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Originally Posted by Mistermystery
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Originally Posted by Doodler
Heh, well, considering the evidence, it just might still be immersed, just not in the Terran sense.
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I was more or less joking on the immersed part, plus it gave me a good opertunity to show my " water on mars" picture.
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And I was taking the sentence mildly out of context for the sake of humor.
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Originally Posted by Mistermystery
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Originally Posted by Doodler
You come down on the hunt for water, but I remind you that the hunt is not only driving Martian exploration, its also driving Lunar exploration (Clementine, among others) and the proposed JIMO mission back to the Galilean satellites.
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I suppose you are correct here. Maybe I'm just looking to much into this, but I saw it as one of the main reasons to start this mission. Mind you that I didn't mind to say that looking for water is bad. |
Unfortunately, that's how you came across on first reading. The search for water with these probes is twofold. One, we're looking for life in some form or another, and water is the ultimate key to it (that we know of). So any chance for the presence of water in abundance immediately sets off the possibility that there could be some kind of life. Particularly liquid water. The second is that we're still looking to leave this planet for some duration in the future. Where water exists, there also exists the possibility of long term human habitation.
With respect to the various explorations that the hunt for water fuels, you have the Moon, where no life probably ever existed, but a very close destination for long term human habitation. You have Europa, where no human will likely ever set foot, but the possibility of a life sustaining deep ocean keeps the possibility of life VERY close to the forefront. Then there's Mars, where the presence of seas of water and the ongoing presence of subsurface water (or even surface brines), dovetails both. The possibility that life may have once been there, and the possibility that human life may yet take root there.