
Looking for life on other planets? Go deep - Hooke
http://www.airspacemag.com/space/mars-caves-180959123/?no-ist
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sandworm101
My hunt for life isn't for bacteria in caves. I take it as written that that
sort of life exists out there somewhere. Send the probes, but don't kill the
dream of finding ewoks. I don't want to spend billions/trillions of dollars to
find pond scum in a Mars cave. That's interesting, but not my dream. Spend the
money on telescopes necessary to image exoplanets. Find the green/blue one
with and O2-heavy atmosphere. I want the one with city lights on the dark
side.

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heydenberk
Finding any extraterrestrial life is much more interesting than finding any
specific kind of ET life. Having an n > 1 for biology would be one of the most
profound advancements in the history of science.

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spdustin
I agree. And I don't. Let me explain.

Discovering that our planet is not a _special snowflake_ would be one of the
most inspirational experiences I can dream of.

Discovering intelligent life, end more so!

Discovering super-intelligent life - think of the possibilities!

Then nearly every sci-fi movie flashes before my eyes, and I wonder: would
they be as amazed at our presence in the universe? Or a pest, dirtying up a
rocky ball of perfectly harvestable resources they intend to process for their
alien armada?

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JumpCrisscross
> _Discovering that our planet is not a special snowflake would be one of the
> most inspirational experiences I can dream of_

To each their own. Finding unique pond scum on Mars would deeply horrify me.

If life independently emerged twice in one system then the paucity of
intelligent life's cosmic signature means something happens between formation
and broadcast with deafening regularity.

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lovemenot
Not necessarily. It might merely reflect a too-narrow definition of
_broadcast_ baked into current assumptions. Right now SETI is looking for its
lost keys near a street lamp, because "that is where the light is". Not to
fault that approach, but I would not make any larger inferences about their
lack of success.

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vkou
This is actually one of the few scientific reasons to send a human to Mars.
(Or at least, low Mars orbit.) Cave teleoperation with a seven-minute delay is
completely infeasible, but teleoperation with a few-second delay would work
much better.

You could deal with the wireless communication problem by having the robot be
tethered - I think a human could figure out how to drive said robot, without
snagging the cable. This could even be done from low Mars orbit, reducing
mission cost, and the risk to human life.

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rosser
As true as all of that may be, I don't think it's politically viable to send
people to Mars orbit, without putting at least one of the mission crew's
footprints in its regolith.

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foobarbecue
FYI I was just awarded a NASA postdoc and my project is to add ice-climbing
capability to this robot (LEMUR).

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marcolinux
The article made me curious about lumenhancement. Seems to be about this 3D
datasets of caves:
[http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/projects/NIAC_Caves/](http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/projects/NIAC_Caves/)

