Enormous Amount of Frozen Water Found on Mars

schweini writes "Space.com is reporting that the Mars Express probe's MARSIS (Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding) experiment has detected and measured an enormous amount of water ice near Mars' south pole, which would be sufficient to submerge the whole planet's surface underneath approximately 10m of water on average."

Comments

Total recall

[cachimaster]

Total first post recall

Re:Total recall

[rez_rat]

I was going to say something REALLY smart here!... but I totally don't recall what I was going to say!??

S-

Re:Total recall

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you Mod, if this is off topic then why is the first post modded funny?
Bunch of assholes!!!

Why couldn't NASA do this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fucking Europeans are really showing us up. We need a moon mission to stick it in their face.

Re:Why couldn't NASA do this?

[Seumas]

Because, in America we don't care about achievement in discovery. The typical attitude is something like why should we spend two billion dollars exploring space when we have real problems in our own country. Yes, that true American spirit that has propelled us since the first foot was stepped on the shores of this country is dead and buried. *sigh*

Seriously, when was the last time you heard a kid cite some social parasite, sports star or rapper as one of their heroes? When was the last time you heard one name an astronaut? In fact, how many people can name even one astronaut that is currently active in the space program?

Unless it involves devising some mechanism of getting us beer, porn or baby jebus in larger quantities and more efficient rates, my fellow Americans largely don't give a damn.

Re:Why couldn't NASA do this?

[QuantumG]

So, do ya think that maybe the massive amounts of marketting and promotion that NASA did in the 60s might have had something to do with them being a lot more popular then than they are now?

Re:Why couldn't NASA do this?

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact, how many people can name even one astronaut that is currently active in the space program?

Well, if you had asked a week ago, I'm sure most people could have named Lisa Nowak... ;-)

But seriously, why would it have to be an astronaut "currently active" in the space program? Surely you could still have Neil Armstrong or John Glenn be your astronaut hero. I'm sure a lot of people still hold up Michael Jordan as their sports hero, even though he's been retired for years.

How many astronauts these days are doing "heroic" things? Heroes are unique; you don't get to be a hero if there are a hundred other people who do what you do. Hops to LEO in a shuttle doesn't make you a hero to many people, no matter how much work it took to get there. Being the first man to land on the Moon, however, can make you a hero for all time.

Re:Why couldn't NASA do this?

[thrawn_aj]

I feel your pain. But you should know that throught history, the people who really contributed to the advancement of the human race (many a time ignoring the flames licking their feet as they stood at the stake) constituted a tiny minority of humanity (at best). As such, innovation and the frontier spirit has remained the domain of a significant few, rather than the multitudinous drones that form the background noise on this lil rock we call home. If that sounds elitist, it really isn't. All I'm saying is that there is no pre-ordained reason why the human race should or shouldn't have a profound future. What is true (and what we should accept and move on) is that only a small fraction of humanity will ever recognize profundity when they see it :P. And please don't fel bad about your country, it is really a global phenomenon. Until a few centuries ago, the operative word was "anti-science" - i.e. active hostility against science. Then even the most retarded of the drones realized that science was the goose that laid the golden eggs and you didn't even have to acknowledge the goose! - just grab the eggs and praise god (I don't abuse my capitals thank you very much :P) for the bounty :P. So now we live in a period where anti-science has been replaced by apathy to science. It's a sort of knee-jerk reaction to the fact that the world owes the scientific community a heavy debt and is trying to welsh out of it ;-). No matter, no one's in a hurry. Time enough for us to evolve fully.

Re:Why couldn't NASA do this?

[Seumas]

In fact, how many people can name even one astronaut that is currently active in the space program?

Well, if you had asked a week ago, I'm sure most people could have named Lisa Nowak... ;-)

But seriously, why would it have to be an astronaut "currently active" in the space program? Surely you could still have Neil Armstrong or John Glenn be your astronaut hero. I'm sure a lot of people still hold up Michael Jordan as their sports hero, even though he's been retired for years. That illustrates my point precisely. First, on the sports angle - it's sad that we would even compare some guy who scored lots of points in a game where you throw a ball in a hole and who could jump high to a guy who straps himself into skyscraper sized machine with enough fuel to incinerate Florida, escapes the atmosphere, throws on a suit and leaves the shuttle to walk around in the empty vacuum of space, tethered by a little stringy rope and risking his life every second of the way in a manner that no other man or woman on the planet could even comprehend.

Second, on the Neil Armstrong angle. That the only space heroes we could conjure up are those that were around when most of our parents were still watching Saturday morning cartoons is the perfect illustration of how pathetic our desire for exploration has become. Astronauts today are doing far more heroic things every time they step into that suit above and beyond most other human beings. Unfortunately, they are not big, bold, earth-shattering things leading to immense progress. Again, that illustrates the entire problem at hand. We don't have any Buzz Aldrins or Neil Armstrongs at the moment, because we are too busy cutting their budgets, reducing the grandness of their adventures and explaining away the loss of our societal fascination with and dedication to advancement.

There's nothing wrong with admiring sports figures, but neither Kobe Bryant nor Paris Hilton are ever going to discover anything great. Lead man to a new world. Or save man from himself by finding "new lands".

I envy that my parents were a live in a time when a president put an impossible challenge in front of a nation and then they watched nervously as it culminated in potentially the greatest achievement in the whole of history. I envy that the memories my parents and generations before them have are not limited to two space shuttles exploding and screwing up a little robot rover launch, because we used imperial instead of metric measurements.

Re:Why couldn't NASA do this?

[Nyeerrmm]

To be fair, I do some work with kids for educational outreach for space exploration, and one thing that I've always find amazing is that whenever I get in to the question and answer part (usually preparing for something else fun) there's always a couple of kids who have some amazingly fun and insightful questions like 'What planet would you visit if you could?' or 'When do you think we'll have a Mars base?' To be fair, it's a minority of the kids who seem really interested in space exploration or anything beyond a 'whoa, that was really cool!' type of thing (I do mostly rocketry stuff for that reason,) but I feel that a minority are all you need.

I had a discussion with another student a week or so ago about the politics of space exploration, and who of the upcoming nominees would be the best choice with regards to NASA funding and private exploration legislation (I currently think its Bill Richardson, despite my partisanship,) and one of the main things that stuck out at me in our discussion was that it doesn't matter if the public is really excited about it, it just matters that a small minority are willing to put their effort into it, and the majority are willing to tolerate a very minor part of the budget on it ($15 billion is not that much as far as the national budget is concerned.) Not that I wouldn't be ecstatic if everyone started cheering as loudly for a discovery of a life-developing extra-solar planet, or even the discovery of vast liquid seas on Titan, but what we currently have is better than nothing. A couple more billion to allow for more robots along with 'Moon, Mars and Beyond' would be amazing though.

Anyway, I don't have a problem with the Europeans making this discovery, and I'm as patriotic as anyone, because this kind of thing is a human endeavor, and I'm just happy that my country can make a significant impact.

To sum this little rant up, I'd be very happy if our celebrity obsessed culture got over the obsession, but it really doesn't worry me much. My one real concern for the long term future of the US (long-term meaning hopefully not Iraq, Afghanistan, or even immigration) is our educational system so we can remain competitive (but not necessarily dominant) in the technology and discoveries of the future.

Re:Why couldn't NASA do this?

[regularstranger]

Space is a pretty big place. I think there's room for people who are not Americans to make discoveries. Also, if the patriotic aspect of exploring space is so important, it's not like NASA didn't play any role in this discovery.

Re:Why couldn't NASA do this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because, in America we don't care about achievement in discovery. The typical attitude is something like why should we spend two billion dollars exploring space when we have real problems in our own country.

Yeah, that really explains why NASA has a budget about the size of all of the other space programs in the world combined. And it sure as hell explains why NASA was the only space agency in the world to launch any probes to Jupiter or further (including the recent probes to Saturn and Pluto). And it sure as hell explains why NASA is the only agency that has successfully landed on Mars and why NASA recently launched MRO.

You sir, are full of shit. As far as planetary exploration goes, NASA is second to none. NASA probably launches 5 times as many probes as the ESA and probably spends 10 times as much money on the research from the probes (including additional funding from the Dept of Education and NSF). But if you want to debate what is happening today, compare how many space probes NASA is currently operating in our solar system compared to the rest of the world. If the ESA thinks that putting up Mars Express, Venus Express, Rosetta, and the piggyback Huygens probe makes them a real space exploration power, they are sadly mistaken. In that same period NASA has launched the multibillion dollar Cassini probe (the expensive part), Deep Space 1&2, Mars Climate Orbiter (failed), Mars Polar Lander (failed), Stardust, Genesis, Mars Odyssey, CONTOUR (failed), two half billion dollar Mars Exploration Rovers, MESSENGER, Deep Impact, MRO, New Horizons, and STEREO. There is no comparison whatsoever.

Re:Why couldn't NASA do this?

[Anonymous Coward]

As such, innovation and the frontier spirit has remained the domain of a significant few, rather than the multitudinous drones that form the background noise on this lil rock we call home. If that sounds elitist, it really isn't.

Two comments on this:

1. If you constrain "innovation" to "technological innovation" you are right, in a way, but probably not in a way you think: While people doing technological advancements are few as a fraction of the population, technological "breakthroughs" are hardly done by the single, lonesome genius in his basement. Innovations are often developed independently and in teams and even if you hear of a single name, there's often more than one person behind it and even that team massively builds on other published scientific work done by others. So, yes, technological advancement is done by a small portion of society but it's hardly done by "one-in-a-century" figures.

2. I'd argue that social progress is as important as technological one. Yes, I do complain about the social sciences, too (esp. since some do look more like proto-science), but without social progress we end up having (for example, the nuclear bomb) but lack the social framework to deal with it, resulting in catastrophic consequences that are proportional to the technology's power.

Re:Why couldn't NASA do this?

[jdigriz]

Bah. Susan Helms, Shannon Lucid, Sergei Krikalev, Anousheh Ansari, Mark Shuttleworth. Or do they have to be actually up in orbit to be "currently active"? Sure, one's a cosmonaut, and two are civvies, but they were on our frickin station so it's close enough.

Any slashdot reader who's been paying attention should know at least a few.
Then again, I'm card-carrying space enthusiast who has met moonwalkers in person so I'm exception that proves your rule.

Re:Why couldn't NASA do this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, the Americans have a space program now?

Re:Why couldn't NASA do this?

[Nyeerrmm]

I can't think of what any of the non-civivilians did off the top of my head, though I recognize Shannon Lucid's name. And I am also a card-carrying space enthusiast. I'm on the national board of SEDS (Students for the Exploration and Development of Space) and am a senior in Aerospace Engineering and will be doing grad work in the area eventually going into space systems development.

And Anousheh only stands out because I worked in a booth with her at the X-Prize Cup last year, and Shuttleworth mostly because I'm an Ubuntu user. I also know of Mike Folsum because he's from Texas A&M and he's been flaunted this year pretty well, Mike Melville (pilot for spaceshipone) because I met him when they were flying to Osh Kosh and the Smithsonian through my hometown (Tulsa, OK) by befriending the air-boss at the facility they were using, and a few others that I've met but don't remember their name. Obviously this doesnt include the pioneers.

Very few astronauts/cosmonauts stand out as being memorable, which is part of the problem. I'm not sure if I'm arguing with you or agreeing with you. I think we're on the same side so I'll go with I'm agreeing with you.

As a disclaimer I'm not prone to hero-worship and don't think of myself as having any role models, and never really have, so maybe I'm not the best example. But just my experience.

Re:Why couldn't NASA do this?

[jdigriz]

Lucid set an American space duration record and then walked off the shuttle. Sergei Krikalev was the Flight Engineer on a couple of ISS expeditions, but I remember him as the guy who got left up there on Mir when the Soviet Union collapsed. Talked to him via Amateur Radio during that time. They got him down eventually. Susan Helms has 5 space missions under her belt, but I remembered her because she starred in the IMAX Space Station 3D movie. I had erroneously associated her with a Hubble Servicing mission but that must have been someone else.

Re:Why couldn't NASA do this?

[HLN]

In fact, how many people can name even one astronaut that is currently active in the space program?

Most people in Sweden can, since Christer Fuglesang, the first (and so far the only) Swedish astronaut, was up on a mission to ISS last year (the STS-116 Mission).

He is also one of few people who are both trained as a russian cosmonaut and american astronaut!

Re:Why couldn't NASA do this?

[Logic and Reason]

Your attitude reeks of elitism and a rose-tinted nostalgia for "the good old days." You say an astronaut is "risking his life every second of the way in a manner that no other man or woman on the planet could even comprehend"? Please. The risk is certainly there, but don't try to pretend it's somehow fundamentally different from all the risks "regular" people take every day in pursuit of less glamorous occupations. Yes, exploration is a noble goal, but you are fooling yourself if you think that's why people used to care more about the space program.

You know what? You're not going to listen to what I have to say, anyway. You're off in your imaginary space-ship, looking down on all of those closed-minded little people who can't see the obvious importance of your personal obsession; and you whine that they won't spend as many of their tax dollars on the space program as they used to in the "glory days." The only thing I can tell you is that you're not going to have much success convincing people with that kind of condescension.

Re:Why couldn't NASA do this?

[Anonymous Coward]

"That illustrates my point precisely. First, on the sports angle - it's sad that we would even compare some guy who scored lots of points in a game where you throw a ball in a hole and who could jump high to a guy who straps himself into skyscraper sized machine with enough fuel to incinerate Florida, escapes the atmosphere, throws on a suit and leaves the shuttle to walk around in the empty vacuum of space, tethered by a little stringy rope and risking his life every second of the way in a manner that no other man or woman on the planet could even comprehend."

You're absolutely right. How dare people admire someone who's spent every day of their life practicing to become the best in the world at a sport over someone who sat in a chair while other people piloted him to the moon?

Re:Why couldn't NASA do this?

[Bastard of Subhumani]

Yes, that true American spirit that has propelled us since the first foot was stepped on the shores of this country is dead and buried.

It was probably OK till the latecomers arrived. You know, that pale skinned mob who arrived from the other (Atlantic) side. Been heap big trouble since they showed up.

Re:Why couldn't NASA do this?

[Ingolfke]

I think you're glorifying "the American spirit". Although there have been great explorers and people driven purely by the desire to know... I think most people, particularly the early American colonists, were more interested in making a new life for themselves, whether that meant more freedom or more money. The big migration out West had an adventurer component, but it was also full of people asking "how do I make some money and a better life for myself off of this".

Re:Why couldn't NASA do this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are astronauts worthy of hero worship? It's a large scientific program, its success is due to thousands upon thousands of workers, not to mention general advances in science and an economic system that can support advanced research projects that don't have an immediate economic benefit, not to mention a military system that shares many technological requirements in common with the space program.

The astronauts were just a bunch of jarheads who followed orders, more recently there's a bunch of old scientists who get a crash-course and are sent up after a year or two. Ascribing the achievments of the space program to the actions of (say) Buzz Aldrin is off course. It's just taking the simplistic hero-worship system of sports athletes, and transferring it over to NASA - it's not a perfect fit and in fact it doesn't even make sense.

Not to mention, why does NASA need hero worship in the first place? Is the space program somehow slighted if astronauts don't get lots of parades and groupies when they come back?

Re:Why couldn't NASA do this?

[tsalaroth]

I could've, until she got fired last week..

Re:Why couldn't NASA do this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. Extravagant hyperbole can make any profession seem glorious and worthy.

Re:Why couldn't NASA do this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry you are way off.

In america we belive, :"HEY Those light brown people over there have more oil than us! let's go blow them up."

That is reality, nut that mamby pamby crap you just spewed forth. If Americans CARED one tiny bit about the problems at home they would be fixed. Dipshits like Gates blowing billions to feed africans while americans starve, WE are intent on forcing our way of life on the middle east when the USA is fucked up on it's own.

Re:Why couldn't NASA do this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok here's a solution to all our problems. Round up all the dumb people, lazy people, and people who don't give a shit about the fact that we are on a path to extinction via shortsightedness and kill em. We would have the resources to explore the system, let biodiversity regrown, and end human suffering (after a whole lot of short term suffering of course.)

Re:Why couldn't NASA do this?

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact, how many people can name even one astronaut that is currently active in the space program?

What's her name now again, that chick in diapers? It's right on my tongue.

Re:Why couldn't NASA do this?

[Magada]

Yes, because eating humble pie is a sure-fire way to get noticed and convince people your dreams are worthy. Pah. More on topic, I have this much to say to both of you: America lost the space race. Boo hoo. Cry me a river. Then Russia gave up on it. Cry me river number two. The future of space exploration lies with corporations anyway. NASA, the ISS and the other (national) space programs are just fluff and budget sinkholes.

Re:Why couldn't NASA do this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gawd...you must be a liberal, Al Gore worshiping, lifetime PETA member, envirowacko, socialist weenie. If we killed all of your types, then we'd be OK.

Re:Why couldn't NASA do this?

[illumin8]

Anyway, I don't have a problem with the Europeans making this discovery, and I'm as patriotic as anyone, because this kind of thing is a human endeavor, and I'm just happy that my country can make a significant impact.

I heard a very interesting story on NPR this morning (sorry I can't find it on their website yet) about how China now has a space program that is 3 times larger than the US, and they are now likely to reach the moon within a decade or less, where at our current level of funding, NASA isn't likely to reach the moon until 2020. Apparently China has decided to put 200,000 people into their space program (3 times the amount of employees that NASA has), and their program is very reminiscint (sp?) of the Gemini program started in the 60's in the US.

This is where having a population that is not visionary and forward thinking is dangerous. We run the real risk of becoming a has-been in space exploration, at a time when in the next 100 years or so our planet is becoming less and less habitable, we need to be looking for a backup plan.

Re:Why couldn't NASA do this?

[Gr8Apes]

But seriously, why would it have to be an astronaut "currently active" in the space program? Surely you could still have Neil Armstrong or John Glenn be your astronaut hero. I'm sure a lot of people still hold up Michael Jordan as their sports hero, even though he's been retired for years.

That illustrates my point precisely. First, on the sports angle - it's sad that we would even compare some guy who scored lots of points in a game where you throw a ball in a hole and who could jump high to a guy who straps himself into skyscraper sized machine with enough fuel to incinerate Florida, escapes the atmosphere, throws on a suit and leaves the shuttle to walk around in the empty vacuum of space, tethered by a little stringy rope and risking his life every second of the way in a manner that no other man or woman on the planet could even comprehend.

I'm not sure we compare Michael Jordan to an astronaut. The analogy holds, however, much deeper than you think. More below:

Second, on the Neil Armstrong angle. That the only space heroes we could conjure up are those that were around when most of our parents were still watching Saturday morning cartoons is the perfect illustration of how pathetic our desire for exploration has become. Astronauts today are doing far more heroic things every time they step into that suit above and beyond most other human beings.

That could be because Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first who did something only 12 humans have done, and we remember some firsts. Heck, do you know who stayed in the command capsule and flew around the moon while the other two were cavorting? Do you know who the first 3 were that flew around the moon? Do you know the first 3 that died?

Today, I think only some will know about Virgil (Gus) Grissom, even fewer will know his two crew members names: Edward White and Roger B. Chaffee. Astronaut deaths unfortunately became a lot more common with the Challenger and Columbia disasters, and thus the uniqueness of the deaths of the first three faded (Time has a lot to do with it as well, although had those other two disasters not happened, many more would know about the original Apollo 1 crew). Other than Christa McAuliffe, who else died on Challenger? Why do we know her? (Hint, she was a civilian astronaut - the first) What about Columbia?

Now to get back to the Michael Jordan analogy. Note that while we may still know Michael Jordan, I will guarantee you that many of today's teenagers do not. He's not a hero to them, he's before their time. He will fade although he will be remembered for a while. Look at Wilt Chamberlain. He too has largely faded, although he still holds several records. Charles Barkley, on the other hand, flashed and is almost forgotten.

