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NASA Probes Reveal Vast Stores of Martian Ice
John Faughnan writes: "The BBC reports that a British newspaper has leaked stunning news from the Mars Odyssey spacecraft. Vast amounts of water ice are present on mars, "[if it] were to melt it could cover the planet in an ocean at least 500 metres deep." Researchers thought it would take a year to detect any water ice below the martian surface, but the huge quantity meant that weeks of observation were sufficient. The BBC notes that "The Mars Polar Lander was to touch down in exactly the right spot in 1999 and would have undoubtedly detected the ice had it not malfunctioned on the way down." This discovery will change plans for upcoming probes and may lead to a manned mission within the next two decades. The official announcement was scheduled for this Thursday prior to several publications."
I hope they're real careful when they bring back that water sample...who knows what's in it?
/dev/psychic: No medium found
This is a serious step ahead for the feasibility of a terraforming project. I'm reading the Mars series from Kim stanley Robinson at the moment, this article is spot on!
Sounds like Hell froze over =)
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If this probe detects ice in the first meter of soil from 60 degrees south to the pole, how could it find enough water to cover all of Mars to 500 meters? There must be assumptions not described here, or a math error.
This makes the colonization of Mars possible. This makes Terraforming possible. This makes fuel manufacturing easier. This makes oxygen generation easier. IF NASA plays this right we could easily be there by 2020. I just wish the money and the will exsisted because we have the technology to do this now.
There is nothing inherently safe about liberty. That's why so many people died protecting it.
I think it's great that there could be manned missions to mars, but I don't quite understand how the discovery of ice on mars would make manned missions any more possible. Don't they take water with them on missions anyway? Could anyone shed some light on this?
"Windows never has bugs. It just develops random features."
Hillarity at the touch of a button
We should colonize mars now before we destroy ourselves with nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction. I would think it could be done relatively cheaply with all that water already on the planet.
Hopefully a real manned mission will come out of this. We've set our sights to low in the past 30 years and allowed to many choice moments to pass. After we let the Pluto mission lose its chance to study an atmosphere I had lost all hope for Nasa.
We must make a manned mission to Mars, people may talk about cost and worry over what scientific results it would have. Ignore that; go to Mars because it is there.
Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.
I thought we always knew mars had quite a bit of ice at the poles, but the fact that there is now enough to cover the whole planet in water is very interesting, i doubt the *whole* planet was ever covered in water though, because if so the whole surface would end up being ice right?
"The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else." - Bush 05
A lot of the technology needed for a Mars Colonization Mission has already been developed, and is currently being tested. With the discovery of water, it makes the mission that much more desirable, and the possiblily of Terraforming grows dramatically. NASA must be one bunch of happy campers right about now.
"To make apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe." -Carl Sagan
Hmm. I thought this sounded familiar, but maybe I just Remembered it Wholesale.
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This just might make the Space Exploration Bill a possibility, instead of just a nice idea.
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Just don't let Greenpeace open an office there....
Don't anthropomorphize computers, they don't like it.
What a coincidence... It's the Martians trying to corner the solar system's market on Martian Glacial Water supply. Soon yuppies with too much money will pay millions for 100mL of Red Water...
--- http://foo.ca
Does that mean a mission to Mars a couple of decades ago would've lowered the production costs of Waterworld?
This is absolutely amazing news. I am quite excited about the prospects for future exploration of hte inner space system.
One concern though would be that perhaps we should consider Martian environmental concerns as well before launching a mission and/or a colony there. I would hate to see the natural beauty of Mars (which exists in my opinion) destroyed by mindless exploration.
I think it's great that we are going to be able to go now, but we should avoid making the errors we have made in the past.
(IMHO, as always)
~ kjrose
The care needs to be taken in the other direction. Water means that Earth life can live there--for instance, bacteria of the Antarctic sort. If we want to know about Martian indigenous life, we need to not inadvertently release several hundred species of microbes on the planet, some of which might take hold and crowd out any existing forms.
Even if they didn't adapt and live, sorting out their chemical components from those of native forms would complicate research.
Sterilizing an entire spacecraft is no easy job in the first place, and it gets much more difficult when the contents include live human beings.
500m around the entire planet from just a polar region!! Well, I don't care if the math does not work. If it can get some astronaut's sorry ass to the red planet then... I BELIEVE!!!!
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
Has anyone actually looked at a Mars map? I'm running the latest version of the Mars Simulation Project, looking at the planet in topography mode.
This planet has altitudes ranging from approximately -8000 meters to +22000 meters, with two very distinctive zones: around -100 W, mostly on the southern hemisphere, there is a huge, +5000 meters continent; the northern hemisphere is between -5000 and 0 meters; and there is a very impressive hole centered at 70 E and 40 S, between -7000 and -5000 meters, sourrounded by a 0 to 5000 meters zone - what happened there? A huge spacial hit?
Anyway, saying Mars would be covered by 500 meters of water is completely meaningless. I guess they took the quantity of water and divided it by the surface of Mars. They mostly want to impress people, I guess, but I for one would be more impressed if someone came with a new Mars map showing the areas where the "sea" would be once the ice was melted. There is an illustration there, but of course it doesn't take into account the "real" quantity of ice/water.
I think this is by far the most important discovery we have ever made. If this much water exists on our closest neighbor, then how much must there be on planets outside our solar system. The possibilities of extraterrestrial life just increased a thousand fold. Just imagine the possibilities if even half of this water were to be melted. Mars would be a bluer planet than Earth!
