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Mars Space

Plan To Bomb Mars For Signs of Climate Change 102

Posted by Zonk from the brute-forces-science dept.
Oliver Harris writes "Scientists are planning on launching huge copper slugs at Mars in the hope that they will reveal signs of climate change. Problem: What happens when the Martians launch their own copper slugs back?" From the article: "'It's neat because it's a brute force way to gain access to the subsurface of Mars,' says David Spencer, a team member at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, US. 'The impactor will be very simple and we'll get our first look at material from that depth.' Christensen says that will provide a crucial test for models of Mars's past climate."
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Plan To Bomb Mars For Signs of Climate Change More

Plan To Bomb Mars For Signs of Climate Change

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  • Copper Shortage (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Innova ( 1669 ) on Thursday January 26, 2006 @05:59PM (#14573184) Homepage
    Scientists are planning on launching huge copper slugs at Mars...

    But where will they find all of that copper [slashdot.org]?

  • The results (Score:5, Funny)

    by Syberghost ( 10557 ) <syberghost@syber ... S.com minus poet> on Thursday January 26, 2006 @05:59PM (#14573191)
    AP, 2106: NASA scientists have determined that the Martian atmosphere contains a metric farkload of copper.

  • boom (Score:5, Funny)

    by God'sDuck ( 837829 ) on Thursday January 26, 2006 @06:01PM (#14573205)
    Wait - when did we add Spirit and Opportunity to the Axis of Evil?
    • It's all due to a typo. Bush got confused because "spirit" and "opportunity" weren't capitalized in his Mars update. One aide reportedly overheard the President say, "We must.. will crush.. spirit and opportunity wherever it.. won't get fooled again!"
    • MALICIOUS HACKER ORIGINALLY PLANNED TO BOMB NASA SERVER ROOM

      'I thought it was neat because it's a brute force way to gain access to the NASA servers,' says F. Ilthy Hair, after the bombing plans were revealed on his PC, 'but then I just got lucky by wildly trying out username/password combos. The combo copper/copper proved to be usefull in the end, God knows why...'

  • I saw this on Sesame Street! (Score:3, Funny)

    by MobileTatsu-NJG ( 946591 ) on Thursday January 26, 2006 @06:03PM (#14573234)
    1. "Scientists are planning on launching huge copper slugs at Mars in the hope that they will reveal signs of climate change."

    2. "Problem: What happens when the Martians launch their own copper slugs back?"

    3. "From the article: "'It's neat because it's a brute force way to gain access to the subsurface of Mars,' says David Spencer, a team member at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, US."

    4."The impactor will be very simple and we'll get our first look at material from that depth.'


    One of these things is not like the others,
    One of these things just doesn't belong,
    Can you tell which thing is not like the others
    By the time I finish my song?

    Three of these things belong together
    Three of these things are kind of the same
    Can you guess which one of these doesn't belong here?
    Now it's time to play our game... ... It's time to play our game!!

  • It's like playing with nuclear weapons....but bigger. What they should do is send the observer spacecraft seperate from the mass. If the mass comes in on a trajectory that's head-on to mars, you could get a *much* bigger explosion!

    Of course, then you'd have to make sure your observer was in the right spot at the right time, and it's probably too complicated... but a bigger explosion, so it's worth it anyway!

    --LWM

    ps - I was hoping we'd build a giant rail-gun to shoot at Mars, but no such luck...

    pps - you

    • you can be sure the US Gov will be interested in data for its program to put weapons in space...that do the same thing (with smaller rods) to earth.

      Just in case people think you are kidding, both IEEE Spectrum [ieee.org] and Popular Science [popsci.com] have stories on how the US is already looking into using tungsten rods to hurtle at objects on Earth. They are known as Hypervelocity Rod Bundles, or Rods from God. However, there is serious doubt if this is a very good use of taxpayer money. Compared to conventional alternat

    • Ready when you are mr DeMille

  • Overkill? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by redheaded_stepchild ( 629363 ) on Thursday January 26, 2006 @06:03PM (#14573253)
    Couldn't we get more data by drilling cores like we do at the poles and other places around the world? Seems to me that all we would really succeed in doing is throwing the evidence in a million different directions. And have we built a rover that is capable of not getting stuck in a crater?

