The new movement in ecology is what's called "Deep Ecology". It's based on the view that our interaction with nature should be reviewed on the basis of assigning to life an intrinsic worth, just due to the fact that it’s a phenomenon of life. This is said very nicely in Naess' book Deep Ecology. And in particular look at item two - richness and diversity in lifeforms contribute to this value and is a further value to itself. If you take that at face value one would argue that a rich and diverse biosphere on Mars would have value and it would have more value than the world we see today which clearly is a fascinating world. If we were given a choice between a Mars, a Mars as we see it today, images of three Marses, there is the Mars we see today. There is nature and there is life. On Mars we have a choice between nature in the universe as we see it and life. As you probably guess my view is to favour life. After studying astrophysics and biology and various combinations for years my personal spin is that life is the most interesting phenomenon that we have seen. We look out into the cosmos as we can observe it we see many interesting beautiful things. The red spot on Jupiter, the rings of Saturn, black holes, quasars, galaxies, star forming regions, Orion nebula. We see a lot of interesting phenomena cosmic rays of high energy, but the most interesting phenomena we see is life. We tend to take it for granted because we eat it for lunch and dinner and it's all over the carpet and we vacuum it up and throw it out the door. But still when we actually focus on it, it is the most interesting phenomenon in the universe that we are aware of. And so I tend to favour the view that Mars would like a goal that's a worthy goal so in the sense our motto is to spread life. This goes back to the original chart that we are now looking at potential for survival of biological evolution beyond the planet of origin. If even the NASA Headquarters, faceless government bureaucrats can see this, I think it actually has a chance of taking root and going some where. And so I think we are entering a new phase of our relationship with space. And that phase is going to be the coming of the diaspora of life from Earth, the spreading out beyond Earth. And I think Mars will be the first stop. The first test of our ability to survive beyond our planet of origin.
     So that's I've been talking about "can we?", how is it technically feasible to do using current technology. I focused on current technology because if the problem to me is not interesting if we invoke hyperdrive or mirrors the size of Texas, it's just not interesting. Because we don't know how to do these things. It reminds me of a cartoon I read in Dennis the Menace. When I'm not reading Calvin and Hobbs I'm reading Dennis the Menace. And Dennis the Menace is arguing with Margaret and Dennis goes, "I bet you a million dollars that I'm right". And Margaret goes, "I bet you a nickel that I'm right". And Dennis goes, "A nickel, now you're talking real money", and I think that's an important point.
     When people are talking about terraforming in terms of antimatter or mirrors the size of the state of Texas, that's like betting a million dollars. It's fun to talk about but you don't have to take it seriously any time soon. But when people, I think look at Mars and see that we could make it warm and breathable and suitable for life, albeit plant life using, doing the same things we are already doing on Earth. And that it can be done within NASA's current budget on time scales of fifty to one hundred years. Keep in mind NASA's already forty years old, it's only twice the age of the current space program. We're talking about a nickel, well maybe a dime but not a million dollars. We're talking about something that's in the near term that could be part of the current program. So NASA is and I'm helping push it this way starting to seriously take altering or spreading life beyond the Earth as one of it's goals. Accessing the possibility of that - OK.
     Let me stop with the last view graph, which I like to use whenever I talk in schools which is about. I'm at the stage in my career where I actually don't do anything useful any more. I just give talks. So I have to rely on younger more alert minds to actually do the work so I would like to put up a list of questions that need answers. Hope that these young alert minds will actually do it and send me the results which I can incorporate into a subsequent talk to relieve me of any responsibility of doing the work myself.
     There is still a lot we don't know as you can imagine about Mars. We know the key volatile is nitrogen and even the others we're not sure how much is there. We need to determine that, we need better models of the runaway greenhouse effect. The one that Jim and Brian and I put together some years ago were very simple-minded. And they weren't time-dependent. They need to be made time-dependent. These are pretty straight forwards FORTRAN programming problem. Models of the photochemistry of oxygen, they said thick CO² atmosphere but some oxygen is needed for plants at very low levels but some. Also ozone. We don't really know if Mars had an atmosphere how ozone would form. It has to be studied because ozone is critical. If you remember that picture I showed you of Mars it doesn't look like Earth, the oceans are all in the northern hemisphere. This is what would happen if Mars warmed up. Unlike the Earth which tends to have a pretty equal distribution of land and ocean. Mars could have a hemisphere of water and a hemisphere of land. It would be interesting to do climate models for that. And finally the long term stability, the question of how long it would really last. I am guessing ten to the eight years, one hundred million years, but we really don't know. And that would be interesting to model. So let me stop there and maybe we have time for some questions.
     OK MARS base, sure. Brown folder over there. Brown folder. Margarita asked me to talk a little about the Mars Society base. As was mentioned earlier we actually spent many years doing research in the Antarctic and Arctic as analogs for Mars. And the, and so when the Mars Society formed there was a suggestion of building a base, simulation of a Mars base. Both as a public outreach and education but then also to put it in a place where we could do some real tests with it. Some real training. People often talk about the Moon. Well let's set up a base on the Moon and do a Mars base there. Well in fact if you said what's the place in the solar system that's most like Mars. The answer is not the Moon, the answer is actually the Antarctic. But it's very hard to work in the Antarctic, it's very far away. The next best place is the Arctic. In particular the Canadian High Arctic and so there is the Mars Society is trying to put together a base. And this is an architect's sketch of what it might look like. That would serve two purposes. One it would actually be a place for doing real research in the Arctic. Research that we are doing now in tents. Not that the tents aren't fine, but this would be even nicer. Cable TV, microwave oven, Internet access all the comforts of home. But more importantly it could have water recycling and solar power. I have been pushing for a long time for both of those in the Arctic and the Antarctic. When we are out there is twenty four hours of sunlight there is no need to have a big stinking diesel generator out there when you are being bathed in solar energy. Nor is there any need to melt snow water to provide drinking water when we can just recycle our urine and drink that. At least that’s what the graduate students do. So we would like to test these technologies in real applications. Solar power and water recycling and in addition provide a base for researchers where they are doing work that is actually remarkably relevant to Mars. Which is why we are there in the first place is Mars. So the current plan is to put some elements of this in place this summer. With maybe a some kind of first module the year after that. Question here.

