Water ice found in Mars crater Raises prospects of past or present life and future manned missions   08.01.2005 @11:58 AM Contributed by Simon   Edited by Simon A large patch of water ice has been found in an unnamed crater on Mars. The find raises the prospect that past or present life will be found on the planet, as well as the chances of future manned missions. The ice was photographed by the High Resolution Stereo Camera on board the European Space Agency's Mars Express probe. The probe found the water on Vastitas Borealis in the northern latitudes of Mars. Scientists think the ice persists all year because of the area's temperature and pressure. The crater is 35 kilometers wide with a maximum depth of about two kilometers. (Views: 205) [Comments: 1]

www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Mars_Express/SEMGKA808BE_0.html

The news account I read said that it was deposited in a cone-shaped formation, roughly 600 feet high.

Screw another mission to the moon - We should be blazing new paths, rather than revisiting old ones.

On to Mars, damnit!

Quoted: The news account I read said that it was deposited in a cone-shaped formation, roughly 600 feet high. Screw another mission to the moon - We should be blazing new paths, rather than revisiting old ones. On to Mars, damnit!

IIRC the new mission to the moon will be like a practice to mars...testing new technologies and strategies...much easier to troubleshoot on the moon than mars.

Dupe found on Arfcom!!!!!!




Dupe-Force is about as l337 as I'll ever get, I'm afraid...

Quoted: Quoted: The news account I read said that it was deposited in a cone-shaped formation, roughly 600 feet high. Screw another mission to the moon - We should be blazing new paths, rather than revisiting old ones. On to Mars, damnit! IIRC the new mission to the moon will be like a practice to mars...testing new technologies and strategies...much easier to troubleshoot on the moon than mars.

You cant go to Mars in one shot from the surface of the Earth.  Any ships that can do the round trip hauling materials and people for a perminant stay on Mars will be too big to be sent up in one piece.  You need a space dockyard, a gate way.  And the only place to do that is in Lunar orbit.  

But once you have gone that far then it just makes better sense to get as much material as you can from the low gravity Moon- which also doesn't have a atmosphere to incinerate you if you goof up- rather than haul it from the deeper gravity well.

A return to the Moon is in order to acquire Lunar resources, especially Oxygen and the aluminum, titanium and steel needed for spaceship hulls- by far the greatest chunk of mass.  Things like computers, wireing, probably even the engines will still get hauled up from Earth but we are still saving a huge amout of mass.

Developing the small, largely unmanned ore extraction and metal refining equipment and then the foundries and machineing units to make things like rolled metal or metal tubing to make hulls from is going to be interesting as well...

Ooooooooooooooooooooooo, pictures.

Quoted: Dupe found on Arfcom!!!!!! Dupe-Force is about as l337 as I'll ever get, I'm afraid...

Quoted: Quoted: The news account I read said that it was deposited in a cone-shaped formation, roughly 600 feet high. Screw another mission to the moon - We should be blazing new paths, rather than revisiting old ones. On to Mars, damnit! IIRC the new mission to the moon will be like a practice to mars...testing new technologies and strategies...much easier to troubleshoot on the moon than mars.

Practice that will cost tens of Billions of dollars, take 15 or 20 years, and most likely delay the Mars mission so long that I will not live long enough to see it.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: The news account I read said that it was deposited in a cone-shaped formation, roughly 600 feet high. Screw another mission to the moon - We should be blazing new paths, rather than revisiting old ones. On to Mars, damnit! IIRC the new mission to the moon will be like a practice to mars...testing new technologies and strategies...much easier to troubleshoot on the moon than mars. Practice that will cost tens of Billions of dollars, take 15 or 20 years, and most likely delay the Mars mission so long that I will not live long enough to see it.

Then you simply are not going to live long enough to see a man on mars.

Its stupid to do what we did with Apollo again and just send a man there to say we did it.  We took so many shortcuts to meet a arbitrary deadline that we left no space infrastructure behind- sure we learned how to build PCs and computerized cars, and nifty medical devices as spin offs but nothing that would allow us to go back again in the next 33 years and nothing that would allow us to stay in space without starting all over again.

Actually I really wish they hadn't decided to go to Mars.  There is so much "acreage" to be settled in Lunar space.  Given the limitations of our technology its much easier to deal with working with the Moon and with astroids than dealing with Mars.  

Quoted: The news account I read said that it was deposited in a cone-shaped formation, roughly 600 feet high. Screw another mission to the moon - We should be blazing new paths, rather than revisiting old ones. On to Mars, damnit!

Actually, one of the cool purposed to going back to the moon I heard bandied about was that of setting up a semi-permanent space station in orbit around the moon.  It would be a staging point for missions to Mars.

Basicly it would be a fuel, oxygen & supplies and vehicle warehouse.  They would send all the stuff out there via unmanned ships (soyuz type) and hold it there until the manned portion was ready.  It sounded like a really good way to cut down on costs and mass of the manned vessel.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: The news account I read said that it was deposited in a cone-shaped formation, roughly 600 feet high. Screw another mission to the moon - We should be blazing new paths, rather than revisiting old ones. On to Mars, damnit! IIRC the new mission to the moon will be like a practice to mars...testing new technologies and strategies...much easier to troubleshoot on the moon than mars. Practice that will cost tens of Billions of dollars, take 15 or 20 years, and most likely delay the Mars mission so long that I will not live long enough to see it. Then you simply are not going to live long enough to see a man on mars. Its stupid to do what we did with Apollo again and just send a man there to say we did it.  We took so many shortcuts to meet a arbitrary deadline that we left no space infrastructure behind- sure we learned how to build PCs and computerized cars, and nifty medical devices as spin offs but nothing that would allow us to go back again in the next 33 years and nothing that would allow us to stay in space without starting all over again. Actually I really wish they hadn't decided to go to Mars.  There is so much "acreage" to be settled in Lunar space.  Given the limitations of our technology its much easier to deal with working with the Moon and with astroids than dealing with Mars.

There were plans to carry on with Apollo, moonbase's, space stations, we weren't just going to the moon for the hell of it. But as always happens, the politicians were unwilling to fund anything that will not bring them votes, the space program was all but canceled to concentrate on the shuttle program which was said to a far cheaper way into space. That was BS and here we are in 2005 still messing with the same ill conceived shuttle program.

Perhaps none of us here will live to see a man on Mars, we can't even get into orbit reliably with our shuttles, the Int Space Station has become an over priced joke, does anyone even know what science is coming out of that thing? How much is it costing us to keep a couple people up there? If we can't afford to build and run an earth orbiting station, what makes anyone think we can go to the moon, asteroids or anywhere else.

How will we put a station in orbit around the moon or maintain a moonbase, where is the money going to come from? I can't see it.