Massive Martian Glaciers Found 314
Kozar_The_Malignant writes "Scientific American is reporting that 'data from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter point to vast glaciers buried beneath thin layers of crustal debris.' Data from the surface-penetrating radar on MRO revealed that two well-known mid-latitude features are composed of solid water ice. One is about three times the size of the City of Los Angeles. This certainly makes the idea of establishing a station on Mars far more plausible."
Time to move... (Score:5, Interesting)
Why? (Score:1, Interesting)
Just wondering.
Fossil water (Score:5, Interesting)
What's interesting to me, is that they mention in TFA that this ice can't have formed recently. The current Martian climate won't allow it. Meaning that the glacier was laid down ages ago when such formations were still possible, got buried beneath the debris, and has basically been sitting there since.
Forget water harvesting, I'm more interested in studying the ice in situ. If there ever was life on Mars (which is independent of the question of whether there's life there now), the odds are good we'd find evidence of it frozen in the glacier. Cold preserves, objects frozen in ice erode slowly, and the living things generally need water to survive.
Of course, anything that ever lived on Mars would likely have been microscopic. I doubt we'd find anything as big as a terrestrial animal. It'd still be the first evidence of life outside of our own planet though, which is a pretty frickin' huge deal.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
because scientists don't like to use vague and imprecise language.
if "ice" means "water ice," then what do you say when you just want to refer to ice of any kind?
Re:Fossil water (Score:3, Interesting)
Since current atmospheric conditions wouldn't allow ice formation (it would just sublimate) -- at some point in the past, Mars must have had a decently thick atmosphere, which probably got blown off by some natural catastrophe -- maybe the crunch-up of the hypothetical next-planet-out (now known as the asteroid belt).
Phoenix mission a waste? (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder if this discovery had been made a few months earlier if they would have altered the course of the Phoenix lander [wikipedia.org] to try to touch down on the glacier. Or is the crust on top of the glacier too thick for Phoenix to get through? This seems like a prime target for future missions to analyze the ice and look for signs of life.
I think we need to send Bruce Willis and a crack team of oil rig workers to do some drilling on Mars...
Re:Time to move... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes indeed, you first! I'll be satisfied to have myself cryogenically frozen (Did I happen to mention you first for that too?) and thawed out in a generation or three when the colonization effort is well under way. Guess I'm not much for a.) getting slowly cooked by solar radiation b.) constantly worrying about a hole the size of a pinprick sucking all the atmosphere out of the ship, c.) either losing my sanity in the confines of ship I can't leave for months on end or waiting for my fellow shipmates to do the same and d.) finally arriving at my destination which is even less hospitable and almost certainly more dangerous than life on the ship.
Seriously, the first people to go to Mars would almost have to have a deathwish to do so.
Re:Time to move... (Score:5, Interesting)
"Seriously, the first people to go to Mars would almost have to have a deathwish to do so."
Replace mars with the new world and it holds true. Your points a, c and d also hold true. For b if you change it to sinking then you are right there too. I'm pretty fucking sure the first people on mars will be remembered as heroes for a loooooong time.
Re:Time to move... (Score:3, Interesting)
Great series, admittedly I had the first part of Red Mars in my head while I was typing that post up. Anyone for eating dirt and joining the new Martian cult? ;-)
Building underground is probably best idea to avoid radiation (this is probably a good idea for a moon base as well), but I would hope that by the time we are seriously considering manned missions to Mars that we have better protection against radiation.
Opportunity Knocks (Score:3, Interesting)
Sounds like we should be taking a new look at the "Mars Express" concept. This just screams for a direct look-see by real human beings. And we could really use a project that would kick-start a new wave of technological innovation.
Re:Time to move... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Time to move... (Score:5, Interesting)
You are forgetting we still haven't actually resolved the problem of preventing crew irradiation during their travel to/from Mars.
That is a show-stopper, 100% chance of being irradiated beats the off-chance to get a new world disease.
Shielding rises the mass of the vehicule, which is already a problem that forces us to a slow travel due to our limitation to chemical rockets.
We need to switch to a different and better propulsion system like a nuclear one in order to escape this quagmire of Shield/mass+length of travel compounded problem.
Re:Time to move... (Score:3, Interesting)
Check out the Mars Direct proposal championed by Robert Zubrin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Direct [wikipedia.org].
Not only did it involve pre-setting equipment and habitats, it's launch framework was shuttle-derived, thus precluding a need for new (potentially troubled) launch system. Such a shuttle-derived system is reflected in the Direct proposal: http://www.directlauncher.com./ [www.directlauncher.com]
For my money, the whole Ares launch system is a waste of time, money, and effort, too. We could probably be on Mars in ten years if they followed the Mars Direct/Direct Launcher path.
How To Get There (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Establish moon base, mine water-ice, build solar-powered magnetic rail launcher and ore smelter.
2. Combine water with mixture of moon regolith plus mined magnetic materials, freeze into projectile, use rail launcher to send into low moon 'parking' orbit.
