New Mars Forums

Very interesting stuff.
    I'm a little bit puzzled, though.
    If the rockets shut down some 40 metres above the surface, why is there such a distinct darkening of the soil around the probe, which has been attributed to rocket exhaust?
    It seems unlikely to me that the rocket exhaust could have affected the surface from 40 metres (130 feet) away. In such a thin atmosphere, the plume would surely have dissipated sideways within a very short distance of the rocket nozzle(?).
    Shouldn't the surface be undisturbed?
                                                       ???

My natural inclinations wouldn't be to vote for the British Labour Party anyhow.
    But Blair is one of the few nominal 'socialists' in world politics with the guts to do what's right. He's proved that in Iraq and you have to give him credit for it.
    It's only a pity that many among his natural constituency obviously lack his vision and testicular fortitude and have staged a backlash against him at the polls. Nevertheless, it's encouraging to see that he's been returned to power in spite of that.
   (Low percentage voting figures are normal for Britain, where voting isn't compulsory, by the way.)

    Moving on to less palatable news, Bulgaria is withdrawing its 460 troops from Iraq soon. They lost something like a half dozen soldiers to terrorist violence, and a few civilians as well unfortunately, and the resulting political pressure at home has forced the withdrawal.
    Like Spain before her, Bulgaria has succumbed to fear and weakness and is abandoning its Coalition allies and the Iraqi people at their time of need. Shame!

    It's also been announced that the Japanese military engineering contingent is to go home at Christmas. It is these same engineers that the additional 450 Australian troops were recently sent to Iraq to protect from terrorists. I was afraid the Japanese withdrawal might prompt Australia to pull out its extra troops too. But, happily, the Aussie government has declared that those soldiers will be assigned to other vital tasks and will complete their planned tour of duty.
    Refreshing determination and adherence to the job in hand .. well done, Australia! And well done John Howard. 

    Kudos to America, most of all though, for its magnificent performance in Iraq in the face of appalling behaviour by the mindless murderers they have had to contend with. I am constantly in awe of the courage and generosity of the American people who have done so much to help so many of us for so long. A perfect country? No way .. not by any means! But the world would be so much the worse without her.  :up:

    On an upbeat note, Al-Qa'ida's third-in-command has recently been arrested in Pakistan, I believe, and has 'spilled the beans' about much of Bin Laden's network. There's even been some optimistic talk about soon capturing Bin Laden himself. We can only hope.
                                                               

Thanks for the warning, people. I'll look out for those programs.  :up:

    It's an interesting mental exercise to imagine what forms life might take in different environments. Being a Mars nut from way back, of course, I've often considered the plight of animals which might have evolved on Mars in the early days, when conditions were favourable, only to find themselves confined to ever-shrinking ecological niches as the climate worsened.
    If the conditions changed slowly enough, it's possible to imagine any such creatures adapting and changing their physiology to suit. But how tenacious can life be? Could macroscopic multicellular animal life adapt sufficiently to survive the freezing, near-vacuum, virtually oxygen-free environment we find on Mars today?

    Apparently, Dr. Carl Sagan was prepared to believe it possible. In the design stage of the Viking landers, it was seriously considered that the probes might detect the movement of some of the 'rocks' on the surface - the idea being that some animals could have developed rocky exoskeletons to shield themselves from the intense U.V. light and the low temperatures. Sagan even wanted lights fitted to the landers, so the cameras could pick up the activities of any nocturnal creatures!

    As it happened, of course, no Martian animals were detected. But I still wonder whether they might be there somewhere, in more sheltered regions than the open wind-swept plains the Vikings landed on.
    I imagine things like small arthropods, crab-like creatures living in the depths of Mariner Valley or Hellas Basin, perhaps relying on symbiotic cyano-bacteria for their oxygen and a hypersaline cellular medium to ward off freezing. They might hide in underground burrows most of the time, when it's cold, and appear on the surface only briefly, when the Sun warms the sand and transient thin films of liquid water are possible.

    Then again, maybe there are no such things!     :laugh:
    But it's entertaining to speculate.

Hop:-

    Yes. I think Mars is more volcanically active than it's given credit for. And I wouldn't be surprised if liquid water still exists in large near-surface aquifers, too.
    I find it very exciting, m

RMB:-

    No. I don't think any of us were in doubt.

Excellent pictures!  :up:
    The Martian Analemma was fascinating. A spearhead Analemma, eh? Very suitable for the god of war.  :;):
    Loved the last dust storm picture. I can just imagine how much more dynamic the climate system will be on Mars when we start raising the atmospheric density. 

MadGrad:-

    Umm ... yep! 
    Or you may just be a cross-dresser and don't know it yet.

