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Should NASA go to Mars or back to the Moon?

Forums: Science, Space Exploration, Nasa, Fantasy, Space
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maporsche
 
  1  
Reply Thu 23 Jul, 2009 09:04 pm
July 11th, 2010 - a total solar eclipse will be visible from Easter Island.....sounds like a fun trip.
Setanta
 
  1  
Reply Thu 23 Jul, 2009 09:07 pm
I saw a "partial," which was very nearly a total (we were about 100 miles too far south) when i was a kid, in the 1950s. I did that thing you do with pin-hole refraction, holding a sheet of heavy paper up and fiddling it until i could focus a "picture" of the event on another sheet of paper. Someone had had the foresight to warn the school kids not to look directly at the sun.
0 Replies
 
rosborne979
 
  1  
Reply Thu 23 Jul, 2009 09:12 pm
@maporsche,
maporsche wrote:
July 11th, 2010 - a total solar eclipse will be visible from Easter Island.....sounds like a fun trip.

Maybe we should do an A2K gathering on Easter Island on that date. Maybe I'll win the lottery before then and have some cash for the trip Smile
0 Replies
 
High Seas
 
  1  
Reply Tue 28 Jul, 2009 03:04 pm
@maporsche,
This is the moon crossing in front of the sun (photographed by one of the 2 new STEREO satellites on either side of the earth):
http://www.solarviews.com/eng/stereoeclipse.htm
http://www.solarviews.com/images/VSS00023.jpg
0 Replies
 
rosborne979
 
  1  
Reply Mon 3 Aug, 2009 03:22 pm
I'd rather have us go for Mars. Damn the torpedos, full speed ahead! Smile
farmerman
 
  1  
Reply Mon 3 Aug, 2009 04:24 pm
@rosborne979,
Water's gonna cost a whole lot of energy to haul from earth. How about mining connate (or magamatic)water from moon rocks(If there is any?) I always wondered why the dipshits never made a big deal about finding water during the moon trips? Hauling water from the moon would be easier on the energy budgets, no?
edgarblythe
 
  1  
Reply Mon 3 Aug, 2009 04:33 pm
If they could fill some of the canals with water, colonizing would be made easier.
BillRM
 
  1  
Reply Mon 3 Aug, 2009 04:37 pm
@farmerman,
More then likely we will find the water we need at the moon poles as there is strong indication that comet water exist there.
0 Replies
 
farmerman
 
  2  
Reply Mon 3 Aug, 2009 04:37 pm
@edgarblythe,
Then wed have to hire canal locks keepers and start a water authority. Thats gonna ;lead to more Obama socialist bullshit Im tellin you
0 Replies
 
BillRM
 
  1  
Reply Mon 3 Aug, 2009 04:39 pm
@farmerman,
As far as Mars is concern there should also be plenty of water to be found at least for a small population.
0 Replies
 
Cycloptichorn
 
  1  
Reply Mon 3 Aug, 2009 04:53 pm
@farmerman,
farmerman wrote:

Water's gonna cost a whole lot of energy to haul from earth. How about mining connate (or magamatic)water from moon rocks(If there is any?) I always wondered why the dipshits never made a big deal about finding water during the moon trips? Hauling water from the moon would be easier on the energy budgets, no?


Plenty of Ice asteroids floating around out there, we'd never be able to haul the right amount from Earth.

Cycloptichorn
0 Replies
 
rosborne979
 
  1  
Reply Mon 3 Aug, 2009 05:24 pm
@farmerman,
farmerman wrote:
Water's gonna cost a whole lot of energy to haul from earth. How about mining connate (or magamatic)water from moon rocks(If there is any?) I always wondered why the dipshits never made a big deal about finding water during the moon trips? Hauling water from the moon would be easier on the energy budgets, no?

The water would be easier to transport if we freeze dried it first and put it in little packets and then added water to rehydrate it when we got there.

(Let's agree that if anyone tries to explain why this is silly we all get to pummel them mercilessly)
0 Replies
 
rosborne979
 
  1  
Reply Mon 3 Aug, 2009 05:33 pm
@farmerman,
farmerman wrote:
Hauling water from the moon would be easier on the energy budgets, no?

So the question is, is it easier to haul enough water to get you from Earth to Mars (which has water of its own once we get there), or is it easier to haul enough water to get you from Earth to the Moon, then land on the moon, then construct a mining operation, then survive on the moon long enough to mine the same volume of water that you needed in the first place, then launch it all from the Moon. I don't know.

