The New Organics Findings: Curiosity Rover Won't Be Finding Martians Anytime Soon

Curiosity Rover has discovered methane and other organic compounds on Mars. But these need not be linked to incipient life forms.


As is often the case, the yen among astronomers to find life - of any kind - often leads to 'jumping the gun' before all the data has been vetted. Such is the case again after Curiosity Rover was claimed to have found "potential signs of life on Mars."   This was based on the detection of methane— as well as apparent traces of  organic compounds in ancient mudstone.

Curiosity landed on Mars back in 2012 and it’s been slowly climbing up Mount Sharp, a large hill formed when an asteroid impact created Gale Crater, simultaneously exposing multi-billion year old sedimentary rocks laid down in an ancient lakebed. The rover came equipped with a suite of instruments known as Sample Analysis at Mars, or SAM. And its main goal was to find organic molecules. These commonly form in non-biological processes, but they’re also the building blocks of life.

And mysteriously, the VW Beetle-sized rover succeeded in finding organics even though past Mars missions, like 1976’s Viking landers, did not.  (But bear in mind the detection technology available to the Viking craft was vastly inferior to what Rover has to work with.)

 Anyway, Rover's data has led to two scientific papers published simultaneously in the prestigious journal Science.    In the first paper, a team analyzed three Mars years worth (55 Earth months) of atmospheric data from Curiosity. In that time, the rover caught methane levels spiking as the seasons changed, growing several times stronger at the height of summer in the northern hemisphere.  Note that on Mars methane levels range between 0.24 to 0.65 parts per million. This is compared to a level of about 1800 parts per billion on Earth.

Based on the chemical make-up, the scientists suspect this methane was heated up and released from sub-surface reservoirs where it was likely trapped in permafrost. They suspect large amount of the gas may be frozen in such underground reservoirs. But its exact origin remains a mystery.

The second paper was based on a study, led by NASA bio-geochemist Jennifer Eigenbrode, examined drill samples of three-billion year old mudstones that Curiosity collected from two different sites in Gale Crater. Curiosity Rover dropped these samples into an onboard laboratory and cooked them in order to analyze the gasses they threw out.

According to Eigenbrode’s team, the rocks released organic molecules much like those found in organic-rich rocks on Earth.  The core problem? There is simply no way to determine if these molecules are evidence of ancient Martian life.

This is far from the first time Mars researchers have claimed to find methane. Curiosity itself made headlines in recent years after seeing faint methane signals. But scientists have been chasing this gas for decades. This alone ought to put a damper on too much excitement that the source of the CH4 is some kind of life form.

What is the most likely cause of the new methane signals? Not life, but rather a leakage from water-based crystals called clathrates, these buried in the cold Martian soil.  Seasonal changes in temperature would then release different amounts of methane, more as the temperature increases..

The most resonant question then remains: Are there now signs of life on Mars?

In the words of Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program:

"We don't know but these results tell us we are on the right track."

As indeed we presumably have been for the past 4 decades.

Alex Jones' Platform For Conspiracies Now Ventures Into the Psychotic

Alex Jones' recent guest believes a colony of child sex slaves exists on Mars.

Let us concede and agree that when you invent bonkers conspiracies with no grounding in reality it is only a matter of time before you go off the deep end, into the realm of psychosis. We see this has now happened with balmy conspiracy inventor Alex Jones sponsoring a nutty guest (Robert David Steele ) with a loopy conspiracy ideation (it doesn't even merit the term 'theory') about a child sex slave colony on Mars. . The insane conspiracy theory was aired on Alex Jones’ “The Alex Jones Show,” which is broadcast on 118 radio stations across the country.

According to Steele, appearing on last Thursday's  "Alex Jones Show":

"We actually believe that there is a colony on Mars that is populated by children who were kidnapped and sent into space on a 20 -year ride."

He added:

"So that once they get to Mars they have no alternative but to be slaves on the Mars colony."


The most disgusting aspect of this bullshit was blaming NASA for engineering the "colony" and secretly populating it - using what manner of craft - we don't know and can't say. NO NASA craft that large - to hold a hundred "sex slaves" - has yet been designed far less tested.