Basically fame is fleeting, unless you're completely severed from the rest of the population by your actions. Certain (in)famous people will long be remembered (Charlemagne, Hitler, Einstein, Nixon, Washington, Armstrong, Stalin, Hawking, Julius Caesar, etc) and you'll note there are more infamous than famous ones in that list. There's a definite reason for that, and that is that (fortunately) it is much easier to go very negative than very positive outside the envelop of normal human behavior.

Even when someone does go far outside the norm, they can be forgotten. Quick - who was the first person to break the sound barrier? That was considered at the time to be as large a feat as the moon landing. You should have seen some of the articles of the time, even by scientists, about the absolute BS about what happens when you break the sound barrier. Makes for very entertaining, but sobering, reading. You see, the equations for air flow reach an asymptotic limit, or singularity, at Mach 1. In reality, it's quite similar to our current understanding about the speed limit of light. It too reaches a asymptotic limit, but the laws of physics as we understand them prevent us from accelerating anything faster

Re:Why couldn't NASA do this?

[qazxswedc]

You've stumbled onto what I like to call "TJ's Grand Unified Theory." Any scientific discovery or technological advance will immediately be analyzed to determine it's absolute potential for psychotropic effect or self-gratification. (Revised from earlier version: "If you take any invention or discovery and place it into the hands of college students they will immediately devise a means to get high from it or have sex with it.") TJ

Re:Why couldn't NASA do this?

[rbanffy]

There's nothing wrong with admiring sports figures, but neither Kobe Bryant nor Paris Hilton are ever going to discover anything great. Lead man to a new world. Or save man from himself by finding "new lands".

That's so true...

They are profitable. They help sell products and TV. They entertain. And, as for Paris Hilton, she helps me keep mankind in perspective. Some of us are capable of extraordinary achievements but, apparently, not most. She reminds me that about half of mankind has a below-average intelligence.

That, perhaps, make those extraordinary achievements even more extraordinary.

Re:Why couldn't NASA do this?

[Vexorian]

There's nothing wrong with admiring sports figures, but neither Kobe Bryant nor Paris Hilton are ever going to discover anything great. Lead man to a new world. Or save man from himself by finding "new lands".

huh?

But whatever, I agree. I am also afraid that we would really need a cold war in order to send men to mars, otherwise the space race doesn't get enough funds, what's worse is that earth is getting out of resources and planets out there seem to be full of resources so we might be killing ourselves with our own lack of vision.

Re:Why couldn't NASA do this?

[Frumious Wombat]

As one of those people who actually remembers Buzz Aldrin, et al. (which would make me depressingly close in age to your parents, *sigh*), may I say that I and my friends were raised on the dream that by now Astronauts would not be heros, but rather clean-cut Ralph Kramdens, driving the daily Kennedy to Moonbase Alpha shuttle. There was supposed to be an orbiting Port Elizabeth (without the slums), and the beginnings of exploitation of asteroids and the moon for resources. We expected a frontier.

What we all either didn't know (what can I say, we were kids, it was the 70s, and the adults thought disco was a good idea), or forgot, was that the entire space race was a PR stunt, with no goal other than bragging rights over the Soviets. We got to the moon, brought back some rocks, played golf, and tooled around in the ultimate dune-buggy while taking pictures, and that was enough. We need, in other words, an opponent too big to threaten militarily, who is also technologically close to par (so they can compete), with an ideology which is anathema to middle-america. Alternately, we need a big rock moving at high velocity to strike somewhere obvious, and remind people why ignoring the big room outside our atmosphere is a bad idea.

Until then, as far as manned exploration goes: In the words of Apollo 17's commander, "Ok, Let's get this mother out of here"

Re:Why couldn't NASA do this?

[trianglman]

You have a good point. The main reason the space program got so much notice back in the 60's was not because astronauts were risking life and limb (firefighters risk their lives more in one day than most astronauts will in one year), but because we were in an international competition. After we won, the 'stars' that won the game are remembered, and the ones that followed in their footsteps were largely forgotten, unless there was some other drama tied to it (Apollo 13, Challenger, first {insert minority here} to do something in space, etc.) Americans, largely, are interested in competition and rivalries, in space we became the defacto leaders so Americans stopped watching.

Re:Why couldn't NASA do this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. Especially with regard to basketball, the most useless 'sport' on the planet.

Re:Why couldn't NASA do this?

[kabocox]

First, on the sports angle - it's sad that we would even compare some guy who scored lots of points in a game where you throw a ball in a hole and who could jump high to a guy who straps himself into skyscraper sized machine with enough fuel to incinerate Florida, escapes the atmosphere, throws on a suit and leaves the shuttle to walk around in the empty vacuum of space, tethered by a little stringy rope and risking his life every second of the way in a manner that no other man or woman on the planet could even comprehend.

I hate sports like the plague and actually like space stuff, but I got to say this is nearly stupid. Why? Because that "average everyone" can relate to those sports players just throwing a ball around well and getting paid for it. Using your discription of going into space, no one can relate to that, and it sounds really, really stupid/suicidical.

The "average everyone" that is into space scifi like things like Star Wars, Star Trek, or B5 among others. You know what? Space travel is routine and is as safe as traveling to your nearest fast food place. The average everyone doesn't want dangerous near suicidical, expensive trips into space. They want cheap, absolutely safe trips that is priced just alittle more than airplane travel currently is.

Second, on the Neil Armstrong angle. That the only space heroes we could conjure up are those that were around when most of our parents were still watching Saturday morning cartoons is the perfect illustration of how pathetic our desire for exploration has become. Astronauts today are doing far more heroic things every time they step into that suit above and beyond most other human beings.

Your definition and my definition of heroic are two very different things. Heroes are fire fighters, police folks, EMS, or red cross folks that go into known dangerous situtations to save other people's lives. Heroes don't just go into dangerous ares for constrution work. (If the construction work is unsual only that it is happening in space it isn't heroic, just dangerous which isn't the same thing at all.)

Re:Why couldn't NASA do this?

[jmyers]

"In fact, how many people can name even one astronaut that is currently active in the space program?"

give me a break, everyone knows Lisa Nowak

Re:Why couldn't NASA do this?

[Seumas]

Using your discription of going into space, no one can relate to that, and it sounds really, really stupid/suicidical.

And, yet, we piss all over ourselves in our attempts to praise and deify low-income highschool kids who don't have a future and decide to ship off to Iraq and defend... whatever the hell they're defending over there. No, that's not insane or suicidal at all.

Further, the whole point of heroes are that they are not common. As someone who has met Buzz Aldrin many years ago, I can say that I don't need to identify with him to find what he did to be an absolutely amazing thing. Going into space and the moon and eventually to mars and perhaps colonizing other planets are the most astonishing achievements mankind can make. Yet here we are debating whether they're heroes compared to highschool dropouts that smack a leather ball around on television or anorexic socialite parasites.

I'm not necessarily arguing the merits of heroics. I'm arguing the pathetic loss of our ambition, imagination and national interests in achieving amazing things.

Re:Why couldn't NASA do this?

[carn1fex]

Complaining that the US isnt doing something is silly nationalism. (Chances are american scientists helped with one of the instruments in some form anyways.) Science should be the one thing that unifies all of us, irregardless of what border it was done within. Within the space-science community, people collaborate across continents regularly. All of NASAs large science missions have collaborations from different parts of the world and academia. Hell, im working on an environmental satellite now where half of it is being put together in Argentina because theyre really good at what they do and who gives a crap about which flag waves above it? The science is the important thing. In another project im on "in america" I'm the only person in our staff meetings whos first language was English. Success in space-science missions really does have a thousand fathers.

Re:Why couldn't NASA do this?

[Logic and Reason]

The future of space exploration lies with corporations anyway. NASA, the ISS and the other (national) space programs are just fluff and budget sinkholes.

I couldn't agree more. Someday soon we'll look back on the NASA era as laughably inefficient and slow. Not to denigrate the contributions that many of those men and women made, but we've seen time and time again that the market is capable of running circles around government agencies when it comes to innovation and risk-taking.

Re:Why couldn't NASA do this?

[Rei]

According to this document, 5.8 firefighters die per 100,000 fires. The fatality rate for an astronaut onboard the shuttle corresponds to the rate of shuttle accidents: 2 in 117 launches. Now, most people in the astronaut program will never even get to go up on the shuttle. However, just one shuttle ride is the risk of several lifetimes worth of fighting fires.

And it's not that the shuttle is bad by worldwide standards. Despite all the criticism, it's failed about as often as manned Soyuz launches, and less often than Soyuz launches as a whole (luckily, the unmanned Soyuz launches have had the brunt of the failures). Launch failures are a part of rocketry.

Which brings me to this article about how the "space tourism" industry is flirting with financial ruin.

Re:Why couldn't NASA do this?

[thrawn_aj]

Good points both of them. However, the first point doesn't really criticize my views as I never referred to the "solitary genius in the basement". Science has progressed beyond that. The thing is, we tend to lose perspective on how big the world really is. Even a thousand spiffy research institutes churning out amazing discoveries and innovations counts (alas) as a TEENY-TINY minority compared to the vast numbers of people that live on the earth. THAT is the point I was getting at. I was also trying to make the prediction that qualitatively speaking, this cannot change. (i.e. thousands may become tens of thousands, but it will plateau before it becomes a high enough number).

Excellent point about social progress. However, as much as I admire how the social sciences have become more and more rigorous and have actually a bit of predictive power (in economic theory for instance), there is a big difference between the social and physical sciences when applied to society as a whole:

The effects of technological innovations can be assimilated in a society that does not progress in any other way, for example in the areas of superstition or fundamentalist religion. People use modern technological marvels for the purpose of evangelism, an irony not lost on me. Progress in social sciences however, REQUIRES that society as a whole accept that progress in a conscious manner, something that is NOT trivial. This, more than anything else is the reason why there exists the woeful disparity between the two.

So, while social progress is ABSOLUTELY essential, I don't think the time scales for the two types of progress are ANYWHERE near the same. To paraphrase what Isaac Asimov once wrote, the social inertia of an entire planet does not lend itself to engineering on human timescales. So, we need a political structure in place that can have slow but steady forward momentum and will do the job in a few centuries (instead of the ones we have now which tend to average the progress to zero).

Unrelated personal note: Please sign up and/or log in. I certainly would appreciate more rational people like you in here ;-).

Re:Why couldn't NASA do this?

[Anonymous Coward]

All people think about space occasionally but being so out of reach, it's just not the right time. Technology progresses and evolves visibly these days. Many people entertain high hopes they can obtain a machine to do their menial work and free them to pursue higher goals. When technology reaches the point where we send a robot into space every month, it'll be quite exciting.

Re:Why couldn't NASA do this?

[Rich0]

We run the real risk of becoming a has-been in space exploration, at a time when in the next 100 years or so our planet is becoming less and less habitable, we need to be looking for a backup plan.

Uh, no matter HOW bad things get on the Earth, it will probably still be cheaper to build habitats on the Earth than anywhere else in the solar system, unless we can terraform some other body in space.

Whole planet covered with nerve gas? No problem, build space modules - just like you'd have to do in space.

No crops? No problem, use hydroponics - just like you'd have to do in space.

And lots of resources will still be closer at hand on the Earth.

One thing would be a lot cheaper in space - travel. Getting from point A to point B with no friction is a lot cheaper in space unless you need to transit between planets or really different orbits (ie avoid putting stuff in really different orbits to begin with...).

Just wait..

[dreadknought]

Just wait 'til we bring global warming there. We'll finally have an ocean planet in our solar system!

Re:Just wait..

[Harmonious Botch]

It's already happening. TFA has a link entitled: * Sun Blamed for Warming of Earth and Other Worlds

Clicking on that link leads to text that starts with the following:
"Earth is heating up lately, but so are Mars, Pluto and other worlds in our solar system, leading some scientists to speculate that a change in the sun's activity is the common thread linking all these baking events."

I can't wait to surf Mars. With moons that close, there ought to be tidal swells that one could ride forever.

Re:Just wait..

[jswigart]

In that case we need to recruit Kevin Costner to be among the first settlers.

Re:Just wait..

[shess]

I can't wait to surf Mars. With moons that close, there ought to be tidal swells that one could ride forever.

Dude, Earth's moon is millions of times heavier than the moons of Mars. They're going to have to be pretty damn close to get a tidal swell worth riding, even with the reduced gravity.

Re:Just wait..

[triso]

It's already happening. TFA has a link entitled: * Sun Blamed for Warming of Earth and Other Worlds... Why do they blame only Sun? I think that IBM and Apple are just as guilty, if not more.

Re:Just wait..

[Arancaytar]

If 10 meters of water on average is an ocean planet, what is Earth? We are covered to two thirds in water, and a lot of it is hundreds of meters deep.

If the water depth would be ten meters on average, those oceans would be puddles compared to ours.

Unless of course this "10 meter" average is some really stupid number in which higher ground is counted as "negatively submerged".

Re:Just wait..

[Anonymous Coward]

And other studies found that all the crap we've put into the air is actually blocking out some of the sun.

Re:Just wait..

[walt-sjc]

Haven't you heard? Total Recall is a real documentary of the future. We just need to Send Arnold in to activate the alien device which will melt all that ice and we can all be breathing on Mars within minutes!!!

Re:Just wait..

[NeilTheStupidHead]

We'll finally have somewhere to send Kevin Costner

Re:Just wait..

[Curtman]

Why, so the first generation of Martians will have to suffer through long, extremely boring movies?

Re:Just wait..

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, I had a thought...

In the bright and distant future, surely a planet that was in every other way suitable for life could have a moon.. erm.. built?

Re:Just wait..

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but without a molten rotating core to create a magnetic field, the solar winds would sweep any moisture out to space along with the rest of its atmosphere.

Re:Just wait..

[NokX]

global warming is already happening on mars... http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=192

but shhh... don't tell the "george bush and suvs are melting the ice caps" crowd that. give them something to talk about in their dull day.

Re:Just wait..

[phayes]

Fortunately for martian surfers, it's the wind that matters in the creation of the waves that they crave & not the moons. Moons effects are on tides.

Re:Just wait..

[epiphani]

I think thats exactly what it is.

If Mars were topographically flat, the amount of water in this reserve would cover the planet at a depth of 10 meters.

It doesn't take into account that most of that water would sit in the lowest lying areas.

Re:Just wait..

[juhaz]

If 10 meters of water on average is an ocean planet, what is Earth? We are covered to two thirds in water, and a lot of it is hundreds of meters deep. Average ocean depth on Earth is 3720 meters, average land elevation is 820 meters above sea level. You do the math.

Re:Just wait..

[KKlaus]

More massive even too. Does something in (near) permanent orbit "weigh" anything?

Re:Just wait..

[cananian]

Unfortunately for martian surfers, the atmosphere on Mars is very low pressure -- so the winds, although "fierce" in mph terms, can't really move stuff more massive than than dust.

Re:Just wait..

[Mountaineer1024]

Basically they are saying that if the planet was a perfectly spherical ball then the water would cover it to approximately 10 metres deep.

But it's not perfectly shperical, so it's more likely that there'd be a couple really big lakes and that's about it,

Re:Just wait..

[srk2040]

I don't know what the fuss is about with Mars, I say we should put out effort in to extracting Hydrogen off of Jupiter or Saturn and try to clean up our Global warming before heading off to Mars.

Re:Just wait..

[alienmole]

No, just to get him the hell off Earth.

Re:Just wait..

[shpoffo]

Surf Titan.

It already has small oceans.... If I could surf the oceans of Titan I'd have been born a surfer in this lifetime

Wow...

[CalSolt]

Wannabe explorers everywhere just shat in their pants.

oh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tera-Formation anyone?

Re:oh?

[mdkathon]

Though I am not prepared to sight sources. I'm pretty sure most of the community that studies "teraforming" Mars would be a lengthly/lost cause as the atmosphere is too light to hold particles like oxygen. The reason Mars is what it is now is due to its lack of magnetic field which would "hold" the important building blocks of life.

Re:oh?

[MrNaz]

I'm glad you don't sight your sources, coz they'd look pretty stupid if you did. So stupid in fact, that they'd be shot on cite.

Furthermore, the magnetic field is not what holds the building blocks of life together. Unless of course you're talking about The Wizard of Oz and the tin man is what is being held.

What holds "stuff" to the Earth's surface, including the atmosphere, is gravity.

Re:oh?

[timster]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Allen_belts

Due to its lack of a magnetic field, the solar wind pushes gases off Mars, resulting in an atmosphere which is much thinner than it would be otherwise.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast31jan_1 .htm

Re:oh?

[GundamFan]

No to mention getting dry roasted by the solar wind if you did spend time unprotected on the Martian surface regardless of what kind of atmosphere you where standing in.

Re:oh?

[Salsaman]

Ah, that's an easy one. Just make a suitable black hole, and transport it to the centre of the planet.

Primitive earthlings !

Ray Bradbury and Burroughs were right!

[Walt Dismal]

Water! Aha! Past canals! Aha! Okay, next step is, find the caves the Martians lived in. And see if you can find any preserved Martian porn!

Re:Ray Bradbury and Burroughs were right!

[Anonymous Coward]

Water! Aha! Past canals! Aha! Okay, next step is, find the caves the Martians lived in. And see if you can find any preserved Martian porn!

And then what? Upload to Youtube and get sued by Viacom?

It's not water, it's oxygen

[Anonymous Coward]

The surveyor must have mixed up "water" with "oxygen". All they need to do now is find the alien terraforming machine before Quaid suffocates...

All we need now...

[Anonymous Coward]

All we need now is the governator and a giant alien machine, and we can have Total Recall. ;)

Time to get the board shorts out.

[defiant1]

I wonder what the beaches would be like... and i would hate that red sand in your car!

Re:Time to get the board shorts out.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sand in the car would be the least of your worries.

We're the ocean planet

[nut]

Facts about the Oceans:

Area: about 140 million square miles (362 million sq km), ore nearly 71% of the Earth's surface.

Average Depth: 12,200 feet (3,720 m).

http://www.mos.org/oceans/planet/features.html

Re:We're the ocean planet

[Anonymous Coward]

Facts about Man:

Man believes that there is a "God" that created the Earth for him.

71% of the Earth is covered in water.

Man has no gills.

Re:We're the ocean planet

[whathappenedtomonday]

also note that an estimated 125 gigatons of ice is lost each year from the ice sheets that cover Greenland and Antarctica. We'll have a little more / deeper water with each passing year.

Re:We're the ocean planet

[KKlaus]

Right but try building a house, forging metal, inventing the internal combustion engine, etc, etc, under water. Given the choice, being an intelligent land based creature (I think) is far superior to a water based one.

I mean, when you think about it.

Re:We're the ocean planet

[humungusfungus]

Loved the parent post...a pity it was an AC.

However, 71% is only a comparison of the surfaces of the oceans and land.
I remember reading somewhere that the oceans in their entirety actually comprise about 95% of the Earth's inhabitable space. Land-centric life, by populations, biomass, and diversity, are absolutely dwarfed by the life found in our oceans.

....and still we have no gills. :)

Re:We're the ocean planet

[geoffspear]

Well, duh... God covered the planet in that much water so we'd have somewhere to dump all of our toxic waste where we don't have to look at it.

Besides, before the Great Flood only 5% of the Earth was covered with water; the rest is just leftovers.

Re:We're the ocean planet

[Anonymous Coward]

125 gigatons, WTF! Scientific American is lame.

Re:We're the ocean planet

[operagost]

The global flood narrative kinda fits nicely in there, doesn't it?

BTW: dolphins and whales don't have gills, either.

Your cute little quasi-syllogism doesn't support evolution too well, either. Why bother having air-breathing animals if, as you suggest, on a planet with 71% water surface it's a huge advantage to have gills?

Re:We're the ocean planet

[Anonymous Coward]

A basic misunderstanding of teleology seems common among the scientifically and philosophically impaired.

There is no purpose to evolution, there is only chance.

Re:We're the ocean planet

[maharvey]

According to God, the oceans are there because of unbelief, and someday when unbelief is no longer a problem there will no longer be any oceans.

