Posted on 07/02/2008 7:24:59 PM PDT by KevinDavis
The Martian soil uncovered by the 'Phoenix' Mars Lander might not be that different from the dirt in your own backyard. In fact, you might even be able to grow asparagus in it, mission officials said.
The UA-led mission conducted the first ever wet-chemistry experiments done on another planet yesterday. 'Phoenix' tested the soil's chemical properties, like pH and mineral content, by mixing it with water in its onboard labs.
The first experiment showed that Mars' soil has some of the basic nutrients needed to support life and is, in some respects, very earth-like, said Sam Kounaves, the mission's wet-chemistry lead.
(Excerpt) Read more at media.wildcat.arizona.edu ...
Yeah, but who wants to eat asparagus?
Cool. Saddle up! We’re gonna need some mighty big mules tho.
The asparagus growers in my area really don’t need the competition. I don’t eat it, but many do. The first really successful automated asparagus harvester was recently demonstrated near here. Invented and refined by a farmer over decades. Maybe he has a market on the red planet.
time to begin to terraform mars?
I prefer the name Enterprise...
Probably some nuclear powered mules..
Yep...
First you'll have to overcome two practically insurmountable obstacles:
1. The lack of atmosphere (about 1 percent the air pressure we have here), and
2. The low ambient temperature.
You'll never overcome item 1 without finding a way to increase the gravity of the planet, and you'll never overcome item 2 without moving the planet closer to the sun. Someday we may have the technical resources and energy cheap enough to artificially maintain an Earth-like climate on Mars in its current dimensions and orbit; but I cannot imagine it happening this century, or for that matter in the next.
It’ll be interesting to see what they end up doing.. better to let it go commercial eventually. lots of big space chunks to be mined and such..
I just hope to live long enough to see a Moon much less a Mars base.
This is good because now the geeks will need to fabricate a world full of farm equipment that runs on anything other than oil.
Its a refreshing thought and I am sure a nightmare for the sandrats to even contemplate a world without oil.
Marsifest Destiny
It is going to be slow and tedious process to terraform a planet..
McCain does support sending humans to Mars, so that is why I’m supporting him, however, I have a feeling it is going to be done by private industry..
Marsifest Destiny II
That would be my ideal world.. A world with depending on oil front the sandrats..
one word:
Greenhouse
Why? Is asparagus popular on Mars?
Sure, you can build a greenhouse... but that’s building a structure, not “terraforming.”
whatever the environment on the surface of mars, i would hope that mankind sets foot on that planet before i die.
(hopefully not too many taikonauts will die a cold death before an American plants a flag there).
asparigus grown on mars would have a huge carbon footprint during importation!
Interesting stuff!
bring sunscreen! And water!
‘Scientists also found evidence of salts like magnesium, sodium, potassium and chloride. ‘
These are elements, not salts. Salts are combinations of metals and non-metals. Writer should have just said ‘elements’ or ‘salts of magnesium, sodium, and potassium’.
Moving Mars into a better, warmer orbit is possible, of course, provided that some Outsider stops by and sells us the much needed drive:
But we had purchased a reactionless, inertialess drive from the Outsiders. You may have guessed their price. We are still paying in installments. We had moved two agricultural worlds; we had experimented with other, useless worlds of our system using the Outsider drive. In any case, we did it. We moved our world.
Naturally, during the transportation (and after) the Solar System may be severely disturbed gravitationally, and I'm unsure if this is acceptable.
Fortunately, terraforming != habitation. Mars can be a comfortable home for ten billion people, as long as they live and work underground. There isn't much to do on the surface anyway, and lack of meaningful atmosphere means that you can be killed by small meteorites, and lack of magnetic field makes space radiation a concern.
Power for underground cities can be produced by solar panels, possibly assisted with a mirror in orbit, or nuclear. Water is already there, that leads to oxygen. CO(2) will be produced by humans and [other] animals, and plants (possibly located under skylights) will rework it back into O(2).
The only question at this point would be "what is there to do on Mars?" and seemingly outside of supporting life there is nothing else. Mars does not offer a unique environment (such as LEO does); so humanity may be better off just homesteading the ocean shelf, of which we have plenty and it is known to contain vast resources of every kind.
One obvious reason to be on Mars is, of course, as a backup colony in case something happens with Earth. But it wouldn't be very exciting for colonists to live through their lives just knowing that they are just a spare part.
This is pretty big news.
NASA doesn’t even have this yet.
all right!!!!
One of my favorite movies... Mars Attacks...
when I cant speak intelligently about a subject, I refer to movies..
lol
thanks for thread Kevin - pinging my buddy AFPhys who will be first to go to Mars if he has a choice in the matter
dolly/BettyDavisEyes
Not to disappoint everyone, I am sure the environmentalists will find some excuse to stop development on Mars.