Q: Will this be close to any Inuit?

CM: No. The question is, is the proposal in Inuit communities and hence subject to the Native Lands Act. In fact that's always an issue whenever one works in the Arctic. If you are in Native lands you have to get permission and work it in with the Inuit community groups. These areas where we work are in Crown lands so it's not an issue with Inuit communities. Places, other places where we work is up in Axel Heiberg and Ellesmere Island are also in Crown land. I don't think that, that's an issue. Question.

Q: I have two questions one is a comment. About what you said, regarding the spreading of life. I think the origins of life on this planet are open to question and in biology a lot of processes are self assembling a lot of things are self organizing, because of physical laws and maybe things would happen naturally on Mars if the conditions were right. So as sort of a justification life might be more of a rule than an exception if the conditions were right.

CM: Right, yeah that's a good point and we don't know that. In fact the test of that hypothesis that life is a naturally emergent phenomena will be in the past, if that is true we should find fossils on Mars and frozen but dead organisms at the polar caps. If life really comes up quickly. And the one issue with that is if life is so easy to make, why can't we make it in the lab. And maybe when we finally do make it we'll go aha of coarse it's so obvious. It's easy we just never added cinnamon and nutmeg together in the right proportion. That's all it took. But that would be looking backwards. You could interpret what you are, say we could heat up Mars and leave it, let it go on it's own. And maybe life would originate there. I don't know I kind of like the idea of spreading life from Earth. Earth sharing its genome with Mars. Earth has spent four billion years developing its genome through evolution. It's a very sophisticated bundle of information and it's an incredible gift from Earth. To take that to Mars, share it with our sister planets.

Q: The second follow up was it seems to me that you said if we were to initiate some process it would overshoot to some extent and if so what are the thoughts of putting some biology there to when conditions are right for the biology to control the atmosphere.