Re:We're the ocean planet

[Dannon]

Can't remember where I read this but I vaguely remember an answer to a similar question: If God created the universe with us humans in mind, why would He make it so infinite, when the space we can actually possibly physically use is so limited?

Answer: He knew that we would need room for our imaginations to grow.

Re:We're the ocean planet

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not a religious person, but I'm going to play devil's [or God's] advocate here.

God gave man reason and ingeniuty. Man doesn't require gills. People swim and dive for recreation, business, and science. We've explored the environment thousands of miles beneath the oceans' surface and ship tons of goods over the oceans every day.

I'd take brains over fins and gills any day.

I don't believe in God, but I admire his work.

Re:We're the ocean planet

[rynoski]

I don't believe in God, but I admire his work.

Oh, I see. Yes. That makes puuurfect sense. How can you admire the work of something you don't believe in. Oh yes, I realise you do actually believe in God, but you think you will more credibility around this place if you state you don't believe. Next you will telling me my attrocious spelling and grammar give me credibility.

Re:We're the ocean planet

[Anonymous Coward]

....and still we have no gills

But our embryos (and those of other mammals -- including ocean-dwelling ones like whales and dolphins -- and birds and reptiles) all have folds of skin at the neck, just like embryonic bony fish. Those folds in bony fish develop into gills. In the other vertebrates in the list, they develop into various tissues in the throat and ear areas.

While cetaceans are happy in the open ocean and don't need land for reproduction (indeed, they die on land), they aren't very well adapted for toolmaking or use. Some mammals that are quite happy in the water much of the time, and are also well-suited for developing and using tools (sea otters, especially, who use tools fairly regularly) must dwell on land when very young, and often can't live in the open ocean (species living even at the surface in areas with depths greater than about 50m are unsuitable prey).

On the other hand, cephalopods are found in the open ocean and even intertidal areas, and several species (mainly types of octopus) regularly make use of tools, and many others are well adapted for their use. They could in principle survive on land given sufficient moisture or a protective coating of e.g. mucus, as except for their specialized organs (hearts, gills), they are essentially hydrostats much like a human tongue, and is not reliant upon immersion in water for buoyancy or pressure vs structure control. The haemocyanin and gill mechanism could process atmospheric air as readily as water except for some modifications to retain moisture (a semipermeable mucus again) when pumping air over the finely vascularized outgrowths of hydrostatic tissue that act as gills.

Directed evolution doesn't happen, but an octopus leaving the water for short periods of time evolving into something akin to a non-chitinous amphibious spider, is certainly plausible. Bony sea animals colonized dry land in a similar fashion, after all. Cephalopods have some advantages. For instance, they tend to have large brains that don't mind being squished through tiny spaces (cracks under doors, large keyholes). They often have excellent camouflage skills. Although their O2 transport molecule (haemocyanin) is less efficient than ours (and sea mammals), they are more resilient against trauma that causes bleeding, they have no bones to break, and less mass to haul around, so there is no reason to expect them to be slower or more easily winded than people (especially ones who are out of shape) .

I, for one, would welcome intelligent land-walking squidlike overlords. They certainly would not have any trouble with using Emacs.

Core of the planet cooled?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this because the core of the planet cooled down? No geysers... Maybe I shouldn't build an entropy engine then.

Let's add some heat!

[PapayaSF]

This sounds like the idea of terraforming Mars just got a lot closer to doable. Wouldn't evaporating or boiling some of the water via nuclear reactors or orbiting mirrors increase the humidity and heat retention of the atmosphere, and eventually create a climate in which many earth organisms could thrive?

Re:Let's add some heat!

[QuantumG]

In about 400 years, sure.

Re:Let's add some heat!

[Anonymous Coward]

Gotta start somewhere..

Re:Let's add some heat!

[Anonymous Coward]

yea, call ahnold and get him to press the three fingered button.

Re:Let's add some heat!

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that water molecules are a bit too light and likely to escape Mars' gravity well (or be kicked out of it). Nothing like having an atmosphere just to lose it into space.

The problem with Mars is that it's a little too small and has no magnetic field to keep the solar wind away. Oh well, not unfixable, but we'll need a little more technology to move it further from the Sun (perhaps in orbit around Jupiter?)

Re:Let's add some heat!

[Brett Buck]

Without addressing the fundamental flaws with the idea of terraforming in any form, no.

The conditions that caused the loss of the original atmosphere are still present, and even presuming you could start melting the water somehow, and then put some sort of hardy organisms on there to make an Earth-like atmosphere, it would only last until you ran out of water, then you would be back in the same boat, except now all the water would be gone.

        Brett

Re:Let's add some heat!

[Psychotria]

I'm not sure that the presence of water is enough. Mars' atmosphere a surface pressure 1% (from memory) of the Earths. If we 'release' the frozen ice, won't a whole heap of water simply 'evaporate' into space? I'm not a mars terraforming expert, but it seems to me that having water is just one of many things needed.

Re:Let's add some heat!

[Atlantis-Rising]

Yes. To start, let's de-orbit one of Mars' moons, and then bombard the planet with sufficient water asteroids (a chunk of water ice totalling a few million cublic kilometres would probably do, but you'd need a lot of smaller chunks) to both significantly increase the water on the surface as well as increasing the gravity. We can continue bombarding the planet with relatively large asteroids to work on the surface gravity while we move orbital mirrors into position and begin to eat the place up.

As you say, not unfixable... just kind of difficult, especially with our currently-pathetic space programs.

Re:Let's add some heat!

[Simon Garlick]

This sounds like the idea of terraforming Mars just got a lot closer to doable.

How 'bout we start small, huh? Like... spacecraft that don't blow up.

Re:Let's add some heat!

[king-manic]

The conditions that caused the loss of the original atmosphere are still present, and even presuming you could start melting the water somehow, and then put some sort of hardy organisms on there to make an Earth-like atmosphere, it would only last until you ran out of water, then you would be back in the same boat, except now all the water would be gone.


You do realize that'd likely be in the order of several thousand years.

Re:Let's add some heat!

[bh_doc]

Wouldn't evaporating or boiling some of the water via nuclear reactors or orbiting mirrors increase the humidity and heat retention of the atmosphere, and eventually create a climate in which many earth organisms could thrive?

I could swear we already did that...

Re:Let's add some heat!

[Dunbal]

Wouldn't evaporating or boiling some of the water via nuclear reactors

      Nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure...

      Seriously do you have any idea of the amount of energy involved to do what you propose? Here's a hint: multiply 1370 W/m^2 minus 590 W/m2 by the cross sectional area of mars (around 3.6 x 10^13 m^2) to give you 2.7 x 10^16 Watts.

      That's pretty much around the amount of energy you need to produce with your nuclear reactors to keep mars at around earthlike temperatures... To put this in perspective, a 1 Megaton nuclear device has a yield of around 4 x 10^15 Joules. You would need to be exploding the equivalent of 6 of these devices on the planet EVERY SECOND to generate enough energy. Then there's the problem of distributing the heat evenly...

Re:Let's add some heat!

[BuR4N]

Sorry to crash the party but you have to fix Mars magnetosphere first....

Re:Let's add some heat!

[thej1nx]

It took centuries of working at flight, to reach the present point of commercial mass-trasnportation via planes.

What is your point?

Re:Let's add some heat!

[tftp]

You do realize that'd likely be in the order of several thousand years.

I do not realize that, and will not realize that until someone proves it and the proof survives the reviews.

Re:Let's add some heat!

[neonleonb]

You talk about "significantly ... increasing the gravity." Are you really suggesting that we move planet-sized chunks of mass around the solar system? In order to increase the gravity of Mars by 10%, we'd have to move something on the order of the size of the moon. Do you have any idea how much energy that would require? It's completely infeasible for the foreseeable future; if you can manipulate the solar system on that level, you might as well just build a Dyson sphere or ringworld and have done with it.

Re:Let's add some heat!

[lordofthechia]

Wouldn't evaporating or boiling some of the water via nuclear reactors or orbiting mirrors increase the humidity and heat retention of the atmosphere I can see it now... "The Simple Guide to Terraforming a Planet"

1. Bring the whole planet to a slow boil. *
2. Let planet sit until it reaches room temperature
3. Colonize!

As a side effect you would also be sterilizing the planet (at least of bacteria that can't survive boiling water, granted water would boil at a lower temp on Mars).

* For a more delicious recipe, add noodles and flavor packet after Step 1.

Re:Let's add some heat!

[Sobrique]

Well, a ringworld can generate gravity by rotation (ok, it's not gravity, but you know what I mean).

Never really got how you were supposed to do that with a dyson sphere though. I mean, surely you'd have 'high' gravity at the equator, some further out, but as you started to hit the axis of rotation, you lose/reduce your gravitational effects and air pressure.

OK, so I appreciate it might be useful to have lowgrav, but I can't help but feel that you'd end up with most of your sphere (by volume) with not being especially habitable. Unlike a ringworld.

Or did I miss something?

Re:Let's add some heat!

[julesh]

Here's a hint: multiply 1370 W/m^2 minus 590 W/m2 by the cross sectional area of mars (around 3.6 x 10^13 m^2) to give you 2.7 x 10^16 Watts.

From the source you cite:
The average solar intensity at the orbit of Mars is 590 W/m2, compared with 1370 W/m2 in Earth orbit

The figures you're citing are orbital figures. Most of that energy is reflected off or absorbed by the atmosphere. Energy reaching the surface of the Earth is more like 200 W/m2, with an additional 70W/m2 absorbed by the atmosphere. I don't know about the Martian surface, I haven't found any sources, but with a thinner atmosphere, I dare say a higher proportion of that energy reaches it. I'd guess you're probably looking at making up a deficit of less than 100W/m2, not 600.

Re:Let's add some heat!

[julesh]

Mars' atmosphere a surface pressure 1% (from memory) of the Earths. If we 'release' the frozen ice, won't a whole heap of water simply 'evaporate' into space?

It will immediately boil, yes, but I don't think it will reach the velocity required to escape into space. As I understand it, it would stay in the atmosphere until it is guided by the prevailing winds to either the north or south pole, at which point it will cool enough to freeze onto one of the existing ice deposits there.

Re:Let's add some heat!

[Anonymous Coward]

Or just start manufacturing the Prius' batteries over there... We should have that water melted through Global Warmilization in no time!!!

Re:Let's add some heat!

[magarity]

What is your point?
 
The point is: FV = PV(1 + r)^n
Where FV = Future Value, PV = Present Value, r = rate of interest, and n = number of years.
When n is 400, the current value had best be pretty darn small or it just isn't worth it.
 
Let's say it costs the same as Mars Pathfinder, 265 million, to send some widget to Mars to melt the ice or whatever and make Mars habitable in 400 years. That means the real estate on Mars needs to end up being worth $79,243,838,081,000,000 in dollars unadjusted for inflation. To put that in perspective, total real estate value of developed nations is around $52 trillion, or about .1 % of what the value of the real estate on Mars would need to be.
 
Somehow I don't see ski villas on the slopes on Mons Olympus, while excessively chic, being quite worth that much.

Re:Let's add some heat!

[magarity]

most of your sphere (by volume) with not being especially habitable. Unlike a ringworld. Or did I miss something?
 
You didn't miss anything except that it's OK to be like that. The point of a Dyson's sphere is not to provide habitable area. It is to capture the entire energy output of the enclosed star. So all the uninhabited parts are just banks after banks of solar power collectors.

Re:Let's add some heat!

[magarity]

PS - Don't forget you can always live on the OUTSIDE of a Dyson's sphere. If you want to see the sun, put a skylight in the floor.

Re:Let's add some heat!

[Paulrothrock]

What about mirrors? The sun puts out a lot of energy. There's got to be enough there to melt some of the ice.

Re:Let's add some heat!

[adickerson0]

I think you vastly under estimate the capabilities of the the US nuclear arsenal and our willingness to push the big red button.

Re:Let's add some heat!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only that, but "evenly distributing the heat" of the nuclear bombs isn't really a necessity, we're just looking to melt all of the ice, and turn a lot of it into steam (we don't really want to flood the whole planet, now do we?) Distributing the steam throughout the atmosphere will be the interesting part.

Mars won't ever get as warm as Earth, but assuming the atmosphere becomes thick enough, it can be made habitable with enough time and forethought (It's easy to make O2 from water, but plants need CO2).

Re:Let's add some heat!

[GZoomer]

Or the US congress could just make some minor adjustments to daylight savings time and presto chango free energy. ;-)

Re:Let's add some heat!

[jovius]

This is the chance for the humanity. Mars should be terraformed and life introduced. Global authority is to be created to control the process and earth population, and to ensure the project's continuity. Rules about intervening with the process are to be formed and enforced. Visits for altering the dna and taking samples should be permitted.

Media corporations are to be contacted and TV shows created. Eventually, after multitude of sponsored and freak essays, life on Mars would achieve consciousness as scripted. At certain point, after much occasional hilarity and entertainment, would few humans descent from the heavens of Mars as its True Gods (tm). The arrival would have been made to be anticipated by careful placement of ancient artifacts. The candidates are selected by the authority from a pool of lottery winners and applicants. The candidates go through a careful selection, where their personality traits are charted and public opinion asked.

After some time the Martian societies likely collapse and civil wars ensue - prime material for the sequels and next generations. The military might of the media authority keeps protesters at bay and events grounded...

Re:Let's add some heat!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you mean daylight saving time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time

The More You Know

Today's captcha is: vaunted

Re:Let's add some heat!

[greginnj]

I'd guess you're probably looking at making up a deficit of less than 100W/m2, not 600.

Ok, so now we only need to explode ONE nuclear device per second, instead of six. Now you're talking! My kind of project!

Re:Let's add some heat!

[Anonymous Coward]

Or did I miss something?

Yes. The point of a Dyson sphere is to capture the entire energy output of your parent star, so that none is wasted (lost) to inter-stellar space.

Not provide living space.

Re:Let's add some heat!

[Sparr0]

I am too lazy to look it up or do the math... What would gravity be like on the surface of a (standard, earth-orbit) Dyson sphere? Are we talking about .1G or .0001G?

Re:Let's add some heat!

[kannibul]

The only problem with your theory is that you're not taking into account for atmospheric density and composition as well as the amounts of energy received (and absorbed by) the planets - let alone what is generated (and radiated indirectly) by the core of the planet.

A much higher CO2 composition atmosphere would likely yeild earth-like temperatures, but, it depends on what happens when all that water turns to vapor and becomes clouds (which will cool the planet) - add to that where the water will "pool" - since an average depth of 10m doesn't sound like a lot, but that water has weight and will press the crust (assuming Mars doens't have a frozen core), and form oceans. Not overnight by any means, but I think it'd be possible to terra-form Mars - will it be like Earth? No - but we'd survive and likely evolve to fit the planet.

Re:Let's add some heat!

[SpiritusGladius1517]

Are you really suggesting that we move planet-sized chunks of mass around the solar system?

Well, if we had all the money on Earth we could build a bad ass gravity pump. But it damn well better work! We can't spend all of Earth's money every day.

Re:Let's add some heat!

[mhall119]

It's all for nothing unless you can get Mars to produce a significant magnetic field. The reason Mars has so little atmosphere now is because it's been stripped away by solar wind. Earth would have met the same fate if it were not for it's magnetic field. So until you can solve that problem, you'll have to keep replacing the any atmosphere you produce.

Re:Let's add some heat!

[angel'o'sphere]

Energy reaching the surface of the Earth is more like 200 W/m2 ... No, its around 1kW/m2. Reflection by atmosphere, clouds, etc. and absorption is roughly 300 W/m2.

angel'o'sphere

Re:Let's add some heat!

[Pig Hogger]

The point is: FV = PV(1 + r)^n Where FV = Future Value, PV = Present Value, r = rate of interest, and n = number of years. When n is 400, the current value had best be pretty darn small or it just isn't worth it.

It only takes a fucking anglo-saxon to put a price on something, and then boldly declare, for a perfectly superficial reason, that "it's not worth it".

And you yankees wonder why the whole planet hate your guts.

Re:Let's add some heat!

[ultranova]

I am too lazy to look it up or do the math... What would gravity be like on the surface of a (standard, earth-orbit) Dyson sphere? Are we talking about .1G or .0001G?

0.005899755 m/s^2, or about 0.0005G, for radius of 150 000 000 kilometers (Earth's average distance from Sun). The radius needed for 10m/s^2 surface gravity (1G) is 3 643 411 km. Heating costs are likely to go down :)...

Re:Let's add some heat!

[Anonymous Coward]

Fine, dipshit. YOU pay for it.

Re:Let's add some heat!

[Alzheimers]

No, someone just implanted that memory in your head.

Re:Let's add some heat!

[prionic6]

Aaah, nice math but lack of vision over there. Let's list your assumptions:

In the next 400 years
- Interest rates with typical earth investments will be r.
- Overpopulation will not lead to massive rise in the value of real estate.
- There will be no event making vast amounts of earth inhabitable.
- The money that is saved from not doing terraforming projects is used for nice investments instead (By gouvernments!).
- A terraformed Mars would lead to no buisness opportunities besides selling land.

Re:Let's add some heat!

[anaesthetica]

Dear User:lordofthechia,

As you are aware, Slashdot protocol strictly regulates the form and content of user posts so as to maintain a coherent and familiar format for our readers.

Your post violates a treasured rule from our Manual of Style. All instructional lists (especially numbered lists) must follow a format in which the last two steps are as follows:

• ?????
• Profit!

This message is a warning. You would have received a harsher first-time violator penalty if it were not for your mitigating footnote referencing the preparation ritual for our beloved food source, ramen noodle. Any future infractions will result in an automatic +100000 to your UID.

HAND,

Anae

Re:Let's add some heat!

[dylan_-]

I do not realize that, and will not realize that until someone proves it and the proof survives the reviews.

Alternatively, you could just not realise that "the conditions that caused the loss of the original atmosphere are still present" and the problem is solved!

Re:Let's add some heat!

[spyfrog]

What does the value of Mars real estate become after Earth collide with a metroit large enough to wipe out 90% of all life?

My answer is - priceless.

You don't want to keep all your eggs in one basket. Likewise, you don't want all humans on one planet.

Re:Let's add some heat!

[Galvatron]

I presume, since you didn't give your assumed figure for the mass of the Dyson sphere, that you're considering the gravity of the sun only?

Re:Let's add some heat!

[Anonymous Coward]

The mass of the dyson sphere would be inconsequential. The initial calculation would hold.

That is unless the sphere were made of very dense material tens of thousands of meters thick.

Re:Let's add some heat!

[Galvatron]

Not necessarily inconsequential. The volume of a shell a mere 100 meters thick at 1 AU would be 2.8*10^28 cubic cm. Steel has a density of around 7.8 g/cm3, giving us a mass of 2.2*10^29 kg, or about 11% the mass of the sun. Your figure of 0.005899755 m/s2 is actually 0.000602 g, so I'm not sure why you rounded to 0.0005 g. With a 100 m thick steel dyson sphere, gravity would rise to 0.00655 m/s2, or 0.000668 g. Still not much, but certainly mathematically significant.

A dyson sphere with the same mass as the sun (which would double the gravity to 0.0012 g) would be about 900 meters thick if it were made out of steel. If you want to use something lighter, say an average density of 1, then the sphere would have to be closer to 7,500 meters thick to have the same mass as the sun. A lot, but still not "tens of thousands of meters." And coincidentally, 7.5 km is actually pretty similar to the thickness of the Earth's crust under the ocean.

Of course, given that the sun makes up well over 99% of the solar system's mass, it would clearly be impossible to build such a massive dyson sphere with the materials available in this solar system. Of all the insane assumptions we've been making in this discussion, the one that can be made fairly safely is that a dyson sphere would have to be constructed inside of Mercury's orbit (where gravity would be 0.0056 g's at least).

Re:Let's add some heat!

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't need to live on either surface of a Dyson sphere -- you can live on a planet in orbit around the central star, and can put the planet on either side of the Dyson sphere.

