Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

An Underground Ice Deposit On Mars Is Bigger Than New Mexico (popularmechanics.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the bigger-than-expected dept.

schwit1 quotes a report from Popular Mechanics: A single underground deposit of ice on Mars contains about as much water as there is in Michigan's Lake Superior, according to new research from NASA. The deposit rests in the mid-northern latitudes of the Red Planet, specifically in the Utopia Planitia region. Discovered by the Shallow Subsurface Radar (SHARD) instrument on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), the deposit is "more extensive in area than the state of New Mexico," according to a NASA press release. It ranges in thickness from about 260 feet to about 560 feet, and has a composition that's 50 to 85 percent water ice, with what appears to be dust or larger rocky particles mixed in as well. None of the ice is exposed to the surface. At various points the dirt covering it is in between 3 and 33 feet thick.

63 of 113 comments (clear)

  1. Dispatch from the Red Planet by phantomfive · · Score: 2
    The Council of the Elders met in counsel to discuss the latest developments. All Martians waited to hear the news. Some came to wait outside the headquarters, others listened on the Ber'gor network. The doors opened, and a security detail walked out (with their gelsacs swollen), followed by K'Breel, Speaker for the Council of the Elders, who paused to look over the gathered crowd. Soon he gathered his thoughts and began to speak:

    Reports that our treasure has been discovered by the Earthlings have been far overstated. Our receivers have determined that initial reports were wrong, they merely found our waste pile in the northern wasteland. Our refuse has been covered there, mixed with rock and dirt, buried to keep it away from us. Be assured that the true heart of Martian treasure remains concealed well in the southern reaches.

    And with that, he turned and exited.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    1. Re:Dispatch from the Red Planet by Quinn_Inuit · · Score: 1

      I love that these dispatches are still running. All hail K'Breel!

      --

      Stop learning! Only you can prevent esoterrorism.
  2. There is only one way this ends.. by yakumo.unr · · Score: 1

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    1. Re: There is only one way this ends.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      I for one welcome our triple-tittied stripper overlords.

  3. Re:NASA is the CNN of Space by phantomfive · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I'm tired of all the lies that NASA keeps coming up with,

    Uh......what on earth are you talking about?

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  4. ATTN: Flat Earth Truthers by adjustinthings · · Score: 1

    The main belief of stupid flat earth truthers is that NASA is lying about everything

    1. Re:ATTN: Flat Earth Truthers by Opportunist · · Score: 1, Funny

      Well, they have to, since it would instantly pull the plug on their system if NASA wasn't lying. and Roscosmos, and ESA, and CNSA and both ISAs (one of them being the Iranian agency, the other one from Israel)...

      Isn't it heartwarming that according to them, at least, these countries cannot get along AT ALL down here on earth but they all agreed to cooperate in their effort to keep space a mystery?

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    2. Re:ATTN: Flat Earth Truthers by Joce640k · · Score: 2

      The main belief of stupid flat earth truthers is that NASA is lying about everything

      Also Trump supporters

      --
      No sig today...
    3. Re:ATTN: Flat Earth Truthers by atherophage · · Score: 1

      But what if Trump gets wind of this? Will he say: "Let's make Mars great again". Could prolly fit a bunch of hotels and casinos on Mars for Musk's millions.

  5. Future human habbitation by coastwalker · · Score: 1

    Well that seems plenty of water to supply a closed loop greenhouse system. Mars here we come!

    --
    Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
    1. Re:Future human habbitation by Mal-2 · · Score: 1

      It's probably still heavily mixed with salts and/or chlorine compounds. They might be solid inclusions because of the freezing process, but it will still be necessary to treat the water before using. That's not to say the water isn't immensely useful -- it will be! It just may take more work than "hey let's put a farm next to it and mine ice".

      --
      How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
    2. Re:Future human habbitation by BlueStrat · · Score: 1

      It's probably still heavily mixed with salts and/or chlorine compounds. They might be solid inclusions because of the freezing process, but it will still be necessary to treat the water before using. That's not to say the water isn't immensely useful -- it will be! It just may take more work than "hey let's put a farm next to it and mine ice".

