UKC

Popped up on one of my feeds yesterday that NASA are calling a news conference on Monday to make a major announcement about Mars.

Currently the most likely appear to be: evidence of life and evidence of running water

In reply to Bob:

This could be one of the most ground breaking discoveries of our lifetime!

Life or water?! Amazing!

In reply to JayK:



Perhaps num num has gone there.

In reply to Bob:


I thought there was already photographic evidence of recent running water on Mars - channels on slopes where ice had melted out of the soil and briefly run downhill http://www.space.com/23905-mars-liquid-water-seasonal-streaks.html
It must be a Lancaster Bomber .....

In reply to Bob:


Maybe they're going to announce that after exhaustive examination of all the available evidence they've decided there's neither.

In reply to Bob:


Maybe marketing have decided to change the name. They already did it to Marathon and Opal Fruits.

In reply to Bob:

Excellent I shall watch with bated breath.

Thanks for the heads up .


OM

In reply to Bob:

It's a godawful small affair, to the girl with the mousey hair....

In reply to Bob:

Why is this not mentioned on the BBC website I wonder ?


OM

In reply to JayK:



Would the discovery of water be really that amazing? I mean H2O isn't exactly rare is it? Or is it?

In reply to ByEek:
If you look at those who are involved with the release and their areas of study it's pretty certain water will be the focus. Obviously finding pooled/running water changes Martian exploration fundamentally. Manned trips will be deal an ace card.

In reply to A Longleat Boulderer:


Yeah, but I'm still not going.

In reply to Bob:

The cynic in me thinks it's going to be a massive let down of an announcement,short of finding extraterrestrial life what could be such a big finding? running water doesn't do it for me. I've hear rumours of some finding in the air which may indicate presence at some point of organic life.

The bigger cynic in me thinks the timing of this is to piggy back on the release of The Martian, NASA will do anything to raise awareness of themselves to secure future funding. I don't blame them one bit for this though. It's just modern politics they have to play.

In reply to cap'nChino:

it probably does it for many scientists though...which is more to the point!

In reply to Bulls Crack:


No Doubt. But does it necessitate a big release as this. Aren't these things usually put out in a peer reviewed Journal for most scientific agencies.

I am playing devils advocate a little here. I am a supporter of NASA and I do enjoy hearing about water etc on mars. Im probably just a little apathetic to such things after years of hearing similar news

In reply to A Longleat Boulderer:

>"Obviously finding pooled/running water changes Martian exploration fundamentally. Manned trips will be deal an ace card."

The producers of Robson Green Extreme Fishing are known to have seats at the press conference.

In reply to Bob:

It's water - They were trying to keep it a secret until monday but it leaked out!

In reply to Bob:

>.


Are you saying there may be evidence that Martian civilization has invented the WC?

In reply to broken spectre:

it's not that at all, they've got an image of the factory where the bars are made ...

In reply to Bob:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-34379284

In reply to broken spectre:

Its huge, firstly for space exploration. It will be a super salty brine but its still something to work with.

But also the chance of finding some sort of life is increased now.

In reply to Bob:

So,

The big news is that there MAY be water. But it has not been observed yet?

Here's something to sum it all up.

youtube.com/watch?v=LKyuyOSGye0&

In reply to The Lemming:





No, you totally misunderstood.

This is solid evidence of a liquid on mars and also an explanation of why it can exist. Something is flowing on mars. They didn't directly observe it but they detected it.

It's really exciting.

In reply to Bob:


"Scientists think they can now tie dark streaks seen on the surface of Mars to periodic flows of liquid water". [BBC]

Well HOO-EFFING-RAY!!!!!!! This amazing fantastic discovery, wot we've waited all weekend for with bated breff, is that they THINK there's liquid water!!!!!

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

In reply to abseil:

In the words of God (off Twitter)

"Focus less on the tiny bit of liquid water melting on Mars and more on the catastrophic amount of liquid water melting on Earth."

In reply to broken spectre:


Dead right - I like your comment.

In reply to Roadrunner5:



No it's really not!

In reply to broken spectre:



Solid water, surely...

T.

In reply to Pursued by a bear:

That's @TheTweetOfGod for you, terrible punctuation.

In reply to MG:

Who are you to say what is?

Obviously much of the science world thinks it is..

And yes millions goes into space exploration but we get a lot back in terms of technological break throughs

In reply to Bob:

On a slight tangent I've just read The Martian by Andy Weir, what a belter! MacGyver meets Apollo 13.