Also, two decades of travel would mean the hypothetical "children"  were no longer children upon arrival, but it is possible Steele might cite something like "suspended animation" .  If that was the case it's still the sorriest craft in the cosmos and not one NASA (or anyone else) would design, given a trip to Mars using standard chemical fuel rockets should take no longer than 8 months.  Besides a 20 year Mars transit would end up with all passengers dead given the levels of radiation they'd be exposed to.

Even 8 months would be pushing maximum tolerable levels. One paper appearing 4 years ago noted that the spacecraft containing the Curiosity Rover for its 253-day, 350-million-mile (563 million km) trip to Mars, indicated a radiation dose equivalent for even the shortest round-trip with current propulsion systems and comparable shielding at 0.66 Sievert (Sv) in a range of plus or minus 0.12 Sv.  A 20-year dose would be over 1730 Sv. (NASA lifetime astronaut limits are between 0.6 and 1.2Sv, depending on sex and age)

Then again, where on Mars would this colony be,  given Mars is inhospitable beyond comprehension, not like moving into a bottom basement Vegas hotel, say on Fremont Street?   To fix ideas,  the atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide and the average temperature is minus 81 Fahrenheit.  The "colony" would have to be some vast underground development with ample space for food storage, as well as access to melted Martian ice from which to make oxygen using electrolysis.  No such technology even exists to do this yet although it was depicted on the recent NatGeo series, 'Mars'.

If such a Mars destined space ship with hundreds of "sex slaves" was ever launched, why did no one see or hear it?  The ship would have had to have been at least three times the size of the Saturn V Moon rocket with five times the thrust. Such a launch, say from Vandenberg AFB in California or Cape Canaveral would have sent windows shuddering from a hundred miles away with the blast of the take off .   Yet no one has reported anything along those lines.

Neither have astronomical observatories reported detecting such a monster craft in the skies, dating from twenty years ago .  Were all the astronomical observatories in on this conspiracy too?

Why have all those sucking up this Martian sex slave BS -like the "Pizzagate" malarkey - not done the critical thinking to satisfy themselves it's all a big lot of hooey just like Jones' false flag ideation on Sandy Hook?  That is, that no children were actually killed and it was merely a gov't ruse using child actors to justify taking citizens' guns away.

Why are any Americans with more than air between the ears giving Steele's noxious sleaze bag crap any credibility or re-tweets at all?  For that matter, why is anyone still paying any attention to Alex Jones' absurd conspiracies?

The fact Jones' program is Trump's favorite show discloses he himself is in need of anti-psychotic treatment (strait jacket, electroconvulsive therapy, thorazine) as much as Alex Jones or Robert David Steele.   Worse, it means our fearless leader - who may now have to deal with an ICBM-capable North Korea - manifestly suffers from major psychotic delusions.  His release of the CNN beat down video with him acting like a latter day Hulk Hogan to body slam "CNN" shows he's lost his few remaining marbles.

Would you trust him to deal with Kim Jong Un, who now takes Trump for the biggest clown on Earth? Or to make any strategic deal involving a resolution of the current crisis? I sure as hell wouldn't! Nor would I any screwball that watches Alex Jones ' bilge or buys into any of it.   I'd no more trust his judgment than a guy who's certain that his gold teeth are really radio receivers, for distant aliens to send messages.

One Way Death Trip To Mars Compliments of Elon Musk? No Thanks!

Mars' surface as it might appear to passengers on Elon Musk's space ship - if they last that long.

It seems too many want to get to Mars in a hurry, and safety systems be damned. I noted three years ago the “Inspiration Mars” nonsense  which would cover 150 million miles and take 501 days overall to do a brief Mars "flyby".  Then there was "Mars One" through which nearly 200,000 volunteers from around the world signed up to "land on Mars and colonize it."  That has since been whittled to four, and meanwhile a robot prelim space craft is slated for launch in 2018, and that  mission aims to pave the way for the final volunteer crew by testing technology they will need should they reach the red planet in good enough shape to start the first human space colony. But the odds are they won't They will likely arrive DOA - if they get there in one piece at all - by virtue of receiving nearly the same amount of radiation as those 5 km from the Hiroshima atomic blast.

