NASA Looks To Volcanic Rocks As Target For Next Mars Rover 33
sciencehabit (1205606) writes "At a 3-day workshop, planetary scientists advocated for igneous rock–bearing landing sites as high-priority targets for NASA's next Mars rover mission, scheduled to launch in 2020. The $1.5 billion rover, a near-copy of the Curiosity rover, will collect about 30 samples of rock and soil for eventual return to Earth. Mineralized fracture zones at such sties may have been home at one time hydrothermal systems, with hot, fluid-filled fractures. Hydrothermal sites on Earth harbor ecosystems with extremophilic microbes."
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Sure, it would be awesome and in useful, in many ways, to have a semi-permanent base on Mars. It probably should be a long term goal, but not a current focus.
Terraforming itself is unrealistic even as an extremely long term goal. Who knows what the technology will render possible, but Mars isn’t a great candidate for terraforming. Its gravitational field is weak and it has little or no magnetosphere to name a few things; both of these factors greatly degrade its capacity to maintain a substantial
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$1.5 billion should be just enough to kill all the lawyers.
Re:can we think bigger picture? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, your post does deserve a counter-argument, if not a down-vote, and not for the misused vocabulary, either.
First of all, I can't really get very upset over 1.5 billions, because the US government is spending a lot more on things I like a lot less. But we do have a set of laws that govern how money is collected, allocated and spent, and if there's a country that does better by me on all three, I'm not aware of it.
Second, I actually personally know two different groups of people who hope to hitch their projects on this horse. One of their projects has immediate applications to alleviating the frequency shortage that the US is experiencing, and the other may end up with some interesting applications for jet engines, which may eventually trickle down to civilian aviation. So just because the rover is a near copy, there's no reason to expect that there are not a number of significant improvements along for the ride (or on the ground)
Third, space exploration has had unexpected benefits, and the thing about unexpected benefits is that you can't tell what they are before hand. This goes for all branches of research, and if we had anyone who does not like a specific 'useless' project stop it, you'd be probably arguing that urine is perfectly fine for tanning hides, thank you.
And fourth, the people who are going to get those 1.5 billions are scientists/engineers/technicians in the existing facilities of entities which already have their claws deep inside the hide of the US government. This money will go on buying votes and influence, one way or another - best politicians money can buy, and all that. So it may as well go to Boeing/JPL for a flight to Mars, rather to be spent of 'clean' coal and pushing corn into everything you can think of.
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1) Name one.
The term "Spinoff" was coined to describe exactly this. NASA publishes a list, which was up to 1500 last time I checked... but I guess your Google is broken.
So, I'll just mention something I learned last week, when I had some Teflon-coated fiberglass installed. The contractor mentioned it was developed by NASA for astronauts' suits, and I checked it - he was right.
2) Sounds an awful lot like circular reasoning... like a religion!
"Do this, and you may have a result similar to what has as has oc
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You want to know where you can get some real money (not a paltry $1.5 billion)? War. Stop the damned wars that go on every single day in this world and we'll have so many more resources to spend on social, scientific, medicinal, exploration, and whatever other programs your little brain can come up with. 1.5 billion over that time frame is nothing. It's less than nothing on the grand scale. Look at how much money the space program gets compared to everything else.
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No problem. Would you prefer 3 weeks of corporate farm subsidies (20B/yr), one Ohio class submarine (2B/ea) or three B-2 bombers (500M/ea)?
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Cheaper? Yep. Easier. Probably.
Quicker? Doubt it. The robot can't do much beyond what it was designed to do. And when you run into something interesting beyond its design parameters, all you can do is build another robot and send it along in a few years.
A man on the scene, presuming he's not a complete idiot, should be much more versatile than any robot.
Note, by the by, that I am opposed to any base on Mars (or anywhere else) unless it is intended to be a PERMANENT presence. Send twelve to the moo
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Wow, what a bunch of mis-guided responses (Score:4, Insightful)
Salshtod (Score:1)
Based on a theory that may not be true (Score:2)
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Why? Pretty much everywhere we look on Earth, life has colonized, even boiling springs and groundwater in mines many kilometers underground. The whole point of life is that anywhere that the most basic fundamentals can be met, it eventually finds a way there.
Meh. At least they'll probably find some neat rocks ;) I happen to own land comprise of basalt (and a bit of rhyolite) modified by a hydrothermal system. You find the neatest rocks on such land - opal, quartz, chalcedony (jasper, chrysoprase, etc), zeo
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Thinking inside the box (Score:3)
I'm all in favor of spending money on space exploration, but the way I see it, Mars represents a point of diminishing returns. In the true spirit of exploration, we should begin looking at other interesting environments, such as drilling into Europa or Enceladus. This obsessive focus on Mars is a boon for Mars experts, but it has a real cost in terms delayed progress towards understanding other solar system and deep space targets.
Space exploration missions will inspire audiences and yield side-benefits no matter where they go. Why not spread what little wealth there is and look towards bolder, more exciting targets?
Here's another well-argued perspective on my point:
http://www.theonion.com/articl... [theonion.com]
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