Why is it not water? Because the ambient temperature is really low. So you can go there and you'll have water, but you can't terraform the hell out of the planet, you need lots of heat to melt it - heat that obviously isn't a natural phenomenon on Mars, because it's very cold.
So, a nice find, but no terraforming just yet, taking a spacecraft is like taking a candle to Antarctica, a water supply doesn't solve all your problems.
..."[if it] were to melt it could cover the planet in an ocean at least 500 metres deep."
By my calculations, that would be enough ice for 5,876,042,997,811 scotch on the rocks.
Of course, my calculations are alcohol fueled.
This is not a matter of NASA playing its cards right. It is the American public, via Congress and the President, who must play their cards right. They give orders to NASA, and NASA does whatever they are told and funded to do.
If you want us on Mars, contact your congressmen directly and tell them that you want a permanent American presence on Mars, and you want it now.
This also has a profound impact on the drake equation: (http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti_drake_equ ation.html) This equation estimates the chance of finding life and intelligent life anywhere in the universe. The more places in our Solar System that we find water, the more likely there are Earth-like planets around other stars.
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
Scientists discovered an enourmous reactor-like machine on Mars. Officials say that it is probably some kind of weapon and must not be used. Mars ice will instead be transformed into water and oxygen by earth technology. This should be sufficient to support encapsulated mars habitats.
We better make sure Earth is firmly in control of that planet quickly...
Otherwise the Ice Pirates might beat us to it!!!
:)
The year is 2222 and Mike and Maureen land on Mars after accumulating enough frequent flier miles. They meet a Martian couple and are talking about all sorts of things. Mike asks if Mars has a stock market, if they have laptop computers, how they make money, etc. Finally, Maureen brought up the subject of sex.
"Just how do you guys do it?" asks Maureen.
"Pretty much the way you do," responds the Martian.
Discussion ensues and finally the couples decide to swap partners for the night and experience one another. Maureen and the male Martian go off to a bedroom where the Martian strips. He's got only a teeny, weeny member - about half an inch long and just a quarter inch thick.
"I don't think this is going to work," says Maureen.
"Why?" he asks, "What's the matter?"
"Well," she replies, "It's just not long enough to reach me!"
"No problem," he says, and proceeds to slap his forehead with his palm.
With each slap of his forehead, his member grows until it's quite impressively long.
"Well," she says, "That's quite impressive, but it's still pretty narrow...."
"No problem," he says, and starts pulling his ears. With each pull, his member grows wider and wider until the entire measurement is extremely exciting to the woman.
"Wow!" she exclaims, as they fell into bed and made mad, passionate love.
The next day the couples rejoin their normal partners and go their separate ways. As they walk along, Mike asks "Well, was it any good?"
"I hate to say it," says Maureen, "but it was pretty wonderful. How about you?"
"It was horrible," he replies, "All I got was a headache. All she kept doing the whole time was slapping my forehead and pulling my ears."
In a related story, NASA has announced that it will abandon its space exploration effort in favor of running a ski lodge catering to exclusive, high-income customers, like "P. Diddy". An unnamed source close to NASA has said that "We need to turn a profit, you know? Those rockets don't run on hydrogen, they run on good ol' American greenbacks! Like the ones P. Diddy has! He loves to ski, did you know that? He's big into everything NASA is into."
"P. Diddy" declined comment, sighting his long history of producing music videos with fish-eye lenses, shiny space suits, and unmarked black helicopters.
Cheers,
Bowie
Bowie J. Poag
Now that you have ice, you can use this for water, you can grow food, you can split it into hyrdogen and oxygen etc.
You have everything you need to sustain life. I think terraforming is a way off, but I don't see any reason why you couldn't put a colony on mars if there is lots of water there.
It's about time we made some plans to populate another planet, dual redundancy and all...
The problem isn't NASA's will to do it. It's funding and the laws of physics. The laws of physics make it extremely difficult to protect astronauts from radiation well enough to keep them healthy on such a trip, which would involve several years coasting in interplanetary space.People also don't realize how debilitating long periods in zero-g are. They often have to carry astronauts away in wheelchairs when they come back from a long period in orbit.
This makes a lot more sense. There's really nothing of scientific value that people could do that a sample return mission couldn't. Sending people into space has never been a good way of doing science; that's why they never have to compete for funding in peer review, because they'd lose.
We could bring back a sample within five years if we wanted to. If it had bacteria in it, it would be one of the most momentous scientific discoveries since the age of Galileo and Newton.
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Building a vehicle that would send a colony to Mars is not easy task, from what I've read NASA would have to build something or at least assemble parts in orbit. Unfortunately Joe Public has a major problem with nuclear -- he is scared shitless that if we have something nuclear circling the globe it will crash on Earth spreading radiation.
This is the point of my argument -- build a nuclear propelled rocket but assemble it in Moon's orbit which would provide safety in case of problems. I don't think anyone would complain if we accidentaly nuke the Moon since it a dead rock anyway. At the same time a base on the Moon would make for a good location for the people working on the construction of the rocket. Especially if US can put a base on the Moon before Chinese get there.
One thing that has puzzed me about the search
for life on mars is this; Assuming back in 1997
before Pathfinder landed in the Martian DESERT,
orbital probes flew over the planet looking for
a good place for the lander to touchdown.
Didnt NASA see the ice in the polar region ?,
and if your looking for life as we know it !,
then why not land where the ice and or water is ?.
Pure Vacumn + Unfiltered UV Light + No Water + Heat/Cold Extremes = No Surviving Bacteria. What else are you going to do, swab the thing with alcohol?
