Getting Pumped for The Martian.
The first teaser for the Ridley Scott film just came out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ue4PCI0NamI
Video with the author: http://www.rawscience.tv/the-martian-andy-weir-space-investor-steve-jurvetson-geek-out/ During the filming in my office with space artifacts all around, it was a special honor to let Andy Weir have his first touch of a rock from Mars. Behind him, in the red frame, is a spare engine from the Viking spacecraft used for the first landing on Mars, and behind me is the only complete Viking biological sampling instrument on Earth (the other two are on Mars).
In the video interview, Andy & I have a “Bill & Ted moment” when we realized that both of us have a passion for John Young (my view on that: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/4658001375 ). And although my verbose ramblings had to be edited for brevity, the discussion led me to believe that humanity will create a rich ecosystem on Mars; we will not import it. Each planet can serve a genetic data vault backup for the other, but we will only share humanity and a few special species (cats perhaps) across the worlds. It is much more likely that we will direct the rapid of evolution of microbes and plants in-situ, and consider “invasive species” imports after a terraformed ecosystem is well underway.
This sparked a Reddit discussion on Martian life forms, remote syn bio, and possible panspermia: http://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/2ku9tc/steve_jurvetson_shares_an_interesting_idea_about/
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