Now, we have wannabe commercial space pioneer Elon Musk, who recently declared in a speech ( at the International Astronautical Congress) entitled “Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species”,  that his goal was to “make Mars seem possible. To make it seem like it’s something we can do in our lifetimes. That you can go.” Musk, not meek about his ambitions, showed a video of his imagined Mars  rocket taking off from the Kennedy Space Center with 100 people on board, refueling in orbit and then landing on the surface of Mars. The audience fairly gasped at such a wondrous sight when NASA wasn't making similar plans until the 2030s.

By contrast, Musk's vision featured an ambitious timeline, starting with the first launch of an unmanned craft as soon as 2018, then the first paid passengers making their way to the Red Planet by 2024-25.  When asked if he himself would make the trip, he said "I'd have to get all my plans for succession in order first."  Just as well, because it's doubtful anyone would survive that trip any more than the Mars One journey.

Musk's design imagines a Mars rocket a towering 400-feet tall, with lots more thrust  than the Saturn V that took the Apollo astronauts to the moon. He acknowledged the immense, if quixotic, challenge he was undertaking would begin not just with creating a spacecraft that could keep dozens of humans alive for extended periods but with producing rocket fuel from the resources on Mars. And he acknowledged the difficulties of lowering the cost of the flights from $10 billion a person to $200,000 or less, in part by reusing rockets to fly repeat missions ferrying lots of people.

Now, try to imagine this, paying $10b each for a one way death trip. As one late night comic put it: "What better way than this to get rid of the billionaires!"

Let's also bear in mind that currently Musk’s Falcon 9 rocket is grounded, after blowing up for a second time. The maiden flight of its more powerful Falcon Heavy has been delayed again and again. I ask in all seriousness, would you really trust this guy to get you to Mars in one piece?

Musk, like Bas Lansdorp, CEO of MARS One, is also vastly understating the costs,, which he estimates at maybe $100b - say for 10 billionaires to take the first trip at $10b each. But as I've previously noted the more likely price of a first manned trip is $1 trillion - in today's dollars, and probably at least $1.4 trillion by the time the first ship is ready to launch in 8 years. That math would require at least 140 billionaires ready to launch to the Red Planet. I don't think there are that many who'd pay for a death ticket no matter how exciting Musk makes it. They want to remain here on good old planet Earth to see how many more hedge funds they can control, and how many resources they can consume for themselves.

Less clear is how SpaceX would pay to get to even that point. Musk did say he would “make the biggest contribution I can” of his own wealth, and at one point he joked that the company might have to use Kickstarter, the online fundraising platform, to raise money. Somehow, I don't think that would work for a project of this kind. Apart from that and outside of a few ambiguous technical details of the spacecraft he offered few specifics on how this monster ship would get built, where and what propulsion system might be used.

Nor did he address the hazards of radiation exposure for such a voyage- which might be just as well. To be clear, the radiation issue isn't necessarily a "show stopper" - but it means the proposed craft would need adequate shielding, and that means more money. Is $1 trillion too low then? Probably! That low figure gets you the basic "no frills"  craft to get there, but the highest probability of arriving as a corpse.

Reference can be made to a paper entitled  'Measurements of Energetic Particle Radiation in Transit to Mars on the Mars Science Laboratory" .  It revealed that the spacecraft containing the Curiosity Rover for its 253-day, 350-million-mile (563 million km) trip to Mars, indicated a radiation dose equivalent for even the shortest round-trip with current propulsion systems and comparable shielding at 0.66 Sievert (Sv) in a range of plus or minus 0.12 Sv.  NASA lifetime astronaut limits are between 0.6 and 1.2Sv, depending on sex and age. So that's at best more than half a career of radiation exposure, even disregarding time spent on the surface, or indeed on any preparatory missions.


The takeway? Without radical progress in reducing the duration of the Mars journey and breakthroughs in increasing the radiation shielding of craft, suits and other habitats, human trips to Mars will likely be ruled out by NASA for exposing astronauts to more than a three per cent increase - such as stipulated in "Risk of Exposure-Induced Death for Fatal Cancer", a threshold set by a working group panel of radiation specialists in the aftermath of Hiroshima

Make no mistake that getting to Mars is exceedingly difficult. On average, it’s 140 million miles from Earth, though the planets do come to within about 35 million miles of each other every 26 months.  But that doesn't mean you can make a 35 m mile direct trip from Earth to Mars. From the laws of celestial mechanics and Newtonian dynamics you still need to plot a long, curving arc or trajectory. Even under the best circumstances it would take months to get there, being exposed to radiation levels unheard of on Earth.