I think it's an INCREDIBLE assumption to say that 'they can not only drink, but breathe when they get to Mars'. The text (from the article itself) 'The same design of instrument was used on the Lunar Prospector spacecraft that discovered ice in the shadowed regions of the Moon's poles in 1998' seems to show why this is a bad assumption. We can't just go trouncing around on our own moon without space-suits 'just because we found water-based ice'.
My $.01
Interesting. Yes, a mission/base to mars looks much more likely this way. What I don't get, is why they're not similarly committed to having a moonbase. Moon has ice reserves as well and it's a little bit closer. Most importantly, it's way cheaper to build spacecraft/satellites/orbital nukes in moon. It'd be hands down the most expensive manufacturing plant in the known space to run. But getting stuff into orbit would be relatively dirt cheap.
Logistics of setting up a lunar steel mill would be interesting.. How much is it to get a kilo into orbit again? 20000$?
This is great news if there is water on Mars but i believe one of the major stumbling blocks on a manned mission to Mars and sustaining him isn't so much water
but getting people there alive.
Astronauts just on the journey (180 days each way + 550 days for return journey planetary alignment) would be exposed to lethal doses of radiation meaning when they got to Mars they would already be too ill and poisoned to be of any use to science let alone come home, i don't really feel that comfortable in sending (volunteers) to die a horrible slow death from radiation sickness under the guise of "research"
NASA have did do some research in 1998 on using dirt for shielding on any base but this doesnt answer the journey time radiation exposure problem
I think we forget in our own insignificance that the ISS and the shuttle fly close enough to the Earth's magnetic field and our atmostphere to be protected from the worst effects of our Sun (radiation,flares,magnetic bursts,uv, etc) but once we leave for Mars we will be exposed to the Suns full destructivness and we still havent developed protective materials/shields (short of 6ft thick lead) that will protect us long enough not to kill us in the 915 day exposure of such a mission.
I am still suprised that we think we can send people there after water when so far all we have sent is a glorified "remote control car" instead of an advanced humanoid type robots like this into space
I just read through my threshold, and everyone seems to be making mundane observations or, say, discussing the pros and cons of manned missions, instead of SCREAMING HIS OR HER RESPECTIVE HEAD OFF AT THE ENORMITY OF THIS DISCOVERY!!
/need/ the quantum mechanical electron tunnelling tricks we're pulling these days to get 50% more megahertz? Details, details. We got to the moon in '69, didn't we?
I posit that what we have learned today, if true, is the single most signficantly defining fact in the past and present history of the growth and expansion of human civilization.
You think the world would be much different if there hadn't been a North and South America for Europe to expand to? Nah, details.
You think I'm affected by physics near the speed of light or by the insane mass of black holes? You think computers
You think it matters that we went to the moon?
You think it matters that we have chunks of metal we call space stations careening tangentally to the sphere known as Earth fast enough that by the time they've fallen ten meters in, they're already ten meters higher? (Orbit, don't you know. Think anyone cares?)
The fact that there is water on Mars is more significant than that Earth has a moon.
Think about this.
Have you heard the phrase teraforming?
Do you realize that the stuff I just read today is straight out of science fiction, that we are presently and irreversably on the path toward being the first species in the history of the universe (AFAWK) to proactively colonize a planet other than our own. Without needing to do so in tin cans (spaceships, space suits). Do you realize that within the next hundred years, there will be martians getting 8 minute ping times? (mars-to-earth/c)
Do you realize that Mars is the single largest unclaimed property in the (presently forseeably) inhabitable world?
Forget everything that has ever happened. The fact that we're about to destroy, in whole, a planet's ecosystem to make it hospitable to the one form of life that has developed here on the one-closer rock, and which has enough power and technology to do this, is absolutely amazing.
Now go read about teraforming.
I was happy ina kind of boyish school kid kind of way about reading this. I don't really think it makes that much difference in reality to the actual *need* or feasability for a permanent manned Mars base, because the Mars northern polar cap always had water ice (or was it the southern one? in any case one did) and a manned base would have had to melt the stuff anyway.
The long term effect of this is that perhaps our descendants will be able to terraform the planet as envisaged by Kim Stanley Robinson and this is the kind of news piece that NASA needs to get public support for a Martian base, although, as I said above, in reality it doesn't change things that much.
To the guy who warned about Radiation poisoning from solar storms on the trip to Mars. Ship designers have been thinking about that one for a long time and this is where the concept of a storm cell on board a ship comes from - a thick walled cell whose walls are basically water tanks to absorb the radiation i.e. ionised particles.
What if we tried to melt all the ice (and also create an atmosphere with part of it)? (ignoring the fact that it might take many, many, many years.) How would it affect the overall temperature on Mars?
We could ruin another planet.
Gizmos Gagets For Ninjas
nasa can't prove theyve landed on the moon
nasa lies, the funding goes to black budget DFRC projects
Vast amounts of water ice are present on mars
In other news: Rita's, the popular italian water ice chain has announced its sponsorship of the first manned mission to mars.
Once again Whitehouse jumps to conclusions. He calls this yet to be announced discovery "Ice oceans". This is a slight exageration. He got his information from a story on SpaceRef, one that is a bit more accurate and which was posted on May 22. It does seem from preliminary results, that will be announced this Thursday, that a great deal of water ice exists under the Martian poles.
Dr. Whitehouse is the same guy who at the beginning of April read an abstract for the NASA Astrobiology conference and concluded the author had found life on Mars! He then reported this on the same BBC web site. He was ridiculed for this. If you want the real science scoop I suggest you look to other sources such as SpaceRef and not the BBC in the future.
