Submitted by marketrent t3_yx53p2 in space
Reply to comment by Dangeresque2015 in Early meteorites brought enough water to Mars to create a global ocean — Meteorites bombarding the Red Planet may have carried so much water that it could have covered the planet in a layer 300 metres deep if spread out, while also depositing molecules essential for life by marketrent
Mars still has enough water (ice) to fill an ocean. It's just cold so it's frozen.
If its poles melted today, it would have an atmosphere and oceans for millions of years, as the air slowly blows away in the solar wind.
Actually, no. NASA did the matu based on current estimates, & if all the water & other greenhouse gases on Mars were melted & vaporized, it'd only supply about 6% of Earth's current thickness. Not nearly enough for sustaining life.
Then there's the hydrate problem.
You're right, it's not enough to sustain life. It's not an Earth-like atmosphere. But it is enough pressure to allow liquid water on the surface and protect from micrometeorites and cosmic rays. It's enough moisture in the air to allow rain and distribute water to the entire surface.
You would still need habitats, but they would be simpler to build. Simple plastic-wrapped greenhouses would become viable. You could go outside with just full-body compression socks and an oxygen supply. Atmospheric CO2 and temperature would be high enough for lichen to grow on the surface.
Nothing is growing on Mars due to the chemical realities of the planet. At least not for long.
I maintain faith in the adaptability of biochemistry. It has surmounted impossible chemical realities many times before.
... You don't know how evolution works. Noted.
Evolution is no longer limited to how it has worked in the past. We're now an active part of the process, thinking purposefully rather than simply reacting. GMO crops are the first step. GMO ecosystems will colonize Mars.
You also don't know how biochemistry works, either. Nor are you informed about the current findings of prevailing Martian geochemistry.
You're not going to grow lichen on rocks that chemically bind water into different types of rock. You are not going to GMO plants into utilizing them, either.
Every terrestrial macroscale life form known isn't a modular organism. It's a complex, messy, interconnected thing supported & simultaneously under assault by a billions year old ecology. This ecology will never exist on Mars within the timespan of the human species, regardless of any genetic jiggery-pokery we do.
Current estimates. We really don’t know much at all about mars still and we won’t know for sure until we go there.
Not true. We know quite a bit, actually. We know chemical composition, age, geologic conditions, tectonic patterns, solar saturation, mean temperature & radiological conditions.
And all point to Mars being a cold, dry, inhospitable deathtrap for humans. The famous red dust contains poisonous chlorate compounds, while just under a thin topsoil of hydrate minerals lurk hydrate precursors. Substances ready to take any available liquid water they encounter, & irreversibly transform it into stone.
Why is it irreversible, & why not crack the existing hydrates for their trapped water? Because it'd be extremely energy intensive, & Mars doesn't get very much energy. With roughly half the luminance, Mars gets about a quarter of the solar energy input that we'd get on Earth. While the amount of water we'd get is, again, insufficient to bulk out a breathable atmosphere, much less sustain a science outpost or Martian agriculture.
We need to smash more comets into Mars.
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