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Probable Water Ice Sighted On Mars
CraftyJack writes "Bright white chunks in the trenches dug by the Phoenix Lander have disappeared, leading Peter Smith & co. to believe that the chunks were ice that has since sublimated."
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In such a carbon dioxide rich atmosphere, how do we know it is water ice and not frozen CO2? What do we know of the Martian surface and subsurface temperatures?
Yes, we've even mapped the ice at the poles. But this is still important for a couple of reasons.
First, it's confirmation that the white stuff at the poles really is ice (and not some unknown martian substance that just looks like ice).
Second it means that the lander is digging in the right places to find all of the interesting stuff that goes along with water. It's tremendously interesting to discover whether there's carbon-based fragments in the water (suggesting life did or could exist) and to figure out what else is in the water.
No, you fail it. Heinlein figured out how to move things from luna to terra cheaply a long time ago, if Platinum was just lying about on the moon, we would catapult it to earth with little cost. Moving oil on the other hand might be a more dangerous endeavor.
---- Liquid was a patriot ----
Why is seeding a dead planet with life considered unethical? Since when? You say that we decided as a species that doing so was against our moral conduct but I've gotta ask.. when did that debate take place? By who? The supreme court of the world?
Maybe you have a problem with it but the Chinese and Indians wont. So much for your supreme court ruling.
If everytime we talk about Mars or Titan we must make jokes about oil and America we might as well pick the one jokes which were proven to be funny.
"If that was oil the US would plan a manned mission for next year. They'd send the marines claiming that the Martians were hiding weapons of mass destruction."
"Well clearly we now need to spread Freedom and Democracy to the poor oppressed [Martians], who will welcome us with roses and be able to finance their own reconstruction."
"By an amazing coincidence, [Mars] doesn't actually have democracy over there... Yet."
You're welcome.
You just got troll'd!
"First, it's confirmation that the white stuff at the poles really is ice (and not some unknown martian substance that just looks like ice)."
Or perhaps it is just weird martian substance that still looks like ice, even close up?
_
\\/ are accustomed' - First Lensman
Space exploration has no benefit for society in general. So there is no point in understanding why we have tides? What about how sunspots generate random levels of radiation that plays havoc with the radio broadcasts and communications that we use? What about looking into the area of space around our humble planet to see if there is an asteroid or comet heading right for us? Don't you think that these three points off the top of my head have some sort of benefit for society in general?
As for the swearing, my point is that if it is used as commonly as in your original thread, it really does water down. I got absolutely nothing against colorful language. My point is if you put in too much color, the whole thing becomes a gaudy mess rather than a well accentuated splash here and there.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
You're right, it does sound like you are trolling. But I'll bite.
First off, you are aware that one of the best ways to improve your national engineering cadre (and thus, your economy, standard of living, etc.) is to attempt things that are at the border of your capabilities, or even just a tad beyond, aren't you? Even if the only thing out there was a big brass ring that was way far away, it would pay to push your limits by constantly trying to grab it faster, or cheaper, or whatever.
Second, you realize I hope that NASA's budget is minuscule in the big scheme of things; we spend much more on things like professional sports and junk food that are even less useful. Our entire space program from 1958 to today cost less than our current misadventures in the middle east.
Third, did you ever stop to think about where the vast majority of the available resources are? From energy to precious metals to useful chemical to just plain space the overwhelming majority of the resources we know about are out in space.
Given all that, it hardly seems sensible to deride the space program as useless.
--MarkusQ
Likewise we know there is ice on mars, and one of the very few ways that a solid lump can disappear without trace is for it to sublimate. Other ways are for something with long limbs to have reached over and picked it up or perhaps they were iron rocks attracted by passing magnetic clouds, or perhaps a tiny blackhole opened for just long enough to remove those pebbles. However we've pretty much proved conclusively that there is no long-limbed life on Mars and every other way is vanishingly improbable so Occam's razor tells us that it is likely enough that this is ice that we can, on website designed for popular consumption, dispense with the endless qualifiers.
Manned space flight is afraid of a few deaths? What evidence do you have?
Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee die during a ground test and we still landed on the moon 2 years later.
Dick Scobee, Michael Smith, Judith Resnik, Ellison Onizuka, Ronald McNair, Gregory Jarvis and Christa McAuliff died in the Challenger explosion and we were back riding the same design to orbit 2 years later.
We lost Rick Husband, William McCool, David Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Michael Anderson, Laurel Clark and Ilan Ramon in the Colombia reentry. And again, 2 years later we're back in space on the same vehicle.
Just because you're too much of a wimp to risk your life doing something amazing and unique, don't condemn the rest of us to mediocrity.
Jesus, I thought I signed onto slashdot, but after reading the comments I realize I must have clicked on Fark by mistake.
Yes, that's the scientific way. Don't prove it for yourself, take someone else's word for it.
Whether parent is a troll or not, the question raised deserves some kind of answer.
Getting into space is not the long term goal.
The long term goal is to get back into The Garden. The way to do that is to move all the factories (and most of the engineers) into space. This is all spelled out in the Ecological Manifesto. Which you can find written in the reflection of the clouds on any stillwater lake where you've got solitude surrounded by a few acres of wilderness.