Interesting. I read that in Jeff Goldblum's voice as well. Were there any missio...

icoder · on Sept 28, 2015

I think your parent post was talking about that we may have taken earth-life to Mars (not vice versa)

a3n · on Sept 28, 2015

Correct.

But there are Mars rocks that have been busted loose from Mars, and orbited down to Earth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_meteorite

jkaunisv1 · on Sept 28, 2015

No, we don't have the capability to land something on Mars with enough fuel for it to take off again.

gaius · on Sept 29, 2015

Well, yes and no. There is the Sabatier process:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction#Manufacturin...

wtracy · on Sept 28, 2015

We don't need to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction#Manufacturin...

jkaunisv1 · on Sept 29, 2015

You're right! Even though I cited the Sabatier reaction to a coworker today when discussing the news, I didn't really think about it when answering. Also, for some reason I thought it wasn't yet a technical reality.

I guess also wrapped into my statement was the thought that to be able to launch something back it would have to be landed very well and require some very complex machinery to prepare for launch, given the success rates of just being able to land something on Mars without it breaking. I went with the first reason off the top of my head :)

outworlder · on Sept 28, 2015

Its a hard engineering problem, yes - but not that far-fetched. It's an even harder political problem, though.

It's hard to justify the required R&D expenses without appealing to emotion (such as sending humans).

jkaunisv1 · on Sept 28, 2015

Oh, I wasn't discounting the future possibility - there's definitely nothing impossible about it, and in fact I agree it's quite doable. Just that we don't have it yet.