Any plans for a Mars mission must be scrapped now.

[alang1216]

It took billions of years for the microbes on Earth to create enough oxygen for our atmosphere to support life.

You might want to take a science class or two.

I did take some science classes and they emphasized not making conclusions in the absence of data. You may be right, you may be wrong. Too many variables for me to say for sure.

 

[Mac-7]

Any mission to Mars must be scrapped now. A Mars mission will be a suicide mission. Its just to far, and has to much radiation. To many areas for telemetry errors for the mission to and from Mars.

A suicide mission?

That should not stop freaked out greenies who are convinced the earth is doomed

 

[Carl in Michigan]

52ndStreet
That same provincial and myopic thinking was there before Columbus then the moon mission.
Humans will land on mars by 2040

I remember when we were gonna land on Mars in 1980

 

[jwoodie]

Feel free to read back to what the actual topic is.

Here it is:

Any mission to Mars must be scrapped now. A Mars mission will be a suicide mission. Its just to far, and has to much radiation. To many areas for telemetry errors for the mission to and from Mars.

As you can read, the OP was about the survivability of a mission to Mars, not its long term surface habitability.

 

[jwoodie]

I remember when we were gonna land on Mars in 1980

The decision to use a Moon orbit (instead of an Earth orbit) for the Apollo program pretty much killed that idea.

 

[Mushroom]

Today yes, tomorrow, maybe not. Most of it is CO2. It is possible we can create a plant that can float in the atmosphere and use the Sun to break up the CO2 into carbon to grow and reproduce and O2. In 100 years we might have an Earth-like atmosphere with a layer of organic matter on the surface.

Right, sure it will.

That only took around 3.5 billion years for that to happen on Earth.

And you say it will happen in 100 years.

And yes, Earth once had an atmosphere very similar to that of Venus. That was from the beginning until around 500 million years ago. Of course, the planet was also mostly covered by water oceans, and the first life had the perfect place to thrive in. However, that was anaerobic bacteria, that actually "consumed" other gasses, and their waste product was oxygen.

So no, we are not talking about a century. We are not even talking about a thousand years, or even a million years. You are talking about something that on our own planet took 3.5 billion years. And you think we can do it in a century.

Oh, and first you had better find a way to cover the planet with an ocean. Because those bacteria can not survive outside of an ocean.

You know, there are plentiful videos by professors and actual geologists that talk about the Hadean and Archean eras. Feel free to watch some, then you will understand why what you just said is completely impossible.

 

[Mushroom]

Your thinking is limiting the possibility of living on Mars to the surface. Living underground is also a choice.

Uh-huh. Tell me, how have the experiments like that worked so far?

Oh, I can answer that simply, they have not. And exploring is not "living". We have explored the Moon, we have not lived there. We have had explorers in space over us constantly for decades, but we still do not really live in space.

I doubt we will be there within the next 300 years, let alone 30.

 

[BackAgain]

Any mission to Mars must be scrapped now. A Mars mission will be a suicide mission. Its just to far, and has to much radiation. To many areas for telemetry errors for the mission to and from Mars.

Hey. Luddite. That’s what they said about a manned human lunar landing.

 

[Mushroom]

Zero machines. Assuming we could manufacture a microbial plant that could live and reproduce, say once a day (microbe generations are measured in hours) in the atmosphere of Venus, the CO2 atmosphere would easily be consumed in tens of years, not tens of thousands. There would be no predators, the real danger is having the plant go extinct and not evolve.

Hell, why not just create some magical unicorns that can do it then?

Tell me, exactly how microbial plants there are that need no water, and can survive in the atmosphere? I would love to study these magical plants that can defy gravity and need no liquid.

 

[westwall]

I did take some science classes and they emphasized not making conclusions in the absence of data. You may be right, you may be wrong. Too many variables for me to say for sure.

I see no evidence for that claim.

 

[alang1216]

Right, sure it will.

That only took around 3.5 billion years for that to happen on Earth.

And you say it will happen in 100 years.

Evolution is a slow and messy process, creationism is the opposite. Image a single microbe floating in the Venusian atmosphere consuming CO2 and other gases. It grows and reproduces once a day. Since it has no predators nor any physical limits to it's movement, how long would it be before it filled the Venusian skies, a continuous, planet-wide layer of microbes? 100 years might be conservative.

Oh, and first you had better find a way to cover the planet with an ocean. Because those bacteria can not survive outside of an ocean.

Why? There are plenty of bacteria that survive outside our oceans.