In reply to Roadrunner5:

A person, like you.


Except they aren't reallly. It's mostly NASA PR. Press conferences to announce scientific results have a dubious record.


Even that is questionable these days.

In reply to MG:

Oh, I disagree. It's just that we accept the spin off benefits without questioning their source. Navigation systems are used everyday but many of those using them don't think about the GPS satellites they rely on. Sky TV is watched everyday by millions who don't think about why it's called that.

It ain't all about whether the Apollo programme gave us Teflon or not.

T.

In reply to Pursued by a bear:


But GPS is more of military than space exploration origin, and that from the 1970/80s

Sky TV is watched everyday by millions who don't think about why it's called that.

Ditto decades old

S


What has space given us in the last 20 years? I would say it's moslty the other way round now - areas such as electronics, imaging, etc are being used in space exploration nowadays.

In reply to Bob:

Someone has taken a dump in the cave and put a rock on it.

The DNA results are in.....


;~))




IGMC

In reply to MG:


Plenty. A quick search will turn up a lot such as software used for analyzing satellite images now being used in screening for Alzheimer's, for example.

And the drivers underpinning space technology - it has to be as small as practicable, as light as possible, capable of coming through the equivalent of a damn good kicking it will get during launch and subsequently work faultlessly without maintenance - have led to things developed for use in space finding application in many of the less-developed parts of the world.

Go google and see what you find.

T.

In reply to MG:


current estimates are that the 1960s space race paid back the USA 2 or 3 times the input over the follow decades. Most of the engineers, scientists etc. on the Apollo projects were quite young, 20-30s... so afterwards they moved onto new things and spent another 20 or 30 years in various industry creating and developing. I was at some space related presentations and seminars last week and the USA is getting quite fired up again, slowly but surely.

In reply to MG: GPS is a huge military plus but without all the Nasa investment in rockets and satellites we wouldn't have those systems in place.

its still part of our every day life guiding everything from traffic to planes.

There's just so much which has come from the space program. It's why we should always seek to fund blue sky science. We don't understand all these spin offs can happen until they happen. But so much of our every day life comes from the space program.

https://spinoff.nasa.gov/Spinoff2008/tech_benefits.html

As a start.

But yes I still think the presence of a salty brine is exciting. The odds of life on mars shorten considerably, afterall that is how life on earth started.

In reply to Bob:

Serious question. If we find living microbes on Mars. Does that effectively make it a no go area for colonisation or exploration?

In reply to cap'nChino:

Good question. I'd say probably not. It would cause a massive investment in biosecurity. It's been an issue with Antartic exploration, sadly a massive failing.

But we've explored areas which are essentially alien life to what we have on the surface of the earth, vents, deep sea, antartica etc and contamination was no barrier.

In reply to Roadrunner5:

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3mq1wl/were_nasa_mars_scientists_ask...

Seems this topic is covered extensively in this Reddit AMA.

In reply to cap'nChino:
I wonder if the biologists will start studying perchlorate chemistry to see what it does to proteins and DNA.

Perchlorates (a chlorine oxygen ion) and used in rocket propellant - that sounds like pretty wacky chemistry for a whole planet!

In reply to Roadrunner5:


Spending money on research produces results (NASA was 4% of US GDP at times). There is no reason to think spending money on blue sky stuff produces more or better results than focussed research finding. If all NASAs budget had been spent on other research, we would still have got as many and possibly more benefits.

It's like the silly argument for learning Latin - sure it helps with other languages but why not just learn those languages to begin with!

In reply to MG:

Because many languages in Europe have words with latin origins and it you learn some latin, you will know the meanings of many words in many different languages, without having to learn to that specific language. Also if you learn latin, the learning of that one language, could speed up the learning of 3 or 4 others to a good level of fluency, making it quicker and more efficient overall. You might be surprised how much latin you already speak - http://www.businessballs.com/latin-terms-phrases.htm#list-of-latin-terms-ph...

Not sure how this relates to NASA funding though! If you spend the money without going to space, then at some point in time, man will still need to explore space, when we finally wreck the planet beyond repair? Plus a fair amount of the experiments done in space, are directly relevant to life here and now, but can't be done or are better done in weightlessness of space etc.. Luca Parmitano was saying that every week on ISS they do roughly 25-30 hrs of science experiments each, the remainder of their working time is maintenance.