Now they can have their scotch on the rocks.
RMN
~~~
No, I mean, like, ~really~ long term.
Playing the hypothesis that we discover mars, despite the presence of water, is completely lifeless, and also that human colonization is impractical, maybe dumping 'biobombs' on planets and moons isn't that bad an idea. Seeding it with bacteria and virii, and let time and circumstance give it the opportunity it needs. A few hundred million years, maybe a billion, and hopefully you'll have life.
If we can't transform planets to suit ourselves, or the radiation in space proves too deadly, can we not at least feel it incumbent upon ourselves to seed other places, and let life find it's ways into niches elsewhere?
"To pass through the jungle; silence, courtesy, ferocity, as the occasion demands." -- Kamau, "Proper Passage"
http://themis.asu.edu/
be sure to check out the pictures. very cool
don't hit *the* (read: 1 aka single) webserver too hard. i don't want to have to walk across campus and explain what happened =)
as such, posting AC !
could you safely have a margarita with some
martian ice cubes?
One other thing that should be noted is that if the water is ever leaked to the surface, along with an increase in heat via CO2 being pumped into the atmosphee, then there will probably be a reduction in the amount of dust in the atmosphere, as the iron binds to water droplets. This would modify the atmospheric conditions and probably reduce the number of violent storms. Also, a humid atmosphere would probably also make it more favourable to life, if there isn't any already there.
Without water it would be much more difficult to teraform the planet.
This is unresearched, but I believe that it is a probable scenario, based on the knowledge I have.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Ruin Mars? Any human efforts there can only help the conditions there. On a planet where detonating multiple high-yield nuclear weapons improves living conditions, I don't how we have much to ruin. Think about it, detonating nuclear weapons will cause the ice caps to melt, thicken the atmosphere quickly, raise atmospheric pressure, and begin to block solar radiation! Tell me how we could HURT that planet?!?!
Nope... the Toronto Maple Leafs haven't won the Stanley Cup yet.
i - This sig provided by
Free mars.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
According to http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/mar sfact.html
Diurnal temperature range: 184 K to 242 K (-89 to -31 C) (Viking 1 Lander site)
and with the atmosphere as a 95% CO2, this would be interesting. Since CO2 is a major component of 'greenhouse' gasses (bad name, but true) they've already got a greenhouse going - how much warmer could we make it with environmental manipulation?
Lots of questions to be asked about this, however, it's damn cold. I wouldn't want to be stuck there when the heaters fall over. I've been exposed to ~ -70F whilst skiing (at 13000 ft) and slept in -40F it's not something I'd look forward to. And heck this is, at the warmest, -31C! Brrrr......
Blah.. it's damn cold. I can't really see seas of water without some significant environmental changing at our hands.
-- There is no sig line, only Zuul.
ICE on Mars? Don't worry, palsy there ain't no ice and no water- not ta speak of. Just when NASAs budget needs a massive cut along comes the 'discovery of da decade' ! Yeah right. Gamma-ray ... neutron detectors ... bet it's real easy ta flux-up the data!!! Why do you think NASA DESTROYED the last two Mars surveyor craft? Cause one a' them would have landed smack dab in the middle of this massive ICE-FIELD , dug around a bit and found ... n-o-t-h-i-n-g !!!
Use solar power to create electricity. Use electricity to heat and melt ice to produce water for humans, use electricity to separate water into oxygen (to breathe) and hydrogen gases. I don't know what you'd use the hydrogen for. Can't burn it, that'd be pointless since you'd have to use the oxygen you just got off of it. Maybe there's some way to get the oxides off the iron with it?
It would take decades of research to prepare considering mankind has no experiencec visiting other planets that can support life.
Terraforming is a neat thought experiment.. but seriously. How arrogant are we to think we can take a place like Mars and make it habitable for humans when we can't even get our OWN planet under control? We are quickly decimating the earth and looking for a new planet to use.. so we can what, destroy it too?
Arranging the tanks and compartments that carry such stuff to provide a solar storm safety shelter in the center of your "tin can" is a trivial design exercise. A meter or two of water between you and the radiation is pretty much all you need. The ambient radiation is a problem, although only in percentage terms (it slightly increases your chance of getting cancer sometime later in your life). The point has been made that you could recruit the crew from smokers; they couldn't smoke on the mission; and you would actually decrease their chance of getting cancer during their lives by sending them to Mars!
Many, many design studies have been done utilising exactly the design I mentioned above, and it works. Read about it in this book or at this website.
Another thing I forgot is that with the hydrogen produced by the process and the CO2 in the atmosphere, a fuel can be generated to handle flying back to Earth.
Thus, the entire mission costs drop dramatically.
Wow, This brings a mission to within 10 years if NASA or another agency is smart.
~ kjrose
Somebody or something sure is rubbing it in.
"We found out that you would have discovered a cure for cancer if you hadn't been using a MS OS."
Table-ized A.I.
Look folks,
/. is that people seem to be clueless to the fact that space is extremely fucking difficult.
It's a good thing that all this water has been found on Mars. But it doesn't mean that now a manned mission to Mars is going to be a simple walk in the park, with terraforming right behind.
It takes a lot of energy to get at that buried ice, a lot of energy to melt it, and a lot of energy to lyse it into O2 and H2. Where is it supposed to come from? Solar?
