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Orbiter Reveals Rock Fracture Plumbing On Mars
Riding with Robots writes "Mars researchers report that a robotic spacecraft orbiting the Red Planet has revealed hundreds of small fractures exposed on the Martian surface that once directed flows of water through underground Martian sandstone. 'This study provides a picture of not just surface water erosion, but true groundwater effects widely distributed over the planet,' said one of the mission scientists for the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been regularly returning terabytes of high-resolution images and other kinds of data from Mars."
Who cares about alien plumbing?
I want their electronics!
All these Mars missions seem like a major waste of resources.
Waste of resources? How else would we know that Martian rocks have cracks in them
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
I was going to challenge this but it appears MRO transmits data about ten times faster than other probes. Nevertheless, at 6 Megabits/second it would take 370 hours (over two weeks) to send one Terabyte.
Ok.. so a probe is regularly returning terabytes across the solar system, but ISP's are forming lobbying pacs proclaiming they can't offer the speeds they advertised for people on earth.
Something's rotten in the state of denmark.
Yeah because one probe with line of sight to the planet is just as complicated as networking millions of homes across a country that's several thousand miles wide.
Look, I'm annoyed at Comcast too, but let's not create any new PHB dialogue for Dilbert.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Ahhh! the true martian canals!
I'm quite certain if you paid as much for your data as NASA is for theirs, your ISP would be more than happy to run a dedicated OC-3 to your house. They might even toss in a complementary handjob.
Or complimentary, depending upon your happy ending preferences [damn I hate it when I write the wrong one of those two].
Having a moon base, on the other hand, would not be a major waste of funds.
:(){
Going to the moon could have been seen as a waste of resources, but it brought back rocks that has helped us understand our own planets past.
Going over the Atlantic in the 1400s was probably a waste of resources, I mean, people were still clinging over the idea that the Earth was flat at that time, but yet, somehow someone went over in order to find another way to India (sort of suggesting that at least some people thought the Earth was round), but in anycase, what they found was a new continent, but yeah, it was a waste of resources anyway. I mean, people where pretty sure that the ships would fall of the edge of the planet then.
People experimenting with flying in the 1800s and early 1900s where probably wasting resources as well, I mean, what's the point. You could go (almost) anywhere on the planet by ship, horse and foot.
Sending up the first satellites was a waste of resources, I mean, we have no use for meteorological reports or detailed maps or navigation systems. I mean, we where doing fine before this, and who would have known that those applications would be developed using satellites.
In-fact, our early ancestors leaving Africa probably wasted a lot of resources transporting themselves to Europe and Asia, what is the point of going somewhere at all? They should have stayed in Africa and made sure that the problems at home where solved before they decided to leave.
"Civis Europaeus sum!"
I'm sick of the comparison of crossing the Atlantic to space travel. The two are completely different. Columbus was attempting to find a cheaper route to known resources which could not be found locally. He was using ages old technologies which could easily be repaired by the ship's carpenter at any convenient island. His intended cargo would have paid for his journey no matter which way he went. Space travel, on the other hand, is not about cheaper resources. Everything is cheaper on Earth. Space travel uses experimental technologies (granted, it is well tested) that cannot be easily repaired en route. Finally, space travel has, apart from communications, weather, and other Earth monitoring satellites, never been profitable.
Probably the only point at which they might favourably compare is in the percentage of the gross national wealth needed to fund the voyages.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Probably not. Three ships aren't all that expensive, even in the time and place Comumbus wanted them.
Note, however, one crucial difference - while Columbus was trying to sell the voyage as a trip to the Indies, most educated people knew that that was impossible. Contrary to popular rumour, most everyone with any sort of education knew perfectly well that the world was round, and knew about how big it was. Columbus sold his trip by lying about the size of the planet, and either got the Queen of Spain to hock her jewels (apocrypohal, by the by) by fooling her (unlikely in the extreme), or because she knew perfectly well that those Basque fishermen that were sailing from her ports to Newfoundland for codfish before Columbus ever thought of his voyage knew of a place west of Spain a hell of a lot closer than the Indies (you don't prepare codfish for transport on a ship, you've pretty much got to have dry land for that).
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Waste is an important requirement of human progress. Waste is to civilization what compost is to gardening.
Take the 19th century British railroad bubble. Loads of people lost their shirts investing in rail companies, the result was that Britain gained an excellent rail network at little public expense.
Take the Internet bubble of the 90s, where many quixotic ventures started with a hasty powerpoint presentation and a VC desperate to get some kind of stake in the land rush. Vast fortunes where burned on hopeless enterprises, and many a personal fortune made off of anticipated cash flows with far less NPV. Vast amounts of money was wasted, but as a result the infrastructure of the Internet was greatly extended and made the foundation of new, more productive enterprises.
Take the most useless human activity of all: war. War is widely acknowledged as a major driver of technological and scientific progress.
Things would be great if human beings could sit down and set their minds on creating progress, but that's not what people are like. Progress comes from people attempting to adapt to altered circumstances. An expanded view of the universe and a reduced view of man's place in it certainly qualifies as altered circumstances. For some it is a calamity.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
There are plenty of resources in space that may prove profitable to mine. He-3 on the moon is probably the best example at this time, but there are several other bodys out there that can provide resources for humankind.
Sending probes to Mars is inherently useful since it helps us understand the origin of the solar system and to prepare humankind for the problems involved with long duration space travel. It also gives us very important information necessary for future colonisation of Mars (I mean, you really need to see the place before you send in the settlers).
But in order to go back to the resource wasting, yes Columbus did go after trade routes, but, in essence it was a very high risk undertaking. Waste of resources though would also be any fundamental research and sciences conducted ever. Why, well, because a lot of the fundamental research has had ZERO economic gain from them directly, but a lot of fundamental research has in the long term led to an easier life and to profits.