(Inside is handy, since you can eventually fully (or very nearly fully) seal the Dyson sphere without worrying about darkening your inhabited planet(s), and while you would no longer see stars from the inside-the-sphere planets, distant observers also would no longer see you, except to the extent that your Dyson sphere re-radiates waste heat deep in the longer-wave part of the electromagnetic spectrum... Make your Dyson sphere material resilient against impacts from comets and asteroids and the like, while you're at it.)

Either way works because inside the sphere, assuming a uniform distribution, the sphere exerts no acceleration due to gravity. Outside the sphere, assuming that it is only the mass of few ordinary planets, accelerations of the order of the GP's numbers are reasonable -- to outer planets, the combined mass of the sun plus shell would still be a pointlike attractor, and uniformly distributing the mass of the three non-Earth inner planets around the sun (at any distance inside Mars's orbit) would actually decrease the (small) perturbations on the orbits of the outer planets.

(Building a Dyson "cage" -- a sphere with many many holes -- would not change things much at these masses).

Re:Let's add some heat!

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone please kill me! +4 Insightful ?! I know everyone loves Ramen noodles but goddammit its gone a bit too far this time !

Global warming beat us there

[patio11]

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mars_ice-age _031208.html

Its always fun saying "Mars has global warming" to a room full of people who consider themselves "educated enough to know that global warming denial is an unscientific crock". You first get a bit of laughter, and then about 15 seconds later the implication dawns on them, and they'll say the satellites were busted, the protocols unscientific, and that whatever boring astronomer produced the result must be a stooge for Big Carbon.

Re:Global warming beat us there

[haakondahl]

No Sweat. We'll just send Al Gore. With all of his hot air, the temperature difference between Mars and Earth should narrow significantly.

Heh. The CAPTCHA for this post was "airbag".

Re:Global warming beat us there

[fredrated]

I have a better idea, let's send you and George Bush, then the bs and the danger to humans on this planet will both go down.

Re:Global warming beat us there

[krotkruton]

You need to change that to people who consider themselves "educated enough to know that global warming denial is an unscientific crock" while not understanding that it is also caused by natural phenomena, to which you seem to fit into at least half of that definition. Just because Mars has global warming or the Earth has had global warming in the past doesn't mean that we aren't causing it now and that the effects of our added global warming won't be significantly different from natural global warming.

Besides that, most dictionaries define global warming as something related only to the Earth and also as needing measurements taken over decades, neither of which apply when used in the phrase "Mars has global warming". Your linked article talks about measurements taken over 2 years, which is hardly enough to claim that global warming is taking place on Mars (assuming of course, that global warming is defined that way), but good try.

Re:Global warming beat us there

[spicate]

It might be fun to at least consider looking into your statements of 'fact'. For example, you might think about whether the statement "Mars has global warming" is a scientific fact, or just a hypothesis still in need of testing... or it might be fun just to smirk and assume you have all the answers.

Your link, for example, says, "new data points to the possibility" of a warming trend. Here, in contrast, is someone disputing (in just one of many ways) your implicit suggestion that both Mars and Earth are warming due to some external cause:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=192

Another thing to consider: "more study is needed" (from your space.com citation).

Finally, even if Mars is experiencing 'global warming' - is it of the same magnitude that we are? Why is it happening? You seem pretty eager to latch on to whatever evidence supports your theory without finding out very much about it...

Re:Global warming beat us there

[MADCOWbeserk]

People people, no need to argue.... We can send all the politicians. And maybe the lawyers too. And the Televangelists. And the RIAA. and Dane Cook...

Re:Global warming beat us there

[LarsG]

That should be easy. Convince Bush that the giant space goat is coming, and he will fund NASA building the 'B' Ark.

Re:Global warming beat us there

[jlehtira]

I have a better idea, let's send you and George Bush, then the bs and the danger to humans on this planet will both go down.

Wow, just think of the amount of bullshit! That'll easily fertilize the whole planet and create an atmosphere while decomposing :). Profit!!

Re:Global warming beat us there

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're a scientist, you also know that a problem might have more than one cause. Just because nature contributes to the increased global warming, doesn't mean that human activity hasn't made things even worse.

Global warming is natural. Without it we couldn't survive. The sun might be responsible for some of the current changes, but human activity has probably increased it even more.

Re:Global warming beat us there

[dgatwood]

I think (unless I missed a meeting) that it's pretty clear that global warming (or global climate change, more accurately) is an established fact. It's a bunch of numbers. People who argue that the numbers are bogus are usually kooks.

The legitimate arguments are about whether or not human activity is the underlying cause, not whether the warming is occurring. That said, I assume the GP really meant "people who assume that denying that humans caused global warming is an unscientific crock" or similar.

Re:Global warming beat us there

[sumdumass]

The definition of it only belonging to the earth is because it has been beaten into us that humans are the cause. If you think otherwise for one second, you are some evil corp, supporting their evil, stupid, stupid and unscientific or have some other agenda to push. It is no wonder that a dictionary didn't want to discredit itself by skipping earth in the definition and leaving the possibility for someone to claim that something other then humans could cause it acording to their definition. I mean 'Why would any dictionary want a bunch of super scientist and failed politician constantly trashing them?

And i find it somewhat disturbing that when someone finally admits global warming is happening, the objection is that after all this time explaining it to you, you don't know what it is. Come on, Don't change the definitions or rules because you think you might be losing the fight. It takes nothing away from global warming if mars is doing it too. All it takes away is the amount of influence humans have. Or is there some big scare that if it is ever found that humans don't have as big of an impact as once thought, the ability to control them and extract funding from them goes with it? I can see an interesting problem here.

Re:Global warming beat us there

[sumdumass]

You know, That real science is a place with an agenda. It is staffed with people who have an agenda and it's contributers are people reading and basically commenting or reporting on other peoples work with that agenda in mind.

I am to the point were I don't see the difference between something they parrot and something Exxon creates by proxy when funding research into global warming. IT doesn't matter what scientist says something, who is backing them, how many other scientist are backing them, were the funding is coming from or whatever, Real climate can find a trivial way to dismiss anything that doesn't step in line directly with their position. And the position hasn't changed any in the last 6 years or so either. I thought Science was about continually testing and finding answers but they use 4 year old research in some critics to discredit brand new studies. IT is as if it can only be right it they agree with it. Or more appropriately, it can only be right if all new research agrees with them!.

And yes, You can always find someone at real science saying something against anything that doesn't place humans as the cause of global warming.

Re:Global warming beat us there

[Whiteox]

Don't forget the hairdressers and used car salesmen. Errmmm... for that matter, Management executives as well.

Re:Global warming beat us there

[krotkruton]

I don't think that only reason dictionaries use "Earth" in the definition is because it has been beaten into us that humans are the cause, but that's beside the point as well. Regardless of the whether or not it only applies to Earth, my point is that the so called "global warming" of Mars can't be concluded as "global warming" as we know it because we don't have nearly enough data to conclude that, or at least there wasn't enough data when the article that the GP linked to was written. 2 years worth of data is not enough to say that Mars is going through a phase of global warming, as I said in my post. I probably shouldn't have thrown the comment about the dictionary in there because it leaves the post open for someone to come in and attack that one point as if the other points don't exist...

It is no wonder that a dictionary didn't want to discredit itself by skipping earth in the definition and leaving the possibility for someone to claim that something other then humans could cause it acording to their definition.

Did you miss the part in my post where I said that warming of the earth occurs naturally? I really don't think that most people who believe that humans are causing the current global warming also think humans are the only cause of global warming. There is plenty of data to show that the temperature of the earth has fluctuated significantly over many, many years (hundreds of thousands?). I really haven't heard anyone say that only humans can raise the temperature of the earth. I'm not sure where that idea is coming from.

Re:Global warming beat us there

[aussie_a]

He's saying the sources do not prove global climate change is happening on Mars. While the numbers here on Earth may be quite clear on the subject, we've investigated Mars significantly less so, as such the numbers may not be complete.

Re:Global warming beat us there

[Bastard of Subhumani]

Just because Mars has global warming or the Earth has had global warming in the past doesn't mean that we aren't causing it now and that the effects of our added global warming won't be significantly different from natural global warming.

Their logic seems to be that if sealevels would have naturally risen by (say) 30 feet, it doesn't matter if we make them rise by an additional 20.

Well no, it doesn't matter. Not unless you happen to live around 40 feet above sea level.

Re:Global warming beat us there

[alexj33]

I agree patio.

Since the other are planets warming up, we're going to hear: (predictably)

"Oh, it's the axial tilt of that planet!" "My, the red spot is kicking up dust! That must be the greenhouse effect on that planet!" "That planet has moons reflecting more sunlight on the surface." "The atmosphere of that planet is 'different', which causes warming on that planet!"

But on Earth, it must be man! After all the "science is settled."

I always get labeled a "Troll" (so be it) when I express this viewpoint, but it's true, true true.

Face it people, it's the SUN, always has been.

Re:Global warming beat us there

[pepeperes]

Just, this time, remember to keep here the public phone cleaners, or we'll all die!

Re:Global warming beat us there

[brianerst]

I'm all for the whole tree hugger view of global warming, but you've got to stop "rebutting" the "new data points to the possibility" of a warming trend on Mars with a RealClimate article that's a year and a half old.

This is the second time in a week I've seen that article claimed as the definitive response to claims made just this month - I like RealClimate, but they aren't clairvoyant...

Re:Global warming beat us there

[danbert8]

This is the part I love about global warming mongering. Total lack of time perspective. How is data from decades more significant than data from 2 years? Both are extremely miniscule when compared to any relevant time period.
 
Let's say for argument's sake that the last ice age lasted 100,000 years. That seems reasonable enough considering the earth has been around for a few billion years. So then let's assume your decades of data is 50 years worth. Let's see, I haven't done division in awhile, but 50/100,000 is about .05% of the ice age. Do you think the climate changed in that small of an amount of time?
 
Unfortunately, humans haven't been advanced enough to collect climate data for long enough to predict anything. So wait another 1,000 years, and if the data still supports global warming, I'll start listening.

Re:Global warming beat us there

[LordKazan]

really don't think that most people who believe that humans are causing the current global warming also think humans are the only cause of global warming.

Bingo.. tell but to pro-pollutionists it's easier to misrepresent what we actually think so they can accuse us of groupthink. Since joe-blow-dipshit-republican knows more than a climatologist.

Re:Global warming beat us there

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's say for argument's sake that the last ice age lasted 100,000 years.

Why make up facts when they are known and can be looked up.

Let's see, I haven't done division in awhile, but 50/100,000 is about .05% of the ice age. Do you think the climate changed in that small of an amount of time?

Yes, I do. There more and more evidence that that last ice age ended very abruptly, on the order of 10-100 years.

You have to understand, you are dealing with science here. These stories you are making up have all been studied in great detail. You just have to look up the studies. Of course, now people are saying you can't trust the studies, since scientist are liars with a political agenda. So I guess we'll just have to trust people who make up stuff instead. Whatever.

Re:Global warming beat us there

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it just me, or is anyone else annoyed at all the shitheads disparaging global warming (mainly because of the messenger)? /. is generally a great source of news and commentary with a lot of scientific insight, but because of various moron-i-fascists for Bush and big oil we have to see absurd bullshit trying to discredit what is likely the most important issue of our lifetime.

Why the hell have these ignorant, politically motivated shills been given quarter on Slashdot? I'm totally fucking sick of seeing myself and others moderated or metamoderated down, others modded up, because some brainless cocksucker puts his politics before intellectual integrity and the good of humanity. Why the hell should we tolerate this ignorance any more than we would tolerate posters saying pedophilia is a good idea? You've got your head in the sand if you don't see how their dishonest denial is fucking your children and many generations more.

Re:Global warming beat us there

[GanjaManja]

Saying "Mars ALSO experiences Global Warming" means to me:
"Oh sh*t, we're experiencing Global Warming?! who cares about Mars, we're screwed!!!"

truth is: Man made, natural or whatever, if it's happening, it's a big f*ing deal.
It's like saying "Hey, we've proven this gigantic asteroid heading towards Earth wasn't or fault. Now we can ignore it!"

Re:Global warming beat us there

[Anonymous Coward]

You should investigate the provenence of Real Climate before you believe it too readily. It was set up to defent Mann from the anti-hocky-stick brigade.

Given that Mann's hockey-stick has now been shown to be so false that even the IPCC no longer use it, I would say that Real Climate was founded on a lie, and is a shill for Mann. Take a look at Climate Audit

Re:Global warming beat us there

[dgatwood]

I understand what the parent of my post was saying. I'm just saying that... you know, I'm not sure what I was criticizing about that post except that it didn't point out the curious wording of its parent with regards to the anti-global-warning folks, though it hinted at it.

Re:Global warming beat us there

[Anonymous Coward]

May I try an analogy?

Your Honer, my client pleads not guilty to the charge of Murder. As you can plainly see, in defense exhibit A, people die, all the time. Here is a death certificate for a Mrs. Smith, whom my client never even met. She died, last Friday. It had nothing to do with either my client, or his gun.

Now, the prosecution is going all out, on this one. They are going to try to show you that Mr. Jones' death was the direct result of my client pointing his gun, and pulling the trigger. I ask you to consider this: My client never pointed his gun at Mrs. Smith. He never even met her. But she's dead. Just as dead as Mr. Jones. People die, all the time.

Your Honer, this case is not about the death of Mr. Jones. It's about how he died. He died in the presence of my client, who happened to be exercising his Constitutionally Protected Right to Bear Arms, at the time... And I would like to move, at this time, for a dismissal.

Re:Global warming beat us there

[krotkruton]

The 50 years thing was just to say that 2 years isn't sufficient. I don't think 50 is either, but it really doesn't matter because 2 is bullshit.

As for "Unfortunately, humans haven't been advanced enough to collect climate data for long enough to predict anything. So wait another 1,000 years, and if the data still supports global warming, I'll start listening." Seriously? We have lots of data that shows climate change over long periods of time. We know when the last ice age started and ended and have pretty good (although rough) ideas of when other ice ages occured over the last couple million years. Whether or not we can acturately predict climate change isn't about whether or not we have enough data.

Re:Global warming beat us there

[alexj33]

>>>Global warming is natural. Without it we couldn't survive. The sun might be responsible for some of the current changes, but human activity has probably increased it even more.

Correction: the sun IS likely responsible for ALL of the changes. This is the easiest (I stand by Occam's Razor) explanation.

Might I add to this, that lazy "scientists" who want (yes, I dare say 'want') the cause to be man made doesn't make it true.

Re:Global warming beat us there

[operagost]

Their logic seems to be that if sealevels would have naturally risen by (say) 30 feet, it doesn't matter if we make them rise by an additional 20.

Well, no it isn't Captain Straw Man. The questions is, "of the climate change, how much of it is due to human activity?" If 0.001% is due to human activity, changing our behavior won't help much. The climate change could still be dangerous, but if carbon isn't causing it then if we want to fight against fate we would have to actively try to lower the average temperatures. If 2% is, maybe we should change.

Re:Global warming beat us there

[evought]

And I suppose solar output changes fully explain the surface temperature of Venus as well? The truth is that the planets are very different. Saying we fully understand the mechanisms on extraterrestrial planets and can extrapolate to climate changes on Earth is a stretch--- which is not to say the attempt is not useful, just premature to draw conclusions. We have barely begun to figure out how the climate works here, but we have learned some useful things, such is that the system is *much* more complex than energy in, energy out. There is a high correlation between past CO2 levels and past climate and our (inadequate) studies of solar output and mechanisms (mostly) do not suggest that the Sun is the primary or even a major culprit. Whether the CO2 correlation is strictly causal is open to debate, but good models certainly show that the idea is more than reasonable.

Even if the Sun is causing the warming, higher levels of green house gases will only accelerate the process, and the likely response by humans should likely be the same --- an attempt to at least slow the warming to a rate at which we can adapt adequately. If, in fact, the Sun is the culprit, we will not be able to avoid effects long term, but at least we can likely slow it down or keep from speeding it up.

Now, an admitted and serious problem with warming-related climate models, and this goes for greenhouse or solar induced ones, is that they are not locally accurate. We have good date from ice-cap cores and other sources showing long-term climate changes which we can correlate to both CO2 levels and our understanding of Sun cycles. The problem is that this tells us little of what the weather was like on a particular Tuesday near Whiteface Mountain or Barnaget Bay ten thousand years ago. Our models are limited in complexity by computing power, data precision, and creeping chaos. We can show likely results, but all we really *know* is that climate mechanisms will change markedly. We have not been watching the weather in detail long enough to know more. We can have some success in columnar models which show, for instance, ozone creation in areas where horizontal mixing is minimal, but we cannot model local effects over wide areas very well. This, in turn, means we cannot model the precise effects of local inputs either. Power plants in one state, for instance, often do not effect air quality in the same state. Weather patterns move the output large distances. The effects of potential changes in jet streams and ocean currents have a real potential to hose any models we can put together.

Re:Global warming beat us there

[Anonymous Coward]

And humand induced global warming here on Earth IS a fact? You know, despite what you or Al Gore think, it is not a scientific fact or a "truth". It's a theory. Simply saying it over and over again doesn't make it a fact.

Re:Global warming beat us there

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

Since 1978, we've had direct satellite measurements of solar intensity.

Mars is cooler today than it was during the 1970s Viking missions.

A shrinking polar cap is local warming, not global warming, and did you notice what season it is on Mars?

Why do people repeat Fox News instead of looking for themselves?

Re:Global warming beat us there

[Bastard of Subhumani]

Er, fuck you with the strawman. It's a pretty accurate analogy of the "it's happening anyway so a bit more won't harm" argument that all you SUV driving dick-compensators come out with. Did I mention fuck you?

Re:Global warming beat us there

[sumdumass]

Regardless of the whether or not it only applies to Earth, my point is that the so called "global warming" of Mars can't be concluded as "global warming" as we know it because we don't have nearly enough data to conclude that, or at least there wasn't enough data when the article that the GP linked to was written. 2 years worth of data is not enough to say that Mars is going through a phase of global warming, as I said in my post. I probably shouldn't have thrown the comment about the dictionary in there because it leaves the post open for someone to come in and attack that one point as if the other points don't exist...

We don't just have to years of data. We just have two year of data that isn't measured by proxy. Proxy measurments are how we know the level of Co2 or temperature the earth was 200,000 years ago. It is taken several different ways. But more closley one of the important ways is the UV and IR emittance and reflectivity of the atmosphere. It is the same basic way we measure the temperature of earth from Space.

Of course the rate for error could be higher. The actualy amount could be differen't but any flaw in the formula should transpose itself thoughout the formula so the effect of global wamring will be visible.

But the problem doesn't come from temperature alone. You have glacier that normaly melts (and melts for reasons other then the earths temperature) being passed on as proof of global warming. When we see the same things occuring on mars, it is somehow not connected and means nothing. We have Al Gores movie showing us this as a direct result of global warming and all the polar bears are going to die.

And of course an article isn't going to explain a complete study or show every piece of data. It is an article ment for the masses to digest not a study in itself. Almost every article where you read about terestrial global warming only presents a portion of the facts. Why are we even contemplating the discounting of something being worked on because they didn't present you with all the facts in some article a random user pointed to because it was writen to a level that he could understand? (yea, a couple of commas, maybe a period or two would have help that runon sentence.) Because it doesn't fit with what we were forced to believe and it doesn't support humans as the cause.

Did you miss the part in my post where I said that warming of the earth occurs naturally? I really don't think that most people who believe that humans are causing the current global warming also think humans are the only cause of global warming. There is plenty of data to show that the temperature of the earth has fluctuated significantly over many, many years (hundreds of thousands?). I really haven't heard anyone say that only humans can raise the temperature of the earth. I'm not sure where that idea is coming from.

lol.. No i didn't miss that part. What I missed is that part were natural occuring global warming was a problem. It apears that everyone thinks natural occuring global wamring cannot be the problem because Humans are. So yes, Not everyone who thinks humans cause global warming think humans are the only cause, but they think they are the contributing cause to bring the temperature abive what they consider a natural level. The global warming problem being presented isn't that the earth is warming, the problem being presented is that the earth is warming because we use Fossil fuels and put too much Co2 into the atmosphere. The sun increasing it's strenth is discounted as being behind hte problem. I've read report were Scientist were claiming since 2000 that we didn't account ofr the solar activity corectly and need to adjust it's value by as much as 30%. Yet the humans are the cuase crowd so increased solar activity only acounts ofr a fraction of a percent of the increased temperatures. Also, I have spoke with several self proclaimed global warming experts who claim increased watervapor which would be a di

Re:Global warming beat us there

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that the hockey stick is not false. Search RealClimate for that.