The moon has 1/7th the gravity of Earth, so it would cost 1/7th the energy to lift the water from the moon than from Earth. I'm not sure that 1/7th would offset the challenges of landing/mining/launching.
Brandon9000
 
  1  
Reply Mon 3 Aug, 2009 06:03 pm
@rosborne979,
rosborne979 wrote:

farmerman wrote:
Hauling water from the moon would be easier on the energy budgets, no?

So the question is, is it easier to haul enough water to get you from Earth to Mars (which has water of its own once we get there), or is it easier to haul enough water to get you from Earth to the Moon, then land on the moon, then construct a mining operation, then survive on the moon long enough to mine the same volume of water that you needed in the first place, then launch it all from the Moon. I don't know.

The moon has 1/7th the gravity of Earth, so it would cost 1/7th the energy to lift the water from the moon than from Earth. I'm not sure that 1/7th would offset the challenges of landing/mining/launching.


A person learning electronics would be better off building a crystal radio before building a music synthesizer, particularly if there is no one around who has done it before to seek advice from and every step is experimental.
0 Replies
 
Sglass
 
  1  
Reply Mon 3 Aug, 2009 06:11 pm
what is the gravity of mars. there seems to plentiful evidence of surface water.

how would you create a breathable environment.

since we are outgrowing earth, wouldn't Mars be the pragmatic choice?

does Mars have any active volcanos.
rosborne979
 
  1  
Reply Mon 3 Aug, 2009 07:55 pm
@Sglass,
Sglass wrote:

what is the gravity of mars. there seems to plentiful evidence of surface water.

how would you create a breathable environment.

since we are outgrowing earth, wouldn't Mars be the pragmatic choice?

does Mars have any active volcanos.

The question of habitability or terraforming is different from a first visit just to explore. We don't need to create a breathable environment on the first trip, we just need to survive long enough to explore and then return.

I think mars gravity is about 1/3 that of Earth. Mars has no active volcano's and no geological activity of any type (as far as we know). However, there are massive dust storms and frequent dust devils. So the atmosphere is active. On the ground there are anomalies which may possibly be dry ice fragmentation in the soil or possibly liquid water that erupts from underground periodically, but these are things we don't know for sure yet and would be targets for research and exploration.
0 Replies
 
farmerman
 
  1  
Reply Mon 3 Aug, 2009 07:56 pm
@rosborne979,
The journey to Mars would expend lots of water for the trip . I saw a report that stated that a large amount of energy would be expended for the transit due to "expendibles' (You can only recycle water so many times, because the treatment train would run out of water from distillation).
When we went to the moon we were looking for geology crap and not mineralogy. In the "basalt" rocks, there are several minerals that contain bound water which could be driven out anbd packaged as travel modules. SInce the trip to MArs is long, getting out of earths atmosp[here with a "water buffalo" for setting up a colony would be easier by relying on the energy savings by transiting found water from the moon to MArs. I suppose we could shoot water tanks into orbit and then just collect them like aphids.

Im just posing this for discussion here,

Trying to "catch an asteroid" for its water seems a little more difficult than merely landing on the moon and setting up a solar energy unit that needsto reach about 300 C to drive out magmatic water and only about 120C to drive out connate water.(Maybe there wont be any connate but certainly there is water in the Tremolite and other zeolites in the basalts that contact the moree acidic mass of rock that makes up the two masses of dissimilar rocks on the moon.

I am following the dehydrated water idea and I think you should preent that as a paper,(There is a symposium next April 1)
farmerman
 
  1  
Reply Mon 3 Aug, 2009 08:00 pm
@Sglass,
water on mars is a given. Im talking about transit to Mars on an over and over endeavor.

As far as mining water, its about the easiest thing to do. ALl it takes is the apparatus (in vacuum its an easy build) and suns energy to reach two threshold temps.

Unless , of course, we start loading and transiting water by means of the space elevator concept, then itd be just the earth to Mars.
farmerman
 
  1  
Reply Mon 3 Aug, 2009 08:02 pm
@Sglass,
Quote:
does Mars have any active volcanos.
Evidence seems to support several, especially at the N Pole area
0 Replies
 
OmSigDAVID
 
  1  
Reply Tue 4 Aug, 2009 03:03 am
@farmerman,

How about steering comets into Mars ?
 

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