The Speculist

Water on Mars:

New photos from space suggest that water occasionally flows on the frigid surface of Mars, raising the tantalizing possibility that the Red Planet is hospitable to life, scientists reported Wednesday.

The images, taken by NASA's Mars Global Surveyor before it lost contact with Earth, do not actually show flowing water.

Rather, they show changes in craters that provide the strongest evidence yet that water coursed through them as recently as several years ago and perhaps even now.

''This is a squirting gun for water on Mars,'' said Kenneth Edgett, a scientist at Malin Space Science Systems, which operates a camera on the Global Surveyor.

One has to wonder...if there's water on Mars, but the moon is dry as a bone, why are we setting up a permanent settlement on the moon? Granted, the moon is a lot closer. But once you have to start transporting all that water, it doesn't seem like such a bargain being there.

Of course, the moon has other resources that make it an attractive place to put a settlement. But I don't see anyone talking about that in their rationale for putting us on the moon.

Well, there is the lifeboat argument for getting a moon settlement going, but as Michael Anissimov explains the criteria for perpetuating humanity via space colonization...

For a colony to qualify as a true “Lifeboat”, it requires enough people to provide a bare minimum of genetic, racial, and skillset diversity - 200 people, preferably 2,000. Men, women, and children would all need to operate in harmony with maximum safety and minimum conflict. To be truly autonomous, a Lifeboat would need years worth of supplies - computers, medical equipment, robotics, food, water, recycling systems, and in the longer run, industrial facilities that can process raw materials into useful products. To avoid the need for constant resupplying from earth, a space or lunar colony would need to have very efficient recycling processes, and eventually start growing its own food.

...Mars starts to sound like at least as good a candidate. In fact, it's probably a little better when you consider that it's farther away from Earth, thus potentially protected from some of the bad stuff that might originate here in the immediate neighborhood. Still, if a permanent base on the moon is a first step, however awkward and misplaced, towards settlement on Mars and elsewhere in the solar system, that's a good thing.

Anyhow, maybe it's best that the government sponsor settlement on the moon, leaving potentially well-irrigated Martian homesteads in the domain of private development. It's a thought.