CM: Did everybody hear the question or should I repeat it? I'll repeat it. The question is once we start the process of warming Mars it might overshoot and at what time should we introduce life. In fact once we start altering Mars we will probably lose control of this process and it will go on it's own trajectory. And I think that is part of the charm of the whole idea is to let this planet go on its own biological and physical co-evolution, its own trajectory and see where it goes. On Earth it's sometimes a problem when we start environmental projects and they get out of control because normally we have a specific end state in mind and we don't like the way it's going. Well on Mars we would have very little control and I don't think we should have a specific end state. We should just assume that anything that's alive is good. We started from something that's dead. We throw in a bunch of ingredients let them go, let them co-evolve and whatever end state it ends up in has got to be better than a world with nothing alive in it. One drawback is that the end state may not be suitable for human beings. In fact it's highly unlikely it would be for reasons I mentioned as well as just chance. And that we have to resign ourselves to that's OK. That the goal here is a biological Mars at least initially and maybe ultimately. And so in that sense the answer to your question is we introduce life as soon as we can. And so the actual things that I am spending my days doing now is trying to address the question of when can different forms of life be introduced on Mars as it gets gradually warmer. And I think a very good metaphor was developed by several people but most recently by Jim who says that's kind of like walking down a mountain. Imagine being on the peak of Horizobo, Mexico, a very high volcano. Nothing grows on the top it's like Mars today, cold and dry, frozen. As you come down eventually you find some simple life forms and tundra. Then the tree line and down. So you can say well as Mars warms up it will eventually be like going down that mountain. Eventually there will be life. And the key point would be when can you introduce lichen algae like in the Antarctic dry valleys. The next key step when can you introduce Arctic and tundra communities and the next key step the tree line reaches the surface. And these are well-defined questions and I propose you put the organisms in as soon as they are able to survive. And let them co-evolve with the environment. So the system is a biological system that has evolved over time. Question here.

Q: With Mars you are proposing to create an atmosphere that is habitable in the case of Venus there is an atmosphere that is not. What are the processes in the Venusian atmosphere that doesn’t make it feasible?

CM: The question is, What's wrong with Venus? The biggest problem with Venus is it's too hot.

Q: Well I understand that.

CM: But right. Lets imagine if by some magic we could completely remove a CO² greenhouse on Venus. Take away all the carbon dioxide, leave the planet bare it would still be too hot. The problem with Venus is it's so close to the sun that even with a greenhouse effect with no greenhouse effect it's still too hot. And so how do you make a planet colder. Well people talk about putting up umbrellas not the size of Texas but the size of the Earth. Now it is true that we know to put up umbrellas in space. The Soviets did that. I think it was ten meters maybe, but that’s a big jump from ten meters to the size of the Earth. So that's why I'm not optimistic that Venus is within any foreseeable technology. It's a million dollars. It's like a million dollar bet. It's nothing we have to worry about now. By the time we have the technology to make Venus habitable we will have solved the question on Mars. But I still say that Mars is the place to focus, because that is the place where we will learn if we can take steps beyond the Earth. The answer to the question can life expand and evolve beyond the planet of origin will be answered on Mars. By the time we get to Venus we will be doing other things. Question here.

Q: Do you think we know enough? If you take a look back at nuclear energy today and what we were thinking about nuclear energy not less than twenty years ago we had a much different picture of nuclear energy then, then, then now. How do you think the picture you are presenting of introducing life on Mars now it sounds like a great idea right. But what is to say two hundred years from now you go shit that was a bad idea where do we go from there. Should we wait, should we learn more or…

CM: Definitely we should learn more we don't know enough about Mars if it has the elements needed. The real basis of your question really is will it be different from our expectations? You see in the case of nuclear power in the case of anything we have certain expectations and then it doesn’t line up with your expectations. This can happen in personal life you know. And the solution as I found out in personal life is try to avoid expectations, right. If you don't expect him or her to be nice then it doesn't matter whether they are nice or not does it. So in the case of nuclear power we were all expecting all these as you can all remember too cheap to meter. I think that was the buzzword. It's like the shuttle, when NASA was selling the shuttle to the space science community. 'Oh we will have shuttle flights once a week, don't worry we will put all your payloads in space'. And then those expectations weren't met and there's disappointment. So the problem with Mars will come if we think it's going to turn out a certain way. And I think the answer is we shouldn't do that. Let's take all possible scenarios. The worst case is we plant seed we warm it up and it just all dies. Well it just goes back to square one, from death to death. We really haven't lost any thing. We may have gained knowledge about processes we don't understand. The other possibility is we start Mars and it will go off on some trajectory biologically that we didn't expect and we may not like. In the sense that it may not be suitable for humans. But it may be great for the organisms that have co-evolved to live there. I would define that as a success too. And the third possibility is that it evolves in a way which recapitulates Earth's history and generates an oxygen-rich atmosphere and humans can walk around in a shirt-sleeve environment. I think we would define any of those three outcomes as a success. So that we have no preconceived definition to what Mars has to turn out to be in two hundred and fifty years. So we let it go and then I don't see that there's a problem. Still those there is a lot to learn before one would start such a process. We don't even know if it would work. We don't even know for example how much water is on Mars, we have theories, but no one has yet even drilled a hole. We have sent all of three spacecrafts to the surface and the one with the deepest that dug the deepest got this far down [indicates about six inches]. So there is a lot more to learn about Mars before most of the things I said can be moved into the realm of facts. Before one would start that there are two points to that question. Do we know enough to start and do we enough to ensure that the answer will be the answer we like. We have to define that whatever the answer turns out to be we will like. Question in the back.