Just because something at the moment only have a direct value in knowledge; it doesn't mean that you should stop doing it as you can never be sure about what the applications will be in a hundred years.
I would say that a better liking to the Mars exploration being carried out now than the crossing of the Atlantic that I mentioned (note, that there were more points there) is for example some of the early scientific investigations of for example temperature. Understanding temperature or other fundamental properties did in the early days not give any return of investment, so what was the point, well now we have refrigerators, airconditioning systems, engines et.c. et.c.
So, the point here is that the accumulation of knowledge will in many cases lead to a better life and wealth maybe a 100 years after the initial research.
In the specific case of Mars, there are a lot of interesting things with the planet, especially since the history of Earth and Mars are so similar. Understanding Mars is understanding our own past.
"Civis Europaeus sum!"
Space travel, on the other hand, is not about cheaper resources. Everything is cheaper on Earth.
Everything is cheaper on Earth, RIGHT NOW.
Everything is more abundant in Space, Full Stop.
When the cost of getting things to orbit gets cheaper, and the technology robust enough to repair en route we will have to re-evaluate the comparison.
And yes I've read Roland Brak's thoughts on Asteroid Mining.
http://ronaldbrak.blogspot.com/2006/02/great-asteroid-mining-con.html
Don't forget there was a time when boats were not so seaworthy, navigation not so advanced and sailors stayed close to the shore. The overland route to Asia was the only sure fire way to get there.
I'm fairly certain most of our Earth based activities are a major waste of resources anyways, so why not?
Sig unrelated.
Read about the Flat Earth Myth. By the early middle ages, and certainly by Columbus's time, it was almost universally accepted that the earth is round.
The reason why nobody wanted to fund Columbus's voyage is that he wildly miscalculated the distance to Asia, thinking that it was far closer than it really was. Everybody else had more or less accurately calculated the westward traveling distance to Asia and knew that current ships couldn't make that far of a journey. Coincidentally, the American continents happened to be roughly where Columbus thought Asia was supposed to be, and now he has a national holiday in his honor.
Plato thought the earth was round because spheres were really really cool perfectness. But by the time of Eratosthenes ~1700 years before Columbus, Greek astronomers had a pretty good idea how big the earth was (within 5-10%, depending on quite how long a stadia was), and they had a reasonably accurate estimate of the distance to the moon as well. An Indian astronomer around 500 AD had the circumference to within 60km. Columbus, on the other hand, thought the Earth was only 25000 km around, not 25000 miles (though in other units; it wasn't really a metric-English confusion, but it was a confusion about which kind of miles were being used :-), so as MatskEE says, he got very lucky that he into the Americas before he ran out of food and water.
On the other hand, he got out of Spain just after the Spanish Inquisition took over, and while maybe nobody expected it before then, lots of people expected it to continue once it had arrived.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I don't know, but my first reaction was that they were trying to say that rocks fractured the Mars Lander's plumbing, and my second reaction was that there should be a bad joke about plumber's cracks on Mars in there somewhere. Maybe you've just got better taste...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Why do we care about ground water in Mars? Don't we have bigger things to do here on Earth? All these Mars missions seem like a major waste of resources. Where is our moon base?
Boy, are you in the wrong thread.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Undoubtedly.
By all means, go for the technological advances it brings. By all means, go for the scientific knowledge. By all means, go for the sheer adventure of it. Just don't compare space travel to some second rate Genoese navigator wanting to take a short cut to China, because there are no practical similarities.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
It could have been done cheaper via automated probes. Debates about this get long and heated, I should note; but I find the "robot" side the stronger argument.
Table-ized A.I.
No, it could not have been done cheeper with automatic probes at that time. The state of art artificial intelligence was not on level of what would be required for good scientific value to be brought back.
You could have built a machine to bring back rocks, yes, but at that time, AI was not even close to be able to find rocks of interest. It is approaching that level today though. So... you basically needed 30-40 years of investments in computer science and AI in order to approach a level of technology that could accomplish the scientific values that was brought back by humans from the moon.
Now, tell me whether paying X people developing man rated modules for the moon or if paying Y people developing AI and computer science and technology was cheeper?
Sending up a geologist (which they did), brought in situ intelligence that could investigate interesting targets of opportunity (which they did).
Today, the situation is maybe a bit different with respect to AI and advanced computer systems, and it is maybe possible to find the interesting rocks autonomously. But, when the moon voyages was taking place, this was not the case.
So, while the arguments may be applicable with respect to the current state of the art and exploration of Mars (I am not saying I agree, but anyhow) (the firm I am currently on is developing an autonomous robotic scientist for future Mars missions), they can hardly be applied to the early manned missions to the moon.
"Civis Europaeus sum!"
Who says anything about AI? In general its hard to tell what the rocks are about until brought to an expensive Earth lab anyhow. Geologists on the moon didn't seem to help much. Plus, a remote camera can take detail at least as good as the human eye can see, and in more colors than visible to the human eye, so that multiple human experts on Earth can examine them for candidate returns.
Table-ized A.I.
OH NO the planet that has continued to serve us in no way has cracks. I actually only clicked on this because I thought it said Mars has crack and I had to do a double-take.
I guess I am in one of those technicality moods, but will reading the initial post I always read the from such-and-such-department. In this post it says for the more-evidence-of-hydrogen-hydroxide-department. Hydrogen Hydroxide, aka H2O, aka water, is a bit redundant and cumbersome wouldn't it be more correct to call it Dihydrogen Monoxide? Ok I'll shutup now.