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Water found on Mars!

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springhill said:
So this is how it all ends. We stroll on over to Mars like we are the only intelligent lifeforms in the universe, claim it as ours, when unbeknownst to us a superior race was there millions of years ago and have a proxy over it that has been ratified by the Universal Alliance of Intelligent Beings (we were not included for obvioius reasons ie. the use of the word intelligent ). Hence pissing off an aggressive race who see this as a hostile takeover. They decend upon the lemmings with their anal probes and their death rays and, dissolving our bodies to dust in an instant. Viola! the end of the human race, cos we think of ourselves as the centre of the universe.... oh the humanity!
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Spring, you've been reading too much Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. :D
Be kind to mice!
 
derty said:
The Red Mars, Blue Mars and Green Mars is a good SciFi trilogy that covers the terraforming and settlement of Mars - SciFi but some good theories in there. Either way it would take a long time to produce an atmosphere and develop a soil profile suitable for Earth like life.

On the topic of going there for mineral wealth. At the moment it is all postulation that there are suitable concentrations of metals. While there is evidence of volcanism and the possibility of plate tectonics we do not know how long it lasted or how energetic it was. It may be that processes did not occur suitable for the concentration of metals. Also further to the point without the upheaval and and erosion associated with tectonics any metal concentrations formed at depth would likely still be at depth.

If I had to head anywhere in the solar system to go mining I would be off to the asteroid belt where everything is broken into nice bite sized chunks. The planets undergo differentiation during formation where Fe and Ni and other metals sink to the centre and the light silicate material forms the outer layers. Extrapolating from the meteorites found on earth 92.8% are silicate or rock meteorites, 5.7% are metallic meteorites and the rest are a mixture. So approx 6% of the meteorites within the asteroid belt are of a similar concentration to the core of the Earth, Fe and Ni dominated.

Now based on the estimation that the asteroid belt has a mass of 1/1000th of the Earth and the Earth has a mass of 5.67x10^24kg we get a mass of metallic asteroids of 3.55x10^17 tonnes or 35,500,000,000,000,000 tonnes.
So 35 quadrillion tonnes or 35 million billion tonnes of metal. None of this DSO haematite crap or nickel sulphides, you find this stuff like it just came out of the smelter.

anyway, I digress. Water on Mars, it confirms what was pretty much known, but it's a good start and hopefully it speed up the impetus to get some people up there.
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hi derty , yes i think it is a long time coming too just would like to know what the powers to be have in stall for us or are we just bumbling our way forward or backwardes
 
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