Examples of what they've looked at; bone loss due to weightlessness which directly correlates with osteoporosis, lots of ocean water analysis is done from Hyperspectral Imagery, Colloids / Nanotech, biological pathogens research and how they become active, dark matter research, robotics development, some chemo drugs were developed in space... no doubt there are dozens more, that simply would not have progressed had there been no ISS.

In reply to summo:

That doing things indirectly isn't very efficient. Learning Latin maybe a enjoyable intellectual exercise and enable you to understand historic writing but it really isn't a very efficient way of learning modern languages. Similarly, I think the justification for spending on space travel should be one of exploration - which is a powerful human instinct. Justifying it on spurious research grounds is dishonest.

Luca Parmitano was saying that every week on ISS they do roughly 25-30 hrs of science experiments each, the remainder of their working time is maintenance.

Which makes the point nicely. 25-30hrs is a trivial output for the millions spent. If that money was spent on research on earth you would get many hundreds of hours of output. You might learn different things, or the same things in different ways, but output would be far larger. The ISS is great human endeavour but it isn't a sensible way of spending research funds, and (non-space related) research shouldn't be its justification.

In reply to MG:


I think you'll find people who speak 3 or 4 European languages fluently might disagree with you.


But if those experiments can't be done on earth, there is no alternative? I think in many cases the experiments are done on earth too, results compared etc.. in other cases they simply can't, there is a system where only the most deserving of experiments are selected for the ISS etc.. otherwise as you say you are simply throwing money away. In reality it's 25-30hrs times the number of crew worth of experiments that can't be done on earth, can you put a price on that, what's your upper limit?

In reply to summo:
In reality it's 25-30hrs times the number of crew worth of experiments that can't be done on earth, can you put a price on that, what's your upper limit?

If ISS is up there anyway, clearly it makes sense to use it for science. What I am saying is that the £???m cost of ISS would almost certainly not be justified by the research output it produces, which is a happy by-product. No way would ISS get funded on the basis of the research it produces when placed on a level playing field with other research proposals.

To put it another way, if the big thing in the 1960s had been a race to the centre of the earth, the US and Russia would have poured trillions in to this rather than space travel, and we would now all sorts of spin-offs from these programmes with further research on drilling being justified by future potential spin-offs. However, this didn't happen and if anyone proposed a multi-billion dollar earth drilling government body, they would be laughed at.

In reply to MG:

Bottom line your position seems to be to explore or not. I think I'd choose to explore and I'd rather do it in space than Reading or even California. How little we would have achieved as a race if we were not born with curiosity and the desire to explore.

youtube.com/watch?v=dwXqoaThGvA&

Cheers

Toby

In reply to Toby_W:



You seem to have completely taken the wrong thing from what I was saying. I agree: explore. But don't pretend the justification is research. In fact the situation is very similar to early mountaineering when a veneer of scientific justification was needed to make alpinism justifiable socially.

In reply to MG:

you are mixing two issues, spin off benefits or indirect uses many years later and deliberate thought out scientific experiments that can only be done in space, which are resolving known problems on earth.

Are you suggesting the research into how deadly pathogens become active, or how chemo attacks certain cancers shouldn't be carried out, or do they have a specific price, after which point we should ignore them? Does a certain number of people have to benefit? You get my point.

I think much more money is wasted on public and private vanity projects around the world, before we need to start targeting space research.

In reply to MG:


I think a far number of explorers, were botantists etc.. simply chasing new species, in new places etc.. amazing how many of those species had led to medicinal drugs & treatments. Sometimes, if you are pushing boundaries into new places, using new equipment and new techniques you don't quite know what you will find or how it will be of long term benefit, but the exercise itself is bound to provide a range of rewards. History has proven this.

Even randomly, perhaps the recent landing on a comet, opens up the option of humans diverting one in the future, should an earth bound comet/asteroid be spotted in time. Perhaps then, we'll need to launch from a permanent base in space, or on the moon etc.. But, then we'll need to learn more about how to man it, power it etc...

In reply to summo:
, or do they have a specific price, after which point we should ignore them? Does a certain number of people have to benefit? You get my point.

This mainly. Simply put if we spend money on A then it isn't available for B. If B is more valuable ( measured in whatever way) then it is preferable. From a research perspective, I would say most space travel is firmly under A.

