Ice cliffs found on Mars and NASA says they’re a tap for astronauts Mars boffins have spotted lots of almost-pure water ice on Mars. Detailed in a Science paper titled ” Exposed subsurface ice sheets in the Martian mid-latitudes”, the find was made using the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera. The scientists who tend that instrument spotted …
Mountaineers have problems because they have very limited carrying capacity. I've used a little hand pump jobbie to make water from sea water and its not that difficult - and assuming the astronauts will be recycling I can see them getting away with a relatively small solar collector for heating and melting the stuff and PV powered purifiers for most of their needs.
Getting hold of the ice is another matter - I've tried hacking at ice before and if it gets any harder as it gets colder a couple of hours work with a pickaxe might produce more sweat than the accumulated ice cubes.
Lasers. You forget the laser guns that the Space Force™ will have with them.
Anyway what about:
"as we don't know the density of Martian ice"
Assuming no more than basic mineral contamination, surely the density will be the same as the density on earth? h2o is h2o init?
h2o is h2o however it will never be pure if frozen in an atmosphere because there are always bubbles of atmospheric gasses trapped in it - it's these that cause much of the colour of ice. From what I remember the amount of gas trapped in ice is a factor of formation speed, temperature, pressure and doubtless a few other factors not least gravity.
Right, but based on gases, we are effectively saying that that water can never be as dense as pure, controlled ice because it can only be contaminated with gasses, assuming those gases are less dense than ice (A safe assumption I feel).
It isn't the gas, per se, but the other chemicals that may affect the freezing temperature as well as the overall density. But the tone of the statement appeared to me that there would be complications from density fluctuations. The only complication would be if it was denser than terran ice.
I don't think that this can really be a factor assuming that the ice found is indeed, h2o based.
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@symon - ok so you dissolve CO2 in water, what happens when you freeze the result? Not arguing that various water based diluted compounds can vary in density, but I am interested in the relative differences between density of most h2o based compounds when frozen.
As for the comet coment, (swidt), the problem wasn't about how dense water ice per se, but the underlying formation, compacted ice crystals, was it rock and ice etc. What we are talking about here on the surface of Mars (8mbar average for those that care), is really the comment that is density of the water a real consideration to how it will be utilised by our intrepid, yet thirsty, explorers?
I don't think so.
I mean it is a small point. Probably even too pedantic at this stage. But this is El Reg afterall...so if not here then where else?
"e. From what I remember the amount of gas trapped in ice is a factor of formation speed, temperature, pressure and doubtless a few other factors not least gravity."
Depends on when the ice formed. The atmospheric pressure on the Martian surface is very low now.(~0.06% Earth and mostly carbon dioxide)
Oh my, where to start. As you can see in the phase diagram, there are multiple forms of frozen ice, helpfully enumerated with Roman numbers from I to XV. But I guess for practical purposes, this type of density change is quite negligible if your water might be 90% of whatever they sell for sand up there on Mars.
Your phase diagram kind of proves the argument. We already know the temperature and pressure on Mars. It's not like we should anticipate some strange Martian form of Ice that bonds in a radically different way.
I refer you the recent incident of the probe and the comet in the night time. The designers of the probe not knowing the density of ice in said comet thought it would probably not be too dense. Probe bounced, measures to grab into the ice and hold it failed as they bounced off too. After ending up wedged less than optimally it used it's onboard stress hammer to test the hardness of the ice. It broke around the level of 'concrete'.
The ice mountains on Triton and Pluto will likely be very hard too.
"Getting hold of the ice is another matter"
A thermal ice drill should work nicely even at Mars atmospheric pressure provided you have enough power (solar or thermal nuclear) and a relatively small amount of water to start the process working. After that its a continuous process. Hot steam in, cool water vapour out which you then condense to get back more water.
@AC "Getting hold of the ice is another matter"
I would imagine at the poles there is not a huge amount of solar so I would imagine they would go and get blocks and thaw it where it was needed. It will be a while before we have pipelines up there and I'd think people will be nearer the equator.
It's not just drinking, washing, and breathing (breathing because they'll want to extract O2 from it). They will consume large amounts of water for making rocket fuel, because it's not practical to carry enough fuel for a return journey. They might also want it for shielding. Apparently it's better than regolith against radiation.
Worked so well for Bowie Base.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1413314/
Note I always thought the infected humans skin texture, resembled a less green version without the carapaces & helmets of the first post. Suggesting the ice warriors might have been very different in their past.
...until you know whats in it.
I'm sure they didn't really mean the astronauts WOULD just grab a bucket but just in case...
Here on earth we've built up a tolerance to the bacteria we're exposed to regularly. Mars might potentially have had a whole ecosystem of complex microbial life at some point in it's distant past. Maybe even at a time when those glaciers were formed.