Re:Global warming beat us there

[spicate]

Well, the article I linked to wasn't peer reviewed either, or the holy word of God, but since the space.com article I was replying to was dated December 2003, I think it was appropriate.

Re:Global warming beat us there

[Anonymous Coward]

Or is there some big scare that if it is ever found that humans don't have as big of an impact as once thought, the ability to control them and extract funding from them goes with it?

Yep. Got it in one.

Where is the alien reactor?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where is the alien nuclear reactor (that you start by pressing your hand into the middle of the thingamabob, which then drops down glowing green, that starts the nuclear reaction (that melts the ice, creating the oxygen for the planet) and thus, allows Arnie and the hot-chick to have a happy-ever-after? I mean come on people! Quatro said there was a reactor. Doug Quaid is the man for the job! He just needs to get a cup (a sports cup) so that when Sharon Stone starts kicking him 'there', he doesn't fall to the floor crying like a little girl. Did I miss anything?

Re:Where is the alien reactor?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's Kuato, not Quatro. Other than that, pretty much right. :-)

Re:Where is the alien reactor?

[AK Marc]

Arnie and the hot-chick

She was much more sleazy than demure.

ok, where was I when...

[7-Vodka]

It seems like the last time I heard of this topic the scientists were trying to find any evidence of water on Mars.
Now, they've found a massive amount and the F article states:

1. Discovered in the early 1970s, layered deposits of ice and dust cap the North and South Poles of Mars.
2. Scientists have long known that Mars' north polar cap is a massive storehouse of water ice...

So what gives? My vague memory says in the nineties they were still looking for any signs of water and now it's old news?

Re:ok, where was I when...

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a difference between " measurable presence of water" and "a significant presence of water that has/had geological and climatical impact."

Re:ok, where was I when...

[AlXtreme]

You might be mixing up our moon with Mars.

Re:ok, where was I when...

[carn1fex]

Well so yes theres some water there as proven in the past but this reasonably quantifies at least how much water is there and has some big implications. Sustainable human habitation for example. Also with this enough water its probable that at one time it was a liquid ocean. Which also has the implication that Mars might have a really extreme climate cycle. Say every few million years something happens to make the ice melt, then oceans exist for awhile then the planet refreezes again, etc.

Moo

[Chacham]

Um, isn't this about two weeks too early?

Re:Moo

[inode_buddha]

"Where are the true objectivists?" If there was a true objectivist, how would you know? Even Einstein was deeply religious.

Re:Moo

[c6gunner]

There's no such thing as "Evolutionism", and I, for one, resent your attempt to equate science to religion. Your inability to comprehend the theory evolution in no way discredits the science behind it.

Re:Moo

[Rakishi]

Well given that he apparently, like most creationists, has absolutely no idea what evolution is (hint: its not about how life began) you really can't expect much from him.

Re:Moo

[Dunbal]

Well given that he apparently, like most creationists, has absolutely no idea what evolution is (hint: its not about how life began) you really can't expect much from him.

      But surely people like him are living proof that at least SOME of us DID descend from monkeys...

Re:Moo

[jimbojw]

Um, isn't this about two weeks too early?

No, you're thinking of the recent article on breaking the speed of light

which is of course impossible without 1.21 gigawatts of electricity and a flux capacitor.

Re:Moo

[vidarh]

Depends on your meaning of religious - Einstein himself wrote essays were he explicitly rejected the dogma of established religion and the idea of a personal (antropomorphic) god. But in an article in the New York Times Magazine in 1930, he wrote of a feeling of "cosmic religious feeling": "The individual feels the futility of human desires and aims and the sublimity and marvelous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought. Individual existence impresses him as a sort of prison and he wants to experience the universe as a single significant whole. "

Elsewhere he wrote: "During the youthful period of mankind's spiritual evolution human fantasy created gods in man's own image, who, by the operations of their will were supposed to determine, or at any rate to influence, the phenomenal world. Man sought to alter the disposition of these gods in his own favor by means of magic and prayer. The idea of God in the religions taught at present is a sublimation of that old concept of the gods. Its anthropomorphic character is shown, for instance, by the fact that men appeal to the Divine Being in prayers and plead for the fulfillment of their wishes."

And "In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests."

But he also wrote this:

"If it is one of the goals of religion to liberate mankind as far as possible from the bondage of egocentric cravings, desires, and fears, scientific reasoning can aid religion in yet another sense. Although it is true that it is the goal of science to discover rules which permit the association and foretelling of facts, this is not its only aim. It also seeks to reduce the connections discovered to the smallest possible number of mutually independent conceptual elements. It is in this striving after the rational unification of the manifold that it encounters its greatest successes, even though it is precisely this attempt which causes it to run the greatest risk of falling a prey to illusions. But whoever has undergone the intense experience of successful advances made in this domain is moved by profound reverence for the rationality made manifest in existence. By way of the understanding he achieves a far-reaching emancipation from the shackles of personal hopes and desires, and thereby attains that humble attitude of mind toward the grandeur of reason incarnate in existence, and which, in its profoundest depths, is inaccessible to man. This attitude, however, appears to me to be religious, in the highest sense of the word. And so it seems to me that science not only purifies the religious impulse of the dross of its anthropomorphism but also contributes to a religious spiritualization of our understanding of life."

The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge. In this sense I believe that the priest must become a teacher if he wishes to do justice to his lofty educational mission. "

So he was "religious" in the sense that he believed in a "religious feeling" and saw the search for scientific truths itself as a religious impulse, and he believed that faith in human endeavor and ethical behavior were a higher form of religious feeling than the belief in personal Gods - the latter idea which he described as invented by human fantasy.

Re:Moo

[grantt]

(hint hint: Evolutionary theory doesn't explain where or what the root of life. In other words, how did the first cell that every living organism derived from come into being. It merely depicts organisms abilty to adapt to their ever changing habitat. Or did I miss something? Where that cell originated from, I think, is incomprehendable by your or my monkey brains. Much like the infinity of the universe.

Re:Moo

[Rakishi]

(hint hint: Evolutionary theory doesn't explain where or what the root of life. In other words, how did the first cell that every living organism derived from come into being. It merely depicts organisms abilty to adapt to their ever changing habitat. Or did I miss something?

The point is that the theory of evolution (in the normal sense of it) deals with everything after the first cell, once the mechanisms for mutation and selection were in place. Creationists seem to not grasp that half the time, thinking that because evolution doesn't explain how life began (as it shouldn't) it must be wrong. It's like saying that all of geology is wrong because it doesn't explain how the earth formed; we have other theories and branches to deal with that.

Where that cell originated from, I think, is incomprehendable by your or my monkey brains.

Not really, various theories exist with varying degrees of observation backing them up. Usually some form of selection is used were complex life forms get built up from simple molecules (similar to evolution in some ways in that regard).

One theory (I'm probably butchering the details as I'm filling in blanks as I write) is that over time by pure chance a set of molecules was created inside an oil bubble that catalyzed the creation of more like molecules. The natural chemical reactions, as laboratory experiments show, would have led to a decent amount of precursor molecules from which to build such copies. Over time this led to nucleotides and then RNA by a long process of ever increasing complexity (errors happen, the good ones pass on). Now RNA can both perform functions and store information, its DNA and Proteins in one package. Over time these RNA based proto-cells would become more complex, forming amino acids and then proteins. DNA would replace RNA for information storage although RNA would still remain in certain basic pathways (ie: making proteins and copying DNA, essentially the functions needed for the described proto-cells to become modern cells).

Remember that this took tens of millions of years and occurred in large sections of the planet, only one needed to be successful. Furthermore it likely happened on billions of planets and so even a one in a billion chance makes life evolution likely (the galaxy doesn't seem to be overflowing with life so the odds of life don't seem massive).

Liquid water

[Rix]

They've been looking for signs of liquid water, primarily in the distant past.

Frozen Water?

[Rie Beam]

Mars is unlikely to sport beachfront property anytime soon, but the planet has enough water ice at its south pole to blanket the entire planet in more than 30 feet of water if everything thawed out.

So how many Hummers are we talking about here?

Re:Frozen Water?

[Anonymous Coward]

There'll be time for that later, but how are we going to warm the planet?

Re:Frozen Water?

[tsa]

Two, I guess ;)

Re:Frozen Water?

[dreamlax]

Two, I guess ;)

Woah! Careful, you don't want to overdo it.

Re:Frozen Water?

[tgd]

So how many Hummers are we talking about here?

Hey, this is a family site!

Where should we drill first

[Anonymous Coward]

Wonder where on the ice we should drill first that has the best chance of detecting life (bottom/outer edge?)?

it's sublimating!

[hxnwix]

Ever so slowly...?

Martian Water-world

[Rie Beam]

A Martian water-world is unlikely in the near future

Thank god.

Re:Martian Water-world

[LagAdder]

Wasn't that the film with "Wet Max" as internal working title?

Quality of life on Mars

[Chayak]

Just think of the relief for future explores. They can now have a nice alcoholic beverage on the rocks and not feel guilty about using precious water. Mars Snow Cones and Mars Bottled Water (patents pending) is taken so stay away you sharks!

Re:Quality of life on Mars

[Carthag]

A method through which to deliver monoxide dihydrogen via an interplanetary liquid fuel propulsion engine; a method to gather and store said monoxide dihydrogen for later distribution; finally, a method to carve said monoxide dihydrogen into specifically sized cubes for use in ethanol beverages.

Man there's a ton of money to be made here.

Re:Quality of life on Mars

[Carthag]

Shit, forgot to add an extra patent with "... online" :(

So where there's water there's a way

[gd23ka]

But before we can have our Mars colony we still have to take out the
trash because I don't see why this parasitical scum http://prisonplanet.com/articles/june2006/110606At tendees.htm (Bilderberger'06 Attendee List) would want to let us go there.

Looking at the technical problems such as radiation protection (Mars has no magnetic
field to deflect particles btw), designing shelters and then bringing in the heavy
equipment for building all those cool domes that are on the covers of Robert Heinlein's
books and solving hell of a lot of other problems...

taking out the trash is in comparison a minor, straightforward chore.

Re:So where there's water there's a way

[BiggerIsBetter]

Thanks for the inspiration. If Mars has large amounts of water, but life on the surface is diffult, can we not put our habitats within the water? Lots and lots of benefits - including easy access to H2O and O2, and shielding from the radiation.

Re:So where there's water there's a way

[julesh]

Looking at the technical problems such as radiation protection (Mars has no magnetic
field to deflect particles btw)

Radiation reaching the Martian surface is apparently about 2.5 times exposure in low Earth orbit. NASA describe it as high but within manageable limits, and I'm sure they understand the consequences of it better than I do.

Re:So where there's water there's a way

[Fireye]

That would be a decent idea, if the water was liquid. Additionally, if there were aquifers, the water contained therein would either be ice, or under enough pressure to prevent the water from turning to ice. There would be no easy to to penetrate an aquifer and create a habitat in one. ... of course, that's just my impression from reading Red Mars, an awesome hard sci-fi book on this subject.

The depth figure doesn't make sense...

[isaac]

FTA:

The scientists calculated that the water would form a 36-foot-deep ocean of sorts if spread over the Martian globe.

Hang on, is it enough water to cover the surface of Mars to an average depth of 36 feet, is it forming an ocean in the lowest-lying areas of Mars (Hellas?) with an average depth of 36 feet? (Or even a maximum depth of 36 feet?)

There's orders of magnitude between each of these. Does anyone have a better reference?

-Isaac

Re:The depth figure doesn't make sense...

[Anonymous Coward]

estimated volume of ice found = surface area of Mars x 36 feet

Re:The depth figure doesn't make sense...

[snowgirl]

Not to mention that enormous volcano bigger than Texas... I mean, wouldn't you have to cover that up too to declare it as "surrounding the entire surface"?

Re:The depth figure doesn't make sense...

[MyHair]

I also found it an odd measure. I'd much rather see an image of where the lakes/oceans might be if all of it was melted, perhaps with depth maps.

I assume they used the average radius of Mars and the water would cover 36 feet of a sphere with that radius.

Re:The depth figure doesn't make sense...

[whitehatlurker]

It doesn't make any sense, as the entire body of water is underground, and the soil is dry. If the water melted, it would likely be entirely absorbed by the ground. (I guess you can't say "earth".) There would be no ocean.

All we can really say is that if it all melted, there would be no water-ice at the poles ...

Re:The depth figure doesn't make sense...

[carn1fex]

Good god people its just a frame of reference for everyone. Obviously the scientist modelled mars as a perfect sphere to make the quantity of water understandible to everyone, including we of the scientific tilt. 10^15 gallons doesnt do much for me. :)

Re:The depth figure doesn't make sense...

[geekoid]

Don't be stupid.
Clearly it's just the depth the water would be if the surface area of mars is flat.

Everybody in the FREAKING world gets that except for the people on slashdot who think it's cute to be intentianally obtuse.

Measurement Nitpicking

[Rie Beam]

From Slashdot:

Space.com is reporting that the Mars Express probe's MARSIS (Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding) experiment has detected and measured an enormous amount of water ice near Mars' south pole, which would be sufficient to submerge the whole planet's surface underneath approximately 10m of water on average.

10m = ~32.8ft

From the article:

"The scientists calculated that the water would form a 36-foot-deep ocean of sorts if spread over the Martian globe."

36ft = ~10.9m, closer to 11m.

Re:Measurement Nitpicking

[Anonymous Coward]

WHOLLY FUCK DUDE!

get on the phone with nasa before its too late!

Re:Measurement Nitpicking

[Psychotria]

The key words (ok, phrases): "approximately", "of sorts"

Re:Measurement Nitpicking

[Anonymous Coward]

Who knows, maybe you should give them a call.

Re:Measurement Nitpicking

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not just look up the real article in Science? The number is in the abstract.

The total volume is estimated to be 1.6 x 106 km3, equivalent to a global water layer approximately 11 meters thick.

Obligatory Planet Joke

[Vulcann]

Isn't there a lot of water in Uranus

Sorry :D

Re:Obligatory Planet Joke

[Saffaya]

Actually, Neptune is more associated with water.
Salty water.

Re:Obligatory Planet Joke

[nacturation]

>----> Joke

You

    (0)
      |
    ---
      | /\ So the joke severed the poor bastard's body into multiple pieces?

Re:Obligatory Planet Joke

[nko321]

Uranus is full of gas!

Blue sky on Mars!

[Lionfire]

At long last; now no one's eyeballs will pop out when we visit.

Re:Blue sky on Mars!

[Anonymous Coward]

Blue skies are the result of high concentrations of Nitrogen in the atmosphere, not liquid surface water.

There is even more water

[Electric-PI]

This is very exciting as it makes the idea of colonizing Mars sometime in the next 100 or 150 years a little closer. The article mentions even more water:

"There's evidence that about 10 times or maybe even 100 times that much water has flowed across the surface of Mars to carve the various channels, the outflow valleys and other features we see in the images and topography data,"

The Article also does mention that:

The reflected beams revealed that 90 percent or more of the frozen polar material is pure water ice, sprinkled with dust particles.

Does that mean it's usable fresh water? I guess analysis of that ice would be high on the to do list.

Re:There is even more water

[Presence2]

Does that mean it's usable fresh water? There's no such thing as unusable water when you're packing the camper for a 12 month trip to mars and every ounce counts...

Re:There is even more water

[stgben]

Does that mean it's usable fresh water? I guess analysis of that ice would be high on the to do list. Great question. I wonder if we could tap into this to replenish the small amount of usable water we have left on Earth.

Re:There is even more water

[SatanicPuppy]

Because, compared to bringing in water from other planets in the solar system, that water purification thing is EXPENSIVE!

Re:There is even more water

[Hal_Porter]

Bullshit. The aliens in V thought it was worth shipping water and a few humans (food and cannon fodder) 8.7 light years. Taking water from Mars should be much cheaper.

Oh yeah. Spoiler warning.

Re:There is even more water

[rbanffy]

How can a decades-old sci-fi series still be victim of spoilers?

BTW, the first half was somewhat good. The second half was horrible.

Re:There is even more water

[Rei]

This is very exciting as it makes the idea of colonizing Mars sometime in the next 100 or 150 years a little closer. The article mentions even more water:

There's long been known to be an enormous amount of water in Mars' polar caps; the question was how much.

Let's engage in a little creative exercise, for those who have this notion that Mars will be colonized within the next hundred, hundred-fifty years (by colony, assumedly "mostly independent"). Pick a category you would need on Mars -- power, metals, ceramics, plastics, adhesives, clothing, lubricants, hydraulic fluids, dyes, solvents, abrasives, food, personal items, medications, etc -- and pick a specific representative in that category -- say, in ceramics, ferrite suitable for transformer cores, or in plastics, teflon for coatings in high-corrosion environments (like many refining processes). Take your pick. If you want me to break down a particular category, just ask. Once you make your pick, we'll trace back the dependency chain for producing it.

The dependency chains are almost always monstrous.

The simple fact is that, on another planet, you're entirely dependent on modern technology to survive. Modern technology inherently spawns massively long dependency chains. We don't notice these things in our daily lives. We write with a marker and never give a thought to all of the chemical and physical processes that went into making the plastic, the foam core, and the ink, and everything it took to make those chemicals, and everything it took to make those chemicals. And so on. Look around you. Almost everything you see has dependency chains like that. To have a mostly self-sufficient colony on Mars, thus, you must be able to satisfy most of those dependency chains locally. You're talking mining hundreds of minerals (can't find some? Uh oh, you're in trouble!), which will be dispersed across the planet. You're talking about an industrual complex the size of a major US city. Which you'd have to set up on a planet for which it costs tens of thousands of dollars per kilogram to land payload there.

Don't hold your breath.

Re:There is even more water

[mikerubin]

reminds me of Spaceballs

Re:There is even more water

[Rich0]

The dependency chains are almost always monstrous.

Stop and consider what life on earth would be like after a nuclear war destroyed most of the infrastructure. Even on earth it would probably take a century to get back to where we are now. On Mars it would be far worse generally - basic resources are far more scarce. Now, arguably high-tech resources like miniaturized devices are more plentiful - they could be made on Earth and shipped, but large infrastructure would be more easily built on Earth even post-apocalypse.

Don't hold your breath.

Uh, you seem to have forgotten what planet you're talking about. If for whatever reason your dependency chain does run out you will most certainly want to hold your breath... :)

Re:There is even more water

[Anonymous Coward]

Y'know... you post this every time someone mentions colonization. Could you at least change the wording a little bit? I'm getting bored.

Re:There is even more water

[Rei]

It's not like I cut and paste. There's different info every time, but the point is the same. Sure, I'll stop -- as soon as people stop making "we'll be colonized any day now!" claims.

Global Warming Solved

[Anonymous Coward]

Sweet zombie Jesus! Now we just need a spaceship and a crew to go fetch some giant Martian ice cubes and dump them into the ocean, thus solving the problem of global warming forever!

Metric System Nitpicking

[Nymz]

Martians don't measure water with the metric system, you insensitive clod!

That's not nitpicking, this is nitpicking

[Anonymous Coward]

36ft = ~10.9m, closer to 11m.

But still inaccurate.

36 feet = 10972.8 mm, exactly.

Re:That's not nitpicking, this is nitpicking

[Sam Ritchie]

Unless they meant US Survey feet, which would be 10972.821945643891287782575565151 mm (approx).

Re:That's not nitpicking, this is nitpicking

[Dunbal]

36 feet = 10972.8 mm, exactly.