Not if they can get worms to thrive there. But without worms or ants it will be difficult to get the soil to sustain improvements.
Nope. Only one name is possible.
Deathmobile!
Sadly with no way to hold an atmosphere you end up again with Mars as it is.
Gravity will be an issue, but the soil means that we only need to send up air and greenhouses.
If we can farm in greenhouses using Martian soil, we can establish long-term settlements on Mars. It will be more like the Jamestown Settlement than Star Wars, but it can be a first step to the stars.
Just like Viking. Nuts.
That’s a hell of an attitude. Americans will find a way, given half a chance. Look at the otherwise inhospitable places where we have learned to not only survive but thrive. So what if Mars never gets transformed into an Earth-like paradise? It’s still a hell of a lot better than anywhere else in this solar system outside of Earth. Fertile soil, water and sunshine, that’s all Martian farmers need to start a colony. Guess you won’t be signing up.
global semi-permeable membrane encapsulation
1.Grow the asparagus in a hothouse. It will take CO2 from the air and convert it to O2. Separate the hydrogen from the O2 and you have fuel and air. Both can be mined and stored.
2. Genetically enhance the asparagus to grow in extremes. Other types of vegetation can be altered in this way to create an atmosphere, albeit encased in a habitation.
Nothing is really insurmountable, it's a matter of ideas and implementation. The people with those ideas and innovations may be in kindergarden now. You just never know.
The only reason I could think of for the scientist choosing “asparagus” as the crop is that the digging tool leaves a trench similar to that which I planted asparagus in long ago.
I'm not sure what kind of attitude you're ascribing to me.
I never said we shouldn't go to Mars, I never said we shouldn't colonize Mars, I never said we shouldn't build structures on Mars and grow food in them. In fact, I consider all these things both doable and worth doing.
All I did say was that actual terraforming of Mars was well beyond our current level of technology, so far beyond that the deficit can be measured in centuries.
Do I think we should put people on Mars? Absolutely.
A big baggie! Think of it as a planet-condom.
Why should it be semi-permeable? If it's permeable at all, the atmosphere will get away from you again.
My point was that we used to be a “can do” culture, that has accomplished what was perceived as impossible. Just because you think it can’t be done, doesn’t mean that there aren’t more ingenious minds out there that can “get ‘r done!” The technology exists to terraform Mars even if the will to do so doesn’t.
That's precisely my point... the technology does not exist to "terraform" anything. We do have the technology to colonize in controlled habitats on a limited scale, and I'm all for that. Bring on the domed cities.
But before we start terraforming, we will have to invent the technology, starting with a much denser source of controllable energy than anything we've ever come up with before. Fusion might be viable, and we'll probably figure that out within the next fifty years.
But then we have a succession of first-time-ever problems to solve in getting Mars to look and feel like Earth (which is what the term "terraforming" means).
The sheer scale is a problem. If the libtards are to be believed on the matter of "global warming" (and they're not, but that's another issue) it has taken all the pollutants from all the combustion we've been doing since the dawn of the industrial age to raise the temperature of our atmosphere about a half a degree.
Myself, I don't think we even have that much influence. You're talking about taking an entire planet and raising the temperature of its atmosphere about a hundred degrees F to get some habitable areas, presumably within a couple of generations. We not only do not know how to do that, we don't know how to try.
I am a firm believer in the can-do attitude, I really am... but you have no idea of the scope of the task you're contemplating.
You are acting just like the liberals regarding domestic oil exploration and refining. You are saying that it is too hard, will take too long, so why bother. You have raised the bar for successful terraforming to an unrealistic goal of an Earth environment equivalency. Another favorite ploy of the left.
Just because something is hard, takes a long time (decades) to show significant progress and is expensive doesn’t make it not worth doing. People with that negative attitude are called Europeans. They never thought we would turn out to be anything worthwhile either. We proved them wrong. And we will do it again and again.
If you don't mean "terraforming," don't use the word. If you say we have the tech to go to Mars, you're right; all we lack is the want-to. But don't accuse me of "...[raising] the bar for successful terraforming to an unrealistic goal of an Earth environment equivalency." You did that yourself, when you used the word "terraforming."
If you say we have to tech to make Mars over in the image of Earth (which is what "terraforming" means), you're simply incorrect... and no amount of calling me a liberal is going to change that.
If the call went out for Mars colonists, I'd be the first to shoot my hand up into the air, even though I'm a lousy choice for a colonist. I'm over 40, paunchy, and thanks to my urologist no longer fertile. But I was raised on Heinlein and Bradbury, I believe in the can-do attitude, and I'd volunteer even though I'd probably be turned down. I'd stow away if I could.
Please quit accusing me of liberal attitudes. That's really misplaced.
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