3. Use mirrors in moon orbit to melt regolith/metal/water mixture from projectiles in 'parking' lunar orbit. Form into desired hollow and radiation-resistant Mars transport. Build necessary habitat inside. Attach VASIMIR propulsion which will use hydrogen extracted from water from which ship is mostly made. Attach Mars lander made mostly from materials mined on moon. Use oxygen from from hydrogen fuel extraction for breathing during trip. (You could even do roughly the same thing on Mars for return trips, or at least refuel/re-shield with sufficient supplies sent ahead on unmanned vehicles to get started.)
4. Get your ass to Mars! Get your ass to Mars! Get your ass to Mars!
5. Profit!
Probably much I've missed, or am mistaken about. Sounds good to me, though.
Cheers!
Strat
Re:Time to move... (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually you would only gain 30%-50% by going nuclear. There are apparently experiments with plasma that could be used as propulsion, using a cannon from earth. That would allow you to not bring lots of fuel.
That's really SciFi though, I wonder if they even have done something similar on earth except with water in amusement parks attractions.
Re:Time to move... (Score:3, Interesting)
I dont want to be too harsh on the parent, but these are pretty false comparisons. To begin with, the "New World" settlers werent in "danger" of contracting diseases from the "New World"... the diseases were from the "old world". This is like saying that our astronauts would have to worry about gang violence on mars. No... gang violence is on earth.
The reason a Mars to New World comparison is a poor comparison is pretty simple. The "New World" had "human beings" already there, thus proving that living there was completely viable. Just because the inhabitants of the "New World" werent white Europeans, doesnt mean the "New World" was somehow inhospitable. No, the whole New World concept is quasi nationalist and insultingly Eurocentric.
A more accurate comparison would be talking about how 14th century Europeans colonized Antartica. Of course, that didnt happen.
Anyone willing to go to Mars would have to be either divorced from the reality of their likely demise.
- You dont need to worry about being lost, because there is nowhere to go. Your on Mars. Each spec of martian terrain is just as unwelcoming to earth life as the next.
- You are completely reliant on technology for your survival. Back on earth, the planet kept you alive, now you are relying on equipment created by the lowest bidder (thats right). If that machine that makes your air happens to blow up, catch fire, etc, you are dead with almost no means to manufacture another. No moving, no anything. End game.
- Dont like your job? Dont like your room mate? Want to see a movie? No. You are stuck in your job, which is to do science and survive. Thats it until someone comes to relieve you, and that is if someone comes to relieve you because...
- Civil war, economic collapse, Plague, zombie apocalypse (left 4 dead ftw), angry congress criters, etc., back on earth means that no rocket ships are coming to get you, resupply you, etc.. Now you are just going to whittle away and die! Yeah! Thats right, there will be no way for people stuck on mars to exist without resupply from earth... not with current technology (or foreseeable future).
I still think we should do it, but it would have to be done right. Not small bases like everyone recommends, but overkill to the extreme. Large initial colonies to support just a small amount of people. Human beings need space, downtime, and certain levels of freedom to avoid the nastiness that comes along with confinement. The price tag would have to be one that would be shared with the entire world as no one country would be able to do it (though the $700 Billion going to wallstreet would be an excellent down payment).
Then spread the job of getting supplies to Mars. (Score:4, Interesting)
Undoubtedly, the quantities of materiel for a Mars base would be huge. What I can't understand is why nobody is ramping up to spread that job around. Seems to me that there are plenty of companies, states, countries, and so on, who would be delighted to get the chance to spend millions of dollars to have their stuff being used by a Mars crew. And it seems to me that we now know both how to get missions to Mars and how to have them work together.
Why is nobody trying to convince Wisconsin to start their own Mars mission to send five kilos of cheese into Mars orbit along with some clothes from Lands' End and fifteen or twenty kilos of brats and cheese bread? We know that UW Madison has some kickass space scientists and plenty of engineers. Or what about having developing nations pay a fifty or sixty thousand dollars a kilo to get their signature products added to a vessel to then be built and launched by one of the umpty-dozen New Space companies? There are plenty of options. [typepad.com]
The smart thing to do at this point is to start pushing non-federal entities to start their own launch programs to launch their own payloads to Mars orbit where they can either wait for landing instructions (safely a few hundred miles or more from the base) or to be ferried down by some purpose-built vehicle.
Not all supplies are high tech. There is no reason that we need to wait years and years before we'll be ready to send low-G cheese, for crying out loud. The vacuum sealers sold in every supermarket today are more high-tech than the gear used to prepare consumables for the Apollo missions. Thousands and thousands of kilos of supplies would fit into this category. Clothes. Food. Bedding. And on and on. And, frankly, there are plenty of ways to structure the contracts so that Mars crew aren't obligated to use what is sent. Something would have to be pretty damn bad to get left in the cold but there's no reason that option can't be included.
And think about it. This way the logistics work is spread around, too. And the cargos can launch at high-G, travel at near-ambient temperatures in low-atmosphere vessels, and in a dozens of different ways, be a hell of a lot cheaper to send then trying to get everydamnthing shipped in a human-capable vessel. Sending everything in one vessel is like shipping a package by buying an airline ticket for it. This would provide the option of "parcel post".
UNDERGROUND CITIES (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Time to move... (Score:2, Interesting)
Pluses for no hostile natives, though.
Didn't the natives help the first european settlers survive the first few years?