Mars ecology

Earthworms can reproduce in simulated Martian soil, which would be helpful when people start going there:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/11/171127091558.htm

This soil simulant is made from earth volcanic rocks, mechanically crushed. I have doubts that it is realistic. Thinking about lunar regolith that people have had direct experience with. That stuff has lots of sharp edges on microscale, because it was crushed by hammers. It was crushed by 10s-thousands-km-per-hr incoming rocks. All I have heard is that it is irritating in a variety of ways.

I realize that Mars had a very different early history, with atmosphere and surface water. But that was long ago. More recently its surface is just blasted like the Moon's.

Until there is a surface-material return mission, our knowledge of Martian soil will be very limited.

The lunar soil samples, by the way, seem to all have been allowed to deteriorate. Contact with water and oxygen. This is sad because doing earthworm experiments with that stuff might not yield accurate results. Actually it is sad in many ways and not clear to me who allowed that to happen.

 

Ya you betcha. Mars work will have some major stumbles I expect. But Mother Earth as a hangout is nowhere near the big bad.

 

Every environmental 'movement' has faced this same dilemma: state it mildly (within hard evidence) and nobody effing cares. Overstate it, and in modern terms, you get clicks. This is the younger sibling to 'development' having tantrums.

It does not mean environmental concerns should not be considered. Playing field is not level, so (as hkmb says) 'our team' falls theatrically on the pitch looking for a yellow card.

There are substantial interrelated challenges facing human enterprise and addressing those gracefully will require some big-boy and big-girl thinking. Prompt Doom is not a winner. Repeating 19/20th centuries is not a winner either.

 

I reckon PriusChat persists not because some car buyers fear prompt global disaster unless they make their +CO2 smaller. Rather, because they appreciate when some car company leads towards future, they are inclined to follow. More than that, because buyers lead and Toyota with an unpopular innovation could have been an epic fail.

It was not a fail. Instead, just look at all the hybrids and EVs that are now littering our roadways

If we all expected prompt planetary doom, we'd have bought Hummers and Escalades to go out in grand style.

We expect to survive, which is a darn good first step. Planning that survival remains a work in progress.

 

Mars is much further than Moon, where we have scarcely begun. Mars is different from Earth and Moon in ways we don't yet know. I doubt that Mars habitation can succeed without Moon practice, but some future thinkers think otherwise and that's OK.

Doing Mars critically requires 'surface sample returns' from multiple near-equatorial regions. When somebody shows their rocketry will send back a few tons, we can begin to discuss habitation. We hear more now about robotically manufacturing 'return fuel' there, which is also important.

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Just now a volcano in Bali is emitting ash. Somebody ought be collecting tons of that fresh stuff for biological/agricultural research. V ash is all spiky on microscale and kinda like Moon. And like Mars, maybe. If earthworms can handle that, one might have more confidence in exoplanet agriculture. Mars inhabitation requires food production and that means soil biology beyond what we have ever done before.

It also requires 'topside' engineering and let us hope engineers are getting into that.

It also requires vast money and frankly I don't see how that happens, medium term. I know where most of humanity's money resides, and so do you, but we dare not speak of it here.

When Earth's richest people want to pay to do Mars, it might get done.

 

Just me & you here now eh Bisco?

I would agree that survival is a given, pretty much, but making the best of human enterprise will require discussions we have not yet begun.

 

Not at all. You know that d.e. is animals' silicate exoskeletons, right?

 

Yes d.e. has sharp edges as does volcanic ash. I was thinking that sharp edges from high-speed bombardment might be different. The latter are independent of material's chemistry.

But this I wonder how similar is Mar's regolith to Moon's. I don't know and it is not certain that anyone else does. Mar's has just a bit of atmosphere, which might matter.

I still think we need to get a ton of the stuff trucked back to Earth for agricultural experiments.

The worm experiment is notable. But one must realize how roots grow into soil - they basically push with water pressure, lubed with mucus. Do sharp edges matter? Many plants pop up in fresh volcanic ash.

 

Require plant debris in one form or another. Can actually get quite subtle. I think the new worm experiment included pig manure in the soil simulant.