Water found everywhere on Mars

[Mr. Anderson]

But it looks like it might not have been as much as originally thought. Pretty cool though, especially when we get people to Mars and try and mine the ice for our own needs.

http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/space/12/08/mars.odyssey.ap/index.html

 

[diorio]

It said enough ice for 2 Lake Michigans, thats a considerable amount of ice. The planet still isn't very hospitable though, though someday I'm sure we will go there anyways.

 

[Mr. Anderson]

Originally posted by diorio
It said enough ice for 2 Lake Michigans, thats a considerable amount of ice. The planet still isn't very hospitable though, though someday I'm sure we will go there anyways.

Yes that's a lot, but taken in perspective, its not oceans full of water. There may have been more that was lost to evaporation to space, but it wasn't that wet of a planet to begin with it seems.

D

 

[dabirdwell]

Ice on Mars

We have known for some time that the majority of the water on Mars is not in the polar ice caps as was once thought. Rather, there is a layer of ice called permafrost just below the visible surface, and with this report estimating that 70% of the soil's makeup is ice, I would like to see a new pathfinder or something drill and analyze some cores from the crust of the planet. If there is any primordial evidence of any precursors to life from when there was liquid water on the planet, this is where it will be.

 

[medea]

ooh just it could be just like Total Recall, only we dont have mutants with three tits yet.....but seriously, this is an interesting revealation that will hopefully further peoples interest in getting a manned flight going to mars soon, we can only hope, maybe with China in the race NASA will get moving...

 

[Mr. Anderson]

A manned mission to Mars is going to take some time. The best thing that could happen would be the creating of a viable single stage to orbit ship that's less costly than the Space Shuttle so that we can build the Mars mission ship in orbit. It will be a huge undertaking and if we do it right we need to have heavily redundant systems so that it will last the 2+ year trip.

I also think a better platform, higher orbit ISS will be needed - then the question becomes where does the money come from?

D

 

[Thanatoast]

Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson is a science fiction novel set in the near future with current technology as its basis. Very close to what could happen, if we wanted to try it.

It's really too bad that there's so much emphasis on cost-cutting, efficiency and returns that there's not much money for pure science. The US could afford to do this all on it's own if it really wanted to. We did the moon on our own, after all. And in a race to the finish with the Russians to boot.