Water found on Mars

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it would be terribly tragic if the microbes they find in the Martian subsurface water turns out to be carried by an earlier Viking mission which introduced earthlike bugs on the Martian surface resulting in irreversible terra forming.

That was an obsession during the early days of the space race:contamination either way: worry about our returning astronauts bringing space bugs back here, and worry about our vehicles contaminating other heavenly bodies.

So quarantine was considered vital either way. But as one scientist of the Sixties said "absolute sterility, like any other absolute, is probably impossible".

The Soviets sent more than a dozen probes to Mars between 1960 and 1973. Some didnt make it far beyond earth's atmosphere, some flew by Mars, but several ignominously crashed on to the surface of the red planet (one managed to deliver the coat of arms of the U.S.S.R. to the surface of Mars, but failed to return any data).

So when our Viking lander arrived in 1979 there was already a good few hundred pounds of man made scrap metal on Mars.

Like Glebel said there are some hardy microbes here on earth. Even if a vehicle was sterilzed before being launched it could have picked up some of those atmospheric bugs. But then the microbes would have to survive the journey through interplanetary space. And then they would have to survive on their new home on Mars (cold, and six percent normal atmosphere). Almost but,maybe not completely, impossible. If some hardy strain (either on that iron hammer and cycle emblem, or on the Viking Lander) were to survive at all- its descendants after a few short bacterial generations might eventually thrive in the new competition free habitat. Four or five decades later could they still be up there breeding? I guess that's not impossible.

Maybe they're watching us watch them.

I kind of wish the space shuttle had never been invented. Because of it - a vessel that could never leave the earth's orbit - the space program stopped being about traveling to other planets, but about how beans grow in zero gravity. Now that that waste of time has been retired, maybe we can get back to actual exploration.

I think you have it a little bit backwards.

The shuttle was invented because of the end of the space race. Not the other way around.

The space shuttle is cheaper than Apollo.

Once Apollo was over there was no longer that Cold War era patriotic push for tax payers to support manned space flight. So NASA shrank to a fraction of its former size over night. But continued to explore planets via unmanned probes, and also continued to use human astronauts- but in the low orbits on the shuttle. The unmanned probes accomplished alot in expanding our understanding of the solar system though.

How will this turn out?

Mars has the potential to become a fridge when the power goes out for weeks. All that stuff that was on your food becomes visible.

With lower gravity and pressure, the potential is there for Amoeba the size of grapes, and Lichens growing head high.

Sterile will never work, so lets try dumping everything that survives at the poles, some that have developed anti freeze, and see who survives.

Evolution has been proven by Science, so I hear. So evolution and survival of the fittest must be good, as Darwin intended.

Terraforming Mars is not possible for hairless ground apes that can't not trash their only planet.

We can only do what we evolved to do, litter.

In a hundred years Mars can be that planet that changes colors with the seasons. A good coat of Black Mold would catch and store more heat.

While some want to nuke it, and there was an actual plan to nuke the Moon, that is just what the nuke people say about everything.

Sure, heat will release gas, but Mars lacks the gravity to hold it.

What is needed is taking a large comet and parking it in a low orbit that will decay. Perhaps one of the stray Moons with ice and oceans would increase the mass and provide water.

Moons are not just ornaments. Tidal friction flexes the crust and produces heat An oversize Moon in a close orbit would warm Mars, then drop in for some Moon/Planet Sex.

As Mars lacks a magnetic field, bumping the gravity up to Earth Plus, would hold a thicker atmosphere. On Earth it gets thin at 10,000 foot, and scarce at 15,000.

We talk Greenhouse, it could be done on Mars, all that CO2 ice, Moon sex, in a few decades it would be southern California all over again.

Without violating Zoning Laws, or moving Moons, we could trigger one of the Gas Giants, with Nukes. This would give Planet Beach Bunny a better summer. Binary Suns are a normal thing, we could use an outer Sun. Before we torch it, we could steal the Moons.

Ever since Star Wars we have all wanted to look up in the sky and see several Moons in the daytime. Huge Moons, close, high detail, where you can feel the pull of gravity. Huge and lasting are three Moons full erections, Yoda says.

I know NASA did the movie set for the Moon Landing Movie, but this is for real.

We could get it done, it is possible, two Moons for the Beach Bunny Planet, just by naming them Donald, and Trump.

He also gets Moon hotel rights.

I know the state of our space program, government, economics, is not up to the task, but we could tell the Russians they could not do it.

Torching some of the Gas Giants, bring Pluto in for a Moon, I mean, what do the outer planets do?

We could have a secondary Solar System orbiting the first, maybe two, we could fix this place up, and have Blackjack, and hookers.

Ummm....

Well... the term IS "terraforming".

The word "forming" placed on the end of "terra" ( as in "Terra firma". 'terrain', terrestrial and words like that) which means "Earth". So it does literally mean "making something more like Earth".

How long before Nestle starts selling it in a bottle?

Yes. you're talking about something akin to the invasive species problem that occurs between ecosystems on the Earth itself when humans (accidently, or intensionally) causes species from one place to invade another place.

Oddly there doesnt seem to be a name for it. Maybe you could call it "biological pollution"?