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[RedKing]

Still not enough. You've heard of Deinococcus radiodurans right?

I first read that as Deinonychus radiodurans. Which would be infinitely more awesome. And dangerous.

[GiglameshDespair]

Vacuum filled with radon, radium, uranium, plutonium... everything radioactive!

B-but if it's filled, is it really vacuum?

[LordBaal]

That's why I propose that instead of us halting for decades (even centuries if things keep this phase) our space program, otherworldly colonizations efforts, which are vital to our continued existence as species, to argue about the well being of some microbes that might or might not exist. We simply fucking go there with as many precautions as possible without being this ridiculous and check if they are over there as a side quest of the main fucking purpose of this, spreading ourselves to other planets and eventually the stars.

[RedKing]

That's why I propose that instead of us halting for decades (even centuries if things keep this phase) our space program, otherworldly colonizations efforts, which are vital to our continued existence as species, to argue about the well being of some microbes that might or might not exist. We simply fucking go there with as many precautions as possible without being this ridiculous and check if they are over there as a side quest of the main fucking purpose of this, spreading ourselves to other planets and eventually the stars.

The thing is, finding living organisms (even bacteria or viruses) on another celestial body would be beyond huge because of the ramifications. So you really, really, really want to be sure it's a legit find and not something that stowed away.

[Sheb]

Although the chance that the Earth and Mars share the same origin of life are already quite high, what with our habit to throw rocks at each others for billions of years.

[Starver]

...but if we send people to find the things, rather than just (at least theoretically) sterile robots, we might end up discovering Mars is a prime location to find something like e. coli areosalutor (or possibly ...areopervasor), suspiciously close to the manned station's 'privy' module.

(FAKEEDITd, "...and" to "...but" and thus also...)

As long as we don't end up masking any unrelated 'biologies', or falsely resetting the Most Recent Common Ancestor point in the timeline.  Either (genuine) result would be very interesting to learn about, if true (and also quite interesting if we could be sure that there was nothing there at all, before we got our mucky mitts on the place, rather than getting large error bars on the 'maybe we put it there, maybe we didn't...' confusion.

But doing the equivalent of washing up on an 'unexplored' pacific island to find that the natives are all blond-haired, blue-eyed descendents of a European shipwreck¹ a century before, having totally wiped out any of the original polynesian culture... 



As to the 'need' for making off-world colonies.  I support the "not all eggs in one basket" purpose to them.  Obviously requiring that the colony(/ies) be self-supporting, and then obviously risking political separatism as per just about every decent space-opera (and quite a few not decent ones), but thus we ensure that the unspotted Big One asteroid (or a mad-man with a hand on a quite sinister red-hued button) doesn't send us back to the stone-age (or irrecoverably beyond).


¹ That included some women, obviously.

[Il Palazzo]

For those who like stargazing, or those who would like to finally see and easily identify most of the observable planets, there's a nice alignment coming, starting from about now and lasting for about a month.

Venus, Mars and Jupiter are nearly on the same line of sight as seen from Earth, so their separation on the sky is very small - they're visible roughly in the same place in the sky.

One needs to look towards the Eastern sky, low over the horizon, about an hour before sunrise - 5-6 A.M. Just below the constellation of Leo.
There'll be four bright objects arranged in a line there, the brightest one being Venus, the next-brightest being Jupiter, and the two remaining ones: Mars and the star Regulus. They're both of similar brightness, but Mars can be distinguished from the star by its visibly reddish hue.

In the next three or so days, a crescent Moon will also pass through by the whole shebang, returning once again next month.

The closest apparent approach of the planets will be more or less half-way through this period, with Mars and Jupiter passing extremely close to each other - less than the Moon's face width - on 17th-18th of October, Venus and Jupiter on the 26th, and Mars and Venus on November the 3rd.
That's three conjunctions in three weeks' span, which is cool and very rare.

All three planets will be the most bunched-up together on 23rd and 29th of October.
Should you find yourself up this early in the coming weeks, you might want to take a look to the sky.

[i2amroy]

Care to give a location for those predictions? That sounds really cool, but if you are in a different time zone/location then I obviously might need to look at a different time or slightly different place.

[Il Palazzo]

No, your location doesn't matter much. You'll just see roughly the same thing a few hours later/earlier than your friends in other parts of the world (i.e. it's always an hour or two before the sunrise).

Depending on your latitude you might get better/worse visibility due to the angle the line of planets makes with the horizon.


Anyhow, here's a useful tool for finding out where and what to look for:
http://neave.com/planetarium/
Set your location, set the time to the morning hours, and look towards the Eastern sky. Then advance time daily for about a month.


edit: the location (latitude) matters insofar as to what time it is when it's 'an hour or two before sunrise'.

[i2amroy]

Fair enough, I probably should have realized that on a bit more thought.

[That Wolf]

Why havnt we gone back to the moon? 

[MonkeyHead]

Why havnt we gone back to the moon? 

As there is no real pressure (either scientific or political) to do so. What would be the point?

[That Wolf]

Helium 3

[Il Palazzo]

Helium 3

Alright. What would you use it for?

[LordBaal]

Helium 3

Alright. What would you use it for?

  Power generation... maybe?