How do perchlorates affect us human life?

https://en.wikipe..._effects

I say misinformation. Have these scientist never heard of Tardigrades or lichen ?

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Perchlorates are what make you a Jedi.

Perchlorates are poison, not that that matters one iota when it comes to colonization. Man will get it done, whether she speaks Engrish or not remains to be determined.

We settled Phoenix, people live there in the summer, Mars has to be easier.

Perchlorates can be used to generate oxygen. This is useful to human life.

Shall we spend a $trillion to personally verify Mars is a crap hole? Add surface 30 rad/year from cosmic radiation - no magnetosphere, no atmosphere. $ocial intent!

The same feat was accomplished in Harlem, Baltimore, Camden, urban Washington, DC; Atlanta, Detroit, Chicago, Pacoima...- though it cost $10 trillion during the Obama administration.

Perchlorates....as in Sodium Perchlorate, sold as "Staffel's Weed Killer". Also worked as a rocket propellant when mixed with other substances. Launched many rockets with it. So...it seems mars is covered with 1) weed killer and 2) an essential ingredient for rocket fuel.

We would be better served trying to colonize Antarctica than Mars.
If Earth has 100 apocalyptic events it would still be thousands of times more hospitable than Mars.

As a practical matter, the first explorers will rig for Mars as if it were as dead as the Moon -- zero atmosphere, food and water. Any mitigating factor will just be a bonus. Also, this may be a local phenomenon. It may not apply to the whole planet.

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My parents used to brew coffee in a perchlorator.

So much for Hollywood's idea of living on Mars like Martian as setting up a colony on Mars may need to be dialed back with something on the Moon first; then lessons learn after spending a few years on the Moon might a manned mission to Mars possible.

Or course Bacillus subtillis was killed by perchlorates. That is a common microbe.

You need mircrobes that live in acide mine waste

Not surprised at all. Life just doesn't happen to appear from non-life. Period. Even given the best of the best of the best conditions. No one possibly reproduce this. Yet we are spending billions and billions of tax dollars trying to find something that doesn't exist.

Really, only lunatics would even give a thought that life could have existed on Mars.

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OK, I'm on Mars.
1. Where is my air?
2. Where is my water?
3. Where is my food?
4. What will stop me from going crazy from isolation after 6 months?

1. Where is my air?

If you have a copious energy source you can split carbon dioxide to get oxygen. In any case you should try for a closed system because the filler (nitrogen, which we can't use but is essential to prevent either oxygen or carbon dioxide poisoning) is not readily available on Mars. You want to preserve nitrogen as much as you can.

2. Where is my water?

Potentially at the poles. If you have really a lot of energy at your disposal you can create it out of thin...erm..air and rock.

3. Where is my food?

That one is tricky. Hydroponics might be an answer.

What will stop me from going crazy from isolation after 6 months?

Same as the guys working in Antarctica. Do something you love - in this case explore and homestead on a new world - and there's little chance of going insane.

Shall we spend a $trillion to personally verify Mars is a crap hole? Add surface 30 rad/year from cosmic radiation - no magnetosphere, no atmosphere.

The martian surface average is more like 8 Rad/year, which can be further mitigated by choice of landing site. The radiation environment in Hellas planitia for instance is some 4 rad/year, still quite a bit more the the 0.6rad/year we get on Earth, but roughly the same as our astronauts are exposed to on the ISS. This also assumes astronauts are just hanging out on the surface without any protection. At the end of the day, radiation isn't the most serious concern in colonizing Mars.

Not surprised at all. Life just doesn't happen to appear from non-life. Period. Even given the best of the best of the best conditions. No one possibly reproduce this. Yet we are spending billions and billions of tax dollars trying to find something that doesn't exist.

Really, only lunatics would even give a thought that life could have existed on Mars.

Only an idiot would make a statement like that. Or a religionist. Same thing.

[Ha, Charles Cockell, who held an astrobiology MOOC I too, is truly productive.

@bscott: "This can only come as a shock to those who believe we capture all of the variables in our "simulations"."

It may come as a shock to those who believes that the purpose of simulations is to capture "all" variables instead of deepening understanding by capture system behavior. Especially if they do not see that this was a necessary experimental study (which can lead up to simulations).

@Al: "Shall we spend a $trillion to personally verify Mars is a crap hole?"

We already know that, but it is the best crap hole after Earth for a lot of things such as robotic exploration of once habitable environments. And I doubt Jennifer and Charles had access to that much money

@Bart_A: "Not surprised at all. Life just doesn't happen to appear from non-life."

Besides the non-sequitur, that is an erroneous claim. Not only have we seen it happen - Earth started out sterile, now it is not, so life appeared from sterile conditions - we have corroborating and yes, reproduced, evidence from bioinformatic studies of the geological conditions that resulted in emergence of life. [Weiss MC et al. 2016, The physiology and habitat of the last universal common ancestor. Nature Microbiology.; reproduced in: Williams TA et al. 2017. Integrative modeling of gene and genome evolution roots the archaeal tree of life. PNAS.]

Excitingly that geological system is known to have existed on Mars - Spirit found an example - but also in Enceladus - Cassini found that from its plumes, and can be a generic feature of small (chondrite core) *and* large (heated core) ocean moons that are not ice locked towards the core. (So not every ocean moon, unfortunately.)

Shall we spend a $trillion to personally verify Mars is a crap hole? Add surface 30 rad/year from cosmic radiation - no magnetosphere, no atmosphere. $ocial intent!

The same feat was accomplished in Harlem, Baltimore, Camden, urban Washington, DC; Atlanta, Detroit, Chicago, Pacoima...- though it cost $10 trillion during the Obama administration.

The addiction to fecal regurgitation is getting out of hand. Fecal regurgitators sure stink a place up.

It is hard for me to understand how the information in this article can be considered new or interesting. The toxicity of perchlorates is well known hand has been for at least a dozen decades.

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Mars is a dead berg and a waste to send people to. Keep sending unmanned probes. Jupiter and Saturnian moons are a much better bet for potential life.

Mars is named after the Roman god of War, so why not send all our warmongering folks there

Religionists would love to occupy new lands where they could reproduce without limit. And as mars represents the high ground they would have a strategic advantage for conquering their home world, the 'holy land', basically by raining asteroids down upon it until we are all killed or converted.

Great idea.
ты сумасшедший?

This little factoid could have made some interesting chemical drama for The Martian. Whoops...spilled some hydrazine on the soil... BOOOM!
Tak interestna!

(ok I don't have a keyboard configured for cyrillic...)

We settled Phoenix, people live there in the summer, Mars has to be easier.