Slashdot Mirror
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."
Just wait 'til we bring global warming there. We'll finally have an ocean planet in our solar system!
What you reap is what you sow
I wonder what the beaches would be like... and i would hate that red sand in your car!
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
Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, Never drive a car when you're dead
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?
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
And then what? Upload to Youtube and get sued by Viacom?
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.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Now, they've found a massive amount and the F article states:
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?
Liberty.
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.
Um, isn't this about two weeks too early?
Have you read my journal today?
They've been looking for signs of liquid water, primarily in the distant past.
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?
How we know is more important than what we know.
So how many Hummers are we talking about here?
Ever so slowly...?
Thank god.
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!
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.
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
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
10m = ~32.8ft
From the article:
36ft = ~10.9m, closer to 11m.
Isn't there a lot of water in Uranus
:D
Sorry
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.
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.
At long last; now no one's eyeballs will pop out when we visit.
Arnie and the hot-chick
She was much more sleazy than demure.
Learn to love Alaska
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.
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.
Martians don't measure water with the metric system, you insensitive clod!
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Faith is a willingness to accept something w/o complete proof and to act on it. Reason allows you to correct that faith.
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.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
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.
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...
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.
Common stable molecule discovered to be abundant. News at 11.
POKE 36879,8
So THAT's what that giant white cap on the Martian north pole is!!! Doh!!
There go all my "Martian Cocaine" investments!!
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.
...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".
Unless they meant US Survey feet, which would be 10972.821945643891287782575565151 mm (approx).
This sig is false.
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...
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.
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!
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
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.
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.
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?
--
make install -not war
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.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Things sound more and more cosy. So a new .mars top level domain is long overdue.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Bah
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.
Damn those pesky terrorists
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!
We need to urgently plan our first colony to Mars... how shall we do it..
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
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.
----
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.
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.
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.
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.
I hate printers.
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
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".
After all, they are where we came from. Too bad we'll all be wiped out in an outbreak spred by unclean telephone sets.
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.
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.
Robin Leach can bellow out the commercial.
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.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Allen_belts
1 .htm
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_
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
I could've, until she got fired last week..
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.
"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.
Why are so many posts with factual errors modded up?
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.
A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have.
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.
Something bad is coming when people are suddenly anxious to tell the truth.
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.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
I'm a hard science fiction fan (Niven, Bear, Benford, etc) & I found the trilogy to be disappointing...
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
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.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
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.
Fuck you Mod, if this is off topic then why is the first post modded funny?
Bunch of assholes!!!
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.
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
Mark Twain
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.
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.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
I doubt the water from the melted ice would cover Olympus Mons.
Ah, that's an easy one. Just make a suitable black hole, and transport it to the centre of the planet.
Primitive earthlings !
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
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
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
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
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.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
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.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
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"
the more accurate the calculations became, the more the concepts tended to vanish into thin air. R. S. Mulliken
Anyone know a heater that will work at -207 degrees Fahrenheit?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
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.
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.
Clones are people two.
"(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.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
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.
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.
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.)
"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
-- Vice President Dan Quayle, 8/11/89
this is from the dan quail humorous quotation site.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
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.
...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]
First someone needs to define "God" precisely. Then we can approach proving His existence. Next we'll tackle the Easter Bunny.
Hey man, put down that bong and take a step back.
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.
It is a reference to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and thus, by definition, is not obscure on slashdot.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
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.
"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.
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.
now they just need to find that chick with three boobs.
--- sig moved for great justice.
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!
Its called dystopia -- an intended Utopia that falls on its face :)
"..."
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.
---------
No matter how thin you slice it, its still baloney.
The very first thing that struck me about the article is the image provided.
0 px_from_Blue_Marble.jpg
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_640
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.
Assuming ethanol comes from murdered children and the hydrogen from magic, hydrogen saves 132% more lives than ethanol.
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".
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 ;-).
Unlike knowing the touch of a women, which is most definitely obscure on slashdot
It would have been way more awesome if they discovered enormous amounts of frozen pizza on Mars.
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
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.
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
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
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.
That's it. There WILL be a colony on Mars within the next 75 years.
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.
Damn those pesky terrorists
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.
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
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.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
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.
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.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
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.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
-FL
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...
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
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...).
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.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
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.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
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.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.