    Either way, the world is your oyster.   :laugh:

[Don't .. repeat .. Don't let this go to your head, but you're one smart 16 year-old. All intelligence is relevant (equally valuable) and relative, so beware of judging intelligence - it's just too difficult and I've rarely known it to achieve anything worthwhile anyway. But, having said that, as intelligence goes, I think you're very intelligent!   
    Plus .. I think you should try and get out more.  ]

Cindy:-

    Ah yes.
    I've seen nights just like that. Fairy tale stuff that even Walt Disney can't match. It almost makes you ache to witness its surreal beauty - familiar things seen in an unfamiliar, seemingly alien, light. Another world indeed.
    Magic!   

Cindy:-

    It's an interesting question.
    Of course, we've all known for some time now that salty water once flowed on Mars, so I won't insult your intelligence by dwelling too long on that aspect of it.
    (In passing, I imagine that one of the most important factors in the concentration of salts in water on Mars would be the length of time any oceans may have persisted and how long any rivers existed to wash eroded minerals into them.
    Another factor would be the concentration of minerals in certain bodies of water due to evaporation, of course; as discovered by Opportunity at Meridiani.)

    Something that's always fascinated me is that there are dendritic drainage networks all over the ancient cratered southern highlands of Mars. Although described by geologists as 'immature' networks, lacking the well-developed characteristics exhibited by similar networks here on Earth, it is widely suspected they may have been carved by the runoff of precipitation billions of years ago.
    Then you have to consider the existence of enormous lakes in the southern highlands, like Lake Ma'adim:

    ... which is estimated to have held more than 5 times as much water as the present-day Great Lakes of North America. Calculations suggest the lake had a surface area of some 1.1 million square kilometres and a depth of 1100 metres!
    On a topical note, it was this lake which overflowed into Ma'adim Vallis and fed the Gusev Crater Lake, whose sediments NASA's Spirit Rover is investigating as we speak. (See the topmost blue-filled crater in the above picture.)

    It seems likely to me that Lake Ma'adim, whose distinct shoreline has been identified and mapped, was a freshwater lake, perhaps fed by precipitation during an early epoch or by freshwater aquifers in a later era.
    The northern wall of Gusev Crater was breached at some stage in the past, perhaps by water erosion, and it's not difficult to imagine the water streaming northward into the lowlands. There it may well have become part of a saltier longer-standing body of oceanic water(?)

    I can't prove Lake Ma'adim was filled with fresh water, of course. It's more of a hunch. But it may well be that Spirit's current analysis of a rocky outcrop dubbed 'Methuselah', in the Columbia Hills of Gusev Crater, will soon be giving us definitive information one way or the other.

    Isn't it just wonderful stuff?!!!   :up:   

::Edit::  I know I've waxed lyrical about Lake Ma'adim before. Apologies to those who have tired of my enthusiasm for it. 

GCNR:-

    Yes they certainly can handle a 6-month zero-g trip to Mars.
    The question is, can they handle 6 months in zero-g, 18 months in 0.38g, 6 more months in zero-g, and then a sudden return to 1g (after 2.5 years)?
    My guess is no, they can't.

    Sure. Big problem. But why should the cable break?
    Why not worry about a large meteor impact?
    What if you have a car crash ... what if your airbag doesn't deploy?
    What if you have a heart attack tomorrow?
    Why don't we just make a reasoned evaluation of the risks and understand that the rotation-cable breaking on the trip to Mars is an extremely low risk?

    Have a small communications pod, with antennae, on the cable, at the centre of gravity. It would have no problem aiming toward Earth.

    Put the solar panels on the centre-of-gravity pod, too. And, with the modules rotating once per minute, or faster, heat build-up should be controllable.

    If we have comfortable 1g living quarters for the trip, by utilizing centripetal force, do we need to use an NTR for a faster trip? Why not increase our margins by taking a month longer to get there?
    Admittedly, the less time in interplanetary space, the less the radiation dose. But I believe radiation is a far lesser danger to the crew and the mission than the deleterious  effects of bone and muscle wasting during 12 months in zero-g and 18 months in 0.38g. And then there's the PR disaster of astronauts being dragged off the ERV, incapacitated, on stretchers and life-support.

    Just a few thoughts to counter GCNR's regular doom-and-gloom scenarios.      
[No offence GCNR, but your pessimism and tut-tutting can get depressing at times. No doubt you call it 'realism'.    ]

Cindy:-

     :laugh:  Might help explain why I've seen so few moonbows.

A warm welcome to New Mars, Benlinliu.
    Don't worry about the language problem.
    I think your English is good and your meaning is clear enough.