...
National? (Score:5, Insightful)
Who's nation though?
Re:National? (Score:2)
quoth #2 (Score:3, Insightful)
Number two says, "There are no Nations anymore. There's only coporations." I suppose that means that the parks would be owned by MickeySoft, General Products and Lockheed Transnational. "Mars deserves a break today. No exploration will be allowed to interfere with our relative advantage over our fellow men."
NATIONAL parks? (Score:2, Insightful)
Earth First... (Score:3, Funny)
IN RELATED NEWS... (Score:2)
Look towards home planet first. (Score:5, Informative)
Never mind Mars.
The US *is currently* building a road in the Antarctic from their scientific base on the edge of the region too the Pole.
They are *mining snow to fill in crevases*.
The Man on Mars should be worried...
Brown said phase one of the project -- filling huge crevasses with ice on the crevasse fields 70 kilometers (40 miles) south of McMurdo station -- has already been completed.
Sir Edmund Hilary (the first man to climb Everest)has just walked part of it, and needless to say, has slammed the initiative.
http://www.antarcticconnection.com/antarctic/news
Fixed URL (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.antarcticconnection.com/antarctic/news
Re:Look towards home planet first. (Score:2)
I assume the filling of huge crevasses is causing your inflamed emotion... Are you just arguing on the (valid) point of preserving natural beauty?
slam? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, I thought he was dead, but he's not! [wikipedia.org]. Can you point to the slam? The article you pointed to (my link works, yours had an extro /) [antarcticconnection.com] was mostly positive about the road.
Clayborne & Russell (Score:3, Informative)
That said, I'd still love to see a human presence on Mars, as long as I'm one of em...
I'd tell those scientists... (Score:2)
Thank you, thank you.
Isn't the space hardware worth preserving too? (Score:2, Insightful)
Closer to home, imagine if we colonised the moon at some point in the future - would you send crews out to pick up the man-made "litter" left behind by, say, the Apollo 9 mission, or would you keep it as a[n] [inter]national monument to a piece of human history?
It'd be like trashing the Mayflower or something because it had served it's purpose and was cluttering up the landscape.
I s
Read the article people!!! (Score:2)
But I have just one question for these people that the article didn't really address....
What's there on Mars in the first to conserve? Any water or life it may have had at one time seems to have long-since vacated. They talk
Fat bloody chance. (Score:2)
"It is the right of every person to stand and stare across the beautiful barrenness and desolation of the Martian surface
Any serious attempt to colonize Mars will include serious attempts to thicken, warm, and humidify the atmosphere, probably opening underground aquifers or mining the water ice cap. Once you introduce planetary climate change, much of that "beautiful barrenness and desolation" is going to change whether people visit it or not. It's possible that Olympus Mons, which for practical pur
Them martians... (Score:3, Funny)
Only the English love deserts (Score:3, Insightful)
Most people that live near or on a desert would rather change them into an oasis (or in this case terraform). Try living in, or travelling on one - it looses a great deal of it's romance very quickly.
Space Rangers (Score:3, Funny)
Beagles in search of a home (Score:2, Funny)
Self-hatred (Score:3, Insightful)
Mars is a planet that (arguably and maybe) once supported life and does so no longer (arguably and maybe). What cosmic plan does it disrupt to bring life back to that planet or bring life to it for the first time? And if he thinks that Mars' pristine wilderness is going to survive life's onslaught unchanged he is so wrong in a thousand ways!
We have earned the right to change Mars to suit ourselves and barren, lifeless vistas be damned! How did we earn it? By surviving, by achieving and by striving until we can leave our cradle and venture outward to other planets and beyond.
It's an entire planet! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Just say yes and move on (Score:2)
Perhaps we could just ask him to go on ahead of us and police the "No dumping" area?
Re:Conservation of rusty dust? (Score:2)
Imagine a proposal to fill in the Grand Canyon and culvert the river underneath. The geography would certainly be the main focus of attention in the ensuing fight.
TWW