      Too bad there isn't some simple process to purify water, I mean really simple, like boiling-water and condensing-steam simple...

      Ah well. I guess purifying dirty water is still beyond our technical abilities.

      0_o

      Strat

      --
      Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
    3. Re:Future human habbitation by tomhath · · Score: 1

      Too bad this water isn't a big salty sea that can be tapped and pumped out. An underground deposit of ice mixed with sand spread out over an area of 120,000 square miles would require a lot of energy and heavy equipment to mine/transport/purify. .

    4. Re:Future human habbitation by Rei · · Score: 2

      Too bad there isn't some simple process to purify water, I mean really simple, like boiling-water and condensing-steam simple...

      Pop quiz: what do you get when you boil perchlorates? Answer, in case you didn't know: hydrochloric acid vapours. And that's just the start of problems you're going to have.

      And it's not just perchlorates in there. There's arsenic, hexavalent chromium, you name it. At one NASA conference, there was a glacier expert who suggested just this - going to an ice deposit on Mars, digging some up, melting it, letting the sediment settle out, and drinking it. A water recycling expert who had worked on the ISS water recycling system almost threw a fit. She said, get us a sample of that water and 15 years later we can give you a space rated water cleaning system for Mars.

      Oh, and it's not actually "ice", it's permafrost - 20-50% rock. Digging through permafrost is difficult even on Earth, with equipment optimized for Earth conditions for over a century. Slow and very high maintenance; permafrost acts like concrete, with water playing the role of cement as a binder. And in case you didn't know, we don't exactly have a bunch of nuclear powered Martian backhoes sitting around. The closest we've come to "digging" on another world is a tiny slow robotic scoop for loose materials. The closest we've come to "drilling" is tiny little abrasion bores. The closest we've come to melting is.... nothing, we haven't.

      NASA's looked at a wide range of different methods for getting water on Mars, many of them involving extracting from ice, including digging, drilling, melting, etc. Their conclusion is that this is important and we need to be working on it, but the TRL is almost nothing. There's a lot of problems that you just wouldn't think of. For example, as soon as you dig off the overburden, the ice underneath starts sublimating. If you leave it overnight, you'll come back to fresh overburden on the top.

      --
      Wingus, Dingus! Listen up!
    5. Re:Future human habbitation by BlueStrat · · Score: 1

      Pop quiz: what do you get when you boil perchlorates? Answer, in case you didn't know: hydrochloric acid vapours. And that's just the start of problems you're going to have.

      So, the studies you refer to NASA performing regarding extraction of H2O from Martian soil somehow were able to take into account the large deposits of relatively pure (compared to plain Martian soil) water-ice deposits that were *just discovered*? Was not aware NASA had broken the time-barrier.

      Pop quiz: Are the temperatures and vapor-pressures the same or far different between water and those contaminants? What temperature does water boil at compared to those other chemicals and compounds at a far lower air pressure than on Earth? At what temperatures and pressures do they condense? Will a very high relative concentration of water-ice make it easier or more difficult to extract and purify? How in the world do we manage to extract relatively-pure water locked away in rocky layers from wells in many homeowners' back yards? How are you certain enough of the relative amount and types of contamination of water-ice on Mars to be able to all but dismiss the idea that we have the technology to extract usable, potable water from ice on Mars?

      C'mon! This is elementary chemistry and physics! Always a reason why 'it can't be done!' when it comes to manned space travel with modern-day Luddites, eh? If we'd listened to that sort of defeatist crap in the 1960s the entire world wouldn't instantly recognize the name Neil Armstrong.

      Strat

      --
      Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
    6. Re: Future human habbitation by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 1

      And in case you didn't know, we don't exactly have a bunch of nuclear powered Martian backhoes sitting around.

      Whelp, that problem's solved! Seriously, though, the Soviets did a ton of work on nuclear-powered everything. If humans decided to work together...

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
    7. Re:Future human habbitation by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 1

      Pop quiz: what do you get when you boil perchlorates? Answer, in case you didn't know: hydrochloric acid vapours. And that's just the start of problems you're going to have.