In reply to MG:

I thought the experiments are carefully vetted and it's not just a case of whoever pays the most, gets their experiments done.

There's a limit to the space and time, so the experiments have to have a solid foundation and case.

In reply to DancingOnRock:

Of course, and now its there it makes sense to do that.

However, I don't believe the $150b (!!) the ISS programme has cost can be justified on research grounds, which to be fair, it isn't.

Firstly the finding of water on Mars is great news. Really exciting stuff, and it is worth bearing in mind that in all locations where there is known water on earth there is life. So water is a key environment for harboring life where we know it exists (earth), so finding water somewhere where we haven't yet found life is exciting, as it makes the discovery of life there far more likely.

Secondly on the point of spending money on space there are 2 areas where the research money is spent. One is to to conduct research into space technologies, such as rocketry, space suits, the impact of living in space on humans, space propulsion, food, etc etc etc. If you want to explore space, you need to conduct this research to improve the techniques required for exploration. You can't simply explore space, technology needs to be developed to do this, and this is done through research. If you support space exploration, you must support research into it.

Secondly there is research that can only be conducted in space (or is more easily conducted in space) due to the different environment. The argument as to whether it is worthwhile is probably stronger here due to the cost, but I certainly think it is. Especially given the costs are shared with the exploration aspect.

I think the argument that research in space isn't worthwhile really isn't a good one, especially in the context of the vast achievements that have been made through it. In addition to that the vast potential of space exploration should not be overlooked, we really haven't got started yet, and therefore we should continue to conduct research. It's also worth bearing in mind that the majority of people on this forum don't spend much on NASA, so we get the benefits of their publications and research at a pretty low cost!

In reply to MG:


So £120bish shared between how many nations? over 10 years. So the cost is between NASA, CSA, ESA, JAEA.... ESA's share is £40b / 10yr, or £4bish per annum per all the ESA nations(11 of them), so I'll be generous and call it £400m/yr from the UK. Pretty cheap really compared to how much the UK spends on other projects, or the fact the UK has much bigger proportion of the ESA ground based work, which it would not get if it wasn't part of the ESA.

UK space industry has a turnover of £8b, it exports £1b worth of satellites annually, plus other things. I'd say even if nothing was discovered on ISS, the UK gets an excellent return for it's stake in the various space partnerships.

In reply to MG:

You are having a laugh..

Blue sky research is hugely beneficial.

It needs to be protected and has been one of the great losses from the UK science sector as we have moved towards goal orientated, impact driven science.

It makes sense but we should still stand aside a few % of our budget to answer big questions with no immediate impact and that science does pay back.

In reply to DancingOnRock:



I co-wrote the NZ biosecurity science strategy for the next 20 years or so, we did loads of research into the need for blue sky science or should we just propose impact driven research. The evidence was pretty conclusive that funding big unknown questions does pay back over the long period.

In reply to Roadrunner5:


Measured how?

In reply to MG:


does it have to be? Can't you simply spend 5 or 10% on wild and spurious ideas. The UK once the nation of tinkerers in garden sheds, now wants to measure and evaluate everything before embarking on anything. You might want to read up on how many prototype designs James Dyson made before he got a properly functioning model, wild ideas often move things forward in big leaps. (although I tihnk his hand driers are $hit).

In reply to summo:


You can but you can't claim a huge benefit without some measurement.

You might want to read up on how many prototype designs James Dyson made before he got a properly functioning model,

Yes but that's not blue sky research, is it. It had a very focussed aim.

wild ideas often move things forward in big leaps. (although I tihnk his hand driers are $hit).

I think they are OK but his hoovers are rubbish. I'm a Henry man.

In reply to Roadrunner5:


I think you're agreeing with me there?

There is a process where the experiments have to have validity, whether that be bluesky or impact driven and it's not just done on a purely financial basis.

In reply to MG:

it could be measured, by looking at existing products that weren't the result of deliberate design or pursuit in the first place.

Accidental inventions, or things which were discovered, but their real use laid elsewhere;

saccharrin, smart dust, crisps, Teflon, vulcanised rubber, plastic/bakaelite, radiation from uranium, pacemaker, microwaves, super glue, Velcro, safety glass, dynamite, stainless steel....

can you imagine life without these items, which were never created to solve a specific problem. Sometimes failures in production development research are more fruitful than specific goals.

