donsutherland1

jfuh

This bit isn't really much of a surprise - the surprise would be actually finding either indirect or direct evidence of life - perhaps ferrodoxins or Fe3O4 like they did with the martian antarctic rocks. Or fossilized remains of life.
The real biggie would be actually finding a living martian.

Which given the ability of life on this planet to survive in the harshest of conditions I would gamble actually still exist - ie endospores.

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GarzaUK

To be fair it is a bit of a surprise and it is a big story in itself.

It means in theory, colonies can be self-sufficient. We have Ice there, that takes care of water, we have nutrients there that can grow earth plants and crops, therefore we can keep livestock there.

As the evidence piles up it seems that we are destined to be a two planet species after all, we seemed to be destined to colonise the Red Planet.

Which brings me to my next point...

What if we can heat the planet and melt the ice, should we allow Earth life to spread on Mars?

Or should we keep Earth life confined to special areas and see how Martian life evolves on its own? This is of course if Mars actually has amino acids of its own.

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The silenced majority

Resources are near infinite IMO.

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GarzaUK

How so? What sort of resources?

The silenced majority

I don't know, really.

When I look at the sky on a starry night, I can't help but think that resources for energy, life sustenance - whatever - are near infinite.

Korimyr the Rat

There is the scientific curiosity of studying how life is evolving on Mars, versus improving the long-term survival chances of our species. Personally, I think the correct course of action is obvious.

We should have been working on this decades ago.

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jfuh

That kinda boils down to "what's worth going to mars for"?
Sure given these resources colonization would be a higher probability but there needs to be a strong motive.
The original explorers that came to the "new world" came because of the desire to find a path to the far east that was not controlled by the Portuguese or Venetians. What is the strong motive to go to mars? Practically unless there is some resource or some scientific significance there's just simply not going to be any push to cross over 10 light minutes to get there. Hence why I don't really see this as any sort of major surprise.

Kandahar

There's no push NOW, because it's too expensive to send humans there. And rightfully so; robots can make all the scientific discoveries much more cheaply than humans can.

However, in a few decades the cost will have been reduced to the point where we can not only send humans, but we can actively begin the terraforming and colonization process. When that happens, the motive will be the same as the motives of people colonizing distant lands throughout history: because it's there.

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