New Mars Forums

Hi Cindy!
    Yes, I saw that article but you beat me to it in the posting department!   

    But, is this new system really all that different compared to, say, http://www.boeing.com/assocproducts/ene … .html]this kind of thing?
    The idea of harnessing solar heat directly, using lenses or mirrors, is not a new concept. Apparently that magnificent 18th century Frenchman, Lavoisier, had a large convex lens manufactured and succeeded in melting metal (platinum, I think?)

    But regardless of how old the idea is, or who invented or refined it, it looks like it should be used today to supplement out electricity supplies in sunny areas like, say, New Mexico or Outback Australia.
                               

Earlier this year, the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope detected about 20 parts per billion (ppb) of hydrogen peroxide in the martian atmosphere, which apparently fits in with theoretical predictions about the existence of the catalytic gas there.
    I'm not able to find out where in the atmosphere this gas is concentrated, if anywhere, or whether that figure of 20 ppb is representative of the atmosphere as a whole (?). In addition, I can't locate any information on the stability of H2O2 in Mars' lower atmosphere, where CO2 mixes with small concentrations of oxygen, water vapour, and now, methane.

    If we assume the methane is biological in origin, it is clearly concentrated enough, at 60 ppb or higher, to overcome the effects of H2O2 (20 ppb), with which it reacts, at least on a local level. In other words, any H2O2 in the lower atmosphere, even that produced by dust devils I assume, is being 'mopped up' by methane.
    This would, in turn, enable the microorganisms producing the methane to thrive, since the antiseptic H2O2 is being kept at much lower levels.

    I can imagine this set-up as a kind of 'Gaia-like' control of the environment by life - stabilising the conditions to enhance its own viability - as life here on Earth is known to do.
    Admittedly, on Mars the conditions are far more marginal than they are here but the principle may still hold. The methane waste product of life on Mars may be limiting the concentration of H2O2 and thus enhancing the conditions for life to continue and to produce more methane .. etc. etc.

    Just a little speculation.   

Hmmm.
    I don't know about Willy Wonka's factory being on the Moon. That so-called 'rabbit' seen on Mars looked a lot like a Wonka Bar wrapper to me!
                                            ???

    By the way, there's a brief description of the KGB dwarf legend at http://www.astronautix.com/astros/kgbdwarf.htm]THIS SITE.
                                                   

Interesting.
    Some of our resident space hardware geniuses here have mentioned the fact that the ISS is in an orbit too inclined to the equator to be useful as a staging post for crewed lunar flights in future. Perhaps this CX OLEV space-tug, or some near-term enhancement thereof, could gradually shift the ISS's orbit to a more equatorial one(?) and make it more useful in this way.
    Recently, people have been talking about abandoning the ISS as an expensive white elephant. But, with President Bush apparently intending a return to the Moon, and with the amount of money already spent on it, surely shifting the ISS to a more useful orbit would be worth considering. It could then be gradually upgraded to include an on-orbit construction facility for assembling larger interplanetary ships from components launched separately from Earth (or even, much later on, from components produced at a lunar facility).  ???   

[P.S. I realise 'equatorialising' the ISS's orbit would preclude using Russian launch pads to reach it (too far north) but, if the U.S. is serious about human exploration of the Moon, it will surely have a sufficiently reliable ELV by then to obviate the need for Russian mercy missions.]

Cindy:-

    I'll definitely drink to that!   :up:

Hold the phone!
    I just realised there's another Titan flyby on Dec. 13th, at an altitude of 2400 km. Perhaps they'll get a better idea of the surface conditions then.

    Incidentally, there's a good update on science returned from Cassini lately at http://skyandtelescope.com/news/article_1386_1.asp]THIS SITE.
   (Apologies in advance to those who know about it already.    )

I was interested to read that if Huygens lands on a hard surface, it will have about 30 minutes of 'life' to send back data. But if it lands in a sea of liquid hydrocarbon, it will have only a few minutes before its instruments are flooded.
    I hadn't heard about this difference before. I'd assumed the probe was built to cope with a liquid surface just as well as a solid one.

    Now, of course, nobody seems able to tell whether the Titanian surface is solid, liquid, or slush .. or even if it might have the consistency of drifts of powdery snow!
    I find it amazing that a probe like Cassini, bristling with every remote scanning instrument known to science, can get up close and personal with a body like Titan and still be baffled as to its surface composition.   

    Now I suppose Huygens will disappear when it reaches the surface of Titan and nobody will be able to determine what happened to it.
    Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock never had this kind of trouble analysing a celestial object.     

