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Comment by ramraj07 | Hacker News Reader

It’s beyond obvious that water flew as rivers in Mars at some point, and looks like there’s some water there even now!

Even life, is there any reason to think there WASNT some microscopic life there at some point? I doubt anyone thinks there’s viable life there even now (though one can’t 100% exclude the possibility).

It’s like everyone kind of already knows these are the likely facts but we keep using these as scapegoat questions to fund more missions for rovers etc. Instead, wouldn’t it be better if we are honest to oursleves and find things we actually want to do? Like get some people there? Which again, more than the science is just about the accomplishment itself.

I’m genuinely curious about places like Europa. I’m not at all curious about digging more Martian dirt and doing increasingly insignificant geology on a dead planet.

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I would argue that the main thing holding us back is the lack of funding. NASA's entire budget can't even compete with Meta's R&D department, so they have to take small steps. Investigate Mars, try to get people back on the moon (Artemis), and go from there.

Eventually we'll get to a point where we can explore Europa properly and we can send people to Mars, and all that, but it's going to take time. Without enough funding, things just take a lot of time.

You have it backwards. NASA is actually really good at exploring other stuff in our solar system. They have sent probes to all kinds of places, recently direct imaging Pluto with New Horizons.

Their budget is actually absurdly large. The problem is they are mandated to engage in vanity projects like Artemis, which don't do anything to contribute to science at all.

>Even life, is there any reason to think there WASNT some microscopic life there at some point?

We have no clue about how likely it is for life to emerge or how it happens, so we can't really tell. Maybe we're on the only planet with life in the universe.

Finding proof of life on Mars would completely change that equation.

Science is the difference between "everyone kind of already knows" and proven facts. Don't confuse a hundred years of Martian sci-fi with actual scientific discoveries about Mars.

Not being snarky but that is what Science is supposed to be. Unfortunately, it has mutated to the more warm & fuzzy "everyone kind of knows." Case in point, it should be "trust the data" but instead we get "trust the experts." The irony? We all know expertise in humans is fleeting.

> Even life, is there any reason to think there WASNT some microscopic life there at some point?

Well the little thing of not having any evidence indicating the presence of life.

So agree, but the logistical challenges for even landing a probe on somewhere like Europa or Enceladus are far greater than landing somewhere as inert as Mars. Jupiter has an incredible magnetic field, we'd need to somehow land on the moon (which is a challenge in itself due to the potential for 30m spires of ice), drill through the surface ice and possibly through multiple subsurface oceans til we reached a layer that had geothermal vents.

Also while I agree with you that it's very likely that there was microscopic life on Mars at some point in the past, considering that finding evidence of life on other planets would be one of, if not the largest discovery in human history, I think it's important to keep going until we confirm it.

I always gave this vision of 20 years after sending a probe the moon turns green. Liquid sub surface ocean being an excellent breeding ground.

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