mars has had water flows. - by jimjack
jimjack on 14/12/2006 at 18:11
So called water is right. It's a hill drawing. It looks like a figure. An alien figure.
RocketMan on 14/12/2006 at 18:56
Ughh....nobody has any respect for advances in space exploration. Laugh all you want but your kids are likely gonna be living on mars if we fuck up Earth well enough. If they find some kind of fossilized bacteria in that water its going to change everything. I have my doubts about life on mars but would love to be proven wrong.
SD on 14/12/2006 at 19:09
someone jizzed on hubble
Printer's Devil on 14/12/2006 at 19:27
IIRC, the core of Mars cooled eons ago and as a result, does not possess a protective magnetic field like Earth's. The atmosphere is many times thinner than Earth's, lacks an ozone layer and is comprised mainly of CO2. Severe dust storms, extremely low temperatures (up to -143 C) and likely (
http://www.slate.com/id/2155117) contaminated water (where it can be found at all), means that colonies in the Sahara desert would be more practical.
jimjack on 14/12/2006 at 20:07
Well..I think otherwise according to this:
(
http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2006/12/05/2138980.htm) http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2006/12/05/2138980.htm
I think have satisfied my mars/space fixation, I have a school function tonite, and with any luck I will have other interests to think over. hope its worth the $15 ticket maybe get me some highschool girl badness :ebil: IT COULD HAPPEN
Gorgonseye on 14/12/2006 at 20:18
Be sure to send me pics of the girls you pick up.
Agent Monkeysee on 14/12/2006 at 23:08
Quote Posted by RocketMan
Ughh....nobody has any respect for advances in space exploration. Laugh all you want but your kids are likely gonna be living on mars if we fuck up Earth well enough. If they find some kind of fossilized bacteria in that water its going to change everything. I have my doubts about life on mars but would love to be proven wrong.
If we have the technology to make Mars even marginally suitable for permanent settlements we have the technology to keep Earth livable.
RocketMan on 15/12/2006 at 01:20
We already have the technology, and more generally, the means to preserve this planet. That's not the problem. The problem is that its not economically feasible. Consider what we know:
1. Solar conversion technology is not efficient or cost effective unless you have co-generation and a huge equitorial region of empty space to fill with solar arrays (thermal or photovoltaic) due to the irradiance at those lattitudes.
2. Wind power is crappy in metropolitan areas and at low elevations, has a large capital cost, is not "always on" and is even less efficient than solar means due to wind being a degraded form of solar energy.
3. Fuel cells are the biggest scam ever. Hydrogen fuel is not a natural source. It has to be made and is in fact a commodity of energy. Its only asset is that it has zero emissions. Then again, so does steam and electricity. Tankage also adds tremendous weight and the fuel boils off in time.
If you ask me, I'd say nuclear batteries are the way to go. Look at the problem of nuclear waste management from reactors. Everybody complains that we have all this shit piling up and we have to bury it in the ground....no we don't. We can use that "waste" to power everything from mp3 players to satellites.
Petroleum products are tremendously valueable natural sources of energy with a high energy density, are very portable and work with every existing technology. They aren't going away till the gas does.
Colonizing mars isn't just for abandoning this planet. There are other reasons as well.
I think if nothing else, its a good idea to feel out the solar system, if not for scientific interest, then at least to see if we can make use of anything the planets have to offer. Especially if fuel cells are to have any chance of becoming mainstream, we'll need more platinum than the Earth actually has, which means interplanetary mining (which by the way isn't sci-fi. Its already in the planning stages)
Quote:
someone jizzed on hubble
I was just waiting for that comment...thank you for your insightful contribution to science.
Rug Burn Junky on 15/12/2006 at 02:44
Quote:
We already have the technology, and more generally, the means to preserve this planet. That's not the problem.
umm, No.
In your example (that the Earth will be so fucked up that we
have to leave), it pretty much assumes that we
don't have the technology to fix it at that point in time.
Never mind the fact that you didn't address AM's point by showing in any way why it would be MORE feasible to move a whole population to another planet and make that planet livable than to fix this one (Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids, In fact it’s cold as hell), you were pretty much just yammering about unrelated shit.
And I think it's gonna be a long, long time.
RocketMan on 15/12/2006 at 04:11
What the hell? :weird:
I wasn't talking about what we'd do once the planet becomes unliveable. I was saying we are perfectly capable of taking preventive action now. I went a bit O.T. to discuss why but my sentiment was that its not a question of whether we have the capabilities. We do, we just choose not to do it.
I don't think i had an example, but i think if the Earth's ecosystem becomes contaminated enough we won't have a choice about whether to leave or not. I dunno if it'll come to that but wouldn't it be nice if we had a way of decongesting the Earth of its overpopulated inhabitants? I didn't really want to dwell on that because this thread is about the water on mars which is a scientific investigation.
On that note, water is really cool to find for many reasons. We all know that it means the possibility of life. That's yet to be found. On the other hand I'm really excited about it because if we can setup a small installation on mars near the water, we can actually use that water to make hydrogen and oxygen propellants so that the planet effectively serves as a relay point for expeditions to the outer solar system. Seeing as a huge chunk of transport vehicles' propellant budget is wasted just escaping Earth, Mars offers an excellent opportunity to reach even further than current technology allows.