      Actually, if you want the hair-splitting nerd fight to continue, that would be 36.0000 feet exactly. Don't forget your significant figures!

Water

[Psychotria]

While I think that the idea of terraforming the planet is silly, the presence of water is good. It means that if we ever colonise the planet (in bubbles, not because we terraform it) that water is one less thing we have to worry about transporting there (or creating). Large amounts of water also means that we can probably create Oxygen, making the idea of a permenant station even more viable.

Not

[djupedal]

"...an enormous amount of water ice...would be sufficient to submerge the whole planet's surface underneath approximately 10m of water on average.

Did you know that if you took all of the sand from the Sahara Desert and spread it out that it would cover all of North Africa...?

Compared to the Earth, as an example, the 10m stat actually says there is very little water. Think about it.

 

• 10 meter depth over 100% of planet surface
  
• 15 meter depth over 75% of planet surface
  
• 20 meter depth over 50% of planet surface
  
• 40 meter depth over 25% of planet surface
  
• 80 meter depth over 12.5% of planet surface
  

80 meters depth covering just a bit more than 10% of the entire planet. 2/3 ~ 3/4 of Earth is covered in water, with the average depth of all the major oceans sitting at 3800m.

Three-thousand, eight-hundred meters here at home - compared to fifteen meters for Mars. Fifteen??!! Does that sound enormous to you? If it does, I've got an appendage I'd like to show you, in private, of course, you're not going to believe.

Re:Not

[rez_rat]

Hey, if you're drowning in 80 m of seawater, or drowning in 3800 m of seawater; I'd bet you wouldn't care of the difference. A lotta water is a lotta water. Just like a /.'er to nitpick over a mere 97.9% difference. Sheesh. The point was: The whole planet would be covered in water! Suspend some disbelief and think: "That's pretty cool!"

Oh, and close the door to within 0.016th of an inch of the wall on your way out.

S-

Re:Not

[Chatsubo]

TFA states that there's that amount of water in one deposit.

There's probably other deposits, with much, much more....

"There's evidence that about 10 times or maybe even 100 times that much water has flowed across the surface of Mars to carve the various channels, the outflow valleys and other features we see in the images and topography data"

They're just saying that, they've found where a bunch of that water IS, but they still have to find where the rest of it is. If it's there.

Re:Not

[djupedal]

So let me get this straight...

1/100th & 1/10th, in their words (and yours) = an enormous amount...? Sorry, again, still not buying the literary license at work here. Your defense only serves to better illustrate just how weak it is...give it up :)

What are the chances...

[jordyhoyt]

a couple bacteria could (accidentally) make it the whole way to mars on one of our probes? Is it possible we could inadvertently populate mars with our Earth-life? How funny would it be to "discover" life on mars when we actually put it there years before on a probe to one of the more life-friendly corners of mars... just a weird though i had while reading this

Re:What are the chances...

[djupedal]

"a couple bacteria could (accidentally) make it the whole way to mars on one of our probes?"

From the bacterium's point of view, there would be nothing 'accidental' about moving from A to B, you know that, right?

"Is it possible we could inadvertently populate mars with our Earth-life? How funny would it be to "discover" life on mars when we actually put it there years before"

Last I heard, we were doing better at killing off anything Martian we may have 'discovered', so I'd say the odds of life from our side coming out alive on the Mars side are pretty much zero.

Re:What are the chances...

[Mr0bvious]

According to this article http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.htm?programID=05 -P13-00024&segmentID=7 the chances are high... Here is an extract

BURDICK: It is surprisingly difficult. I spent some quality time with a microbiologist at the Jet Propulsion Lab out in Pasadena, and this guy works in the spacecraft assembly facility where they build, well they built the Mars Rovers that are now out there on Mars. And this guy, his job is to kind of inspect what's left over and to see well, gosh, did any microbes survive the incredibly kind of harsh decontamination process that we've devised to get rid of them? And to his great surprise they have, and he's found at least one microbe that not only thrives in the spacecraft assembly facility, but seems to have actually evolved in it. It's a tough little spore, it eats aluminum. He found it growing on the surface of one of the Mars Rovers. It forms these spores and then the spores kind of group together to form a little, what he calls an igloo. It looks kind of like a macaroon under a microscope and when he cuts it open and exposes it to the light detection techniques that NASA's developed to look for life, he finds no sign of life and then when he puts this little igloo back together, the microbe comes back to life amazingly. And I asked him, "So you know you found this thing on the Mars Rover when it was being built. Do you think it's up there on Mars right now?" And he said, "oh yes, I'm quite certain, I'm almost certain that it is." So you know, I mean, it's just indicative of how life wants to spread. Either they're moving around inadvertently with us or they're moving around intentionally with us, but they are kind of reflections of our ambition, our desire to reshape the nature around us in a way that makes us more comfortable. You know, we can kind of demonize these things, but in a way they're really kind of impressive little critters. They're sort of doing what nature permitted them to do. And in a Darwinian sense, I mean, they're winners. I mean you've got to be, even if you don't like aliens, and there is quite a number of reasons not to, I think it's worthwhile sort of stopping and at least being impressed by their ability to thrive in a world that we think that we dominate. So far as we know, Earth is the only planet with life on it and the wind is blowing outward. We may well be the dandelion in the solar system.

Interesting...

Re:What are the chances...

[Dunbal]

Last I heard, we were doing better at killing off anything Martian we may have 'discovered'

      OMG! Already crack-pot environmentalists are trying to blame us for "destroying" mars??? Damn, I'm sorry. I killed those baby seals, but the martian baceria - NOT GUILTY! And I didn't pour the acid on Venus either!

Re:What are the chances...

[djupedal]

The example has nothing to do with 'environmentalists' - it has all to do with the first samples NASA tried to deal with back in 1976 ~ 1977 - which may have zapped anything that might have been found in the process...ooops.

Re:What are the chances...

[Anonymous Coward]

This happened years ago with an unmanned moon mission; the scientists got their equipment back only to find it covered with "alien" germs; these were, of course, terrestrial bacteria that had gotten inside the equipment during assembly - supposedly because a technician sneezed on it. They Might Be Giants wrote a song about it for ABC's "Brave New World" series.

Re:What are the chances...

[Dunbal]

The example has nothing to do with 'environmentalists' - it has all to do with the first samples NASA tried to deal with

      Yes, it's called a "joke".

Re:What are the chances...

[robably]

Interesting...

I impressed by how you subliminally influenced the moderators there.

Funny...

Re:What are the chances...

[Nocterro]

Interesting? God damn, man, haven't you read Andromeda Strain? That's a -1, Terrifying, not a +1, Interesting!

Re:What are the chances...

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean it!

Re:What are the chances...

[geekoid]

Good God man, if that is happening, it nede to be modded +1 - Hide in a bunker.
I would never see it if it was modded down!

Re:What are the chances...

[Anonymous Coward]

Where do you think Transformers come from?

Imagine we finally get AI working, send a bit of it to Mars on a rover... and/or maybe this aluminum eating bacteria takes control... All of a sudden, robots coming FROM Mars isn't such a silly idea. Even two different, warring factions of them!

Who knew Saturday Morning Cartoons could predict the future?

Re:What are the chances...

[Anonymous Coward]

It eats the aluminum? That is interesting, I wonder what the waste product is from the process.

Re:What are the chances...

[Mr0bvious]

I see how that looks, but it was totally coincidental..

offtopic..

Mutant Generators

[Temujin_12]

Now if we could just find the large underground mutant generators, we will be able to instantaneously terraform Mars. Of course we'd need Arnold Schwarzenegger to spearhead this for us, but I think he's up to the task.

Re:Mutant Generators

[jimbojw]

> Now if we could just find the large underground mutant generators, we will be able to instantaneously terraform Mars. Of course we'd need Arnold Schwarzenegger to spearhead this for us, but I think he's up to the task.

According to wikipedia:

July 19, 2006, Schwarzenegger proposed forming the Climate Action Board, a new, centralized authority under his direct control that would be responsible for implementing one of the nation's most far-reaching initiatives to curb global warming.

Getting Mr. Quaid to start the reactor may take more convincing this time around...

Re:Mutant Generators

[Anonymous Coward]

Open your mind, jimbojw! Quaid was a jerk, who worked for the bad guys. He volunteered to have his memory erased, and only after forgetting who he was, became a hero.

Anyway, after G. Bush, I don't think erasing Arnolds memory is a good idea. (schizoid embolism, delusions of grandeur, lobotomized - does this ring a bell?)

Earth First!

[Russ Nelson]

I say that we terraform Earth first. If you've ever flown over Colorado, Nevada, or Utah, you quickly realize that Those Places Ain't Habitable.

Re:Earth First!

[Anonymous Coward]

Colorado? Are you nuts? It's the most beautiful state in the country. I say we terraform your mom's snatch. That way she'll have an excuse for it smelling like fish. There'll actually be some in there.

Re:Earth First!

[Xeirxes]

I live in Nevada, you insensitive clod!

Re:Earth First!

[pair-a-noyd]

That's what you humans think!

Too bad we can't ship our CO2 to Mars

[BlackSabbath]

Let's see. By all accounts we're producing too much CO2 on Earth, meanwhile our closest neighbour is just begging for some CO2 to trigger a bit of global warming and make the planet nice and cosy.

OK. A bit simplistic, but you can't help wondering...

Re:Too bad we can't ship our CO2 to Mars

[Dunbal]

Let's see. By all accounts we're producing too much CO2 on Earth, meanwhile our closest neighbour is just begging for some CO2 to trigger a bit of global warming and make the planet nice and cosy.

      Uhh, dude, sorry to rain on your parade but the martian atmosphere is over 90% CO2! I doubt that having more CO2 there is going to do anything. What Mars really needs in order to be warmer is to have an orbit closer to the sun!

      Man you have to re-take basic nerding 101 for not knowing that.

Re:Too bad we can't ship our CO2 to Mars

[kyknos.org]

MArs atmosphere is 90% CO2 but the atmosphere is extremely thin. So, it really needs more CO2 to become warmer.

Re:Too bad we can't ship our CO2 to Mars

[mr_matticus]

90% of 1 cubic meter is less desirable than 50% of 10 cubic meters when you're talking atmospheres. Back to Nerding 126 for you! More C02=higher density atmosphere=better heat retention=slightly more Earthlike (some intermediate steps removed).

Re:Too bad we can't ship our CO2 to Mars

[HolyCrapSCOsux]

Would that not require more planetary mass? In order to retain more atmosphere.

Re:Too bad we can't ship our CO2 to Mars

[kyknos.org]

Mars has too thin atmosphere for its mass. It can keep much stronger atmosphere. A bigger problem is its weak magnetic field which allows atmosphere to be blown away by sun wind (which is however a very slow process).

Breaking!

[Spit]

Common stable molecule discovered to be abundant. News at 11.

So THAT's what

[rez_rat]

So THAT's what that giant white cap on the Martian north pole is!!! Doh!!
There go all my "Martian Cocaine" investments!!

Re:So THAT's what

[julesh]

Not meaning to spoil your joke or anything, but you do know that the large, visible ice caps at the martian poles are dry ice, right? The water ice is beneath those caps.

Re:So THAT's what

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you know what this is?!? Snow! Do you know what the street value of this mountain is?

Re:So THAT's what

[Anonymous Coward]

Awesome.

I must have missed the part.....

[ricree]

...where people here were claiming that.A large amount of water on Mars would be something to get excited about for a number of good reasons, none of which are "disproving God".

This is spooky

[Mr. Protocol]

One of the most gorgeous anime series ever made, "Aria" (two seasons, "Aria the Animation" and "Aria the Natural"), was based on exactly this concept: we terraformed Mars and overshot. It's now a water planet, whose name has been changed to Aqua. An ocean planet of island chains, each set of islands was colonized by a different culture. The animation is set in the city of Neo-Venezia, the original having sunk under the ocean of Earth ("Manhome") long before.

This story really startled me, because now it's actually sounding possible.

The year is 2303, and tourists are gliding in gondolas along the canals of Neo-Venezia, in the care of the undines...

Quaid!!!!

[blankoboy]

I say we get the governator up there stat to thaw it out so we can have a giant beach party before the year 2020. I call dibs on riding the rover around.

Units

[hcdejong]

So, is that an Imperial enormous amount, or a metric enormous amount?

Just making sure I have this straight, it's (in climbing order of magnitude)
huge
enormous
gigantic
stupendous
???

Re:Units

[PeterBrett]

So, is that an Imperial enormous amount, or a metric enormous amount?

I believe the correct unit for expressing such an enormous amount would be a "shitload". This is a well-known measure, used extensively in the civil and power engineering. It is frequently heard when discussing currency.

Under the Water, to Carry the Water

[Doc Ruby]

Scientists recently discovered a large deposit of water deep in the Earth's molten rock, many (hundreds) of miles under the crust layer. Perhaps more Mars water is locked up there. If it took us that long to find it on Earth, how will we find it on Mars? And how will we find whether that extra water was ever on the surface?

Re:Under the Water, to Carry the Water

[Clever7Devil]

Ah ha! You see? You see?! It's where all the water went after the deluge. Silly scientists, constantly proving yourselves wrong.

Only one thing to say ..

[Saffaya]

Get your Ass on Mars !!

Re:It's as if...

[Nyeerrmm]

That's absurd, I'm a staunch Christian and look forward to the discovery of extra-terrestrial life. If they have a religous background that's incompatible with my religion, we'll see how it works out. However, with my current lack of evidence, I tend to believe that the ideas of Clarke's Rama series (that God exists and that is constantly trying to create a universe that is devoted to Him and somehow compatible with my beliefs) is true.

Whether the Pat Robertson's of the world agree with it's compatibility, it doesn't matter. The religous conservatives dont define the world. It's the crazy religious liberals that do including Jesus himself, Peter, Paul, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Wesley (my background is most influenced by the Methodists), and, in my opinion, John Paul II. I've learned over my religious experience (which is acknowledgedly limited doing to my age (only 21) and devotion to more concrete science and engineering) that it's ridiculous to listen to any supposed authority without judging it for yourself, including even a literal interpretation of the Bible (I had a girlfriend once who claimed that Revelations was likely largely figurative, but somehow didn't stretch that out to make Genesis the same.)

By the way, I don't feel thats hypocritical because I still believe in the Bible, and the idea that the new law of the New Testament is absolute (love your neighbor, etc.) I just don't follow the idea that everything in the translations should be taken literally (e.g. 'Witches' is best interpreted as potion-makers in the Old Testament, homosexuality is usually referred to in regard to rampant sex without regard, which was particularly dangerous in the age before real medicine, trying to implement Democracy in Iraq isn't mentioned at all, and I don't see a damn thing about using the word fuck, shit, or ass in anything that I've read.) The only thing that I see as applicable is to not to shake someone else's faith by doing particular things, and I like to think I do my best to not do that, while influencing people such as my younger brother and friends to not be taken in by the most ridiculous parts of our religion.

Mars: home sweet home

[nuddlegg]

Things sound more and more cosy. So a new .mars top level domain is long overdue.

wait, where's the "haha" tag?

[pair-a-noyd]

For the naysayers..

Isn't anyone worried about the turbinum supply?

[arcite]

Vilos Cohaagen: Don't touch that! Get away, get back!

Douglas Quaid: What are you afraid of? Turn it on.

Vilos Cohaagen: Impossible! Once the reaction starts, it'll spread to all the turbinium in the planet. Mars will go into global meltdown. That's why the aliens never turned it on.

Douglas Quaid: And you expect me to believe you?

Vilos Cohaagen: Who gives a shit what you believe? In thirty seconds you'll be dead, and I'll blow this place up and be home in time for Corn Flakes.

From the horses mouth

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMSWJQ08ZE_index_0.html

Re:Poll Troll Toll

[Debug0x2a]

Where is the cowboyneal option?

Re:NASA is doomed

[nacturation]

Anyone read Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy? I have heard it is a great series with plenty of entertaining sci-fi aspects and though provoking social/political discussions as well. First book was fairly enjoyable. Now I'm trying to slog through the second book and quickly losing interest due to it turning into a long, boring, slow soap opera set on Mars. Does it eventually get better, or should I burn them while I have the chance?

Boring !

[Ihlosi]

I can't wait to surf Mars. With moons that close, there ought to be tidal swells that one could ride forever.

Bah .. surfing is such an Earth-bound sport. I can't wait to strap on a pair of wings and fly through the atmosphere on Titan. Low gravity + fairly thick atmosphere = lots of fun.

Re:It's as if...

[Ihlosi]

If they have a religous background that's incompatible with my religion, we'll see how it works out.

It's not as if we don't have centuries worth of experience in that.

"Death to the heathens !"

A Blue Mars Map

[gobbo]

I also found it an odd measure. I'd much rather see an image of where the lakes/oceans might be if all of it was melted, perhaps with depth maps.

It's one of those statements meant to boggle, like "if you stacked all the books ever printed, they would reach the moon" [that's bunk, just made that up].

Anyway, you asked for a sea level map of Mars, so here ya go.

Of course you know what this means...

[mrbluze]

We need to urgently plan our first colony to Mars... how shall we do it..

1. We need to build three spacecraft. (1) for the working class, (2) for the intelligencia, and (3) for middle management, politicians, salespeople, hairdressers and other absolutely essential jobs required for any new colony.
2. We should first send spacecraft number (3) as it would surely be the largest and most important craft. These people are, after all, our leaders and those whom we admire most.
3. After the people on craft (3) have worked out how to make the atmosphere there breathable, and have had enough meetings and committees to organize themselves out of existence, they can then contact Earth and send for the other two craft.
4. In the meantime, all of Earth's problems have been solved and we don't need to go to Mars anymore.

Re:Of course you know what this means...

[KDan]

That's all fine and dandy, but have you considered the possibility of mass extinction from diseases spread by dirty telephone handsets?

Daniel

Re:Of course you know what this means...

[nebbian]

I was waiting for a comment like yours :-)

Re:Of course you know what this means...

[ezzzD55J]

intelligencia ITYM intelligentsia ;-)

Re:Of course you know what this means...

[Anonymous Coward]

ROFL at the hitchikers' reference.

Re:Of course you know what this means...

[Joebert]

What do you call 50,000 lawyers at the bottom of an ocean ?

Indication that spacecraft 3 made it there in one piece.

Re:Of course you know what this means...

[raddan]

We should call it the "B Ark". LEMON?!

Re:Of course you know what this means...

[Kyeev]

Douglas adams is that you?

Re:Of course you know what this means...

[batquux]

5. Profit!

Re:Of course you know what this means...

[CODiNE]

(3) for middle management, politicians, salespeople, hairdressers and other absolutely essential jobs required for any new colony.

Cue jokes about long-haired geeks.

Re:Of course you know what this means...

[Dirtside]

No, he just thinks Carlos Mencia is a genius.

Re:Of course you know what this means...

[mrbluze]

ITYM intelligentsia ;-)

Jus showce emmuch inteligents I hev.

Re:Of course you know what this means...

[Anonymous Coward]

We need to urgently plan our first colony to Mars...

No! Venus is where you want to go. Hurry; pack your bags now!

Don't talk about it (Bush gags Climatologists)

[Anonymous Coward]

http://scienceblogs.com/grrlscientist/2007/03/bush _to_gag_climate_scientists.php

Bush To Gag Climate Scientists -- Again

Category: Global Warming Politics Weather
Posted on: March 11, 2007 1:24 PM, by "GrrlScientist"

According to a recently leaked memorandum, the Bush Administration is once again up to their dirty tricks; they are trying to gag government scientists by demanding they not to talk about polar bears, sea ice and climate change during official overseas trips.
----

Namings

[Anonymous Coward]

'Frozen water' - that sure sounds a lot more spectacular than just plain old 'ice'.

Planetary engineering.

[Ihlosi]

Are you really suggesting that we move planet-sized chunks of mass around the solar system?

That's probably very inefficient, but we could look for suitable chunks of matter that are going to miss Mars, and give them a little nudge to make sure they don't.