Go watch the TV series "Fortitude" or the rather good recent SCI-FI horror flick "Life" for a rather over the top view on messing with ancient bacteria.
(FWITW - Watch Fortitude anyway, cos it's awesome)
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So it could be distinguished from zero with unavailable means :) Even infinitesimally small is an infinitesimally little bit bigger than 0.
He is making an assertion about all the microorganisms in the universe and assuming that they all behave in the same observable way as Earth microorganisms when he has no way of knowing that. He's saying that he knows all the unknowns, which he doesn't.
But thats taking Earth science and microorganisms and applying it to a different planet with different characteristics. The branches of evolution (if any) and pathogens may be totally different to what we have observed on Earth.
The article is taking huge leaps of logic about many unknowns, and also is contradictory -
"The chance that an alien bacteria would have evolved to stick to that protein is infinitesimally small." So not Zero as he claims after all.
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Back in the real world, I think it's highly unlikely (say the chances are a million to one) that any of the humblest things upon Mars, bacteria, minute, invisible bacteria, could have any affect on us.
Ok....you first. Bottoms up!
Just because it's blue doesn't mean it's water and come to think of it, there's some nice lakes here on Earth that wouldn't want to approach much less drink it. I hope a probe will check out this "ice" before we make any plans or even think about using it.
The density of the ice will vary according to included/dissolved gases and solids but removing it just requires a heated blade. At 6 milliBar atmospheric pressure it will sublime direct to vapour. Since bacterial contamination is unlikely, you should just need to heat it up. Of course if you do that at 6 milliBar pressure yer gonna go straight to steam, but condensing it into liquid won't be difficult if you pressurise the steam, and separating out the gases and solids is child's play. Getting the energy to do all this when yer on Mars is the challenge. Gonna have to take a Nuke with ya as solar out there is weak and yer not likely to find much oil/coal. Efficient recycling will also reduce the need for vast amounts of water.
Did you actually read the article you linked to? No mention at all of shortening anyone's life, let alone by twice as much as previously thought.
All they've said is they think there is ... a two-fold or more increase in cancer risk compared to the conventional risk model for a Mars. Key word here being risk.
So that's an existing small risk that's been increased. Even two times small, is still small!
The 'boffins' always seem to suggest that getting there is the difficult bit, the living there and the teraforming parts are a doddle.
We should land a bunch of Elonites onto central Antarctica with only what you can parachute in from orbit and see how they get on, it'll be infinitely more easy to find water, use solar power, grow food etc there so it should be a complete piece of piss.
From the blurb of Science Magazine:
Some locations on Mars are known to have water ice just below the surface, but how much has remained unclear. Dundas et al. used data from two orbiting spacecraft to examine eight locations where erosion has occurred. This revealed cliffs composed mostly of water ice, which is slowly sublimating as it is exposed to the atmosphere. The ice sheets extend from just below the surface to a depth of 100 meters or more and appear to contain distinct layers, which could preserve a record of Mars' past climate. They might even be a useful source of water for future human exploration of the red planet.
And the actual abstract itself
Thick deposits cover broad regions of the Martian mid-latitudes with a smooth mantle; erosion in these regions creates scarps that expose the internal structure of the mantle. We investigated eight of these locations and found that they expose deposits of water ice that can be >100 meters thick, extending downward from depths as shallow as 1 to 2 meters below the surface. The scarps are actively retreating because of sublimation of the exposed water ice. The ice deposits likely originated as snowfall during Mars’ high-obliquity periods and have now compacted into massive, fractured, and layered ice. We expect the vertical structure of Martian ice-rich deposits to preserve a record of ice deposition and past climate.
Impressive telemetry must backup such confident assertions.
Based on the description, a more efficient collection device might be something similar to the design of a solar evaporative distillers collection film.
Since the ice is sublimating it should be possible to capture the sublimate and through suitable processes using currently available tech convert it to a usable product with minimal energy input.
Can we not do anything without destroying the environment in the name of science? This then becomes commercial and gets even worse.
Mars (as is the moon and quite a few other places) are littered with crap that we sent up and discarded when it has reached the end of its life, broken or failed before it even got there.
How confident can anyone be that sending Cassini with a plutonium power pack into Saturn's upper gas layer has burnt it to a crisp? It has still left (albeit very small) amount of extra-planetary material behind.
I am all for science but it does make a mess and there appears to be little incentive to clear up afterwards.
Cassini was deliberately crashed into Saturn as the route least likely to contaminate any environments out there. Left to just fly around for long enough it was likely to crash (uncontrolled) into one of the various moons, with a much higher risk of leaving bits behind.
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