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Posted by jburk to Life on Mars at May 31, 2004 06:58 PM
A consortium of scientists, including a Utah biologist, say some weird creatures found in the Great Salt Lake might help unravel some of the mysteries on Mars. Though the Great Salt Lake is a dead sea - drying up even more this year from years of drought - it's far from dead. On the northern arm of the lake microbiologists from Westminster College in Salt Lake have been taking samples of water.TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.marsnews.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/580
Well if Mars is devoid of life, then we have prime candidates for tranplantation from the salt lake area that would survive the harsh martian environment quite possibly.
Posted by: Harold LaValley at June 1, 2004 05:57 AM
Off note thought on Martian life:
Back to LEO and how to get there. Some time ago we all sort of batted around The space elevator, Nano carbon fibers and other such stuff.
If one were to while in orbit create the ringed planet earth by construction of panels that could be joined end to end. Then add spokes just like a bicycle rim by those same nano carbon from the ground up. Now you get gravity as a byproduct and a launching platform to any were from LEO.
Posted by: Harold LaValley at June 1, 2004 09:15 AM
I'm still thinking that the genes are going to have to be tweaked a bit to account for UV etc. Also the bugs will still need large quantities of water at least on a seasonal basis. This brings me to another point. The changing nature of the Great Salt Lake deserves more scrutiny since as the salt(s) content increase will previously unobserved bugs start appearing? The mechanism for this will be important in the search for past life on Mars as well as creating a more eficient layered ecology should we so choose to attempt terraforming.
Posted by: Chris at June 1, 2004 11:01 AM