Mars is farther from the Sun than Earth... less solar flux. Where are the acres of photovoltaic cells going to come from? Not to mention the mining machines, the melters, the tanks, etc.
I'm not against a manned mission to Mars, and I think this finding of water is a good thing. I just don't see how it translates into "now we can easily go to Mars right away, yippee!". That is just pure wishful thinking.
The problem with most of these highly-optimistic manned-space-mission discussions that you get on
Yes, there are political and financial hurdles to space exploration, but the bedrock engineering problems are enormous. I'm NOT saying insurmountable - just enormous.
We'll get there. It'll take time. I predict many will die along the way. It won't be easy. Space kind of sucks, really, if you happen to be a living thing.
I hate to pour cold water on anyone's enthusiasm - I have been a space buff since I watched Alan Shephard blast off on the first suborbital flight for America's space program as a lad. Nothing would please me more than to see the first TV from folks standing on the surface of Mars, though I honestly doubt it'll happen in my lifetime.
I just strongly believe that absurdly optimistic characterizations of how easy it's all gonna be will cause more harm than good...
- Steve
Say you're right, worst case scenario, and we screw up when terraforming mars. Who cares? There's no way we're going to make it LESS habitable, and we can just bring our people home. As for any martian microbes that may buy it - well, I'll shed a single tear for them, I guess.
I'm the stranger...posting to
"Mars is essentially in the same orbit... Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe!"
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
right all that ice is there waiting for Aronld schwartzennegger to release it so he can save the feakazoids from the evil "breathable air 'r' us" corporation.
So would the water be saline, like our oceans? Or would it all be fresh water?
--
Some weasel took the cork out of my lunch.
I can see next week's news: Mars Odyssey blown to bits by a freak laser blast from the planet's surface...
Sorry about the double reply, but I found a good link with some information on this topic: here.
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I recall reading an article about one of the early space tester guys who went up 100,000 feet or so in a balloon and then sky dived back (setting the world's record for that as well). Apparently he had a leak in one of his gloves and his hand swelled up a great deal at the height.
-
Yeah, I know this is a dumb post, but I was thinking - if I had the money, I'd probably spend a few million to be the FIRST person to drink a glass of water made from melted Mars Polar Ice (that almost even SOUNDS like some kind of sports drink, doesn't it?).
Of course, I wouldn't be laughing after I got poisoned by heavy/toxic metals IN the water....but something about that seems kinda romantic, in a cheezy 50's sci-fi pulp-novel sort of way.
Kevlar
I urge you environmentally conscious Slashdot readers to start boycotting Finnish products like paper, high tech (Nokia!) and software like Linux and SSH (use OpenSSH instead!).
You can also send e-mail to your local Finnish embassy. Tell them how outraged you are about this dangerous, anti-environmental policy. Point out that nuclear power is not just an internal affair as nuclear pollution does not know boundaries!
It looks like the biggest roadblock to Mars colonization will not be air, water, or shelter, but microdust particles.
Simply put, Mars has a very active atmosphere, which is a big planetary grinder, for lack of a better word. Some of the dust on Mars is so fine as a result of the atmospheric dynamics that it poses a danger to humans.
How? Even though colonists would not breathe Martian air directly, the very small dust particles there will get into pressure suits and living quarters. Essentially, there is a danger that people would be breathing particulates and getting a Martian version of black lung.
We don't know the extent to which this issue poses a danger to settlers, but it is a very real one. Add to that the harsh conditions, the dangers of dust storms, meteor showers, and unknowns we can't forsee, colonization of Mars will be very difficult indeed.
Space Propulsion Engine for Flying Saucer - New Physics
Rumor in Silicon Valley -
Inventor of 3D volume holographic optical storage
shopping his concept for Space Propulsion Engine
to US and other countries.
for further look at biography background goto
www.colossalstorage.net
he is working in top secret and will not patent, publish or share concepts as he says no physicist or scientist he has ever studied or researched had this approach and knows his concept will work to give near light speed
travel thru Galaxy.
he says it is a mankind first concept !!
MarsHydro. Tongue in cheek today, water in mouth tomorrow?
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
Terraforming would take a lot of resources that are not there yet. First you would have to raise the temperature to above 32 degrees F. Next, all of that frozen CO2 would start melting and we would need plant life to convert it into O2. Then you need to find a lot of Nitrogen to make the atmosphere thicker. And increasing the gravitational pull might help there as well, I'm not sure how you would pull that one off, but making the Moon around Mars heavier with asteroids may do something. There are probably a lot more things as well that could be done to speed up this process.
...President Bush said, "This is great news. I mean, how can you go to Mars if the toilets don't flush?"
..."Hey. Here's some really convenient stepping-stones to get you out into the rest of the solar system."
:)
First, a satellite orbiting the earth rich in minerals and possibly water. It'd be a perfect staging point for in-system space travel at any rate. Then, another possibly human-habitable planet only a short few months travel away that could be covered with an ocean 500 meters deep. Then a giant asteroid belt, and to top it off, an ice moon orbiting Jupiter!
This is to say nothing of the ice rings around Saturn!
Why can't anyone see this for what it is? Someone *wants* us to go out and explore beyond the boundaries of fantasi... er.. our Earth and possibly our solar system.
so that throws a wrench in the works for colonizing and terraforming. Comparing Earth's Van Allen belts to Mars' is like comparing body armor to lingerie.
is taking back off from the planet's surface. This is not the moon here people, its a planet. Do you know how much effort goes in to every shuttle launch from earth? Now do that with a minimal amount of crew millions of miles from help. If you want a manned mission to mars you'll need a new automated-launch shuttle. Something NASA hasn't been able to figure out. We should send more unmanned probs before risking human life.
