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
South pole stations
by
wowbagger
·
· 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.
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
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.
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