New Mars Forums

Mark S writes:-

    Amazing!!
    Such an indictment of the politico/economic climate in the biggest space agency on Earth, when fear is the driving force instead of the wonder of discovery!

    I sense the frustration in TJohn's remarks, too:-

    As you may know, TJohn, there is a conspiracy theory about just this kind of thing. There are those who surmise that JPL is the organisation with the most to lose from a redirecting of finance out of robotic probes and into human missions.
    I've never analysed this notion to see whether it is a cogent argument or not, but there have been many attempts by various parties to present evidence to this end.
    Actually I'd be interested to hear from people with views one way or the other. I hasten to add that, though I love a good conspiracy theory, I don't necessarily buy into this one by any means.
    I know the mainstream explanation for all of this is just that NASA has had a bad run of luck and was more inclined to sit and do nothing rather than risk further embarrassment. But is there more to it? Is there a cloak-and-dagger act going on behind the scenes at JPL?
                                        :0

Here in tropical north Queensland (Australia), they used to build what were called, not surprisingly, 'Queenslanders'! These are essentially weatherboard (I think Americans say 'clapboard' ) structures with corrugated iron roofs, but elevated on poles so that the floor is about 3 metres above the ground. The elevation means more breezes and air-circulation under the floor, which is desirable in a warm climate. They also have a verandah at the front and, less commonly, at the rear.
    Some of these Queenslanders are delightful houses! Although they're relatively high-maintenance in terms of paint, if well looked after they're just a treat to behold!

    In recent decades, with air-conditioning becoming a common feature, the Queenslander is rarely built, except by die-hard purists prepared to take on the disadvantages as the price for its beauty!
    With the prevalence of termites and what we call cyclones (hurricanes in America, I believe), and the trend toward low maintenance, houses now are different. Most are built on a reinforced concrete slab which has steel rods protruding upwards out of it at 600 millimetre intervals all around the perimeter. The walls are made of hollow concrete blocks (large bricks) and concrete is poured into the hollow space where the steel rods are positioned inside the wall. Thus, about every 2 feet (in American lingo! ), the wall is a steel-reinforced, solid, concrete column. The walls are later cement-rendered (two coats) and painted.
    The termite-treated triangular wooden roof trusses have joints secured with what we call 'gangnails'. These are enormously strong. They showed one of these roof trusses on T.V., chained between two Mack trucks. The trucks tried to drive away from each other, thus tearing apart the truss. Their wheels spun but the roof truss held!
    These roof trusses are bolted to the steel reinforcing bars protruding from the top of the walls, so that the floor, walls, and roof are one integral structure. When the rest of the woodwork is completed on the roof, coloured concrete roof tiles are individually secured to that framework, or colour-bonded corrugated steel sheeting is screwed onto it.
    Colour-coded heavy-duty aluminium (read aluminum! ) window frames are securely fitted into the window openings, and the glass installed is cyclone-rated according to the altitude of the house above sea-level and proximity to the coast. A quick calculation based on the information printed on a corner of the glass in my living room window, showed that, if the window were horizontal, I could stand in the middle of a typical pane and it wouldn't give way!

    In spite of this almost universal standard of building strength in north Queensland, we still manage to produce quite a wide variety of styles, colours, and finishes. Though admittedly, the more money you're prepared to pay, the better chance you have of getting something really different.

    The reason I decided to launch into all this is because of the news items we get from America. We see the aftermath of hurricanes and tornadoes and can't believe the extent of the devastation!
    They show a small town from the air and all that's left is a few hectares of splintered wood! We just stare, open-mouthed, unable to understand why all the houses have just blown away in the wind.
    Doesn't America have different building codes for different risk zones? We have strict laws about building standards in areas prone to cyclonic winds but it appears, at least from what we've seen, that America doesn't. Is this the case?
                                     ???

    I really should apologise to Cindy for only half staying on topic with this post. It's just that this American building standards thing has occurred to us quite often recently.

Sounds about right, Rob!

    Are we agreed we'd need to evacuate the tube? If so, there'd have to be a seal at the top end, resistant to air pressure outside but presenting no barrier to the emerging projectile. As Byron suggests, this should be the easy bit!

    There could be a flaw in the logic being used here, though. It's one thing to talk about shuttles entering Earth's upper atmosphere, or accelerating half a tonne of Martian air to the terminal velocity required. But both of these are relatively gradual events. What we're talking about here is a projectile, travelling in a vacuum, suddenly hitting the air at maybe 7 kms/sec.
    Even though the air is very thin, are we still going to experience an explosive shock at the instant of egress from the tube? And, if we do, how destructive is it likely to be and can we build the projectile to lessen the effect or withstand the shock?

Hi Nida!
           That's the nicest thing I've heard from a young lady in a VERY long time!
           Unfortunately, I'm approaching my 104th birthday. Although I can certainly remember chasing women, I can no longer recall why!! (Slight exaggeration.)     

           Anyway, you shouldn't go around telling men you've got a crush on them. Men, as a class of people, are extremely susceptible to the merest hint of flattery and become insufferable in its wake! I've already started preening myself like some outlandish peacock!!

           But thankyou, Nida, for absolutely making my day!!!
                                           

It seems this whole thread lives or dies by the effect 1 or 2 millibars of Martian air will have on a projectile hitting it at 4 or 5 kilometres per second.
    We can assume all sorts of things but we really need a definitive answer in terms of numbers to determine the magnitude of the shock and the heat produced.