In reply to summo:




You then have to show that those products, or ones of similar benefit, wouldn't have been produced by focussed research funding in order to demonstrate "huge benefit". Teflon (that great invention that means frying pans are damaged by utensils), may have come out of the space programme. But if instead a tiny frying-pan research programme could have produced the same results, you can't say the space programme was a huge (research) success - in fact in that case it would be a grossly wasteful research programme..

In reply to MG:

The ISSpresso for example. Countless utilizations down here on terra firma - money well spent

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=14&v=dWuEVSCw8B8

In reply to MG:

Urban myth, I think DuPont invented Teflon by accident.

In reply to summo:

Well it was one of your examples. Pick another - the same arguments apply.

In reply to broken spectre:

That's not really addressing my cost-benefit point. Trillions of dollars for....coffee!

In reply to MG:

Thanks for the clarification & sorry as is always the case with threads the points can be lost as they lengthen, I understand though not sure I entirely agree.

Cheers

Toby

In reply to MG:


My was that they are things that were not discovered through someone directly trying to solve a specific problem.

In reply to MG:


Better think of it as military budget diverted in to space/civil applications and without a need to prove a civilian market exists in order to be developed. That gets a like from me.

As to diverting space exploration funding to save the planet, I suspect we would be oblivious to many of the problems currently befalling the planet if it weren't for the vantage point that earth orbit provides us.

Above all else, space-exploration gives us a sense of perspective otherwise missing. To be unwilling to undertake such exploration is a bit like saying everyone should give up climbing, hill-walking, sailing, or other frivolous, costly and risk-carrying activities that keep us away from our families, jobs and generally have a detrimental impact on the environment.

In reply to summo:
What about how to put a group of scientists into long term orbit to study the effects of various things in zero gravity.

I recon that's a pretty specific research problem that they've targeted and solved quite well.

In reply to Bob: The argument you don't need blue sky research is dangerous. For sure a lot of it goes nowhere, but that's the nature of the beast - only if you push and explore will you discover the truly new and innovative

In reply to one and all:

Has the editor of The Guardian been reading this thread? If so,interesting precis (but absurdly long url):

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/29/the-guardian-view-on-t...

In reply to Bob:
This discovery of liquid water, landing a working moveable object on the Red Planet, taking high quality photos of a planet and its moons 4.5billion miles away, landing on a fricking comet (A COMET!) . These are the discoveries that drive us forward. As Iain said, how many things have stemmed from the 60's space program. They are one of the reasons behind many of my kids at school getting really passionate about science and engineering.

We are such a tiny tiny dot in the unimaginably vast universe. Damn it, this stuff makes me so psyched.

'We choose to go to the moon this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.'

-Why climb the highest mountain? Why fly across the Atlantic? Why indeed...

Landed on a fricking comet!

In reply to Pursued by a bear:

It is also incorrect, curiosity can dig around, no problem at all. It isn't however equipped for water samples (not that liquid water actually exists), other than looking for evidence of water/ice in neutrons being emitted. But it can drill or dig the ground quite happily, take samples and analyse. If it wasn't fairly clean, it wouldn't be able to land and drive across the ground with contaminating it.

There is also plenty of discussion on how clean things need to be etc.. before landing there. How to clean, normal alcohol, or UV, autoclave etc.. Nothing leaves earth completely 100% clean, so they take samples at nasa of what is left on analysis craft like curiosity, so if they get obscure results, they can cross check what they took up themselves.

In reply to summo: Plus, as I understand it, some research on just how long any microbe or similar can survive if it does make it to the surface of Mars. Just because it's a harsh environment doesn't mean that things that remain on a craft can't endure.

I think this is different from what you meant by 'they take samples at nasa of what is left on analysis craft like curiosity', which would have to be done after cleaning but before launch as I don't see NASA or anyone else going up there to get it back for analysis.

Still, exciting times!

T.

In reply to Pursued by a bear:


Of course, If things survived impacts on planets as life (or the foundations of) spread around the universe. There is no reason why things can't survive a harsh landing on mars.


Yes of course, in between one stage and next. Nope, I don't think curiosity will be back soon. Perhaps it will sit in a museum in a few hundred years time though. When we now marvel at Stephenson's rocket, perhaps in the future we will stare at the primitive vehicle that once went to Mars.

In reply to Bob:

This is good news. Water means plants could grow at some point. Plants means animals and one very important animal to get to mars would be the cow. Then We can really have proper mars milk. Remember you read it here first folks!