Musk claims SpaceX could do it in 80 days and eventually in 30, but I doubt it, and I'd have to see the rocket design and trajectory - as well as source of propulsion first.

As I also previously noted, referencing radiation levels,  the deep space environment can also be tremendously harsh on ordinary space faring. Of the 43 robotic missions to Mars, including flybys, attempted by four different countries, only 18 have been total successes. You can be sure with any humans aboard that percentage would be lower, maybe even zero.

Musk - conveniently -  didn’t address the explosion that blew up one of his rockets earlier this month. He has previously said the incident, which occurred while the rocket was being fueled ahead of an engine test firing, was the most “difficult and complex” the company has ever faced. This follows another Falcon 9 failure last year, when it blew up a couple minutes into flight.

It would be tremendous if a bunch billionaires - starting with Donald Trump after he loses this election  took Musk up on his offer to get them to Mars. But I somehow doubt even Trump is dumb enough to do it.

Why Would Nearly 200,000 Sign Up For a Mars Suicide Trip?

Back in March, I questioned why any married couple would want to go on a 16-month jaunt to Mars and back. Never landing, only making a pass then returning (hopefully!) in one piece to Earth. The private, non-profit project is being called “Inspiration Mars” with the initial front money coming from multi-millionaire investment consultant Dennis Tito (The first ever space tourist, i.e. aboard a Russian Soyuz craft). The cost estimate? About $1 billion. NASA will not be involved.

The planned Mars mission would cover 150 million miles and take 501 days overall. While the Apollo 8 crew actually orbited the Moon for 20 hours before returning, the Mars couple will only do a brief Mars "flyby" (since their trajectory is based on the 'sling shot' effect'), lasting maybe an hour if that, before proceeding on their long voyage home. In other words,  enduring 500 -plus days of being cooped up in a large closet-sized space for a reward of only about an hour of actually seeing the Red Planet, and that from a spacecraft a hundred miles up. (A married couple that passes all appropriate tests has been deemed ideal because two strangers might not tolerate each other in a confined space  - with no Wifi, no cell or smart phones, but maybe lots of regular books via Nook.)

Now, as if to out-do that, we learn the next phase of a Mars One trip is being readied: to sift through nearly 200,000 volunteers from around the world who've signed up to be (ostensibly) the first to "land on Mars and colonize it."  A robot prelim space craft is slated for launch in 2018, and that  mission aims to pave the way for the final volunteer crew of 4 by testing technology they will need should they reach the red planet in good enough shape to start the first human space colony. (Translation: They haven't yet croaked from receiving nearly the same amount of radiation as those 5 km from the Hiroshima atomic blast.)


The US aerospace company, Lockheed Martin, which has worked on scores of NASA missions, has agreed to draw up plans for a lander based on the US space agency's Phoenix probe that touched down on Mars in 2008. The lander will launch with a communications satellite that will go into orbit over Mars and provide video and data links from the surface of the planet back to Earth. A UK company, Surrey Satellites (SSTL), has signed a contract to work on the communications probe.

Bas Lansdorp, CEO of MARS One told reporters at a press briefing in Washington D.C. on Tuesday that the robotic mission was "the first step in Mars One's overall plan of establishing a permanent human settlement on Mars". Lansdorp believes the mission to Mars would cost as little as $6bn, but Michael Listner, an expert on space law has put the total bill at closer to $1TRILLION. Most of the cost must be paid for by philanthropists, sponsorship, and broadcast rights.

In respect of the latter, since the Mars One business model incorporates a real risk of death in this space venture – a reality TV show will follow the 4 final astronauts through their mission. You will be able to see just about all their meltdowns when micro-meteoroids strike the hull, as well as the frantic prayers when a large solar flare goes off (we're talking about an X class monster) and high intensity radiation is hurtling towards them. The total time to get there, by the way, will be 200 days.