      And it's not just perchlorates in there. There's arsenic, hexavalent chromium, you name it.

      Wow. So... We'll need 2 Brita / Pur filters? :-)

      --
      It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    8. Re:Future human habbitation by Rei · · Score: 1

      So, the studies you refer to NASA performing regarding extraction of H2O from Martian soil somehow were able to take into account the large deposits of relatively pure (compared to plain Martian soil) water-ice deposits that were *just discovered*? Was not aware NASA had broken the time-barrier.

      Contrary to how the media is spinning this, shallow permafrost deposits on Mars are not a new discovery. Phoenix landed on one. Want to see Martian ice? Here you go

      Pop quiz: Are the temperatures and vapor-pressures the same or far different between water and those contaminants?

      Hydrogen chloride is highly hygroscopic; it is difficult to separate by simple distillation. It forms an azeotrope at 20.2%. You're not going to get it down (or up) enough just by pressure shifting.

      Will a very high relative concentration of water-ice make it easier or more difficult to extract and purify?

      There is no "very high relative concentration of water-ice".

      How in the world do we manage to extract relatively-pure water locked away in rocky layers from wells in many homeowners' back yards?

      If it's saline, or contaminated with toxic compounds? We don't.

      Even for non-drinking water, we don't. Here in Iceland we use geothermal water to heat our homes. But if it turns out that the geothermal reservoir that they hit is saline, they just close off the well; the corrosion problems of hot saline water just aren't worth the effort to even set up a short heat exchanger loop.

      How are you certain enough of the relative amount and types of contamination of water-ice on Mars to be able to all but dismiss the idea that we have the technology to extract usable, potable water from ice on Mars?

      Mars is well enough studied to have a good idea. We still, however, need core samples before we can design a proper system to work with it.

      C'mon! This is elementary chemistry and physics!

      Now, welcome to elementary astronautical engineering, where you have literally zero tolerance for failure, yet something you didn't think of almost invariably crops up and ruins things for you.

      Look at the ISS oxygen generators, for crying out loud. Simple electrolysis. Straightforward, highly controlled feedstocks (the precise opposite of IRSU). And they've still had problem after problem. On ISS, that's fine; you have Earth right next to you to resupply you. If you're on Mars in opposition, yeah, good luck with that.

      --
      Wingus, Dingus! Listen up!
    9. Re:Future human habbitation by Rei · · Score: 1

      ** ISRU

      --
      Wingus, Dingus! Listen up!
    10. Re:Future human habbitation by BlueStrat · · Score: 1

      Contrary to how the media is spinning this, shallow permafrost deposits on Mars are not a new discovery.

      Did you even read TFS?

      " It ranges in thickness from about 260 feet to about 560 feet, and has a composition that's 50 to 85 percent water ice, with what appears to be dust or larger rocky particles mixed in as well."

      That's "shallow permafrost" to you?

      There is no "very high relative concentration of water-ice".

      And again:

      "...has a composition that's 50 to 85 percent water ice, with what appears to be dust or larger rocky particles mixed in as well."

      Look, it's obvious you're being disingenuous here and I'm wasting my time and energy replying to any of your other claims. Just stop with the Luddite stuff, OK? It's not flattering.

      Strat

      --
      Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
    11. Re:Future human habbitation by Rei · · Score: 1

      Contrary to how the media is spinning this, shallow permafrost deposits on Mars are not a new discovery.
      That's "shallow permafrost" to you?

      Shallow = low overburden

      "...has a composition that's 50 to 85 percent water ice, with what appears to be dust or larger rocky particles mixed in as well."

      Which is in no way, shape or form a "very high relative concentration of ice". If you think this is, I recommend you make yourself a mixture of 50-85% ice, 15-50% rock, dust and sand, and drink it.

      --
      Wingus, Dingus! Listen up!
    12. Re:Future human habbitation by BlueStrat · · Score: 1

      Shallow = low overburden

      Translation: "Words mean whatever I want them to mean and I can change their context afterwards to fit my agenda!"