You know, there are plentiful videos by professors and actual geologists that talk about the Hadean and Archean eras. Feel free to watch some, then you will understand why what you just said is completely impossible.

You need to study what Arthur C. Clarke said about the impossible.

 

[Mushroom]

It took billions of years for the microbes on Earth to create enough oxygen for our atmosphere to support life.

You might want to take a science class or two.

That is the problem with a lot of people today.

They know almost nothing of science, and believe that what they think or believe is reality.

Hell, I have had more than one try to explain that Venus is a "runaway greenhouse effect", and that Earth would turn out the same way if we did not reverse things now. The only problem is that the Earth would never get that way, because Venus is not a greenhouse effect at all. It is the way it is because it has an incredibly dense atmosphere, and it would be that hot no matter what the atmosphere is composed of. And on our own planet, it took billions of years for that to transform into the atmosphere we know today.

Now most tend to believe that all planets likely started the same way. Of the 8 planets in our system, 5 are gas planets. And we know that that was once 6, because we were one also. And it is believed that Mars likely was one also.

Now the other might have been, but it was too small and to close to the sun so that atmosphere was simply blasted away.

Now of the other 3 inner rocky planets, only one remains that way. Mars was once very earth-like it is now believed. But the cooling of the magnetosphere led to atmospheric loss. So it grows more and more barren every million years, and will eventually resemble Mercury.

Venus is the closest to ours in size, but also has no magnetosphere. However, there is also something about their atmosphere that is creating something similar in their upper atmosphere. It is still not fully understood, but for those that think terraforming Venus would be a solution, tampering with that effect will likely result in a loss of that protection and then Venus would suffer the same fate as Mars and Mercury.

Venus is a rarity among planets - a world that does not internally generate a magnetic field. Despite the absence of a large protective magnetosphere, the near-Venus environment does exhibit a number of similarities with planets such as Earth. The latest, surprising, example is the evidence for magnetic reconnection in Venus' induced magnetotail.

ESA Science & Technology - A magnetic surprise for Venus Express

Venus is a rarity among planets - a world that does not internally generate a magnetic field. Despite the absence of a large protective magnetosphere, the near-Venus environment does exhibit a number of similarities with planets such as Earth. The latest, surprising, example is the evidence for...

sci.esa.int

This is something I find fascinating, as people really seem to believe we can change the atmosphere of a planet in only a century or two. Of course, the same people likely believe that humans alone are going to turn our planet into a duplicate Venus in a century or two, so I should not really be surprised. They are the most arrogant it seems, and just believe that they can do anything they want.

 

[Mushroom]

Why? There are plenty of bacteria that survive outside our oceans.

OK, technicality. I should shave said "live and thrive".

Yes, bacteria can "survive" outside of an ocean. It is known as a "cyst", and at that point is actually technically not alive. It is completely dormant, and does nothing. No biological functions like converting one gas to another, no reproduction, nothing. At that point it is lifeless and does nothing. Simply "sleeping" in the hopes that it can be dropped back into a suitable environment so it can go back to "living".

So once again, show me a bacteria that can thrive, do it's metabolic processes, and reproduce outside of a liquid medium.

 

[alang1216]

Hell, why not just create some magical unicorns that can do it then?

Tell me, exactly how microbial plants there are that need no water, and can survive in the atmosphere? I would love to study these magical plants that can defy gravity and need no liquid.

I'm guessing there are microbes that can do many of these things, just not all in the same species. We can already slice and dice DNA and make critters not found in nature and we are only getting better. In 100 years from now, who knows what we'll be capable of.

 

[JohnDB]

Venus also has Sulphuric Acid for an atmosphere that has literally eaten and dissolved every satellite we have sent to it before the co² layer.
Nevermind the intense heat.

Both Mars and Venus require a minimum of 2 years of travel time in space.
So most astronauts won't have a bone structure by the time they get there. Nevermind the extreme radiation of Space outside the protective atmosphere of a planet.

 

[alang1216]

So once again, show me a bacteria that can thrive, do it's metabolic processes, and reproduce outside of a liquid medium.

Maybe it is imagination you need:

Life could be thriving in the clouds of Venus​

Published in 2021 in the journal Astrobiology, the series of articles targets Venus as a potential home for microbial life like bacteria and other organisms. The collection emerged from the 2019 Venera-D Venus Cloud Habitability workshop, which convened more than 50 scientists in Moscow to examine existing research and understand the planet’s potential to support life billions of years ago — and today.

Despite the features that make the planet’s surface inhospitable, its thick global cloud cover may present gentler conditions for some microbial life forms due to the availability of sunlight, nutrients and some water — all of which can create narrow but habitable zones like those theorized to exist high in the atmosphere.

