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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.
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Ahhh! the true martian canals!
Having a moon base, on the other hand, would not be a major waste of funds.
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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.
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