      Which is in no way, shape or form a "very high relative concentration of ice". If you think this is, I recommend you make yourself a mixture of 50-85% ice, 15-50% rock, dust and sand, and drink it.

      I do every day, from even lower concentrations of water and higher concentrations of sand & rock. It's this thing called a "well". Amazing technology. You should read-up on this technical wonder.

      Strat

      --
      Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
    13. Re:Future human habbitation by Rei · · Score: 1

      Shallow = low overburden

      Translation: "Words mean whatever I want them to mean and I can change their context afterwards to fit my agenda!"

      No, words mean what words mean. When you're talking about mining, "shallow" means "low overburden". If you're talking about thickness of a deposit, you refer to... wait for it.... "thickness".

      It's not my fault if you want to misuse terminology.

      I do every day, from even lower concentrations of water and higher concentrations of sand & rock. It's this thing called a "well"

      The water that comes up from your well is 15-50% sand, dust, etc? You need a new well. And probably should have yourself checked out at a hospital.

      I think you're confusing liquid water trapped in the pore space of strata, with permafrost, a roughly uniform mixture of loose particles bonded together by ice.

      --
      Wingus, Dingus! Listen up!
    14. Re:Future human habbitation by wbr1 · · Score: 1

      My kingdom for mod points. Rei has it here.

      --
      Silence is a state of mime.
    15. Re:Future human habbitation by Rei · · Score: 1

      The concentration of water in this location is just as high or higher than in most aquifers

      That would be a fine response if we were talking about an aquifer. It is not an aquifer. An aquifer is solid rock, not dust and debris, and full of liquid water, not solid. It's an absurd comparison because you can't just drill a well into permafrost and pump water out. Not that "drilling a well into permafrost" is an easy task to begin with regardless. If you melt permafrost you don't get water, you get sludge.

      --
      Wingus, Dingus! Listen up!
  6. Michigan's Lake Superior by quenda · · Score: 2

    > as much water as there is in Michigan's Lake Superior,

    So what is that? Aboutr 40% the volume of Lake Superior?
    More than Minnesota's part, but less than Canada's? Or has Trump annexed the whole lake already?

    1. Re: Michigan's Lake Superior by macxcool · · Score: 1

      Thank you sir! As a Canadian I was deeply offended ;-)

    2. Re: Michigan's Lake Superior by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      Putin watered down the results

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
  7. This makes several Mars mission plans feasible by ShooterNeo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Prior to this, the assumption was that the moisture percentage in the soil was only a few percent. This meant that to get water for a large greenhouse or to electrolyze to hydrogen to fuel a methane ascent rocket, you'd need a bulldozer and a large oven and rock crusher. Heavy stuff and hardly worth sending to Mars unless you were doing missions on a large scale (easier to just send the water you need and liquid hydrogen as payload on the lander).

    If there really is a massive frozen lake of mostly water just a few feet down, you could land on a spot where the soil is thin and drill down. Maybe evaporate the water by sending hot CO2 down the hole or something, and collecting the moisture in the steam that rises back up. (you get the CO2 by compressing martian atmosphere and then heating it)

    This seems a lot more feasible, though doing it using a purely robotic lander would still be very hard.

    1. Re:This makes several Mars mission plans feasible by Falconhell · · Score: 1

      Yes, you would need al that heavy machinery, but only if you ignore the existance of explosives. For a seppo, thats a bit surprising.

    2. Re:This makes several Mars mission plans feasible by rickyslashdot · · Score: 1

      Hmmm! Anybody remember the international discussions about using clean hydrogen fusion devices to excavate large areas of terrain (or whatever it is called on Mars)? And how these issues got scuppered by SALT and SALT II, along with the space nuclear bans.
      Among the last nuclear testing done by the (now defunct) USSR, they produced a device that yielded 95% fusion and only 5% fission from the trigger, with really low levels of radioactive residue - almost all of which comes from the fission component of the device. Hell, the radiation protection needed by Mars personnel wouldn't need to be much more than already required to protect against cosmic and solar radiation. Besides, with the rovers - adaptable as refined water carriers - the colonists wouldn't even need to be in the areas of the fallout.
      THIS would eliminate the need for high-mass diggers and crushers to gain access to these - admittedly 'contaminated' reserves of water that need additional processing - but with the near vacuum of Mars' atmosphere, vacuum distillation seems like a real no-brainer.
      A single mission with 30 to 40 tons of cargo could hold several rovers, multiple 'nuclear excavation' devices, and the robotic beginnings of a water reclamation project. The ONLY issue would be getting all the hardware behind sufficient shielding (rock masses, mountains, big hills, or even a big hole in the ground) to protect the remaining operational hardware from the EMP.

