In my Quest class we did this project where we "went" to Mars. I was an engineer, we designed the ship and a rover. My friends H, C, B, SS, and Domo were all biologists. They "discovered" dormant life beneath the surface.
Yesterday, the last day we had Quest this semester, we had to give our teacher our recommendations for what we should do. There were a lot of different opinions, and we also had to consider what was possible. No one would actually leave the planet alone, but terraforming would take hundreds of years at minimum. Is there actually a morally, politically, and scientifically benificial choice?
a. Leave it alone. Allow Mars to develop or die on its own. A lot of people picked this as the most ethical choice, but it is unrealistic that we wouldn't go somewhere that we could go.
b. Build a research station on Mars. This may harm some of the bacteria that lives there, but the thing is that we could learn more about the bacteria, maybe get it to develop.
c. Build a mining station. Would also harm Mars. However, since Mars is closer to the asteroid belt and there are metals there we could use...no one in my class picked this.
d. Terraform the planet. To terraform it for human occupation we would have to put a solar panel in orbit around it to warm the planet and melt the ice caps. Simultaneously we would plant the hardiest cold-weather plants there are to hold the water in. Terraforming has never been done before. However, the planet could also be terraformed to suit the bacteria life already there, so that we could observe the formation of actual aliens.
If there really is life on Mars, which our experiments proved there COULD be, what do you think?
Not registered?
Create an account