Mars Is Frigid, Rusty and Haunted. We Can’t Stop Looking at It.

We lost our Martian rocket ship The high paid spokesman said Looks like that silly rocket ship Has lost its cone shaped head We spent 90 jillion dollars trying to get a look at Mars I hear universal laughter ringing out among the stars

It’s sobering if not surprising that the human race descended from riff raff.

Kind of disappointed with Elon Musk and this mars “thing”, because he is somewhat of a genius – That is, and HAS changed an industry (although his piss and moan investors - people with a little stock in his no-profit showing company might not think so), but that’s just an idea,one statement he made. I on the other hand like to collect things and when I can in multiples so after I experiment & modify an item,to make it perform better to my liking (or, “murderfy”, a favorite word) I still have an extra if that fails - a backup. So with this Mars colonization thing, It’s not too unlike my philosophy, a spare planet here and, oh hey, Mars as a back up!

"Everything we know about geology and astronomy tells us that Earth will someday become uninhabitable." True. But I suspect that geology and astronomy are less likely to endanger the Earth than human stupidity. Mars looks interesting, but the Earth is the only place that most of us will ever really know. We need to protect it at all costs.

I most likely will not live long enough to learn of the discovery of "intelligent" life elsewhere in the universe. However, I will be mightily excited if any form of protolife or actual life-as-we-know-it is confirmed. The emergence of life is, by all accounts, precisely what nature does in a universe of non-equilibrium thermodynamics and non-extreme conditions.

Europeans reached the Western Hemisphere in 1492. Within decades, large numbers of Europeans followed. The Western Hemisphere was valuable and not all that difficult to reach. We got to the moon about 50 years ago. The total number of people to visit the moon is just over 20. None of those stayed. The moon is worthless (aside from poetic inspiration) and very hard to get to. Mars? You must be kidding.

The article states at the end that "everything we know about geology and astronomy tells us that Earth will someday become uninhabitable." Nice. Just look at Mars. We will never terraform Mars, but hopefully keep our Planet habitable, until the Sun swallows all its orbiting planets, that is.

Humanity needs to take care of its own planet before we go off to colonize another. I mean really, what gives us the right to do to other worlds what we have done to earth? We have utterly trashed the earth with pollution, oceans full of garbage, destroyed ecosystems, extinctions of many species, and overburdened the planet with an unsustainable population of humans. There is not indication that we would not do the same to any other planet we land on. This is pure hubris for us to dream about colonizing Mars. I believe ecologists would call that an invasive species.

Stop looking up. Try looking down at our oceans and poisoned land and cancer ridden inhabitants. We only need to know that if we do not care for this planet, it will eventually resemble Mars.

Mars does not have enough CO2, but we have too much. Why not capture all the CO2 from factory chimneys etc., freeze it, and send it to Mars where it would remain ice and thus not fly away from the planet. When we arrived, perhaps 500 years from now, there would be enough CO2 to be reconverted to gas inside of gigantic tents which would counter the weak gravity. Furthermore, earth would have found a way to get rid of our CO2 problem. Genius, no? Sigh.

Any person who wishes to journey to Mars is an idiot! Robot exploration is less costly, especially in human lives.

"It is not crazy in astrobiology circles these days to hold the opinion that the life that now envelops Earth started on Mars and then some pilgrim microbe was brought here on an errant asteroid." Actually, it is still crazy. What purpose does it serve to consider that a possibility? Does biogenesis first occuring on Mars solve any of the mystery behind how it happened? No.

Is it too far out to think that Mars was like Earth at one time, and hangs in the night sky as a reminder of where we're headed? Wouldn't Earth be just like Mars, if environmental degradation, pollution, extinctions, over population, and climate change continue?

Excellent piece on the angry red planet (I borrowed phrase from movie title) from Mr. Overbye. A few months ago I read this. Kind of mind-blowing: There are roughly 500 billion galaxies in the universe, meaning there is somewhere in the region of 50,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (5×1022) habitable planets. I’ll leave you to do the math on whether one of those 50 sextillion planets has the right conditions for nurturing alien life or not. http://www.physics-astronomy.com/2017/07/astronomers-estimate-100-billio...

So much to think over, so little time. As Dennis so elegantly wrote, "In the fullness of time, everything gets everywhere." It could be another way of saying if anything can happen, it will happen; the clock has to run infinitely long. In the vanishingly small interval during which life evolved on Earth, we humans are teased with these small snippets of possibility. What a treat !

Why don't you tell the Truth Mr. Overbye. This opinion piece is nothing but your Mars fantasy. It is like so many others resulting in us wasting many many BILLIONS $$$ on Mars "exploration" while far more useful and meaningful space projects are NOT funded. Mars junkies like you, Elon Musk and others should use PRIVATE funds to indulge your Mars fantasies. We certainly do not need wasteful spending on Mars which you cannot even see without a telescope to have reason to look up into the sky. When I look up I see our large glowing luminous Moon almost close enough to touch and only a few days away with tons of water easily accessible just below its poles waiting for our return to stay this time! !