      --
      redneck geek
    3. Re:This makes several Mars mission plans feasible by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      Maybe evaporate the water by sending hot CO2 down the hole or something

      Or just recirculate the re-heated steam?

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    4. Re:This makes several Mars mission plans feasible by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      How is this more reasonable than sending lightweight mirrors to Martian orbit? Per unit of mass, this would allow you to get massive heat fluxes for long periods without any contamination and also boost localized electricity production to boot. Neither would it waste the energy the way a nuke would, by trying to heat a flat region from a point source.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    5. Re:This makes several Mars mission plans feasible by Kjella · · Score: 1

      Sounds like a pretty big power budget. If it's as little as three feet, couldn't we erect a airtight greenhouse, lay the ice bare and have solar collectors = mirrors heat it up until the ice melts by itself, then collect it like a well? And once you have some water I think you need to get some kind of steam engine or stirling engine going via solar concentrators, I don't think solar panels will cut it.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    6. Re:This makes several Mars mission plans feasible by hey! · · Score: 1

      This seems a lot more feasible, though doing it using a purely robotic lander would still be very hard.

      While clearly this makes human habitation a lot more feasible, I don't see that humans add that much to the initial phase. It's going to be machines doing most of the work, and humans and their food and life support add a lot of mass and cost that could be applied to more useful things. I'd imagine a robotic bootstrap phase in which machines built a small functioning environment. This would be designed around the limitations of machines. A small follow-on crew would follow which would use more versatile machines to establish a larger, more suitable habitat.

      The real barrier is to find someone who actually wants to spend the money it would take to establish a manned Mars colony. Over time the costs would go down as robots get better and moving masses around the solar system gets cheaper. And the breakdown of robotic/manned depends on the relative rate at which robotics and space propulsion technology improve. The cheaper and more capable robots become relative to interplanetary travel per se, the more it makes sense for the pioneers of a colony to be robotic.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    7. Re:This makes several Mars mission plans feasible by Rei · · Score: 1

      Prior to this, the assumption was that the moisture percentage in the soil was only a few percent.

      The Phoenix lander would beg to disagree with you.

      ... you'd need a bulldozer and a large oven and rock crusher. Heavy stuff and hardly worth sending to Mars...

      This "ice" is still 20-50% rock. You still do.

      This has been another "Debbie Downer Talks about Mars"

      --
      Wingus, Dingus! Listen up!
    8. Re:This makes several Mars mission plans feasible by Rei · · Score: 2

      Explosives would work great, but only if you ignore the existence of sublimation when the now fractured ice gets exposed to the Martian atmosphere.

      --
      Wingus, Dingus! Listen up!
    9. Re:This makes several Mars mission plans feasible by iggymanz · · Score: 1

      suppose there is microbal, fungal or other underground life using this water? we'd be killing the martians!

  8. WTF? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I'm still struggling with football pitches, olympic swimming pools and libraries of congress. How many of any of them make a New Mexico?

  9. Re:NASA is the CNN of Space by Kjella · · Score: 1

    Uh......what on earth are you talking about?

    Probably the same delusional budget/PR process we have some times:

    1. Here's all the cool things we could do with lots of funding
    2. Media/bloggers/politicians create lots of buzz around it
    3. Actual budget is barely keeping lights on or less
    4. Time passes, boring economic details get forgotten
    5. Where are all the cool things you said you'd do??

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  10. Standard Units by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Lake Michigan is in New Mexico?
    Why don't they use standard units like football fields, double-decker buses or, the correct one in this case, olympic sized swimming pools.