    In my opinion, a much closer approximation to a "two-front war" would have to be Coalition troops fighting against terrorists in Iraq, while simultaneously fighting against treacherous propaganda by left-wing journalists at home.
    As Bill has pointed out repeatedly, we're in Iraq now; the time for being 'Anti-Iraq-War' is long gone. Trying to pull the rug out from under our armed forces by demonising them and publishing things like dubious civilian casualty figures is nothing short of a disgraceful betrayal. As long as our soldiers' lives are on the line, I think scurrilous journalists with their own political agendas should be actively restrained from attempting to demoralise our military.
    If you want to call that totalitarian censorship, then go right ahead. 60 years ago, in WWII, we were fighting different forms of fascism and behaviour like that of our present-day leftist journalists would have earned them prison terms for giving comfort to the enemy.
    This is absolutely not the time for personal politics - the lives of our own countrymen and the freedom of a nation are at stake! It's too important.
    To all those still whining and sulking about the Bush-Kerry election result, I say: Grow up and deal with it like adults.

    The figure of 100,000 Iraqi civilian deaths has been trumpeted from the rooftops by left-wing journalists, still completely confused as to which side they're on - the side of liberal democracy or theocratic fascism.
    The figure is a statistical nonsense, as can be gleaned from http://slate.msn.com/id/2108887/]THIS ARTICLE, by Fred Kaplan.
    I would normally present a few of the salient features of the article, as a courtesy to those too busy to read it in its entirety. But this one needs to be read right through to get a feel for why the 100,000 figure is so unreliable.
    The actual figure is probably somewhere between 15,000 and 25,000.
    So, what am I saying here? That a figure of, say, 20,000 civilian deaths is somehow 'better' or 'O.K.'?  No, of course not!  What I'm pointing out is the unforgiveably palpable glee on the part of some journalists in publishing the figure of 100,000 deaths for purely anti-Coalition sensationalism.
    The figure is based on data so shaky as to be meaningless but the media deliberately overlooked that fact in order to publish a number which suited their agenda. Those responsible are not journalists.

    And another thing!  :rant:
    From my vantage point on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, I can see clearly that all this "Divided America" stuff is, surprise surprise, being fuelled by the media. God knows what they're trying to achieve with this one but it looks like unadulterated hype and nonsense from here.
    President Bush was just returned to office by the largest number of votes any American president ever had, many of them from black and hispanic voters not expected to vote for him, I'm led to believe. In terms of the popular vote:-
    Bush received 59,459,765 votes (according to CNN) beating Kerry by 3,510,358.
    In 1976, Jimmy Carter received 40,830,763 votes, beating Gerald Ford by 1,682,790.
    In 1968, Richard Nixon received 31,785,480 votes, beating Hubert Humphrey by 510,314.
    In 1960, John F. Kennedy received 34,226,731 votes, beating Richard Nixon by only 118,574 !!
    (Some sources put the gap at only 113,000 votes and apparently the confusion is understandable ... Diana West of the Washington Times wrote: "Only 113,000 votes, including thousands of demonstrably fraudulent ones, would ultimately separate the two candidates in the popular vote.
      The 1960 morning brought a shrinking margin and reports of massive Democratic fraud in Texas and Illinois. But Mr. Nixon went statesman on his political allies and refused to demand a recount.)
    I may be wrong but I don't recall as much being written or said about "A Nation Divided" in 1960, 1968, and 1976. If America is divided today, it's quite clear it's no more divided than it's often been in the past. And there's no point in pretending that today's issues are different; the issues in years gone by were just as important to Americans then as the new ones are today.
    No, the fact is that America is not divided at all, not in any real or comparatively meaningful sense. But the media obviously see it as important to some politically partisan cause of their own to make it look that way.

    I think the same people who see it as politically advantageous to try to undermine the Coalition effort in Iraq, see it as politically advantageous to foment divisiveness at home.
    Beware the traitors in your midst!   :;):

I've been banging the 'Life-on-Mars' drum for ages now and I'm almost embarrassed to repeat it all again here ... almost embarrassed!   

1) Earth and Mars were similar about 3.5 bya - in terms of air, water, temperature.
2) Life existed on Earth 3.5 bya.
3) Earth and Mars have never been quarantined from each other because of impact transfer of crustal material. (More impacts back then.)
4) It follows that life existed on Mars 3.5 bya.
5) All Earth-life is based on the same 20 laevorotatory amino acids - no fundamentally 'different' life has been found here.
6) It follows that Earth-life and Mars-life are the same kind of life.
7) It follows there was only one 'genesis' or
     Earth-life devoured or outcompeted Mars-life when they met or
     Mars-life devoured or outcompeted Earth-life when they met or
     the two types of life amalgamated to form what we see on earth today.
8) Earth-life (the simple kind, bacteria) is extraordinarily tenacious and adaptable.
9) It follows that Mars life (bacteria at least) is extraordinarily tenacious and adaptable - it must be, it's the same life.
10) It follows that we're looking for familiar terrestrial-type bacteria on Mars and should expect to find it.

    "On a quiet day, if you keep perfectly still, you can feel the paradigm shifting" toward life on Mars
    From my point of view, it's way past time!  The logic seems inescapable and it would actually be far more remarkable to me if Mars were sterile.

