The meaning of getting to Mars? Your view?

The only reason I said I don't want LIVING bacteria and viruses there most of us already realize they could be our death. I would be delighted to find dead life there.

You've seen too much cheap scifi. Whatever 'bacteria' we find on Mars might not be adapted to life on earth, and they won't more dangerous to us humans than those very earthly bacterias that have been after us for thousands if not millions of years.

Do we have your word on that?

Everything is possible of course, so no, no promisse but the likelihood that any alien life will be able to efficiently infect humans like earthly viruses and bacteria can do, is very very small.

This is because it takes a lot of adaptation to your host species in order to be able to live and thrive as a parasite in it. A parasite fits its host like a key fits a lock. So it would be a bit like the probability of finding on Mars a piece of metal shaped exactly like your car key... Not totally impossible of course, but highly unlikely.

All very true but how about matter transfer between Mars and Earth over the Eons? It's not impossible that if there is something there at least a broken key is halfway into the lock. I don't really buy it, but I won't totally discount it either. Again just playing Devil's advocate and providing food for thought...

You mean, panspermia? Yes, I agree it's the only shred of a risk.

IF life on earth and (hypothetical) life on Mars come from the same origin (panspermia), THEN the likelihoods that one species from Mars could infect some species on earth (and vice versa) is not 0. They would for instance share similar carbon-based biochemistry, including DNA/RNA.

IF however life appeared on earth and on Mars independently, then you can kiss any Martian on the lips. His bugs won't be able to get into you, as the basic architecture of the two systems would be too different.

An alien life form, whether great or small, can feel threatened enough to attack even if it can't infect you.

There are rocks from Mars on this planet. That's because of the big hit . . .

Huge Meteor Strike Explains Mars’s Shape, Reports Say

science is not as self assured as we are about "impossibilities to be infected". All retrovirii are ONLY RNA and that is more easiily glommed together. Weve got star spectra that contain the components of some of the simplest.One thing weve got going for us is that we know that virus need a host even though technically, viirii are not "alive"

We could be sending all sorts of life stuck to our space goodies and even the rovers and could "awaken" virus to be retrovirii infective of us just like the SPanish flu did a number on the healthiest people.

I think we are really scared of that possibility above all others.

Panspermia is a possibility matter transfer a fact. Setanta just pointed that out.
Of course, if there was life on Mars panspermia will be a fact almost certainly.
Matter transfer is far more common than people think. Even from outside the Solar system as we have seen with the passage of Omuhamuah and the most recent one. None of them collided but given the frequency many probably do.

Remember the scientists who"found evidence of spores" on a bolide from Mars? It turned out to be a special kind of lime rock(a carbonotite) exuded from a long dead Martian volcano .
Thosw guys were rady for a Nobel prize till some students at Calgary and U Texas said "Wait a minute, theres a hexagonal Xl at the c axis". Everything we know about lifes crystals is that they are tetrahedral.
Goddam Canajuns, always fuckin up the celebration parties

The two ideas of panspermia and matter transfer are quite close if one speaks of the transfer of living matter, as opposed to just rocks. For the latter, I don't see how the transfer of inert matter from one planet to another has relevance to the question at hand.

We agree I was just making clear why I first used the coinage matter transfer instead of going all-in with panspermia when I posted. We establish the first is a fact and we hope the next step follows from the first one.

Ah ok, got it. Pardon my slowness.

So no bet huh.

See, I told you that was the only reason we want to go.

Where do you get this "we?"

Ok, to simplify further: Earth has finite energy. It is not finite in that it is an isolated energy system, because it is receiving energy from the sun, which is powering all sorts of processes and being stored and used in various ways.

But as human population grows and industrial uses/consumption of energy grows, it is not sustainable. E.g. we can't use Earth-sourced energy to build entire colonies on Mars or elsewhere without upsetting Earth's energy budget more than it is already being upset by all the surface and air traffic and construction already going on, which in itself is unsustainable.

We have to first come to terms with how much energy and land, water, and other resources we can use sustainably, i.e. without causing problems at any point in the future; or else we are just in a slow-motion train wreck.

It is a variation of what 'they' (same stupid crowd as 'we') call in literature, the 'Royal We', or alternately, Us.

I once heard that given as the explanation for it in that infamous sentence - “Let 'us' make man in our own image.” You probably find this explanation as dumb as I did.