Digest Number 52

> How do you know that Martian life forms would consider their own
> planet stressfull? Perhaps they would consider Earth's Environment
> to be more stressful. Basically you are saying that Martain life may
> be indistiguishable from Earth life, if so they wouldn't be very
> interesting anyway. We could just settle Mars without worrying
> about it. This space colonies vs Mars colonies busness is silly. Its
> like Europeans arguing whether to go to North America or South
> America.
Earth microbes would consider Mars stressful. If they survived at
all, they would experience a strong selection pressure, and would become
quite different from their ancestors within some time.
If indigenous Martian life is indistinguishable from Earth life in
its basic building blocks, that in itself will be a momentuous
scientific discovery - unless the researchers cannot know whether this
Martian life descends from Earthlife accidentally introduced when some
astronauts dumped their poop outside the habitat fifteen years earlier.
There would be three possible explanations: life evolves into only
one or very few possible configurations of nucleic acids/peptides
whereever it is formed from some original soup; life evolved on one of
the planets and was carried to the other by meteorites; life evolved on
the Earth and was brought to Mars by astronauts. It would be good to be
rid of the third possibility, in the event that such life is found.
Besides, don't be greedy. :-) If freefall habitats are built, won't
that be enough of a thrill for a while? To me, they would be far more
interesting than a few golfers on Mars, as would genuine scientific
discoveries.