Q: One thing we need to know before we start is, is there life on Mars, how long do you think it will be?

CM: I don't think that will be very hard, we only because first we look at the surface material the sample return will come back from Mars. There are in fact some people who think that there could be spores on the surface of Mars. I think the chances are one in a billion and it's not very likely, but that's easy to check. The second possibility is that there's like in the sub-surface living in somewhere living in some hydrothermal reservoir or something. And that will be easy to check too in the sense of looking for sub-surface water with ground penetrating radar or whatever and then drilling down to it. And we will do that in all cases because we will want that water, if nothing else to drink it or to study its geochemistry. And looking biologically to see if there is anything alive in it will follow also. And the third possibility is looking in the polar caps to see if something is frozen in the permafrost. Probably is in fact, but it's probably dead, after three billion years of radiation. So I don't think it's very difficult task to probe Mars to the extent that we determine if life exists. We will never say "No" with one hundred percent certainty, it's impossible to prove a negative, but we will be able to say "No" to a very high level of confidence. I think that will be easily do-able twenty or thirty years after the first human base. So it's not something, in fact the biggest time lag between warming Mars up now is not the actual warming up. Its learning enough about Mars and determining if there is life there or not to be able to say Go. Because I perceive a Mars base at least a decade or more away and it takes a while to, to drill deep holes and study a planet and what not so we are all looking at a long time before one is even in a position to say OK, our knowledge base is adequate to make a decision. Question away in the back.

Q: If there is life on Mars how does that change the "should we?"?

CM: That's a really good question and it's my favorite fantasy. That you go to Mars and there is life there, Martian life distinct from Earth life, it wasn't carried from Earth on rocks or vice-versa. It's a separate second genesis of life. Then my suggestion has always been we alter the environment of Mars, but now we do it as to encourage and enhance that life so that life becomes a rich and diverse, a rich and diverse lifeform because if there is life on Mars it's not doing very well compared to life on Earth, it could use a helping hand. And that to me would be the greatest best possible future scenario. That we go to Mars find life just ekeing out, on the proverbial fingernails in some sub-surface environment, or frozen, dormant in the polar caps. And we warm it up the planet and make it so that life can spread out over the whole planet Mars. And we have a sister planet with its own separate distinct life that would be scientifically as well in my view philosophically the most satisfying scenario. Unfortunately there is no way that I can arrange the facts of Mars, as we now understand it to convince myself that there is life there. I'd like to believe it but the facts just don't point in that direction. Question here.

Q: To take it a lot further. If you have two separate systems evolve and we know that just on Earth itself contamination between just different continents and different islands, different species introduced in Australia for example that are real pests.

CM: Humans.

Q: Humans, right, humans have introduced other species as well that are detrimental to the natural environment, how is it that [unheard]. It would be pretty safe to say that if we go to Mars I would say contamination inevitably will be introduced.

CM: Yeah well, if we found Martian life then I think we would quarantine the planet. You would not be able to go there unless precautions were taken to keep from contaminating. It's not that we don't know how to prevent contamination, we know how to do that. We just have to put our minds to it. And I think finding life on Mars, and you say well if humans go they are inevitably going to contaminate the planet. Well that's not really true, if we set up a Mars base and people go and then they find Martian life in the sub-surface reservoir. I don't see that as a problem because the surface of Mars is inhospitable to life. Humans can go and sure they will shed E. coli and all sorts of other things. But those bugs will just land on the surface and die. You can't contaminate Mars until we have to work upon Mars before we can contaminate it. And so we would have time to pull back so to speak and clean up any contamination we left. It wouldn't be hard because the surface is like bleach, it's pretty much self-cleaning. And so we could, we think it's not too hard to imagine a scenario where we find life on Mars. If we can study it in the laboratory but we don't contaminate the planet and then when we warm up Mars that life is allowed to come forth. It's a great fantasy. I don't dwell on it too much because the evidence against life is really compelling. I can't find even a shred of hope that there could be life on Mars, still alive. You have a question.

