LAKE OF frozen WATER THE SIZE OF NEW MEXICO FOUND ON MARS – NASA Settling on Mars may not be as difficult as first feared. NASA scientists have discovered a huge deposit of water ice just under the surface of the Red Planet. The ice has been found in the Utopia Planitia region of the planet, a large depression in the northern hemisphere formed by a massive impact early in the planet's …
B-52's are still flying (*) in anger.
(*) 27 minute War College podcast. North Korea sets off a nuclear bomb and how does the U.S. respond? The Pentagon sends a 65-year-old airplane to buzz Korean airspace. It wouldn't make a lot of sense if the warplane wasn't the B-52 bomber. Designed in the aftermath of World War Two, obsolete nearly before the last one rolled off the line in 1961 - the Stratofortress may remain in the air for another 25 years.
It's bad enough already over here with all the mineral and vitamin fortified waters being shipped and flown across the world. At least I will not be alive when the first batch of bottled water from Mars is available here.
The Two Ronnies - Water Pub
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkwzN-AdIEY
Martian water has never been peed in. That's one thing it has over Earth water, aka Dinosaur pee".
Just trying to fit this into today's toilet-themed theRegister issue.
You're not really trying. I get water for *my* whisky only from the rings of Saturn...
(Actually, I should get around to nudging a few icebergs Mars' way; a few gigatons of water arriving at escape velocity should improve the climate no end).
Signed: the Brennan Monster
1 - the Europeans set up a new Mars mission. Which, unusually, lands in one piece, only to immediately sink below the surface because it has melted the very ice it was looking for with its landing flame.
2 - NASA sends a new Rover which lands on the edge, trundles over to the European parts still sticking out after the lake has re-frozen and cuts it out with its laser.
3 - they happily live ever after and go and repair all the other robots using the pieces of all the other failed European Mars missions.
4 - Trump bills Europe for the repairs, the EU returns a bill for supplying spare parts and they spend the rest of his term in court fighting over it.
Hey, that analyst stuff isn't that hard after all. Where do I sign up?
:)
Yup, that's "mud" to you and me. That sounds pretty perfect. It should be possible to tunnel through that, using only heat. and some kind of pump. What I propose (I could do with a BIT of funding, I'll set up a Kickstarter thing or something) is: Land on surface of mud-lake. Drop something hot onto frozen mud, tied to a string or something. (I'll flesh this out with details later) Pump slurry out of hole and away.
Lower the hot thing (I'm thinking a sub-critical lump of plutonium, heavily shielded) gradually. Keep pumping that mud. Keep going until you reach bottom, but pump a bit slower to create a chamber. Plug the shaft (using mud, now liquid, it will set like concrete!), but install doors in the plug in a couple of places. Now set up camp in your pressurized, radiation-shielded "warm" (-1 or -2 C) cave. Easy access to water. Tunnel horizontally outwards when you need more space. Refreezing bulkheads as you go.
I know I am sounding a bit flippant about this, but this could really be a game-changer if we are serious about colonizing Mars. This makes it possible. Up until now, a permanent self-sustaining colony has NOT been possible.
Now set up camp in your pressurized, radiation-shielded "warm" (-1 or -2 C) cave. Easy access to water. Tunnel horizontally outwards when you need more space. Refreezing bulkheads as you go.
The US Army found bases in ice sound cool (har), but ice has a tendency to move and deform over time.
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