    I've always doubted that a rail gun would work on Mars, even at such high altitudes, but Rob S has got me wondering now! Maybe I've been too pessimistic.
                                                     

PS. I assume the tube would have to be evacuated to improve
      efficiency by reducing drag during acceleration?

Many thanks, kai !

    It's looking more and more like a deliberate forgery by Laney and/or parties unknown.
    Assuming Hoagland was duped, he must know it by now. It will be interesting to see how he reacts.
                                                           

Interesting stuff, Tripp.

    If nobody at TEM can reproduce Laney's result, then what hope has anyone else of doing so?!
    From what you've written, It appears probable that Laney himself has no record of what he did and the order in which he did it. As everyone knows by now, I'm not au fait with imaging techniques. So it will come as no surprise that I gleaned only a general idea of the complexities of image processing procedures from that 'conversation' with Bamf.
    But it was obvious that if a "print/scan step" was introduced by Laney, then that eliminates any possibility of identifying the source data.

    One of the most telling portions of the exchange comes when Bamf states:-

    It's becoming apparent to me that this whole episode will have no clear-cut and decisive outcome which would demolish TEM once and for all.
    However obvious it may be to people with the necessary skills that Laney's 'real' image, and the procedures he's performed on it, are the result of incompetence and/or deceit,
it seems unlikely that that understanding can be conveyed simply to the layman.

    A further complication seems to be the inherent distrust between the opposing camps. By rights, of course, the decision should be a 'no-brainer'. We should all just trust NASA and ASU and Noel Gorelick.
    But the whole thrust of the TEM case is that NASA has a hidden agenda and cannot BE trusted!! It's unlikely that Mark S, for instance, is going to believe what Noel Gorelick tells him!

    Having heard from Tripp, and looking forward to any help Josh Cryer may be able to offer, I'll also be interested to hear how TEM try to justify their position from here on. If nobody else can duplicate their results, the results are effectively worthless.

    Curious though, how Hoagland's magnified images seem to show such exquisite detail of what looks so very much like right-angled structures. How is it that 'blocky' imaging artifacts manage to look more like buildings the closer you peer at them? Shouldn't artifacts look even more like 'blobby', shapeless optical interference under closer scrutiny? These seem to do the opposite.
                                          ???

Thanks in advance, Josh.

    You're right in voicing your reservations about MarsNews. People like me look at articles in MarsNews and think to themselves: "Hmmm. The staff at a site like this can't be as ignorant as I am about image processing. Yet, they seem to place considerable credence in the TEM position on this IR image deal. If THEY think there might be something in it, maybe there is!"

    And such thinking is encouraged by the fact that Enterprise Mission has been able to publish all these claims without a recognised authority coming forward to explain to the layman, in simple terms, exactly why the TEM position is false and untenable.
    If TEM is as annoying to NASA as some have suggested, it would surely be in their (NASA's) interests to publicly humiliate TEM by showing, in plain language, that they have misrepresented the truth. And it IS apparent that NASA has tried to discredit TEM in the past, with it's appalling and reprehensible release of the deliberately distorted "catbox" image of Cydonia, and its disingenuous use of MOLA data to create a shapeless blob out of the Face mesa.
    If they are THAT irritated by TEM, why don't they blow them out of the water over this IR image thing today?   ???

    While I'm at it, where are all the night-time IR images taken by Odyssey?
    They must have taken dozens of them by now.

    And how far into the northern summer do we have to get before the CO2 'hood' lifts and we can get an overview of the hydrogen (read water ice) distribution in the top metre of regolith in the northern hemisphere? Many of us have been hanging out for this information and can't fathom why it hasn't appeared.
                                           :0

It's incredible to think that, at least up until January 2000, every country in the world except Burma, Liberia, and the U.S.A. had adopted the SI system of measurements.
    I could be wrong, but I thought I heard lately that it was down to two countries now. So maybe Burma has changed to metric.
    Just in case you're curious, Australia commenced the process of metrication in 1971 and completed the transition by 1981. Changing over is really not as hard as it looks!
                                     

Another fascinating post, RobS.

    It never ceases to amaze me that for any given problem related to human exploration of Mars, we always manage to come up with at least one brilliant solution, often more than one.
    This 'embarrassment of riches' when it comes to technological solutions, emphasises for me the fact that there really is nothing substantial between us and a permanent outpost (colony) on Mars. All that stands in our way is money! Or at least the lack of it.

    People talk about the political will to send humans to Mars, but that too just boils down to the will to spend the money. It's always the money, honey!!

    Humanity is WAY MORE than just ready to go to Mars ... we've been ready for years! Hell, it's like being 14 months pregnant, we're so ready to go!!!

    Sorry .... I just get a little frustrated every now and then!
                                       ???

    Keep up the good work, Rob.   

Phobos writes:-

    That makes two of us .... three if you count Brad Edwards!!!
                                       

    Just recently, on the cover of one of the 'big glossy' science magazines, they showed a very exciting artist's impression of a full-scale elevator with all the trimmings.
    This was no thin 'ribbon'. This was a thick strong column with the ability to carry two lanes of traffic ... one going up and one coming down. This latter point is important because Arthur C. Clarke's concept (and maybe that of others too) included the neat idea that, using superconducting technology, the potential energy given up by the descending vehicle is used to power the ascending vehicle on the other side of the cable.
    That way, ground-based lasers beaming energy to the ascending vehicle are no longer required. With minimal energy losses in the system, the cost per kilogram of putting mass into geostationary orbit becomes almost trivial.

    I love it, I tell you!!  I just LOVE it!!!
                                                         

WELL, RON !!

    STILL WAITING ..... !!!!!

                                          ???