There's Water in Them There Hills!


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Mars water surprise in Curiosity rover soil samples

 

There is a surprising amount of water bound up in the soil of Mars, according to an analysis done onboard the US space agency's (Nasa) Curiosity rover.

 

When it heated a small pinch of dirt scooped up from the ground, the most abundant vapour detected was H2O.

Curiosity researcher Laurie Leshin and colleagues tell Science Magazine that Mars' dusty red covering holds about 2% by weight of water.

 

This could be a useful resource for future astronauts, they say.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24287207

 

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2% water by mass in the surface soil, ice and dry ice (frozen CO2) a meter or less down. Plenty of resources for making propellants, breathable O2, and growing hydroponic crops. Getting there.

 

I know we are centuries away, but is there theoretically enough water there to terraform the place?

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The Martian surface contains between 2% and 7% water ice by mass in the equatorial zone and up to 70% by mass in the polar regions. Melt most of that and Mars has oceans. The problem is having enough atmospheric pressure to prevent loss of the water into space.

Mars_Full_Planet_Water_Map.jpg

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2% water by mass in the surface soil, ice and dry ice (frozen CO2) a meter or less down. Plenty of resources for making propellants, breathable O2, and growing hydroponic crops. Getting there.

 

Well the general consensus now is that Mars was Earth like in that it had oceans, water and vegetation, with all these resources already present on the planet, I wonder if there is a possibility of terraforming?

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Not without a thicker atmosphere and synthetic magnetosphere. Practicality says those will have to be local infrastructure constructs (domes, habitats, regolith radiation shields, superconducting coils etc.) and not global.

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We need to send Mars some of our water.

 

That would cause contamination.

 

Could slam a rocket into Mars to cause a deep enough crater, and let Curiosity inspect the fresh hole. Then send a team to build in the crater, and fill it in to live underground.

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^ Assuming there is any life to contaminate.

 

And we could send pure distilled water.

 

But unless we had some free powerful energy to send water there, it would be very expensive.

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I never knew Mars has polar ice caps. What are we waiting for, send someone over there. Imagine the things we could discover, their might also be seeds, nuts etc over there that the people could use... not an impossibility.

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I never knew Mars has polar ice caps. What are we waiting for, send someone over there. Imagine the things we could discover, their might also be seeds, nuts etc over there that the people could use... not an impossibility.

 

Seeds? Nuts? On Mars??? That would imply that there is vegetal life on Mars more advanced than bacteria and so far even that has not been proved.

Mars is an uninteresting rock: geologically speaking, what are we going to find? Nothing that we did not find study on Earth. Resources speaking, even less

 

That would cost way too much for humans to go there and even more to terraform. What about using these resources not to screw our current planet?

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