    • Re:Overkill? (Score:2, Offtopic)

      by FidelCatsro ( 861135 ) *
      But Usama bin-Laden may be hiding up them , along with the Iraqi Weapons of Mass destruction.
      So obviously they need to bomb it
      • ...and so they lob Weapons of Mars Destruction at him in retaliation?
        Same pot, same kettle, still black.

        (well, actually, the pot could be of a different variety.)
      • But Usama bin-Laden may be hiding up them , along with the Iraqi Weapons of Mass destruction. So obviously they need to bomb it

        Nope, we know where those are:

        http://www.postchronicle.com/commentary/article_21 24562.shtml [postchronicle.com]

        Maybe we should test this giant-copper-slug idea on Syria first, though.
        • Unfortunatly , they had "Property of the US milatry written on the side" .. There have been numerous claims refuting that that happened and it is strongly suspected the General had been put up .Syria of-course denies all knowledge.
          Not that I am a great fan of Syria, but it all seems a little ominous
          • There have been numerous claims refuting that that happened and it is strongly suspected the General had been put up .

            A thousand liberals screaming something probably isn't true doesn't make it false.

    • Re:Overkill? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Kelson ( 129150 ) * on Thursday January 26, 2006 @06:23PM (#14573470) Homepage Journal
      Sure, but drilling cores is something that needs a lot of equipment and hands-on control. It'd be great for a manned mission, but it's tricky to fit a hundred-foot-plus telescoping drill onto a rover and expect it to work.

      This way you can blast a crater and then analyze the dust spectroscopically.
      • Wow, thank you. That's the best reply I've ever recieved: concise, on topic, and both great points.
      • it's tricky to fit a hundred-foot-plus telescoping drill onto a rover and expect it to work.

        Is not! I do it all the time myself.

        Kids these days. No gumption in 'em at all.
      • In goes to show you how crudely we are forced to learn about other planets, in a technique that amounts to bludgeoning you subject with a stick to see what's inside. I'm sure there was a point in history when this was also the most effective means of studying wasp's (the flying kind) nests.
  • not to be overly cynical...but this seems to be the typical "human" method of studying new things. first, we take a cursory glance from a distance. next, we think about how we can study it. in the process, we destroy or cause harm to it.

    i wonder if we'll ever stop to think that what we do may have some sort of greater impact. doesn't an intelligent species have some sort of responsibility for its actions?
    • doesn't an intelligent species have some sort of responsibility for its actions?

      You are making some big assumptions there...
    • There is responsibility for actions (it's up in the air about the intelligence part). It will come, but the result may not be reaped in our lifetimes. Nevertheless, why does personal responsibility matter in this case? It's not harming anyone.

    • not to be overly cynical...but this seems to be the typical "human" method of studying new things. first, we take a cursory glance from a distance. next, we think about how we can study it. in the process, we destroy or cause harm to it.

      Rubbish. Mars is not some delicate ecosystem that withers and dies when you look at it funny. It's basically a dead rock. When your methods of observation are not precise enough to get the results with small-scale measurements, you sometimes have to blow the system up to

      • Do you know this from personal experience, or are you, like the people I mentioned in my post, making the assumption that by messing with something you don't really know about, you won't break it? If something bad were to happen to disrupt the Mars environment, these scientists will claim ignorance. I believe that there is a big difference between bombing the surface of a planet and "looking at it funny." The fact is, we don't know much about Mars, except what we see through telescopes and the very limit
    • Hmm... This does almost remind me of the most pointless chemistry lab I've ever done. We stuck a piece of magnesium in an eudiometer tube and destroyed it with hydrochloric acid. The point? Find the mass of the piece of magnesium. It's not just that we could have used a balance, but that we destroyed the piece of magnesium. What is the point of knowing the mass now that it is magnesium chloride? This rover seems much the same. Lets break it and see what it USED to be made of. I guess I can kind of see

