I mean it's cool but what impact does it have?

Generally speaking, where there's water, there's usually life of some sort

These things were discovered ages ago and were long thought to be water

I guess its just official now?

Life on earth wouldn't exist without water. Even though the water on mars was found to be extremely salty, it wouldn't be impossible to extract it to make it drinkable water if we ever tried a mission on mars.

impact on what, your daily life? nothing lol

.

The Waters of Mars, anyone? Dr. Who fans?

when the alternative is sending water to mars on a spaceship I wouldn't be so sure

how do they know its water?
couldn't it just be some other fluid.

fission reactors essentially distill water so you would have power and clean water if you managed to get a nuclear reactor to mars.

You'd have to ship fuel and control rods out there too in addition to the not small task of placing a nuclear facility on environmentally hazardous planet, and that doesn't even begin to cover waste disposal so idk about the feasibility of that.

It very well could, but ice caps at Mars' poles lead scientists to believe it's actually water.

Other liquids aren't out of the question though. People thought there was water on the surface of Titan for years until probes determined it was actually liquid methane.

Hey, that's my favourite episode!

This is real cool btw.

woah this is damn cool

Shipping conventional fuels would weigh more and take up more space and most people overestimate the volatility of nuclear power + waste disposal as aircraft carriers and many submarines are powered by nuclear power plants.

The amount of money it would cost to even get that kind of weight to mars would be tremendous.

I wasn't referring to the volatility of power rather the construction or placement of a nuclear facility on a planet 140,000,000 miles away from earth with dust storms that engulf the planet for days at a time would be a bit tricky.

In addition waste disposal would still be an issue as carriers and submarines only temporarily hold their nuclear waste before delivering them to a permanent storage facility, so unless the plan is to build another storage facility along with the plant and have the specialized personnel for both the handling and disposal of waste then its still really a large problem.

nice

Yeah considering this would only really matter for the creation of a "base" of sorts by the time that comes around fusion reactors may be viable and then they could potentially manufacture their own heavy water fuel on site as well as the fact that fusion reactors producing less waste would help. Overall I am fairly confident that any mars base or settlement would be nuclear powered as any other conventional power source would require a lot of oxygen for combustion etc. So I would bet on nuclear or if the somehow get fuel cells to work well enough.

I agree nuclear would be the best option too with what we currently have.

I just don't know how we would manage it without spending a lot more money then NASA possibly has right now.

It's not only cool because there is a lot of potential on mars, but think about the entire universe, if two planets in one solar system have liquid water, imagine the endless possibilities ahead!

interstellar civilization or even communication is hilariously impractical rn

and will be w/o a SIGNIFICANT change to how we understand and interact with the universe and light and stuff

life could exist on mars rn tho and that's cool, but its very obviously a few billion years behind us unfortunately. Regardless, life in some form will be there within a hundred years or so either from us inhabiting the planet or us accidentally dropping off something that grows :(

I guess that's why they have sunken millions upon millions into finding out about life in other solar systems and other planets and also sending radio wave containing messages about our civilization. Not to mention how we might find a eventually for interstellar communication that IS faster than the speed of light, maybe not in our lifetime, but who knows.

But I guess you're right your rational and logical comment will shut down all the funding.

they discovered a small quantity of hydrated salt.

I can't believe you just said that crap. this is the equivalent of those youtube commenters on videos about space talking out of their arse about something they have no clue of.

every time someone brings up space there's always that guy......

also

do your research, go read the fermi paradox or the correlation between the distances in space and mathematical probability for life before you get your ignorant imagination get the better of you.

my thoughts exactly
damn that episode was good, especially the ending

Surely nothing has ever been debunked or newly discovered. Also the fermi paradox is not an answer it's a probability, and one of many theories.

in a society that still has resource scarcity, hunting for extrasolar life is kind of pointless because there's no conceivable way to actually benefit from it for the most part. Like it'd be cool, but its not like we're gonna be able to trade or extract resources from anyone.

I support space exploration and shit but trying to say that its actually practical or really necessary isn't true.

http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html

look at all that logic, batman!

iduno man, i give that way more credibility than a dude who basically says "space is big, so there is life."
which is what everyone keeps saying. you know, everyone who really doesn't know anything about space...

quert is ur entire purpose in life to ruin peoples day?

while they did find "a small quantity of hydrated salt" the importance of the hydrated salt is twofold:
1. it proves that the RSLs are of liquid cause (thats a lot of liquid)
2. it proves that the liquid cause is in fact water and not a different liquid

not only are you wrong about the mars water you are also wrong about the probability of life:
1. ur the biggest fucking pessimist ive ever seen
2. the mathematical probability of life is pretty good considering the scale of the universe - there is an equation that is a good way to determine the amount of intelligent civilizations in our galaxy (and thats only INTELLIGENT and in our GALAXY) and the number varies from nah, we dont have shit and yea, theres a ton of people out there
3. the fermi paradox, countering the aforementioned equation, is applied for the most part to say that there are intelligent civilizations out there but some smaller value in the equation is preventing contact (the great filter theory), therefore your completely pessimistic application of the fermi paradox is not supported by the majority of the scientific community

fuck off and let people be happy