Q: You have heard about the nanobes?

CM: The question is did I hear about the nanobes, by analogy to the microbes. Nano being even smaller. People have talked about they originally gained popularity in the Mars meteorite. The evidence for life in the meteorite was in very small organisms, thousands of times smaller than the smallest bacteria then known on Earth. Microplasm. Well people said nothing can live that's that small. But other people said let's go look and there is starting to be reports in the literature now of organisms that are nanometers in size. I don't think that the evidence is still conclusive, but it's starting to mount. Maybe we will be surprised, how small life can be. Question in the back.

Q: How warm does Mars get below the surface?

CM: Now we think no direct measurements but we think that the geothermal flux is about half of what it is on Earth. Thirty five milli watts per square meter on Earth its typically eighty and so if that's true as you go down Mars gets warmer. If you go down at the equator about one kilometer you should hit the zero degree isotherm. It gets warmer a couple of degrees per kilometer as you go down. Ten degrees per kilometer the same as Earth through radioactive decay, residual gravitation formation energy coming out over time. Just like the Earth gets warmer as you. The problem here is there is no energy source down there except maybe chemical so it's not clear if there is even liquid water there. Life, not to mention the dispersal problem of spreading life from one site of water to another site. Question here.

Q: What did you learn from the Pathfinder mission?

CM: Nothing from Pathfinder. Pathfinder was not really a scientific mission. Its main objective was to drive around, cruising. Sort of like cruising the way they do in some California cities, before they put up signs making it against the law. Pathfinder's main objective was just to drive around, it had a couple science instruments but really scientifically we didn't learn anything new about Mars from Pathfinder. From an engineering point of view it was a big success, it was the first use of solar power, the first mobility on the planet and it was an incredibly interesting deployment system, parachutes and the bouncing ball and all that. But the only instruments it had were a camera and an alpha proton x-ray instrument and above those the only one that could generate information that we already didn't have was the alpha proton instrument and it didn't work. So we got information again about the elemental composition of soils, there were heavy elements exactly like Viking and we got images of another place and it looks kind of like the two Viking sites. It was a good mission but it didn't really change anything about our knowledge of Mars. Now that's not true about the orbiter going around Mars now. Mars Global Surveyor is taking pictures as I just showed you at much higher resolution. And we are seeing things we never saw before, like channels at the bottom of canyons and that is really refining our knowledge of Mars enormously. That is still happening for the next year. Question here.

Q: [Unheard]

CM: The Moon, there is evidence of water on the Moon, but it's very very low, small amounts of water. The Moon just doesn’t got what it takes. It doesn’t have, it's lost its volatiles, if it ever had any. I don't think it ever had a habitable state. So it's very difficult to imagine we could bring the moon back to life. It's just not, for example oxygen, carbon, nitrogen would all be limited. There are small amounts of water but not enough to make a biosphere. Probably hardly enough to make a greenhouse. It's at a scientifically interesting levels only part per million in the soil up to percentage levels. It's not an ice skating rink, as some people would have you believe in the press. Big sheets of ice on the moon. It's more like little tiny crystals of ice frozen into the regolith. They were detected by neutron scattering instruments and when you look at the raw data it just barely rises above the noise. You have got to add many passes to get a signal strong enough. It's really there at very low levels. If you had a chunk of that frozen lunar ground with ice in it sitting in your office in a jar, you would say who brought the dry dirt in. It would be drier than most dirts on Earth, which have typically two. Even a desert dirt, go to the middle of the Atacama desert, the driest place on Earth, the soil would have about two percent water. The Moon has less than that. Still not good. Question here.