    Speaking of the paradigm shifting, I noticed a couple of articles. The first relates to pictures of the martian canyons returned by the Mars Express Orbiter. The full script is http://www.nature.com/news/2004/041101/ … .html]HERE.
    A few of the key quotes are from Dr. John Murray, one of the HRSC team members, based at the Earth Sciences Dept. at the Open University, Milton Keynes, U.K. :-

    The second article relates to the recent (now confirmed) discovery of methane in the martian atmosphere. It's got biology Professor Timothy Kral, of the University of Arkansas, quite excited because it seems to fit in very well with his work. He and his colleagues at the Arkansas-Oklahoma Center for Space and Planetary Sciences have been working for years on the possibility that the Red Planet could sustain life.
    In particular, they've been testing the ability of terrestrial bacteria called methanogens to survive under martian conditions. According to the article: "Methanogens are found in nearly every anaerobic environment on Earth, from hot springs to the deep ocean to the intestinal tracts of humans and animals. Methanogens do not require oxygen to survive; instead, these tiny creatures breathe carbon dioxide and hydrogen gas, producing methane as a waste product. This unique form of respiration makes methanogens potentially viable residents of Mars, whose atmosphere is predominantly composed of carbon dioxide with practically no oxygen."
    Speaking of the martian methane, Professor Kral said:-

    For the complete article, click http://advancement.uark.edu/news/NOV04/ … .html]HERE.
    While the work of Professor Kral et al. and the discovery of martian methane do mesh together well, it's only circumstantial evidence for life on Mars and nobody is reading any more into it than that at this stage. However ...

    I think the wheels are turning. Now that the revered Viking scientists who declared Mars sterile are retired or no longer with us, the scientific community may permit itself gradually to accept the logically obvious.

    Shhh..hold still...can you feel that paradigm moving..?!   

Having the biggest and best military in the world isn't necessarily a guarantee of uninterrupted victories, MadGrad, as I'm sure you realise. Guerrilla warfare can be very effective against even the best-trained troops and terrain plays a crucial role in that kind of warfare.

    The biggest army the world had seen up to that point, Persia's army invading Greece in 480 BC under Xerxes, was held up for many days and suffered disproportionate casualties at a narrow pass at Thermopylae. Xerxes' army of some 150,000 were up against no more than 10,000 Greeks, led by 300 Spartans and the Spartan king Leonidas.
    While a Spartan soldier was worth any 5 soldiers of any other army of the day, due to their intensely militaristic culture, the Persians should have won easily due to sheer numbers. But the terrain prevented them using their numerical advantage until a Greek traitor showed them a hidden mountain pass which allowed them to outflank the Greeks.      [Incidentally, while the great majority of Greek troops withdrew before being surrounded and trapped, the Spartans refused to retreat and fought and died to the last man. When just the three hundred Spartans were left facing insuperable odds, Leonidas, upon hearing the ultimatum from Xerxes that the Persian archers would send a hail of arrows which would blot out the Sun, is reputed to have replied: "Then we'll fight in the shade."! ]

    In AD 9 at Teutoburg, three Roman legions, strung out on a narrow marshy track in dense forest and driving rain, were attacked over some days by germanic tribesmen and massacred. At that time, a Roman legion was an unmatched fighting machine and Rome's military strength was formidable. Yet three legions were crushed by a guerrilla rabble, who would normally have presented the Romans with no problem, except for the simple fact that the Romans were unable to marshal their forces in the restricted space available to them.

    Vietnam ... well, I don't need to elaborate on that one, do I?  ???

    The present battle for Fallujah in Iraq could be nearly as difficult, particularly when you consider that there are civilians still in the city and the Coalition is doing its best to spare non-combatants - an almost impossible job.
    If the Romans were faced with a city in revolt, they were unconcerned with public perceptions of their methods. In fact, the more brutal their reputation, the more likely their subject peoples were to behave themselves. In addition, they had long since learned that, when you suppress a rebellion, you kill everything that moves. If you kill a rebel but leave his son or daughter alive, that son or daughter will grow up to kill a Roman out of revenge. For that reason, they slaughtered every man woman and child - no comebacks.

    As Cindy has said, it's harder for 'the good guys' - us - to make progress against utterly unscrupulous murderers like the fascist Islamics we face in Iraq and elsewhere. We have to play by the rules whereas they haven't the slightest qualms about deliberately killing anyone to achieve their aims - even fellow Arabs and Muslims, and even children.

    Being a superpower ain't easy .. in any era.   

If the Sun is blowing out all this matter in CMEs so regularly, presumably over billions of years, I wonder if it makes any appreciable difference to its mass?
    Since a star's mass is related to its power output, is this small but steady mass reduction likely to have any retarding effect on our Sun's gradually increasing heat and brightness?
    Just musing.
                                            ???   

Sounds brilliant, Rik!   
    It's certainly the only way I'll ever get to 'walk' on Mars - in this life anyway.

    Needless to say, I won't be offering my services to help with the programming; might as well ask a chimpanzee to do calculus!