I wouldn't be surprised if it was the Chinese who conquered/developed space and not us, since we're too busy being concerned for the alien "environment."
And we are it.
I wonder if all those useless nukes could be used to provide some heating on mars.. =)
Not that cold really.
You are looking at -averages-, not peak surface temperature as actually measured by landers, which is quite balmy.
The atmosphere is so thin that the temp drops rapidly with height. On a summer afternoon you might want to wear shorts, but also a heavy jacket, if standing up (never mind vacuum rose)
Yeah, I don't think anybody would have a problem with that.
Shaa...
http://www.msnbc.com/news/756847.asp?cp1=1
Damn, wish they had figured out that there was that much water up there 20+ years ago. Between the Soviets and the US we could have had ourselves one hell of a space race to the red planet.
As things currently stand, the Chinese will probably get there unopposed, while the US tries to get funding and political support from its international partners, and the Russians sit around with perfectly good hardware, waiting for someone to hire them.
Until fusion comes along, we'll just have to make do with fission reactors. Bring enough transuranics to fuel your reactor, maybe establish a breeder when you get into lunar orbit to supply future reactors. With a nuclear reactor, you can power a vasmir-type rocket, with hydrogen as ionizable reaction mass, or if you want to be crude, you can supply water directly to the reactor and expell the mass as radioactive steam. Once you get to Mars, deploy some of your spare fuel rods as another reactor on the surface for your chemical fuel/oxygen plant.
The nice thing about having so much power available is that you can start thinking about using magnetic shielding against ionizing radiation, an important consideration for missions outside of Earth's magnetic field.
I still say the first mission using a nuclear engine should be an unmanned shopping trip to the asteroid belt to pick up a few choice chunks of ice and metal to park at a lagrange point for use in resupplying and building. Then we push on to the Moon, and then, Mars. The key is getting a reactor outside of Earth's gravity well, once that's done, it's all about gathering raw source materials for processing and building. Heavy industries in space...
Check out some of NASA's planned (well, studied anyway) missions.
What's in the ice? Another Pauly Shore movie where an ancient martian is frozen in the ice! Two colony boys discover him, clean him up and take him to school, where whacky hijinks ensue.
Keep that planet free and our children may see (or participate in) the process of building really free society.
How about to start the project "Free Mars" with own (and the best) "declaration of independency" and own fund raising?
This supports one of the major theories of Martian water and what the hell happened to it. On Earth there's a process the planet has to cycle carbon dioxide into and out of the atmosphere. This is entirely dependent plate tectonics however. The theory is that Mars was warm and wet a billion years before Earth was but because it cooled faster than Earth because it was smaller its plate tectonics ceased. When that happened the CO2 process couldn't continue and the oceans began to freeze into the ground. It would be really cool if this discovery promoted more exploration on Mars. Having an ice boring probe discover some form of life would be pretty interesting. I wouldn't expect anything to be alive currently because its been many billions of years since water was a liquid on Mars. Even the deepest ice on Antarctica isn't older than a few millions of years.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Depending on your mission scale and profile, as well as available funding and long term goals, water on mars ranges from important to absolutely crucial.
First, water is heavy. The more you have to haul, the more the mission costs. YOu have to lift it into orbit at 10K a pound and then push it towards mars at probably 25K a pound given current production and financial costs.
Secondly, depending on your science and mission profile, having water on Mars can prove very useful. If you are shooting for a long term mission or a permanent science mission, it is crucial for instance. Water is also the basis for creating atmosphere and propulsive fuels once you get there. If the mission is long term, you need it to cultivate plants for a biodome (possibly) as well as for construction (concrete demands water in the mix for instance, though this is a vague assumption).
wonder what it would taste like. if the composition is known, could i mix the salts in distilled wwater and make "martian water"?
This is old.
http://grs.lpl.arizona.edu/news/
"
2002 March 1
The observation of large amounts of ice on Mars was announced today.
"
The BBC falls for it, the Slashdot editors fall for it, and not one poster spots the fsck up.
I've lost faith in you all.
The new evidence for water on Mars is yet another reason that the Viking Lander result should be considered as important for evidence for life on mars and that Dr. Levin's proposed chiral labeled release experiment should be incorporated in a forthcoming Mars probe.
For the near future the European Space Agency's British/German Mars Lander Beagle, http://beagle2.open.ac.uk , offers a golden opportunity for detecting life on Mars next year
The Grammar Nazi strikes again! Excelsior!
Yeah. Pulling a few bacteria out of an exponentially increasing culture will save the petri dish from being overrun. Duh.
In order to stabilise Earth's population through interplanetary migration, it would be neccessary to annually export many millions of people. Not going to happen. The only way to do it is for people to exercise reproductive responsibility. A naive hope, but our only chance.
From the article you quoted:
This is a new press release building on what went before, and it is an important development, becasue it is the first clear evidence as to exactly how much water we are dealing with.
Trolling, attention-seeking fuckwit. Get a life.
Well, I might make typos, but grammar errors?
I doubt there are many, especially in those short paragraphs.
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Safety Safety Safety - theres where 90% of the cost of manned missions occurs.
And the people we send ( at least on the inital trips ) usually do little more than hang on for the ride ( look at the early orbit tests etc ).
So how can we eliminate the safety problem, but still send manned missions?
**use death row convicts!**
I mean why not? if the US govt is going to execute them anyway why not give them the option of becoming a space explorer instead?
