Posted by
michael
on from the promising-news dept.
TheSync writes: "The BBC reports in an article that the Mars Odyssey spacecraft has detected large deposits of hydrogen at high latitudes using its neutron spectrometer. This may indicate significant water ice on the surface of Mars!"
Cadillac Desert on Mars?
by
ackthpt
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Reading Cadillac Desert, which delves into the water history of the west. Interesting stuff about L.A. thieving the water from the Owens River. I'm sure it'll get even more interesting as I get to how L.A. is sucking much of the water out of the entire southwest and how battles are simmering to revoke L.A.'s water rights, starting with Mono Lake a couple years ago.
So, there's water on Mars. Probably not a ton of it, considering the gravity. Maybe enough, with the right structure (like a biosphere) to sustain a limited amount of life. Roll forward to a point where living on Mars isn't just a scientific undertaking but part of enterprise (like settling the western US was from the 1880's onward) and think about how valuable water will be and how carefully it'll need to be overseen.
As for whether there's life or not, big deal, we'll wipe it out in some clumsy way or it'll prove to be so toxic to humans or human agriculture that we'll leave it a derelict desert like much of the southwest. Entertaining thinking, anyway.
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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Re:What's the signifigance....
by
BigGar'
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· Score: 2, Insightful
The significance is that it would greatly simplify sending a manned mission to mars if there was water a large amount of water on the surface. It reduces the weight of the provisions that must be sent along and since it could also be converted to rocket fuel for the return trip.
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Shop smart, Shop S-Mart.
South pole stations
by
wowbagger
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Actually, those stations get a hell of a lot more than just "air, snow, gravity" - they get massive shipments of fuel oil, food, construction materials, electronic supplies, medical supplies, you name it.
They manufacture almost NONE of their needs.
Now, were we to build a south pole station that actually DID use only water, air, and gravity, and created everything else they needed from materials found at the south pole and processed there, that would be something.
Maybe I'm just ignorant, but...
by
leshert
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· Score: 2, Insightful
How exactly do you get from "hydrogen detection" to "water"?
Given that this stuff is at the poles, isn't it at least equally possible that it's CH4 slurry?
Re:Waiting to exhale... a waste?
by
Fenris2001
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Not to nitpick, but....
The problem isn't temperature, per se. I'm presenting my argument based on a mass balance. If we assume that all the hydrogen on Mars is bound in water, then we can get a feel for how much water vapor would be in the atmosphere at any point. In the upper atmosphere, solar protons and gamma rays ionize water vapor into H2 and O2. The hydrogen is so light it is lost into space, while the oxygen remains. This mechanism accounts for the high relative abundance of deuterium on Mars, as well as the highly oxidized state of the surface.
So, even if the temperature of Mars was stabilized in the liquid water range, hydrogen would continue to be lost and oxygen accumulated in the atmosphere. On Earth, volcanic activity serves to replenish the hydrogen lost through photo ionization, and plate tectonics recycle the oxidized crust into the mantle. Mars has no tectonic movement or volcanism anymore. Heating the planet to allow liquid water to form would actually accelerate the loss of hydrogen from the planet.
What this means for colonization/terraforming efforts is that no equilibrium can be reached between hydrogen loss and replenishment. If the rate of ice cap melting and release of water from permafrost were very carefully controlled, it would be possible for human-habitable conditions to prevail for perhaps as long as ten thousand years.
Ultimately, the Earth and Mars share the same fate: to become dry, cold desert planets that will be burned to cinders in a few billion years. Hopefully, by then the human race will have established itself across the galaxy.
Slashdot Mirror
So, there's water on Mars. Probably not a ton of it, considering the gravity. Maybe enough, with the right structure (like a biosphere) to sustain a limited amount of life. Roll forward to a point where living on Mars isn't just a scientific undertaking but part of enterprise (like settling the western US was from the 1880's onward) and think about how valuable water will be and how carefully it'll need to be overseen.
As for whether there's life or not, big deal, we'll wipe it out in some clumsy way or it'll prove to be so toxic to humans or human agriculture that we'll leave it a derelict desert like much of the southwest. Entertaining thinking, anyway.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The significance is that it would greatly simplify sending a manned mission to mars if there was water a large amount of water on the surface. It reduces the weight of the provisions that must be sent along and since it could also be converted to rocket fuel for the return trip.
Shop smart, Shop S-Mart.
Actually, those stations get a hell of a lot more than just "air, snow, gravity" - they get massive shipments of fuel oil, food, construction materials, electronic supplies, medical supplies, you name it.
They manufacture almost NONE of their needs.
Now, were we to build a south pole station that actually DID use only water, air, and gravity, and created everything else they needed from materials found at the south pole and processed there, that would be something.
www.eFax.com are spammers
How exactly do you get from "hydrogen detection" to "water"? Given that this stuff is at the poles, isn't it at least equally possible that it's CH4 slurry?
Not to nitpick, but....
The problem isn't temperature, per se. I'm presenting my argument based on a mass balance. If we assume that all the hydrogen on Mars is bound in water, then we can get a feel for how much water vapor would be in the atmosphere at any point. In the upper atmosphere, solar protons and gamma rays ionize water vapor into H2 and O2. The hydrogen is so light it is lost into space, while the oxygen remains. This mechanism accounts for the high relative abundance of deuterium on Mars, as well as the highly oxidized state of the surface.
So, even if the temperature of Mars was stabilized in the liquid water range, hydrogen would continue to be lost and oxygen accumulated in the atmosphere. On Earth, volcanic activity serves to replenish the hydrogen lost through photo ionization, and plate tectonics recycle the oxidized crust into the mantle. Mars has no tectonic movement or volcanism anymore. Heating the planet to allow liquid water to form would actually accelerate the loss of hydrogen from the planet.
What this means for colonization/terraforming efforts is that no equilibrium can be reached between hydrogen loss and replenishment. If the rate of ice cap melting and release of water from permafrost were very carefully controlled, it would be possible for human-habitable conditions to prevail for perhaps as long as ten thousand years.
Ultimately, the Earth and Mars share the same fate: to become dry, cold desert planets that will be burned to cinders in a few billion years. Hopefully, by then the human race will have established itself across the galaxy.
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Vpered na Mars!