  11. Units by dohzer · · Score: 1

    Is New Mexico big or small?

    1. Re:Units by Mr+D+from+63 · · Score: 1

      How thick is New Mexico?

    2. Re:Units by mridoni · · Score: 1

      Between two and three Libraries of Congress

    3. Re:Units by sconeu · · Score: 1

      Yeah, they need to describe it in standard units...

      Like Olympic sized swimming pools for volume, or football fields for the surface area involved.

      --
      General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
    4. Re:Units by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 1

      I'd say small; on my map, it's about 3 square inches...

      --
      Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
    5. Re:Units by avandesande · · Score: 1

      We have a county here the size of New Jersey if that helps.

      --
      love is just extroverted narcissism
    6. Re:Units by chisquare · · Score: 1

      I believe "acres of green chile" is the appropriate unit for a New Mexico reference.

    7. Re:Units by SEE · · Score: 1

      It's the size of a Poland. Bigger than an Italy, smaller than a Germany.

  12. Get your ass to mars by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

    Kuato!!!!

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  13. "Michigan's Lake Superior"? by hyades1 · · Score: 1

    Sounds like it's time for Canada to build a floating wall, if Trumpsters are already trying to assert ownership over the whole body of water.

    Not to mention that Minnesota and Wisconsin share a bit of shoreline, and might object to the characterization.

    --
    I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
  14. Re: NASA is the CNN of Space by jovius · · Score: 1

    True. But they did accomplish to make everyone believe that Trump won the election so everything is possible I'd say. The hologram projection of the new world is state of the art alien technology. The secretive alien forms behind Hillary were defeated. Earth is a field of battle which we don't know almost anything about.

    Something like that, perhaps?

  15. Are you sure?? by XB-70 · · Score: 1

    "Michigan's Lake Superior" ?? !! The lake is shared by the Canadian province of Ontario to the north, the US state of Minnesota to the west, and Wisconsin and Michigan to the south. Michigan's portion of it is significantly less that the entire lake's volume.

    --
    *** Don't be dull.***
  16. Re:NASA is the CNN of Space by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    SLOBR surely. Get with the times!

  17. OMG! most of these comments... by rgreenly · · Score: 1

    Are retarded. as Pleakley once said in "Lilo and Stitch" "Educate yourself!"

    1. Re:OMG! most of these comments... by thinkwaitfast · · Score: 1

      I recall back in the early days of the web - internet even - when it was populated mostly by people with CS and physics degrees and you could have intelligent, well reasoned discussions with knowledgeable people. Then someone said, we're leaving the rest of the world behind. That was the beginning of the end. Now instead of discussing something with perhaps the individual scientist who proposed something, you could be arguing with a 7th grader or drunk homeless person who never graduated from grade school.

  18. 'Michigan's Lake Superior'??? by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

    Lake Superior isn't a lake in Michigan. In fact, there are numerous states and provinces around Lake Superior.

    Michigan mainly has several of the lesser and dirtier great lakes on it's borders.

  19. Re:NASA is the CNN of Space by frovingslosh · · Score: 1

    Oh, we just completely ignore some of the words in the name! I understand now. It is just like the rest of the time that NASA completely ignores things that are right there.

    --
    I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
  20. Re:NASA is the CNN of Space by frovingslosh · · Score: 1

    Well that makes so much more sense. It must stand for Shallow Subsurface Radar. No bullshit there at all.

    --
    I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
  21. Re:NASA is the CNN of Space by frovingslosh · · Score: 1

    So in the fine NASA tradition we simply ignore some of the stuff that is there?

    --
    I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
  22. Re:NASA is the CNN of Space by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Maybe SHAllow RADar? That's how the Italians name it, and they did build the thing.

    http://www.asi.it/en/activity/solar_system/sharad

  23. Re: NASA is the CNN of Space by Type44Q · · Score: 1

    "SHART" was too messy.

  24. Re:NASA is the CNN of Space by arglebargle_xiv · · Score: 1

    How many football fields is that? Can we get it explained in terms of either a car or baseball analogy? I'm confused.