 

[Mushroom]

I'm guessing there are microbes that can do many of these things, just not all in the same species. We can already slice and dice DNA and make critters not found in nature and we are only getting better. In 100 years from now, who knows what we'll be capable of.

Dude, you are lacking of any of the actual science you need to understand why this is not possible,

Here, I suggest you start here. It talks about the Archean, and how that happened on our planet. And it is largely at a Grade-High School level so hopefully you will be able to follow it.



And no, there are no microbes that can do that. Ancient Earth at that time was absolutely nothing like Venus is. You are trying to post absolute junk science.

Here is another you can watch, which goes a bit more in depth. More like High School - introductory College level.



And yes, I actually have seen both of these, and frequently watch such for entertainment. But if you want to start something similar on Venus, your first step is not the bacteria, but putting in place the environment that such bacteria can survive. We actually already have such bacteria on our planet today, So no need to even "create" them, we already have such bacteria that have survived for billions of years and do exactly what you want. However, they only remain in scattered thermal deep sea vents and in deep caves.

But your first step? Getting enough water to Venus to cover the planet with oceans, so such can survive and thrive. Then simply sitting back and waiting a few billion years.

Of course, by that time the Sun will be preparing to start it's Red Giant phase, and a billion or so years after that it will be consumed by the sun. So all that work would have been for naught.

 

[Mushroom]

Venus also has Sulphuric Acid for an atmosphere that has literally eaten and dissolved every satellite we have sent to it before the co² layer.

Which early bacteria on Earth could handle. And we still have a few scattered on the planet today.

Thiomargarita namibiensis is an interesting example. It metabolizes hydrogen sulfide, and retains the sulfur and metabolizes out hydrogen. Not unlike most bacteria and plants today that metabolize carbon dioxide and metabolize out the oxygen while retaining the carbon. However, there are only a few examples left, as the Great Oxygenation Event caused almost all species that did not thrive on the Oxygen-Carbon cycle to go extinct.

Bacteria like this are commonly called "Extremophiles", and a lot of scientists study them because it gives a peek into the earliest forms of life. The few still found on our planet are almost all in locations that humans can not survive, which are also low in oxygen. Because for each of them, an atmosphere rich in oxygen is as poisonous as one of hydrogen sulfide is to us. So the few remaining survived in an atmosphere devoid of light and oxygen.

 

[westwall]

Maybe it is imagination you need:

Life could be thriving in the clouds of Venus​

Published in 2021 in the journal Astrobiology, the series of articles targets Venus as a potential home for microbial life like bacteria and other organisms. The collection emerged from the 2019 Venera-D Venus Cloud Habitability workshop, which convened more than 50 scientists in Moscow to examine existing research and understand the planet’s potential to support life billions of years ago — and today.

Despite the features that make the planet’s surface inhospitable, its thick global cloud cover may present gentler conditions for some microbial life forms due to the availability of sunlight, nutrients and some water — all of which can create narrow but habitable zones like those theorized to exist high in the atmosphere.

You can have all of the imagination you wish, but your imagination doesn't trump physics, or biology, or chemistry.

 

[alang1216]

Dude, you are lacking of any of the actual science you need to understand why this is not possible,

Here, I suggest you start here. It talks about the Archean, and how that happened on our planet. And it is largely at a Grade-High School level so hopefully you will be able to follow it.



And no, there are no microbes that can do that. Ancient Earth at that time was absolutely nothing like Venus is. You are trying to post absolute junk science.

Here is another you can watch, which goes a bit more in depth. More like High School - introductory College level.



And yes, I actually have seen both of these, and frequently watch such for entertainment. But if you want to start something similar on Venus, your first step is not the bacteria, but putting in place the environment that such bacteria can survive. We actually already have such bacteria on our planet today, So no need to even "create" them, we already have such bacteria that have survived for billions of years and do exactly what you want. However, they only remain in scattered thermal deep sea vents and in deep caves.

But your first step? Getting enough water to Venus to cover the planet with oceans, so such can survive and thrive. Then simply sitting back and waiting a few billion years.

Of course, by that time the Sun will be preparing to start it's Red Giant phase, and a billion or so years after that it will be consumed by the sun. So all that work would have been for naught.

Thanks for the links but Venus isn't the Earth. Actual scientist Carl Sagan posited a similar terraforming option 60 years ago. You may be right but I think you are underestimating the power of genetic engineering. Certainly neither of us will live to see which of us is correct.