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More on the Mars Ice Cap
bfwebster writes "In a striking example of how a preliminary (but wrong!) scientific conclusion can persist for decades, Space.com has a story about how the south polar ice cap on Mars is mostly water, not mostly carbon dioxide (dry ice), as has been stated since the late 1960s. The new finding is based on analysis of Mars Observer readings that show that the souther polar ice cap is too warm at certain seasons to be dry ice. This finding has negative implications both for those claiming that liquid flow structures on Mars were caused by C02 instead of H20, as well as those who were hoping to use all that CO2 for terraforming."
The Mariner series of spacecraft went to Mars around that time period. I can't find a successful one in 1966, though. Here's the list:
I dare say that they're not 'just' using this evidence, it's the only bit of evidence out of the datapool which makes for good press release.
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If they say 'our spectrometer says that it is water', people won't know how that works or even why they believe it. But explaining the temperature difference between CO2 and H2O to the general public is a lot easier, so that's what we hear
I think MGO has a spectrometer or two aboard...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
I don't quite follow you. While it's true that -3 * -8 2/3 is 26, that's rather meaningless. -60 * -8 2/3 is 520.
Now if you could use your analogy between Earth temperature differences between polar and American regions, then the calculation would be more like this: -3 to 26 is a difference of 29, so instead of -60 at the Martian south pole, we can expect -31 at some American landing site. Of course, if we had picked the average summer temperature in Mecca, that would suggest we could find a better landing site on Mars where it would be warmer.
So all these calculations are bunk, or I'm totally confused.
There were no Mars launches in 1966-68. Mariner 5 was originally built as a backup to Mariner 4, launched in 1964. When Mariner 4 completed its mission successfully, the backup was reoutfitted for a flyby of Venus.
Launch: June 14, 1967
Flyby: October 19, 1967
Mass: 245 kilograms (540 pounds)
Science instruments: Ultraviolet photometer, cosmic dust, solar plasma, trapped radiation, cosmic rays, magnetic fields, radio occultation
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
Moon is only about 1/81 the mass of earth (it's surface gravitational force is one sixth of Earth's) and
Mars has (rather stable) seasons (see e.g. Season on Mars )
What are you talking about? The Earth has seasons because our axis is tilted 23.5 degrees from the ecliptic, and thus at different times of the year different hemispheres get either more or less direct sunlight. The moon has absolutely jack to do with this.
Mars has an inclination of about 25 degrees, just slightly more than us. Mars' seasons are actually more extreme than ours. It has a more eliptical orbit than Earth and makes its closest approach to the sun during Souther Summer, contributing greatly the global dust storms I'm sure you've heard about.
No, the main barrier to terraforming is the fact there's no atmosphere to speak of. In the long run, the low gravity and lack of tectonic activity will also be problems. These are major contributors to its current lifeless state.
Three words: Red Mars Trilogy. K.S.R. dealt with all the terraforming issues in detail... I was actually surprised at how deep he went into eco tech.
In any case, it would take more than ants, and a helluva lot longer than a few decades to change the environment on Mars into one we could use.
Not sure about the issue of radiation... there may be a way to have a thick atmosphere that shields the surface enough. I don't think normal radiation within the solar system is really that bad, it's the solar storms that getchya.
One other note: just because the polar caps aren't made of dry ice, doesn't mean there isn't a significant amount of CO2 and carbon locked into the regolith, and in the water itself. But yeah, there are much better gases for terraforming if you want to "Greenhouse" a bit. CFCs for example.
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
The problem is that Mars' rotation & tilt are erratic, and that's due to the absence of a regulator (large satelite).
They're erratic over timescales of hundreds of thousands of years. If we ever do terraform Mars, large swings in the axial tilt will not be on the list of things to worry about.
Mars does have an ionosphere, You have an ionosphere when solar radiation strips away electrons from atmospheric gases.
Mars doesn't have a strong magnetic field though. The magnetic field keeps charged particles away from the planet, which otherwise would erode the atmosphere (this is why Mars has a thin atmosphere).
Hard solar radiation does make it to the martian surface, and in the absence of ozone or another long-UV absorber, would be a problem if we ever did terraform Mars. Buy stock in ACME umbrellas now.
It's far easier to take temperature measurement using other means, and those measurements are sufficient to show that it's too warm for CO2.
I'm not positive of this, but I would guess that ground based infrared spectrometers (like what's on NASA's IRTF) may not have the resolution nor the signal to noise capabilities to do the detection. No that I think of it, there are several plausible reasons why you can't do the detection from ground based telescopes, but I would need to check them out before sticking my neck out and posting them.
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Good points, but one of the benefits of CO2 is that plants want it. Insects could turn O2 into CO2, but insects won't last long without plants...and that's not even getting into what it takes to grow chickens and eggs. ;) You see the problem. Getting Life to survive is really no issue, because that's all life does. The tricky bit is getting reasonable precursors and conditions for life in place. If you can do that, your subsequent decisions won't even matter much, because you can be sure the thing will take off without you and before you know it it's calling you up on the spacephone talking about [mp]aternity.
:)
To transplant an Earth-type ecology, you're going to need remarkably Earthlike conditions, and this is probably unfeasible. What people have looked at is importing something like (what they envision as) primordial Earthlike conditions and letting it stew for a few hundred (or thousand) years. The interesting thing to me is that this is still called "terraforming", when what comes out of it really won't really be Terran - it'll be novel. The starting factors would likely be genetically engineered, and if there's success it'll be through rapid adaptation. The life you get is pure Martian. Just as Ray Bradbury observed.
We don't need CO2 as much as we need Nitrogen in the atmoshpere and in the ground. Well anywho we need Oxygen, Nitrogen, and Carbon Di-Oxide all together (as well as inert gasses but they're miniscule). In order to get a viable ecosystem of any kind of proportions we need all 3.
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