      • Re:hmm... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Kelson ( 129150 ) *
        I guess I can kind of see how it's different, as we aren't removing the top ten feet from all of mars

        Not to mention the fact that meteorites do strike the planet from time to time...
        • You make a good point. Since Mars has no Earth-like atmosphere, even small meteorites can make it though the atmosphere and have significant reprocussions -- possibly no more or less so than these bombs. Nevertheless, I'd argue that meteorites are natural for Mars, whereas humans bombing its surface are probably not. On Earth, although meteorites sometimes do make it through the atmosphere, I wouldn't want someone to simulate such a natural occurance near where I was located at the time.

          An argument allow

  • Didn't we do this already? (Score:5, Funny)

    by EvilMagnus ( 32878 ) on Thursday January 26, 2006 @06:18PM (#14573419)
    ...with the Beagle II [beagle2.com]?

    ( tongue firmly in cheek )
    • > ..with the Beagle II [beagle2.com]?

      In the past 15 years, the Martians have shot down Deep Space 2, Mars Polar Lander, Mars Climate Observer, Mars Observer, Phobos 1 and 2, and half a dozen earlier probes.

      (OK, so Mars Climate Observer wasn't shot down - it was Martian spies who infiltrated NASA and switched things between Metric/Imperial units - but you get my drift.)

      Anyways, it's payback time!

  • copper (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mr_burns ( 13129 ) on Thursday January 26, 2006 @06:18PM (#14573422)
    Um, I wish they'd use some other metal. We can use all the copper we can get here on earth. How about depleted uranium? I could do with less of that in my life and it works well as a projectile.
    • Man, I wish I had MOD points... +1 Funny to you good sir

    • Re:copper (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Vellmont ( 569020 ) on Thursday January 26, 2006 @07:30PM (#14574111) Homepage

      We can use all the copper we can get here on earth.


      Replies like this, and the moderations of them really makes me realize that there's a lot of people that really have no sense of scale. The world copper reserves are somewhere around 340 million tonnes (http://www.icsg.org/Factbook/copper_world/sd.htm [icsg.org]) . That's about 340,000,000,000 kilograms (340 billion kilograms). The projectile they're talking about sending is 230 kilograms. Expressed as a percentage of our reserves, that's .000000068% of our copper reserves. I wouldn't really worry about losing that much copper.

      • Re:copper (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Vellmont ( 569020 ) on Thursday January 26, 2006 @07:58PM (#14574338) Homepage
        In addition to my other reply which lists 230 kilograms as a percentage of the world copper reserves, I'd like to point out that 230 kilograms of copper is almost exactly a cubic foot. That is a 1x1x1 foot cube of copper. Not exactly a "huge copper slug" that the article summary suggests.
    • Using nuculer shit will definately provoke the Zhti Ti Kofft. They might even turn the dark side of the moon around to face us and use their death ray! [uncoveror.com]
    • Depleted uranium slugs? Jeez man, why don't we just rail them out of the sky??

  • perfect! (Score:3, Funny)

    by moosesocks ( 264553 ) on Thursday January 26, 2006 @06:18PM (#14573425) Homepage
    this mission is perfect for our expertise! we've gotten quite good [anl.gov] at sending huge chunks of metal hurtling twoard the surface of mars...

    (with our luck, we'll miss completely and end up blowing up titan or europa and killing whatever life may reside there)

  • Marvin the Martian's revenge (Score:4, Funny)

    by SKPhoton ( 683703 ) on Thursday January 26, 2006 @06:24PM (#14573483) Homepage
    Problem: What happens when the Martians launch their own copper slugs back?