Q: Do you really think the sample return missions they are talking about now from Mars are really justified. I mean considering that they are going to be technical challenges and very expensive and we get a handful of rocks we get to look at. We could get that information in the first ten minutes of man landing on Mars. I can't really see that it would be worth doing…

CM: Sample return is an interesting question. The question is cost benefit ratio for sample return. And one of the lessons that I think we are learning is that robotic missions are not very capable, things like Pathfinder. Pathfinder could cover the distance about the size of this auditorium and that was it. It was enormously expensive to get there. People talk about Pathfinder being cheap, but it was a quarter of a billion dollars. It was cheap compared to Viking, which was five billion dollars. But it didn't give us very much in return. Sample return roughly costs three times as much as a robotic mission. So thinking about it in a cost benefit you could send Mars Pathfinders or three Mars Polar Landers or three rovers on the surface or you could get one sample return. And the feeling is that it is hard to do science remotely on Mars. With instruments that don't work and you can't fix the because there is nobody there, that getting a sample of Mars dirt in the lab here on Earth would give us so much more understanding of Mars then those three missions that virtually all the people involved agree it's a better use of our resources. To do one sample return than three rover missions that we would learn a lot more about Mars from one kilogram of earth and rock brought back to Earth and studied in Earth laboratories where people discover something and follow up on it and so on. Then spending the same amount of money to do say three Pathfinder-like missions. I agree with that and you also brought in human exploration. And that's a whole different point of view and I agree with you that humans bring in an enormous capability for doing field work. But they also have an enormous infrastructure and start cost to get that going. That is just not, there is no serious discussion of funding a human mission right now. There is currently the idea was to go with people, NASA is calling a robotic colony. The transition from the robotic program to the human program is what they called the robotic colony. Which would be still somewhat nebulous but the meeting I just went to, the idea was to basically make the base without people and then people come later. Check into the hotel it's already there, everything is ready to go. It would be a robotic base somehow. It's still not quite formed in my mind but OMB [Office of Management and Budget--Ed.] put in a line item for that and NASA started to study it. And the guy who was the head of the Surveyor program got fired last week and he's the head of the Mars robotic colony program.

Q: I read and I don't know if it's true that the Mars north polar cap. They scanned it and it appears to be very flat on top. It seams to be a very flat plane of ice on the top, with valleys in it. Why should that be so?

CM: The question was the Mars Global Surveyor the laser altimeter data has given us now a good map of the polar cap. And the north polar cap is very flat, why should that be so? I don't know why it should be so flat. You think it would be as flat as the Greenland ice sheet, just because if there was a high point on the ice it would tend to flow, glaciers flow. But I can't think why it would be any flatter than a normal ice sheet. I don't really know the MOLA data in enough detail to know if it's anomaly flat compared to like the Antarctic ice sheet or the Greenland ice sheet. These are fairly flat ice sheets, you get on top of the Antarctic ice sheet and its just a big flat sheet of ice, but it's not really flat it curves down towards the edges and I don't really know if the North Pole is much flatter than that. I looked at that paper but I didn't focus on that issue. I can't, I'll have to look back to see if it was so flat that it's unusual.

Q: If we proceed to terraforming what are the time scales involved?

CM: The time scale to make Mars warmer once you start putting gases in the atmosphere are on the order of about one hundred years. Time scale for that to become breathable oxygen if you rely on the global-scale biology of plants. To make that if you assume the present efficiency of photosynthesis on Earth, the time scale is about one hundred thousand years. Maybe take one more question Margarita. Last question.

Q: OK, how much material or mass to get the atmosphere warmer?

CM: How much greenhouse gases? You need about a part per million. How much physical mass is that? Well the area of mass is ten to the eighteen so it's ten to the eighteen kilograms times ten to the minus six. So it's ten to the twelve kilograms. That number really doesn't mean much it's just a big number. A one with twelve zeros. But it's not something, if you say the lifetime of the molecule is five hundred years, it's ten to the nine kilograms per year. You have to make a million tons a year to maintain, to get it happening a million tons a year. Well on an industrial scale a million tons is not a lot of material.

Q: What's that in shuttle launches?

CM: Well that's a lot of shuttle launches. You can't do it in shuttle launches, you have to make it there. In terms of in-situ production it's not a, we make a lot more of that stuff here on Earth then we try not to make. OK, let's call that a night.

MM: We would like to thank you for coming here. There will be more information about the Mars Society outside after this and T-shirts you can order. So thank you all for coming.