When I first learned that so many around the world had signed up for the mission, the first thing that occurred to me is how much they really knew about the risks. The second thought is that perhaps - in the words of author Barbara Ehrenreich- they truly were "bright-sided" by too much optimism from the CEO (Lansdorp) and the investors.  Make no mistake that a one-way trip to Mars would face an enormous number of technical and practical hurdles that aren’t close to being figured out. NASA’s intrepid rover Curiosity has started addressing one of the questions: radiation exposure on the journey.

During the Rover’s nearly 9-month journey through space Curiosity’s radiation assessment detector  found a serious amount of radiation bombarding the spacecraft. How would humans fare in that scenario? According to a paper published in the journal Science in May:


"It is clear that the exposure from the cruise phases alone is a large fraction of (and in some cases greater than) currently accepted astronaut career limits."


This means that by the time the crew lands, assuming they make it and we don't see a "units error"  like we did some years ago (where English units were confused with metric - sending the robot craft off into space - missing Mars entirely) they will already be suffering from radiation over-exposure.   Now, to be clear, the radiation issue isn't necessarily a "show stopper" - but it means the proposed craft would need adequate shielding, and that means more money- cost. Is $6b too low then? Probably! That low figure gets you the basic "no frills"  craft to get there, but the highest probability of arriving as a corpse.


Let's process this in more detail, as published in the earlier mentioned Science paper: 'Measurements of Energetic Particle Radiation in Transit to Mars on the Mars Science Laboratory"

That paper revealed that the spacecraft containing the Curiosity Rover for its 253-day, 350-million-mile (563 million km) trip to Mars, indicated a radiation dose equivalent for even the shortest round-trip with current propulsion systems and comparable shielding at 0.66 Sievert (Sv) in a range of plus or minus 0.12 Sv.  NASA lifetime astronaut limits are between 0.6 and 1.2Sv, depending on sex and age. So that's at best more than half a career of radiation exposure, even disregarding time spent on the surface, or indeed on any preparatory missions.

Without radical progress in reducing the duration of the Mars journey and breakthroughs in increasing the radiation shielding of craft, suits and other habitats, human trips to Mars will likely be ruled out by NASA for exposing astronauts to more than a three per cent increase - such as stipulated in "Risk of Exposure-Induced Death" for fatal cancer, a threshold set in the aftermath of Hiroshima.

But let's assume the Mars One crew makes it. Of course, their real work now begins. They will have to set to work setting up the portable living quarters using the materials already dropped off by earlier robot craft. Think this will be a walk in the park? Think again! Mars' gravity is about 38 per cent that of Earth, and temperatures average around -60°C (-76°F). Low thermal inertia contributes to freezing winds estimated to be upwards of 90kmph (60mph).  THINK of trying to do housing or energy unit assembly in those conditions!

As if that's not enough, abrasive dust storms lasting months on end were witnessed by Mariner 9 in 1971. And although there is some water vapor in the atmosphere and perhaps two per cent by weight in surface soil, the atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide.   So now, what if during your construction labors you face a storm of meteoroids which puncture the portable living quarters or the hydroponics facility on which your food depends? Will enough life support-shelter redundancy have been provided by the system designers......at $6n?  Will you and your team be able to survive even one meteoroid storm? Bear in mind here that with Mars' tenuous atmosphere you won't have the benefit of these rocky missiles burning up as they do(mostly) while passing through Earth's thicker atmosphere.

 

 If it was me, I'd be more inclined to sign up if I knew $1 trillion was being spent because it is more likely all the necessary bases were being covered- with far fewer aspects left to chance.

The oddest thing of all, however, may be that so many people are willing to leave all their loved ones behind on Earth.....forever.... With no chance of ever seeing planet Earth again, they'd truly be on their own and there won't be any "ET  Earthman call home" either.

For those who want to get a rough idea of what our intrepid would-be Mars One explorers are in for, there's a somewhat schmaltzy scifi film entitled 'Escape from Mars' (1999).  If you can ignore some of the bad acting, there are enough realistic elements of the dangers faced on a Mars trip to make anyone think twice.