Not only do they avoid certain death, but rather trade it for say a 50/50 risk, they get the chance to do something useful and positive to repay some of the damage they have done to society!
And hey if that capsule smacks into an asteroid on the way, or accidentally ends up in the sun, no big loss, the pilot was destined for the chair anyway.
Once these guys have finished the really risky work, and the 'mode of transport' has been improved via the old trial and error method we can start sending smart people to do some real science!
Blockquote:
Equate average molecular thermal energy (3/2)kT with kinetic energy (1/2)mv^2 and you get v=sqrt(3kT/m). Where k is Boltzmann constant (1.38e-23 J/K), T is in Kelvin and m in kg.
Now O_2 has mass 2( 2.66e-26 kg) = 5.3e-26 kg.
And H_2 has mass 2( 1.67e-27 kg) = 3.3e-27 kg.
Which comes from atmoic weight / Avogadro's 6.022e23 = grams/molecule.
Say room temperature is 79F, 22C, 295K then O_2 is zipping around at 480m/s or 0.48 km/s (about 1000 miles an hour), similarly the average H_2 molecule is going at 1.9 km/s.
The escape velocity for Earth is 11.2 km/s and for Mars 5.0 km/s.
So at first glance earth can hold onto the average O_2 and H_2. Which is clearly not the case (Earth!=Gas giant). The rule of thumb is if the average molecular speed is greater than 6 times the escape velocity then it stays, otherwise it leaves.
So 6*O_2 speed is 2.88 km/s, 6*H_2 speed is 11.4 km/s. So H_2 leaves earth's 11.2 km/s escape velocity, and O_2 is still well within Mars's 5.0km/s.
If you use bc to check the math, set "scale=30" to avoid div zero.
While I agree that radiation is not the kind of major show-stopper the previous poster thought it was, anyone that thinks that arranging the tanks and compartments of a spacecraft is a "trivial design exercise" has obviously never put much thought into what's required to design a real spacecraft. We are talking about a highly complex system where everything affects everything else. Tank placement will, for example, change your thermal properties, mass moments of inertia, center of mass, wiring harness layout, plumbing, structural configuration and load paths. Each of these in turn has a cascading effect on the attitude control system, thermal control system, electrical power system, propulsion system, and so on. Possible, yes. Trivial, no.
In english: if you think that anything involving space is trivial you should think about the Challenger.
Yeah, put a bunch of recent ex-smokers in a tin can, and lock it shut for 3 years.
Evil martians won't stand a chance against psycho Terran nicotine addicts.
-Styopa
Doesn't this radically increase the liklihood of life being found on Mars?
I mean, that's a heck of a lot of ice, and we've got boatloads of bacteria that can/do survive in the Antarctic. Why not on Mars?
-Styopa
Worked for Australia.
Posts like this one are why I still read slashdot. The good news is that since it can hold Oxygen gas, it can also hold an ozone. So, given enough time, people can not only breathe, but they can go outside in the daylight.
A typo is a misspelling. Placing a definite article like "the" in front of proper nouns like "Mars" or "Olympus Mons" (not "Mons Olympus") is a grammatical error. (You can do it with some proper nouns, such as the Alamo, but not the ones you use in your post).
The length of the paragraphs has nothing to do with the possibility of grammatical error. It is very the possible to have screwed up a grammar short in sentences.
Second, which is not so obvious. We only need to send enough oxygen for the trip there. Why? Well, ice is water, water is H2O
2 parts Hydrogen, 1 part Oxygen.
Umm.. why bother to make oxygen from water when the martian atmosphere is made of CO2?
1 part Carbon, 2 parts Oxygen.
Pumping the atmosphere is much easier than mining ice.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
It would be interesting to correlate this map with an infrared thermal scan to detect geological hot spots - you might find underground liquid water that can be pumped instead of mined.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
This is absolutely wonderful news. Now we need to get some models of whether orbital mirrors on the poles can create an atmosphere that will keep your skin together, and if so then how soon!
But before that - core samples at the poles! There's a lot of easy to access history and maybe some organics we should know about in there.
In the next 30 years we are going to have either an incredibly well policed and defanged world, or an awful lot of horrible politically motivated NCB disasters. And we don't have anywhere yet for the race to survive if we should make a mess with energy or nanotech research.
Best thing going for Mars is, nobody's there yet that we know of, and anyone who goes will be likely be too busy playing the only game there is -- think of a new environment and what the survival traits will be. Time to fund nuclear rockets, breakthrough propulsion, and other things fanatics don't want to hear about.
Is there any possibility that there might be liquid deep under the ice. If we didn't know the ice was there in the first place, how do we know there is not liquid below just as frozen lakes are ice below. And if there is liquid water, with some sort of internal warmth (gravitational pressure on the core? tectonic pressure?) would there not be life most likely. just a thought.
It's been suggested before (In elementary school books) I think. That launching tons of coal at the planet that would burn up upon impact to increase the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere would help raise the tempature on the planet.
Once we can raise the tempature enough to melt the ice we sit back and wait to see where the land stays.
Now you know where land is and you have a Co2 abundance plant life could then thrive if you put it somewhere it's raining of course.
Another issue though is the radiation. It's widely believed that mars core is solid. We would have to figure a way to heat that core back up so plate tetonics could take back over and hopefully the planet would generate a new magnetic field which then would begin to block radation while the reformed atmosphere starts to do it's job.