    Marvin the Martian will take us on. "Where's the kaboom? There's supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom!"
  • I wonder what K'breel [google.com], speaker for the Council of Elders, thinks about this. It'd be interesting to know :)
    • I wonder what K'breel, speaker for the Council of Elders, thinks about this.

      Given his past speeches, he will probably stress that there is no cause for alarm [google.com]. Hah, politicians! IF there ever was a time to panic, it would be now!

  • Crashing into Mars (Score:3, Funny)

    by Spudley ( 171066 ) on Thursday January 26, 2006 @06:52PM (#14573792) Homepage Journal
    Given the past history of Mars exporation, I'd say it's probably the best thing they could do -- as least if you're planning to crash into the planet, you won't be too upset when it happens.
    • Unfortunately, this time the team's confusion of imperial/metric units causes the slug to make a gentle, safe landing on the planet's surface rather than impacting explosively. Oops.

  • Bombing Mars (Score:4, Funny)

    by Xymor ( 943922 ) on Thursday January 26, 2006 @07:08PM (#14573940)
    Frist the Bombing, then by 2015 US will be sending troops to secure democracy in Mars. This is just part of the plan to bring freedom to mars people.
    • Beautiful. If I had mod points you'd get them all. Or as many as SlackDot would let me give you. You'll have to settle for my undying respect for that piece of comedic genius :)
    • The big advantage here is that given the obviously moribund state of Martian culture, "Bombing them to the Stone Age" would actually advance their evolutionary timetable by millions of years!

      Shortly after the first giant mysterious projectile embeds itself in the surface of Mars, one or more nearby primitive bacteria, inspired by our example, will inevitably cluster around it, find a rock or something and then pound the shit out of their neighbors. A quick flip of the bones up into the air, a jump cut, an
    • Bollocks to a democracy, they need a replacement for Guantanamo Bay!
    • ... and to bring back all that martian oil bonanza to sustain Our Way of Life, one generation more.

  • They should aim at the rovers (not a joke) (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    OK, call me crazy...

    If they aimed at them, they are pretty unlikely to actually hit one, but if they got close enough that one of the rovers could examine the ejecta and go into the crater they'd learn a hell of a lot more than by just studying the spectrum of the ejecta from space.

  • obvious (Score:2, Funny)

    by clsmyth ( 201554 )
    Take off. Nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
  • I could make some sort of Tars Tarkas reference here, but you youngsters would not understand until the movie [imdb.com] comes out.
  • I used to use copper foil to stop slugs getting into my veggie patch.
  • I know why they want to do this... They must have intercepted the cell phone conversations of John Carter. This means the Warlord of Mars is a terrorist! The probably want to get his son, Carthoris of Helium, as well.
  • What are the odds on them firing big shells at us ?

    I mean the chances of anything coming from Mars are a Million to One !
    • > a Million to One !

      I think you're seriously, massively, overestimating the chances! Discworld author Terry Pratchett says that million-to-one chances come up nine times out of ten. While that's an entertainingly flawed equation in a humorous fantasy series, in this case, I think the difference between one-out-of-a-million and nine-out-of-ten is so small compared to the real odds that they might as well be considered equivalent. :)
    • I mean the chances of anything coming from Mars are a Million to One !

      Sure, but you can count on a million to one shot happening half of the time.
  • ...America will blow up the moon!

    (obligatory Mr. Show reference)

  • Are you wearing your tinfoil hat? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tqft ( 619476 ) <`moc.oohay' `ta' `ua_sworrubnai'> on Friday January 27, 2006 @02:40AM (#14576638) Homepage Journal
    If they can launch a huge copper slug to Mars - where else can they land it?

    Hmmm - any guesses people? Go on - you know the answer.

    Large accurate placed explosive without nuclear fallout.

    Think of Mars as target practice.
  • We'll ruin the other planets later.
  • This is what happens when you let rednecks become rocket scientists. They've graduated from shooting up road signs, water heaters, etc. to shooting up whole planets!
  • BOOOOM!!!

    Any body alive down there?

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