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Another benefit of craters (some moreso than others) is that you are dug in closer to the bedrock, meaning that once average annual temperatures break the freezing point of your groundwater it won't take much extra water (if any) to fill in down to the bedrock than it did to fill down to the permafrost. In these locations noosfractal's domed craters could possibly begin terraformation before outside pressure levels would otherwise allow, thus accelerating the oxygenation process and ozone formation (which I also have a model of).
Craters would erode away with rain unless they were all of mostly rock wouldn't they? Maybe I'm on too short of a time scale, but Mars has some slight wind erosion going on now. The air would thicken with water vapor that's going to be the rain, and then you'd have the erosion from rainfall eating away at regolith craters too.
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Craters would erode away with rain unless they were all of mostly rock wouldn't they? Maybe I'm on too short of a time scale, but Mars has some slight wind erosion going on now. The air would thicken with water vapor that's going to be the rain, and then you'd have the erosion from rainfall eating away at regolith craters too.
Like you say, I think it depends on what the crater is made of, and maybe also how big the crater is. There are craters on Earth that have survived millions of years of weathering.
But in the context of domed craters, I've been wondering if they really provide that much benefit. Maybe there'll be water pooled at the bottom of the crater, maybe you can bury your habits more easily.
But I've been thinking about dome construction, and I'm not sure that putting up a dome in a crater has any great benefit, and it may just mean that one of your first jobs is to build a road out of the crater. Blah.
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Sorry about the new topic. Meant for this to be in the thread the quote came from. You could always just build your garage/port facilities outside the crater's rim and ride an elevator up. There've been elevators built before for moving tractor trailers or even the ones used on aircraft carriers for moving planes. They should be powerful enough in the early years until you actually have a planetary economy going. Not sure if that'd be simpler than a road though.
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In "Mars: A Warmer Wetter Planet" Dr. Kargel says that at Arizona Meteor Crater there has been less than one meter of soil erosion per million years. Most of this comes from the (rare but intense) rainfalls.
Glacial erosion is very effective in eroding rock. From the same book it points out that Glaciers on Mars are eroding at 1/1000 to 1/10,000 of the Earth's rate (because of the lower gravity and the much much slower build up of ice in the glaciers).
Wind erosion is orders of magnitude slower than the erosion caused by moving water (either as a liquid or solid). So I am sure that if we get snow to fall and melt on Mars, the pace of erosion will pick up.
However, its lower gravity will always mean that erosion is slower on Earth. Water running down a 20% Martian slope will be moving 1/3 as fast and will have 1/9 the cutting power as water on a similar slope on Earth. (I am assuming it has 1/9 because the formula for kinetic energy is: KE = 1/2 m V^2. I am assuming the erosion is based on the energy in the water flow. Anyone know different?)
Anyway, the slower erosion on Mars is good as there is less volcanism to build up mountains.
Warm regards, Rick.
post script. Rob, the Arizona Meteor Crater is ~50,000 years old.
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