One thing comes to mind are mining robots taking down nuclear bombs to explode in the core (next to impossible and possibly dangerous)
I just wish scientists could figure out a way to fix venus's apmosphere. Plate tetonics still exist there (IIRC a magnetic field too) hopefully someday we can send small robots (nanites that could fly and chemically convert the chemical makup of the atmosphere)
So is there a possibility of siphoning off the hydrogen before it leaves the martian atmosphere and using it for hydrogen based power systems(suitably distant from colonies)?
OrionRobots.co.uk - Robots From sol
Carbonic acid, umm all that lovely acid rain!!!!
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
There are several designs out there already, in fact one is being tested right now in the desert. Go check it out.
"A meter or two of water between you and the radiation is pretty much all you need."
This is the craziest thing I have ever heard. After taking a two year nuclear medicine course, I have to say it's hard to find a bigger load of shit than what you have just said. To find this load of shit modded as high as it was is sad.
If visible light can travel through 6 feet of water, you think it's going to slow down gamma radiation? Not even remotely close.
> The only way to do it is for people to exercise
> reproductive responsibility. A naive hope, but our
> only chance.
You seem to be worried that a growing population is a serious problem, rather than a fantastic boon to humanity, as is actually the case. We all need to stop reading 1970's sci-fi stories and get with the picture.
"Has [being a kidnapped teenage girl, raped repeatedly for months] changed you?" - Katie Couric to Elizabeth Smart
LOL! You mustn't get out much... :)
Did you bother checking what is now the NASA reference mission? I am quoting it. I presume the (kind) folk who modded my little post did. They would have seen that this is EXACTLY the configuration recommended by the experts.
Here it is for you: Mars Direct. For information directly relating to cosmic radiation go to this pdf
Uh uh. We all know where this is headed.
"You fool! This is Mars Alpha Six!"
"Has [being a kidnapped teenage girl, raped repeatedly for months] changed you?" - Katie Couric to Elizabeth Smart
...in the end of "We Can Remember it for you Wholesale," also known as "Total Recall."
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
I wonder just how cold the ice is it, that depth into a very cold planet. And if there was once life on Mars (Looking more likely now), there is a *really* good chance it's been preserved down there.
Ironically, one of the best materials for protecting astronauts from cosmic radiation would be water.
Mars has the highest mountain of the solar system .... and the known extrasolar systems also :-)
Wrong analogs
Mons Olympus, 24km.
(Sic)
Tallest, to be sure - but only the same amount of material that Hawaii has left across the Pacific in the past 70 million years; geologically not to way out
Mars has the deepest depressions, far deeper than Death Valley or the Death See(Israel). About 3km IIRC.
Here's a problem - the deepest depressions on Earth are in the western Pacific, all the way down to -11 km at Challenger Deep.
Mars has the longest and deepest cannyons, about 10km deep and thousend killometers long.
The grand cannyon is a little boy against that.
The grand canyon was cut by the Colorado River. Marinaris remains controversial, but appears to be a tectonic rift. Biggest recognizable analog on Earth?
The Atlantic Ocean.
The Vallis is a zygote compared to that!
If the Mars had an atmosphere like earth, on the bottom of the cannyons the pressure would be twice as high, because they are that deep.
If the Mars had an atmosphere, similar/like the Earth, the Mons Olympus (sic) would stick out of it.
If Mars had an 80%N=N/20%O=O atmosphere, with an average temperature of 10C and a surface pressure of one earth atmosphere, the surface pressure at the top of Olympus Mons would be about the same as at the top of Everest on Earth (Less gravity). People have climbed Everest with no oxygen bottles.
There is a lot more to be interested in on Mars than traditionally over-hyped and mis-understood matters of scale.
This water ice thing would be nice though....
You say,
"...to leave them there with a colony then to send them back."
You seem to be contradicting yourself. If you leave them there, why would you afterward ("then") say you'll send them back?
Puzzled...
Enby in Waltham
If that were the case, they would have discovered ice 20 years ago, before sending "cheaper, (un)better, faster" probes to bounce off planets like so many multi-billion dollar spitwads... ;)
Water is already used as radiation shielding by places such as INEEL. Concrete is good radiation shielding, why? Because it has lots of hydrogen in it from water of hydration.
Visible light can travel through 6 feet of water, but it sure slows me down when I belly flop.. so what?
Even if one of those Occam's Razor dissing theories about life on earth coming from ejecta on Mars is true, the two have developed independently for billions of years. Species on earth that are mere thousands of years seperated cannot interbreed. What is the likelyhood that something that has spent the last few eons on an utterly seperate biological course would be able to make functional use of our biological structure at all?
Sorry, just being a pain in the arse.
Anyone who decides they are too good to reproduce exponentially like the rest of us just leaves more room for the remorseless to occupy. Trying to excersize population self-control is a farce.. Population control is and will always be something one does to someone else, either through force or by giviing them an environmental morality complex.
Eat at Joe's.
If capitalist interests (nations, corporations) don't get there before communists, then it could very well become the "Red" Planet. Remember, the space race to the moon was a cold war phenomenon that was politically motivated, since Earth orbit is much more valuable real estate militarily and economically than any moon establishment. Once the mission objective was met, there was no value in continuing "research" on the Moon. But, a self-sustaining "robotic factory" colony on Mars makes sense as a net contributor to prosperity on Earth for resource-depleting and polluting undertakings. Gravity will see to it that toxic waste stays put. As far as life goes, Mars is already a write-off.
Better to read about it from the horse's mouth: JPL. Here's a link to the press release about this.
r el eases/20020528a.html
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/odyssey/newsroom/press
Orn
1. 2.