I think, perhaps, there is no subject so captivating as humans on Mars. People get too mired in the here and now and stop looking forward, truly forward in time. What will geoplotics look like in 2,000 years? There are only four answers, the states of earth will either look exactly the same, more fragmented today (meaning states have collapsed and divided), more unified than today (meaning some degree of poilitical unification), or we won't be alive at all (meaning a tragic fate has befallen life on Earth, either of our own doing or a cosmic event beyond our control). So what if it takes us 1,000 years to make life habitable. So what if we don't have the technology to accomplish the task. These are 22nd and 23rd-century problems trying to be address by 21st-century technology. Who knows what technological future we'll have? But, I guarantee it will be more advanced than we have today. So, why not get started? Why not revive that pioneering spirit and make science fiction a scientific reality? As for alien microbes, I have no qualms about altering the planet. There's no story you can tell me where Mars without intervention would allow a greater developmental future for those microbes. So why should we treat them any differently than the ones we kill with bleach. If they are single cellular lifeforms with no future, what difference does it make? Let's go to Mars and find out what mankind is capable of.

Is evolution our source of being as we are today or is our past somehow connected to a narrative involving other planets and interstellar travel now lost in the dust of forgotten history. Are the angels of God but an allusion to another realm, another life form far more advanced than we and now alien to us?

Many thanks for all the information you provided to people like us. We love space exploration, including John Glenn, Neil Armstrong, -to mention only two space heroes- and of course Mars. We live near Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and we visit frequently Space Center Houston. Our grandsons will enjoy this article too. In Mars a year is 687 Earth days, this means that if you are 72 years old, you can decide to use Mars years to feel more "Young at heart" as commented by Frank Sinatra, which means that you are only 38. Hooray!

See also Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy for an extended discussion of the morality of terraforming Mars, thereby dooming any indigenous life forms.

The likelihood of human technology will be capable of allowing a migration of humans to Mars before earth decides to shrug off the human race is slim to none. People that believe that within 100 years humans will populate Mars do not understand the state of technological progress.

Wicked cool photo. Tip of the hat to Antara Foto. The symmetry of a great photographer named Foto should not be unremarked upon. My humble opinion.

The notion of terraforming Mars seems incredibly far fetched. Better--and far easier--to maintain our own planet's habitability.

What about crowd funding the purchase of the International Space Station and sending it to a new home around Mars. Or for the same money house all the homeless on the streets of America. Just putting it all out there the dream and the dilemma.

It is amazingly ironic that just below the headline for this article we see "Losing Earth". I am more interested in looking at the pile of trash that washed up on the beach in the Dominican Republic, because this is far more urgent and important. There is no point in looking at Mars while we trash our own planet. Every person on this planet with a scientific brain had better start figuring out how to keep us from self destructing. Mars can wait - it will still be there - which cannot necessarily be said about the humans looking at it.

Dennis, thank you for closing with that moment from The Martian Chronicles. I haven’t read that story in twenty years, and it hit me now just as hard as it did then. Time to dig up that old paperback!

This article is pure poetry.

'Everything we know about geology and astronomy tells us that Earth will someday become uninhabitable'. No doubt true. But surely man's ignorance and warlike behavior will play a major, if not overriding, role, too.

I've always viewed the attempt by scientists to talk up Mars exploration as some kind of search for life to be a publicity effort--they of all people know that the math that says there may well be life somewhere else in the universe given how many planets are out there also says that there is a low statistical likelihood of such evolution happening adjacent to earth in the very same system. If there had been multicellular life forms there in the past the evidence would be out on the surface to see. Obsessing about microbes on Mars is the some kind of misdirect of attention as thinking that discussions about artificial intelligence are mainly about industrial robots. As for our encounters with other life, the distances in space and time are so vast that it is improbable we will ever encounter their signature even if they are very close...

While the extensive history and scientific information shared is very much appreciated, I viewed this article mostly for the pictures. I can't ever see too many beautiful depictions so please show more captivating and moving photos of the red planet. At times, outer space and imagination are one's only hook into reality.

Enough with Mars already! The first (and last) mission to Uranus and Neptune was Voyager 2 launched on August 20, 1977. That was 41 years ago. We are still waiting for the next one. What a shame.

My concern is the possible microbes/ bacteria that humans on Earth might be susceptible to when they bring back samples of the water discovered.

It's a dichotomy that the all of the cutting edge technology that could ever be possibly used to ever get a human on the planet Mars is hoarded by separate nations here on earth - let alone used for the betterment of mankind. There has to be a better reason to go, than it is just the next in line and we are supposed to. Having said that, the conquering (if that is even possible) of space (before we are extinguished as a species by our own hand) will require all nations working together as one populace to overcome all of the problems and challenges. I do not see that happening in me lifetime (nor in Musk's)

If we discovered microbial life on Mars could we be sure that it wasn't introduced there by our own spacecraft from earlier missions?

I found this to be an utterly enjoyable (and no doubt informative) read. Thank you for your use of this Earth-language to describe our other-worldly aspirations.

Sure, Mars, as an avatar of space itself, possesses certain allure. Not just the physical unknowns but also a tucking of the human heart & soul. Are we alone? However, I wonder if there is also some anxiety. Is Earth going the way of Mars after humans through with it? Sooner or later, humans may be nuts enough to unleash nuclear among ourselves, burning the Earth to the crisp. Then nature will finish the job by leaving the atmosphere open to space radiation. And Earth too will be Frigid, Rusty and Haunted

Until we develop some kind of 'warp speed' the travel times are going to be the back breaker for any real hope of space exploration.

I am currently reading “The Martian” by Andy Weir. The movie with Matt Damon as astronaut Whatley was very good.... the book is even better. The science and use of historical facts are fascinating. A great summer read!