Still, the process of increasing a planets gravity would most likely take centuries or millenia, during which no one should set foot on the planet in question (unless they want to get hit by large chunks of space rock). I doubt humanity has the ability to plan in these time dimensions just yet.

Re:Planetary engineering.

[spitzak]

I would also expect that this attempt to increase the gravity would result in a planet with enough gravity, but also a molten surface, and no water or atmosphere.

Re:It's as if...

[the Hewster]

This is a major step forward for those individuals who somehow believe that life evolving somewhere else proves that God doesn't exist. I might be aware that that line of reasoning is nuts, but hey...don't let me rain on your parade. ;)

It's not about believing or not believing, it's about observation and theories that are supported by observation. For example, if we find life on Mars would that prove that God exists? Does anything? Iguess we are back to square one then.

Not really.

[Ihlosi]

that cell originated from, I think, is incomprehendable by your or my monkey brains.

The first cell probably originated from molecules that were most successful at creating copies of themselves (for example through auto-catalytic reactions) before being broken up again by radiation.

Budget Brawl

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when did the number of probes launched mean anything? Or the budget?! What you subsidize is your problem. (Go Military-Industrial complex!) Besides NASA receives a lot of help from other organizations - this is science, not a competition. ESA is only a fledgling organization for a FEW of the European nations. And Europe has not merged to become a federal nation either - so the budget is not even linked to the EU. I find it interesting that you would include Cassini and not mention that it is a joint mission of NASA, ESA and the Italian ASI. Why all the bickering? But I am visiting Slashdot, oh well, nevermind.

mnb Re:Of course you know what this means...

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Create three arks.
2. Launch 'B' ark.
3. Profit!

A much needed total recall quote

[blanks]

"quaid start the reactor"
--Kuato

Congratulations!

[dreamchaser]

You've won the Slashdot "Pedant of the Day" award. Keep up the fine work and you'll help advance the cause of pedantry worldwide!

Re:It's as if...

[Slashcrap]

...millions of atheists orgasmed simultaneously, and then were silent. ;)

Of course they went silent because a load of conservative christians came by and shot them for daring to experience sexual pleasure which did not result in childbirth.

I might be aware that that line of reasoning is nuts

When you became a Christian you automatically lost your right to declare anybody else's reasoning as nuts. We know what you believe and as a consequence, your right to describe any idea as absurd is therefore permanently revoked.

you forgot telephone sanitizers

[lthown]

After all, they are where we came from. Too bad we'll all be wiped out in an outbreak spred by unclean telephone sets.

Re:you forgot telephone sanitizers

[CrazyJim1]

Yah, because everyone uses public telephones nowadays.

One less thing to worry about.

[ady1]

WATER FOUND ON MARS!!!!!
After the people on craft (3) have worked out how to make the atmosphere there breathable, and have had enough meetings and committees to organize themselves out of existence, they can then contact Earth and send for the other two craft. Well one thing is for sure. they won't die out of thirst at least.

How did it get there?

[Kerto]

Does this prove that Mars never had liquid water in a similar fashion as Earth. If Mars was covered in lots of water where did the rest of it go? Or, how did it all clump together in one place at the pole? This is awesome news but it raises interesting questions.

Lex Luthor Invades Next Week

[Anonymous Coward]

He likes his beachfront property

Bottle it and sell it to rappers.

[gelfling]

Robin Leach can bellow out the commercial.

Re:NASA is doomed

[squizzar]

I read all three years ago, and read them again recently. I remember it seeming like a bit of a slog for a while in the second book, but it does get a lot more interesting. When I re-read it the soap opera parts seemed more important because they gave foundation to the characters' motivations and actions. I'd certainly recommend sticking it out, there's a lot of really good stuff in there.

Calling BS

[Blappo]

"Besides that, most dictionaries define global warming as something related only to the Earth and also as needing measurements taken over decades"

I'm calling BS right there. The bolded part, after an impromptu search of the several hard copies in our office and a few online dictionaries, makes no reference of the time frame whatsoever. The part about it relating to "earth" is correct, though.

Re:Calling BS

[krotkruton]

You're right. I can't seem to find a dictionary that uses such a specific time frame even though I thought I found some last night. The only thing I can find today that says that is Wikipedia. However, instead of a concrete time frame, a lot of dictionaries used the word "sustained".

But still not enough?

[kogus]

From TA:

"...the planet has enough water ice at its south pole to blanket the entire planet in more than 30 feet of water if everything thawed out."

and then later:

"That's a lot of water, but not enough to account for the flowing streams thought to meander along Mars' surface in the past."

Am I missing something? It sounds like thirty feet of water over the entire surface would be enough not only for flowing streams, but also for Noah's ark.

Re:But still not enough?

[Peyre]

Nah, that would leave plenty of dry land--remember, Mars isn't flat.

Re:But still not enough?

[kogus]

Ok, not Noah's ark, but at a depth of 30 feet, the total volume of water is 211,036.653 cubic kilometers of water. Is that enough to support a general system of streams and rivers on Mars?

Google shows the math here: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox- a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=yAx&q=((4% 2F3)+X+((6794%2B0.009144)%2F2)+cubed)+-+((4%2F3)+X +(6794%2F2)+cubed)&btnG=Search/

Re:It's as if... [OT]

[tsalaroth]

If I may add to this, if you look at the things that shake another's "faith in their fellow man", you'll find that most of them can fit under the 10 Commandments. That is, if you do things that could make people like other people less, you're probably sinning.. If you're loving and caring about others (even those that have harmed you), it's probably not sinning.

Re:NASA is doomed

[phayes]

I'm a hard science fiction fan (Niven, Bear, Benford, etc) & I found the trilogy to be disappointing...

the case for (terraforming) Mars

[N3wsByt3]

I read a lot of critics about the terraformation of Mars like this one: "The conditions that caused the loss of the original atmosphere are still present"

That is far from certain. It seems many people are going with the assumption that the theory that the gravity-field of mars is too puny to hold the watermolecules (and thus the atmosphere dissapeating into space in a copple of thousand years), is a fact. However, this is only one of many theories existing to explain the lack of an (considerable) atmosphere on Mars. Another variant of that theory to explain it is that the atmosphere got largely blown away by meteor-impacts in the first half-billion years of the existence of our solarsystem (there was a period of a large amount of meteor(hits) then, as proven by craters on the moon and other planets).

Now, if that's true, and seen the fact that fase is long since over, then, if we were able to revive a useful atmosphere, it could well be that it could sustain itself, or at least last for millions of years. No more mass amounts of impacts that blow the atmosphere away, after all. (BTW, all atmospheres lose molecules to space, but it gets more then enough back from tiny (and bigger) particles falling down to earth; this may be true for Mars as well, EVEN if the atmosphere dissapeates faster).

I'm not saying this IS true, but it's one of the many theories out there that try to explain the current state of Mars. Untill we know the actual truth about the matter, it's far too soon to claim terraforming isn't possible on Mars. Depending on the cause for Mars' thin atmosphere, and the level of replenishment, it might well be a viable option.

Re:the case for (terraforming) Mars

[Peyre]

Another explanation I've heard recently for the thinness of the Martian atmosphere involves its lack of a magnetic field. Our spinning iron core generates our magnetic field, but Mars is much smaller than Earth and its core solidified long ago, leaving the planet without a magnetic field. Now that field shelters us and our atmosphere from a good deal of radiation, and the solar wind, so it's thought that without one to protect it, much of the planet's atmosphere would be stripped away, leaving it very thin, as it is now. Either way, the lack of a magnetic field will be a concern to any aspiring terraformers: colonies will be exposed to elevated levels of radiation.

Re:the case for (terraforming) Mars

[Anonymous Coward]

However, this is only one of many theories existing to explain the lack of an (considerable) atmosphere on Mars.

Okay, but in this case you can *do the math*. Our theory of gravity would have to be wrong too. Face it, without artificial confinement, mars is too small to retain a comfortably breathable gaseous atmosphere* (funny enough, earth's atmosphere is thinner that it should be due to the moon - earth should be a somewhat colder venus).

* Unless, you're, like, a super-sherpa or something.

We need big freakin' mirrors.

[Ihlosi]

You would need to be exploding the equivalent of 6 of these devices on the planet EVERY SECOND to generate enough energy.

Put some big freakin' mirrors in space to direct more sunlight to Mars.

Re:We need big freakin' mirrors.

[elrous0]

Would the mirrors have lasers attached? Because, if they do, I'm all for it!

Re:We need big freakin' mirrors.

[Heian-794]

We need a soletta.

Aqua / Aria

[alexgieg]

Interestingly enough, I was reading yesterday about a two-series Japanese manga called Aqua (the 1st series) and Aria (the 2nd one), about a 24th century Mars whose terraformation gone bad and ended up 90% covered in water, being afterwards renamed Aqua. It's not a sci-fi manga, mind you. The premise is that Mars, being filled with so much water, didn't become a good place for exploration. It's a technologically backwards planet when compared to Earth, but at the same time a slow pace place that attracts people interested in a simpler life-style.

I wonder how prescient the author was. Judging from this news, a lot, even if we don't come to actually terraform the place.

Re:Aqua / Aria

[alexgieg]

After writing and posting the above I noticed another slashdotter also posted about Aqua / Aria. Well, so far, so good. :)

Olympus Mons

[Conanymous Award]

I doubt the water from the melted ice would cover Olympus Mons.

Socially Engineering for dummies. . .

[Fantastic Lad]

Mars has water, eh?

Are we all bored to DEATH yet? By the time all of this slow build up is considered humdrum even by those who live hard-wired into their TV's, when the PTB are finally forced to announce the age-old reality of alien life, people won't blink out of existence from the shock of it all.

Social engineering can be so terribly dull to watch unfold.

-FL

Re:Socially Engineering for dummies. . .

[geekoid]

hehe, good one.

pssst..If there was evidence of life'out there' NASA would be hooting and hollering. money would flow to them in giant rivers.

Now we just need a HUGE heater

[elrous0]

Anyone know a heater that will work at -207 degrees Fahrenheit?

Re:Now we just need a HUGE heater

[Guysmiley777]

Anyone know a heater that will work at -207 degrees Fahrenheit?

Yes: Radioisotope thermoelectric generator.

Will it heat the surface of a planet? Sure, if you make them large enough and use enough of them. Not sure what you do about the radioactive material when you're done. Make them into children's toys maybe?

No one sees this comming!?!

[sudden.zero]

This is the first steps to mutation. Some large company will start melting the ice, bottling the water and bringing it back to Earth to sell as drinking water for the super rich. Little do they know that there is a micro-bacteria long forgotten in the ice which is what origionally caused the mutation from apes to man a long time ago when martians first landed on earth. This will start the mutation from humans to super humans.

Re:It's as if...

[Azralon]

For example, if we find life on Mars would that prove that God exists? Does anything? Iguess we are back to square one then.

Well, if God showed up for a worldwide press conference and clearly demonstrated various supernatural/superhuman abilities then that would lend some credence to His/Her/Its/Their existence. But A) scientific methodology by definition can never prove anything, only disprove things and B) certain suspiciously self-fulfilling definitions of God say that proof denies faith, and faith is what God's founded on. So the interaction of points A and B nicely makes the whole thing even more unresolvable.... which is why it's led to atrocities such as war and "casual" religious discussions. In a related story, I'm omnipotent only when I don't use my powers.

Re:It's as if...

[N3wsByt3]

"(e.g. 'Witches' is best interpreted as potion-makers in the Old Testament, homosexuality is usually referred to in regard to rampant sex without regard, which was particularly dangerous in the age before real medicine,[....]"

So, basically, you interpret the bible like you see fit.

That's all fine and good, but if it's up to any individual to interpret it the way it fits him/her, then people who believe 'witches refer to more then potionmakers' and 'homosexuality is about same-sex sexual behaviour' have as much validity then your interpretation of the matter.

Important Ingrediants for Terraforming

[jkyrlach]

IMHO, the problem of terraforming lies not so much with current supplies (although it makes it much easier if these are not scarce) but with the planetary supplies of the materials for water, namely hydrogen and oxygen. Remember, water accumulation is accomplished through various geological and biological processes. One way water is formed/accumulated is through the formation of new plant and animal organisms. Introduce a population capable of thriving without off-world supplies, and the process of water accumulation will begin. This route is a little on the slow side, but it is much more economical than attempting to transport water in from off-world.

similar to pilots in WWI and present

[1800maxim]

Going into space is not a big deal to people anymore, after dozens of trips. Sure, the first person or two to take a spacewalk were heroes, they accomplished quite a feat. But after it has been done for xx number of times, do you really expect the public to react with "ahh" and "oooooh" like they did at first?

One name in military aviation I learned from WWI was Red Baron. Why? He was quite the dogfighter. Name one from the present Iraq war or from the 90's Gulf war. Red Baron was one of the first, original, inspiring. Doesn't mean that there aren't kids now who are excited about being a pilot (or a military pilot), but it's not a big deal, anymore.

global warming

[Anonymous Coward]

Let just send our worst polluters over there and they will globally warm it, what do you mean it isnt working....

First Against the Wall

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not so sure your plans will work out the way you think they will work out.

I dunno, maybe I'm wrong though; I've never heard of a Utopia scheme with a downside.

Re:First Against the Wall

[bheekling]

Its called dystopia -- an intended Utopia that falls on its face :)

Total Dan Quaile Flashback

[goombah99]

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.
-- Vice President Dan Quayle, 8/11/89

this is from the dan quail humorous quotation site.

Err ... no.

[Ihlosi]

The reason Mars has so little atmosphere now is because it's been stripped away by solar wind. Earth would have met the same fate if it were not for it's magnetic field.

... and the fact that Earth has three times Mars' gravity has nothing to do with it ?

Venus doesn't have a significant magnetic field, is closer to the sun than Earth, and seems to be able to hang on to a high-pressure atmosphere just fine.

Re:Err ... no.

[ultranova]

Venus doesn't have a significant magnetic field, is closer to the sun than Earth, and seems to be able to hang on to a high-pressure atmosphere just fine.

Well, if you were laying on the goddess of love, would you get off just because of solar wind ?-)

Seriously, thought, it is entirely possible that Venus is capable of keeping atmosphere through sheer gravity even if buffeted by solar wind, but Mars, being smaller, can't but could if the wind was blocked by a magnetic field. It is also possible that Mars lost it atmosphere in a large asteroid impact or other such freak accident and never got around to replacing it due to lack of volcanic activity, and could keep an atmosphere just fine under normal conditions. This needs to be determined before any terraforming may be attempted.

Re:Err ... no.

[mhall119]

... and the fact that Earth has three times Mars' gravity has nothing to do with it ?

Venus doesn't have a significant magnetic field, is closer to the sun than Earth, and seems to be able to hang on to a high-pressure atmosphere just fine.

Venus has a significantly stronger magnetic field than Mars, which has virutually none. Mars's lower gravity does raise the atmospheric ceiling to about 11 km, higher than Earth's 6 km. However, Earth's magnetosphere extends protection out about 70,000km in the direction of the sun. If Mars has a magnetosphere as strong as earth's, it could easily maintain an atmosphere even at 1/3 gravity.

Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus#Magnetic_field_ and_core
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars#Atmosphere
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetosphere#Earth.2 7s_magnetosphere
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Magnetosphere_s chematic.jpg

Re:Err ... no.

[Ihlosi]

Venus has a significantly stronger magnetic field than Mars, which has virutually none.

From the Wikipedia article you cited:

Venus' magnetosphere is too weak to protect the atmosphere from cosmic radiation.

Re:Err ... no.

[mhall119]

Too weak to act as a radiation barrier yes, cosmic radiation can penetrate Venus's magnetosphere, but it is strong enough to contain the atmosphere.

Re:Err ... no.

[mhall119]

To clarify my last post a bit:

Venus likely had a very strong magnetosphere similar to Earth's early in it's lifetime, but it's core has since solidified or undergone other changes that caused it to lose that magnetosphere.

Venus's current magnetic field doesn't come from the core, like Earth's does, it comes from the interaction of the solar wind with Venus's ionosphere. This produces a much smaller and weaker magnetic field, but still produces a barrier at an average of 300km above Venus's surface. Venus is currently losing it's upper atmosphere to the solar winds, but this magnetic field is offering some protection, and it probably had much more protection in the past.

Mars's magnetic field is weaker than that of Venus, producing a barrier below the 300km altitude, exposing more of it's atmosphere to the solar winds.

Once again, links:
http://www-spc.igpp.ucla.edu/personnel/russell/pap ers/venus_mag/
http://www-spc.igpp.ucla.edu/personnel/russell/pap ers/mars_mag/
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast31jan_1 .htm

Re:It's as if...

[dwm]

...and I don't see a damn thing about using the word fuck, shit, or ass in anything that I've read.

Hmmm... ever read Ephesians 5:3,4?

"But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God's holy people.

Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving." [Eph 5:3,4 NIV]

Re:We're the ocean planet -

[Anonymous Coward]

Facts about Man:

Man believes that there is a "God" that created the Earth for him.

71% of the Earth is covered in water.

Man has no gills.
</quote>

So guess that means that God must be a dolphin,
since they're the only intellegent species on our planet, and well suited to oceans ;)

Re:It's as if...

[Overd0g]

First someone needs to define "God" precisely. Then we can approach proving His existence. Next we'll tackle the Easter Bunny.

just wait

[Anonymous Coward]

i wonder how much water they will find in the northen ice cap when they point MARSIS at it?

let the terraforming begin. remember the garden of eden in genesis? Adam means "man of red earth". when adam and eve ate the forbidden fruit of knowledge, they were driven from the garden and could not re-enter because it was guarded by a flaming sword. perhaps mars is the origin of the human species. perhaps we messed something up there too. perhaps we terraformed earth to escape an impending doom on mars. but before we left, we collected all the water we could, stored it in the poles, and froze it so that one day we might return home and rebuild...

Re:just wait

[AdmiralLawman]

Hey man, put down that bong and take a step back.

LOL +4 Funny LOL!!!!111111oneone

[Anonymous Coward]

The parent isn't even remotely funny on its own merits. Is this an obscure reference to something?

Re:LOL +4 Funny LOL!!!!111111oneone

[DavidTC]

It is a reference to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and thus, by definition, is not obscure on slashdot.

Re:LOL +4 Funny LOL!!!!111111oneone

[TheMadcapZ]

Unlike knowing the touch of a women, which is most definitely obscure on slashdot

Re:LOL +4 Funny LOL!!!!111111oneone

[Amouth]

what do you mean.. any geek that has asked for a date using kilingon has felt one side of a woman's hand .. and on the face non the less

Re:It's as if...

[Anonymous Coward]

I really don't want to get involved in this, but the GP poster was referring to 'translation' (i.e. from one language to another) and not 'interpretation'.

Terraforming models

[ndverdo]

would be interesting what some of the better terraforming models would say with the water in lieu of vast amounts of dry CO2 factored in.

have you noticed ...

[Anonymous Coward]

How space.com doesn't say anywhere that the probe is ESA's?

And how it only provides American commentators, though there are a wealth of European ones announcing the finding?

Looks to me like the US are a bit put out!

No Problem...

[nbritton]

"Would that not require more planetary mass? In order to retain more atmosphere.

No problem... All we need to do is gently push the planet Mercury into a low velocity collision path with Mars... This should give the resulting planet, Marcury, a bigger iron core, more O2, and heat to melt the ice. Then we can collide Mar's two moons (Phobos and Deimos) and the ejected pieces of the Marcury merger into one moon for greater tidal effects.

Problem solved, next.

Quayle '08!

[toddhisattva]

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.

                    --Dan Quayle

Let's check his facts.

"Essentially the same orbit." True enough, and only Venus is in a more Earth-like orbit. Mars's orbital radius is greater (~1.5AU vs. 1AU), but where Dan really nailed it was in the orbital inclination, which is only 1.85 degrees from Earth's.

"We have seen pictures where there are canals...." It's a surpise to me, but the English language has been retconned to make Schaparelli correct: American Heritage Dictionary has a definition of "canal" that includes, "One of the faint, hazy markings resembling straight lines on early telescopic images of the surface of Mars."

