Plan To Bomb Mars For Signs of Climate Change

Oliver Harris writes "Scientists are planning on launching huge copper slugs at Mars in the hope that they will reveal signs of climate change. Problem: What happens when the Martians launch their own copper slugs back?" From the article: "'It's neat because it's a brute force way to gain access to the subsurface of Mars,' says David Spencer, a team member at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, US. 'The impactor will be very simple and we'll get our first look at material from that depth.' Christensen says that will provide a crucial test for models of Mars's past climate."

Comments

Copper Shortage

[Innova]

Scientists are planning on launching huge copper slugs at Mars...

But where will they find all of that copper?

Re:Copper Shortage

[God'sDuck]

forget copper: real geeks find water with Potassium!

Re:Copper Shortage

[dheltzel]

See, the secret plan is to provoke a copper war with the Martians. When they launch their copper projectiles back to Earth, we just catch them and use them. Brilliant, I say, simply brilliant!

Re:Copper Shortage

[fbg111]

Unfortunately, due to a terrible miscalculation of scale, the entire Martian copper salvo will probably be accidentally swallowed by a small dog.

The results

[Syberghost]

AP, 2106: NASA scientists have determined that the Martian atmosphere contains a metric farkload of copper.

boom

[God'sDuck]

Wait - when did we add Spirit and Opportunity to the Axis of Evil?

I saw this on Sesame Street!

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

1. "Scientists are planning on launching huge copper slugs at Mars in the hope that they will reveal signs of climate change."

2. "Problem: What happens when the Martians launch their own copper slugs back?"

3. "From the article: "'It's neat because it's a brute force way to gain access to the subsurface of Mars,' says David Spencer, a team member at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, US."

4."The impactor will be very simple and we'll get our first look at material from that depth.'

One of these things is not like the others,
One of these things just doesn't belong,
Can you tell which thing is not like the others
By the time I finish my song?

Three of these things belong together
Three of these things are kind of the same
Can you guess which one of these doesn't belong here?
Now it's time to play our game... ... It's time to play our game!!

Overkill?

[redheaded_stepchild]

Couldn't we get more data by drilling cores like we do at the poles and other places around the world? Seems to me that all we would really succeed in doing is throwing the evidence in a million different directions. And have we built a rover that is capable of not getting stuck in a crater?

Re:Overkill?

[Kelson]

Sure, but drilling cores is something that needs a lot of equipment and hands-on control. It'd be great for a manned mission, but it's tricky to fit a hundred-foot-plus telescoping drill onto a rover and expect it to work.

This way you can blast a crater and then analyze the dust spectroscopically.

Didn't we do this already?

[EvilMagnus]

...with the Beagle II?

( tongue firmly in cheek )

Re:Didn't we do this already?

[Tackhead]

> ..with the Beagle II [beagle2.com]?

In the past 15 years, the Martians have shot down Deep Space 2, Mars Polar Lander, Mars Climate Observer, Mars Observer, Phobos 1 and 2, and half a dozen earlier probes.

(OK, so Mars Climate Observer wasn't shot down - it was Martian spies who infiltrated NASA and switched things between Metric/Imperial units - but you get my drift.)

Anyways, it's payback time!

copper

[mr_burns]

Um, I wish they'd use some other metal. We can use all the copper we can get here on earth. How about depleted uranium? I could do with less of that in my life and it works well as a projectile.

Re:copper

[Vellmont]

We can use all the copper we can get here on earth.


Replies like this, and the moderations of them really makes me realize that there's a lot of people that really have no sense of scale. The world copper reserves are somewhere around 340 million tonnes (http://www.icsg.org/Factbook/copper_world/sd.htm) . That's about 340,000,000,000 kilograms (340 billion kilograms). The projectile they're talking about sending is 230 kilograms. Expressed as a percentage of our reserves, that's .000000068% of our copper reserves. I wouldn't really worry about losing that much copper.

Re:copper

[Vellmont]

In addition to my other reply which lists 230 kilograms as a percentage of the world copper reserves, I'd like to point out that 230 kilograms of copper is almost exactly a cubic foot. That is a 1x1x1 foot cube of copper. Not exactly a "huge copper slug" that the article summary suggests.

Re:copper

[mikiN]

... why not send a chunk of nuclear waste?

And in a couple of millennia be attacked by venomous six-armed three-legged snakefrogsparrows instead of the warm welcome we'd get from the peaceful meerkatbutterflies that would have evolved instead?

perfect!

[moosesocks]

this mission is perfect for our expertise! we've gotten quite good at sending huge chunks of metal hurtling twoard the surface of mars...

(with our luck, we'll miss completely and end up blowing up titan or europa and killing whatever life may reside there)

Marvin the Martian's revenge

[SKPhoton]

Problem: What happens when the Martians launch their own copper slugs back?

Marvin the Martian will take us on. "Where's the kaboom? There's supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom!"

Re:Why Copper?

[Carnildo]

Presumably copper vapor is less visible on whatever instruments they're using than something like iron.

Crashing into Mars

[Spudley]

Given the past history of Mars exporation, I'd say it's probably the best thing they could do -- as least if you're planning to crash into the planet, you won't be too upset when it happens.

Bombing Mars

[Xymor]

Frist the Bombing, then by 2015 US will be sending troops to secure democracy in Mars. This is just part of the plan to bring freedom to mars people.

obvious

[clsmyth]

Take off. Nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

Re:hmm...

[Kelson]

I guess I can kind of see how it's different, as we aren't removing the top ten feet from all of mars

Not to mention the fact that meteorites do strike the planet from time to time...

Re:Alternatively,

[VendettaMF]

Or, we could be observant and wait for a meteor impact.

Which leaves the techs of NASA looking at two ionised molecules of random gas and wonderring which was a bit of Mars and which was a bit of random meteor...

A nice homogenous impactor is essential for this form of research.

Are you wearing your tinfoil hat?

[tqft]

If they can launch a huge copper slug to Mars - where else can they land it?

Hmmm - any guesses people? Go on - you know the answer.

Large accurate placed explosive without nuclear fallout.

Think of Mars as target practice.

Earth First!

[Sir Codelot]

We'll ruin the other planets later.

Re:On July 4th of this year...

[superyooser]

They should wait two days later so it would be on Thor's Day (Thursday).

For those who didn't read the article, the mission is called THOR (Tracing Habitability, Organics, and Resources).