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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.
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
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.