"If there is water there is oxygen." Inarguable.

Dan Quayle really is smarter than his critics.

IMPORTANT FACT

[Anonymous Coward]

I can piss 10 meters. Fuck mars.

almost there...

[Atilla]

now they just need to find that chick with three boobs.

Quick!

[br0d]

Bottle it and sell it to people for 50 times the cost of perfectly good, EPA regulated earthen tap water!
Oh nm Evian and Aquafina already do that much cheaper.


MARS NEEDS WOMEN!

Re:Piker numbers all wet

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I speak for everyone here when I say: "huh?"

A coincidence?

[Anachragnome]

The very first thing that struck me about the article is the image provided.

Is it just me, or is the image incredibly similar to a radar image of Antarctica? Compare it to this composite image:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Antarctica_6400 px_from_Blue_Marble.jpg

Re:It's as if...

[Peyre]

Well, that's good, Nyeerrmm. It's foolish to think that the Bible can or should be taken literally, especially in the thirdhand translations that we English speakers use. As you pointed out re. the ex-girlfriend, those who make the claim typically pick and choose which parts of the Bible they want to take literally, and which they'd rather ignore as "figurative".

obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless it involves devising some mechanism of getting us beer, porn or baby jebus in larger quantities and more efficient rates, my fellow Americans largely don't give a damn. God bless those pagans.

On Mars

[RexRhino]

It would have been way more awesome if they discovered enormous amounts of frozen pizza on Mars.

Glossy 5 by 8's

[Fantastic Lad]

pssst..If there was evidence of life'out there' NASA would be hooting and hollering. money would flow to them in giant rivers.

Sure, that would be true if the brochure version of reality and the, um. . , real version of reality happened to line up, which they do not.

NASA isn't just about space exploration. Nooo. It's also about giving people a false impression. If you spend big money and make big, impressive displays of 'cutting edge' science, then people will believe, as I am guessing you believe, that the science NASA puts on display is the best that we as humans have available, when it certainly is not. Think of NASA as the stage production version of reality designed to give people something impressive to look at, all to provide another pillar to help prop up an illusion. And it's not so hard to do; you just hire on a bunch of engineers who genuinely believe in the false limits, (there tons of wool-pulled sci-tech guys out there blithely believing in the state-installed reality), and let them play in a big sandbox with rocket ships and stuff. The guys at the top who know what's really going on only have to lift a finger now and again when too many bright ideas start happening in the same place.

Getting people to sign non-disclosure agreements, (the violation of which incurs something painful and terrifying), takes care of the rest. It's a well-oiled machine.

But the glossy pictures are just so nice!

-FL

Re:Glossy 5 by 8's

[Teancum]

I happen to know both scientists, engineers, and even astronauts who work for (or have worked for) NASA on a very personal and social level. I can tell you that these are some of the smartest and most dedicated individuals who you could possibly imagine and genuinely want to do some very legitimate science. It is precisely because of these engineers and scientists that NASA gets anything done at all.

On the agency level, however, NASA is not really about organizing scientific effort, but it is a massive jobs program for employing scientists in nearly every state of the country. There is some sort of NASA presence in nearly every one of the 335 different congressional districts, and that isn't accidental. Some of the previous NASA administrators realized that in order to survive politically in the current system of government within America, they needed to make sure that the pork was spread as far and wide as possible. This is obviously a very inefficient way of trying to perform scientific research, but it does make sure that no congressman is going to cut the funding to any specific NASA project once it has been established in the first place. To cut that funding, you risk pissing off some congressman who is going to come back swinging and try to cut the funding in another district of the person who suggested the budget cut in the first place.

Or if you look at the current shuttle program, there is a standing army of nearly 100,000 very highly skilled technicians (we are not talking immigrant minimum wage labor here) in order to service even a single shuttle flight. And with the work flow and manufacturing processes that involve the shuttle, they can't really perform any more than one flight at a time.

Could all this improve? Absolutely. But to disparage the individual employees in what is mainly a mess on the national management level is not placing the blame for where the actual problems lie. Some incredible science does get done, but it is more often than not filed away and stored in some warehouse in Virginia (close to D.C.) never to be seen again, or only referenced on subsequent NASA research that is also not seen except by a very handful of researchers. This is especially true for those who do research on or about Mars, and especially those who do research about manned expeditions to Mars. Research about this topic has been going on for decades, but hardly anybody really knows what has been done except for those researchers who have been directly involved.

Indeed!

[woolio]

The parent makes one of the most insightful comments I have ever seen on slashdot.

Even "camping" on mars would be difficult. What would one eat? What if a supply ship doesn't make it or can't launch?

Hundreds of year ago, the people who settled uninhabited areas lived pretty tough lives... They had relatively short dependency chains compared to our lifestyle. But they had the ability to move to resource-rich areas... In some sense, the (animals) food and water were already naturally present before they arrived. They could chop trees for fuel, housing, and transportation. They could make clothing, tools, etc from the animals they hunted... It also took a quite a while (decades/centuries?) for things to get really established. And lots of colonists died from disease, famine, etc.

Now take Mars... Little/no flowing water! No animals! No trees! Could we grow anything there if we wanted to?

Mars does have a lot of rocks and dirt... I'm just not sure a colony can thrive just on these. I don't think we would be willing to send so many people to their deaths either.

Assume that we have plants here that would grow on Mars... How would they get water? (e.g. How would the ice be transported?) Gas-powered machines? HA!

The southwestern US was colonized a long time ago.. But at least that region has rain, animals, and plants.

Re:Indeed!

[Rei]

Oh, plants have much bigger dependency requirements than just water. Let's just ignore the requirements for building and maintaining greenhouses (which would be essential on a Mars colony). Plants need nutrients. Lets just look at, say, nitrates. You're not going to find nitrates just sitting around on Mars (yes, you can compost plants to get some back, although let's not go into the details on *that* -- you won't get everything back that you put in, and hydroponic farming is much more realistic (for reasons I'm not going to get into here) than soil based, which means extraction of minerals from your compost). Let's say that the nitrates that you're making come from nitric acid.

The process for synthesizing nitric acid we'll look at uses the feedstock of ammonia from the Haber process, which in turn requires the Martian atmosphere to be greatly purified and concentrated to extract the tiny amounts of nitrogen available. When I say tiny, I mean *tiny*. If I recall correctly, it's a fraction of a percent of the atmosphere on a planet whose atmosphere is a fraction of a percent of Earth's. I'll skip over the Haber process here and focus making the nitric acid. This process, the Ostwald process, is the mainstay of industrial nitric acid production on earth. Ammonia is oxidized with O2 in the presence of a 90% platinum/10% rhodium catalyst to form NO + H2O. In an absorption tower, a countercurrent of steam mixes with NO and O2, which further oxidizes into NO2 and is absorped to produce HNO3 and more NO. The NO is recirculated along with any other waste gasses, while the weak acid is sent on to condensation and distillation. That is, in condensation, a weaker solution precipitates first, and is fed back into the system. In distillation, the aqueous solution is heated and the gasses are further enriched over what remains in solution (these are then re-condensed).

The initial product, red fuming nitric acid, can be converted to white fuming nitric acid by reducing the pressure. The byproduct nitrogen oxides can be fed back into the Ostwald process. Note that in all stages, risk factors must be taken into account. The resultant nitric oxide is a serious corrosion, fire, and even explosion risk. Pressure releases are essential, and the acid should not come into contact with rubber, cork, and many metals.

Notice the new dependencies introduced: "ammonia", O2, electricity, and heat are consumed constantly. Ammonia and electricity/heat have significant dependency chains (O2's is pretty short). For maintenence of this production equipment, you need steel or "other bulk building material", "NOx/nitric acid-compatable linings/materials", "fans" and "pumps" of many kinds (for both liquids and solids), platinum, rhodium, "wiring" (wires, insulation, conduits, etc), "transformers" and other electricity control, "electronics" for process control, "heat exchangers" (very important, given how thin Mars' atmosphere is), "valves" of several kinds, refrigeration equipment, etc, and many casting/machining facilities capable of making the tens of thousands of "parts" (for an idea of how much can go into making a "part", watch the Discovery Channel show, "How It's Made"). Note that the entries in quotes will likely be made of many components and several (or many) raw materials, and their production may involve things that they themselves don't contain, so each of them has a dep tree to follow back. Actually, each of the raw ingredients also has a dep tree to follow back; steel, for example, doesn't just grow on trees.

Of course, even that analogy falls flat on Mars, because even trees can't grow there without modern tech, so something "growing on trees" wouldn't be as big of a help. :)

that's your argument?

[Anonymous Coward]

that horseshit cherrypicking of definitions is your idea of a rebuttal?

autocatalysis

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

Warm the planet, evaporate stored CO2. Positive feedback.

Warm the planet, evaporate water. H2O is a greenhouse gas. Positive feedback.

Warm the planet, form low clouds. Nights are warmer. Positive feedback.

Warm the planet, form high clouds. They reflect sunlight. Negative feedback.

If the global circulation models for Mars are right, small forcings should give us relatively large results.

Mars Colony

[thetinguy]

That's it. There WILL be a colony on Mars within the next 75 years.

Re:NASA is doomed

[gobbo]

I read all three years ago, and read them again recently. I remember it seeming like a bit of a slog for a while in the second book, but it does get a lot more interesting. When I re-read it the soap opera parts seemed more important because they gave foundation to the characters' motivations and actions. I'd certainly recommend sticking it out, there's a lot of really good stuff in there.

Robinson's playing off of a key theme in the books: longevity. The main characters are tight with each other for over 150 years, many decades spent in isolation and underground. They're suffering memory and ennui problems, they're legends to everyone else but all-too human to each other, the same immature relationships. I think that reading Proust might give extra insight into what's going on in the overall character development.

Then there's the terraforming planet as a character. I guess that >20% of the story is about the topography, areology, aremorphology, climatology, ecology, engineering, and travel. If it interests you as quality hard SF, it's great storytelling. If not, it's a slog.

The politics are pretty heady, too. There are some challenging ideas in there, and if they clash with one's own ideologies, it makes it more of a slog.

I'm rereading the Mars trilogy now, and just came to the part where they reach the northern polar ice cap, and are completely overwhelmed by its massive size. Robinson did some excellent research for these books, says my geomorphologist brother.

Re:NASA is doomed

[onemorechip]

How far into the second book are you? I'm about 70% through that book. It is a tough read, but the conference where different political options are discussed (section I'm reading now) is interesting. I have to admit, this has been an on-again, off-again read for me; I'll pick it up and read a few dozen pages, then let it lie for weeks before picking it up again. It would be easier without all the detailed descriptions of rock formations and plant life, but I have to admire how KSR for his understanding in these areas.

The path to self-sufficiency

[GPS Pilot]

Yes, the path to self-sufficiency would be a long one. Mars Colony 1.0 will be able to make its own H2, O2, H2O, CH4, and crude cement, and that's about it.

After another 10 years maybe they'd be able to make parts and structural members out of cast iron and glass. (The energy to do this, of course, still coming from fission reactors shipped from good ol' Earth.)

As for things at the end of the dependency chains (sophisitcated medicines and microprocessors), these would continue to be imported luxuries for a good 100 years. Fortunately, they don't weigh much. The bulk commodities are easier to produce in-situ.

We have a pretty good historical record of how dependency chains developed here on Earth. With this hindsight, the Mars colonists will have the opportunity to "do it better" -- avoiding the mistakes and dead ends (I'll bet that thalidomide will never be manufactured on Mars), and putting more resources into accelerating certain branches of the chain now known to be strategically important.

Just because it will take them a few generations to reach self-sufficiency, does that mean we shouldn't begin the process now? No. If we don't get a move on, there will never be a self-sufficient colony. Inaction is a greater obstacle than dependency chains.

it costs tens of thousands of dollars per kilogram to land payload there

A space elevator sure would be an enabling breakthrough here.

Re:The path to self-sufficiency

[Rei]

Yes, the path to self-sufficiency would be a long one. Mars Colony 1.0 will be able to make its own H2, O2, H2O, CH4, and crude cement, and that's about it.

After another 10 years maybe they'd be able to make parts and structural members out of cast iron and glass. (The energy to do this, of course, still coming from fission reactors shipped from good ol' Earth.)

A steel mill on Mars would cost as much to ship there as an entire manned Mars mission would cost. And you'd still have to ship in all of the dependencies for steel.

What dependencies, I hear you not asking?

The process used for steel production would be based on the Linz-Donawitz (BOS) process, which is itself a modification of the Bessemer process. Preheated iron ore left over from our sulfuric acid process (which I haven't described yet) is burned with methane and small amounts of oxygen to produce high carbon pig iron, which pools at the bottom of the blast furnace (the "ladle"). No pretreatment is necessary, since we will be dealing with low sulfur iron ore, thus sparing us from the necessity of magnesium production at this point. A watercooled lance (which will require an extensive cooling setup -- probably water-evaporative) injects oxygen into the ladel to raise the temperature as it burns away the carbon. Fluxes are then added: burnt lime or dolomite to remove silicon and phosphorus and fluorspar to improve the reaction rate and make a more workable slag are important. Optimally, the chemistry of the steel is analyzed at this point, and any adjustments to its
composition are made. The ladle is dumped into another vessel, where any alloying agents are added in. While on Earth argon or nitrogen are often bubbled through to help ensure a good mix, on Mars this would likely be cost-impractical.

The entire process would require an extensive heat radiating / exchanging setup, due to the insulative nature of Mars. The blast furnace not only requires the reaction chamber and drains, but basic casting forms, waste CO/CO2 discharge (or optional recapture - would need to be scrubbed to remove sulfuric and other waste gasses, which may prove to be not worth the effort), and slag skimming. Slag can optionally be spun for insulation ("rock wool") production. A casting house should be adjacent, and (obviously) heavy equipment will be needed to move ores and products to and from the facility.

Consumed: "sulfur-stripped iron ore", "methane", oxygen, 'lime or dolomite' (better find deposits near your iron!), optimally 'fluorspar', optimally "alloying agents". Entries in double quotes have long dependency chains of their own; entries in single quotes may or may not, depending on the deposit (most likely will). At the very least, mines have huge fixed infrastructure requirements.
EQ Maintenance: Heh, let's not even bother at this point ;)

Dependency chains, dependency chains, dependency chains. Want me to cover that sulfur stripped iron ore? Or the methane (which you have to make through Fischer Tropsh/Sabatier synthesis -- yes, you'll need an oil industry on a planet with no oil!)?. Launch costs of tens of thousands per kilogram effectively kill the prospect of a even remotely self sustaining colony. You simply will not see a steel mill on Mars in your lifetime. Your children will not either. And hey, that was just steel! Speaking of prices:

A space elevator sure would be an enabling breakthrough here.

Yeah, wake me up when we have a >100 GPa mass-produced ribbon. Or even non-mass produced. Or even >100 GPa nanotube bundles. Or even *>100 GPa individual SWNTs*.

Economically, space elevators tend to only make sense when the ribbon strength is >100GPa. ~120GPa is much better. The strongest SWNT ribbons we have are about 10 GPa. Our overall fiber is inherently made of CNT ropes (individual tubes naturally bundle into them). The strongest ropes of SWNTs are under 20 GPa. The ropes obviously can't ever be stronger than their individual tubes. The strongest measured SWNT tubes are ~60 GPa.

In short: don't hold your breath on that either. You'd have better odds waiting on cold fusion. Seriously.

Other Facts about Man

[Seige A]

Man might not have gills, but if you look at the population of earth, roughly 6.6 billion, man needs all that water to live.

Water water everywhere...

[Anonymous Coward]

And WE WANT IT! Now - how to we get it?

Re:NASA is doomed

[nacturation]

I'm a good way into part 6 (Tariqat) -- page 333 of the 624 page paperback. I really enjoy hard sci-fi, but this seems like it's such an effort to get through. There's just so much minutiae of daily life that the really interesting concepts are few and far between.

Re:NASA is doomed

[nacturation]

I read all three years ago, and read them again recently. I remember it seeming like a bit of a slog for a while in the second book, but it does get a lot more interesting. When I re-read it the soap opera parts seemed more important because they gave foundation to the characters' motivations and actions. I'd certainly recommend sticking it out, there's a lot of really good stuff in there. I'll keep picking it up now and again (which makes for a bit of continuity loss) inbetween reading other books. So much sci-fi, so little time... and since I've heard so much about this trilogy, it's a bit of a letdown that the pacing isn't more consistent. There's also Darwin's Radio which I picked up at the bookstore and is waiting to be read, so it remains to be seen how that one turns out too.

Re:NASA is doomed

[nacturation]

So far that's been my experience as well. I found this collection (no referral) to be very interesting as it exposed me to more authors that I'm not familiar with and the stories are quite enjoyable and very much within the hard sci-fi category.

Thanks!

[Fantastic Lad]

Great info!

-FL

Re:NASA is doomed

[onemorechip]

I'm about 40 pages past you. I agree that this is a book that could have benefited a lot from some careful editing. There's a lot of good ideas and good material, and the quality of writing is high, but there's just so much of it. In fact, I don't read nearly as much sci-fi as I used to, just because the writers have become obsessed with creating massive epics (often spanning multiple volumes) instead of the relatively quick-paced writing of, say, Asimov, Heinlein, or Niven in the 60s or 70s. Just compare the original Foundation series with the later supplemental volumes, especially the one by Benford, with its long diversion into apes...

hmm... the math of mars

[N3wsByt3]

The math to make the conclusion that an atmosphere would only last a few thousand years is dependend on various parameters who are not well known, or not known at all, yet. For instance, we don't even know how much water and other elements to make an atmosphere are there, on Mars. Obviously, if we don't know the amount of potential atmospheric sources, we can't say much about the time it would take.

Furthermore, is gravity the only aspect of a dissapating atmosphere? Has the math really been done with various degrees and levels of different gasses (it doesn't have to be exactly the same as on earth, after all)? Can you find a link for the math that proves that Mars can't have a sustainable atmosphere?

And as I said, even Earth loses atmosphere, but that is more than compensated for by the influx of dust/ice/etc. particles and micro- (and macro) meteorites. Has ANYONE a clear idea how much influx of material there is on Mars? (I don't think any real math has been done including that variable).

So, as I said, it's a bit early to tell anything, yet. I would be interested in any links you can give to whatever math has been done on the subject, however.

Re:Earth First!.... Utah?

[Anonymous Coward]

There really is a place like Utah? I thought SCO lived in Never-neverland.....

still has more than earth?

[cheekyboy]

Mars' atmosphere is 95% CO2 and 3% N2 and 2% Ar.

Air Pressure on Mars, is less than 1/100 of the air pressure on earth.

So its still 0.95% if it was on earth. Earths c02 is 365ppm which is 0.0365% of earths air.

So mars has more c02 than earth, and it still isnt getting hotter.

What creates heat , is keeping thermal radiation inside the planet, for that you need clouds, which
are made of water, and to make that you need a good dose of cosmic rays to help.

Mars Wobbles Like Earth?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Ice Age cycle on Earth depends on Earth's wobble or the Milankovitch Cycles. Could you explain how Mars wobbles? Do you know what stage of its cycle it is in?

Because it seems to me that information would be fairly important before suggesting that Mars is warming because of a change in solar output, and not because of the 50/50 chance it's in the warming part of its cycle.

RealClimate may be tired of the thousands of bogus claims against Global Warming they must consider each year. Many of which could be easily debunked if the Global Warming skeptics would simply dig deeper.

By the way, Earth's current wobble does not account for its current warming. I don't want to raise hopes without proper evidence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles

Iron and methane

[GPS Pilot]

Yes, I'm aware that the steel industry has big dependency chains. That's why you will not find the word "steel" in my original post. I said "cast iron." You know, the stuff humans were working with during the Iron Age, thousands of years ago. Adjusting the chemistry of the product is a level of sophistication that would come a few generations later.

Here is a PDF describing methane production processes that aren't dependent on an oil industry.