Why was Mt. Sharp chosen for the Curiosity Rover landing site, and what about those rounded stones that it photographed, indicative of long ago ankle to hip-deep water? If the Martian surface is likely so full of perchlorates and life-hostile, irradiated soil, what are the chances of pockets of microbial life below ground?
The discussion later moves to Venus, Jovian moon Io, and the Chinese lander on the dark side of the moon in the final minutes:
Event Horizon discussion with Emily Lakdawalla.
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As posted:
Imagine sub-freezing temperatures and free radicals bombarding the near atmosphere-less Martian surface (oxidized and rusted red, barren), but below the Martian surface lurk big blocks of briny ice; ice with freezing cold, incredibly salty water around them and maybe just enough O2 to support some microbes.
Worth thinking about.
What are you doing with your imagination?
Salty water just below the surface of Mars could hold enough oxygen to support the kind of microbial life that emerged and flourished on Earth billions of years ago, researchers reported today https://t.co/zLkJwUESiPpic.twitter.com/aAt6hnMxI2
‘Due to the scarcity of O2 in the modern Martian atmosphere, Mars has been assumed to be incapable of producing environments with sufficiently large concentrations of O2 to support aerobic respiration. Here, we present a thermodynamic framework for the solubility of O2 in brines under Martian near-surface conditions. We find that modern Mars can support liquid environments with dissolved O2 values ranging from ~2.5 × 10−6 mol m−3 to 2 mol m−3 across the planet, with particularly high concentrations in polar regions because of lower temperatures at higher latitudes promoting O2 entry into brines’
-Curiosity isn’t necessarily looking for life, but it’s looking for the conditions that make life possible here on Earth with its 10 instruments, such as trying to determine the origins of the methane on Mars’s surface by being better able to analyze the kind of carbon (12 or 14) in the atmosphere to find its source. It’s also much better able to look for amino acids (the building blocks of life on Earth) and better able to analyze the rock and crystal samples it picks up. It’s got a cool laser. It’s about the size of a Mini-Cooper.
-Unlike Earth with its dynamic interior and tectonic plates, relatively strong magnetic field, thick and dynamic atmosphere etc., Mars is a bit like a time capsule. With just over 50% the diameter of Earth, about 38% the gravity, and less than 1% the atmosphere we’ll be able to get a much better picture of what happened during the formation of our solar system about 4 1/2 billion years ago as it’s much less disturbed. The trip up the rock face in Gale Crater over the next few years is like a trip back through time. What happened to Mars? Did the Earth and Mars have common experiences?
No methane on Mars, so that rules out the certain kinds of microbial life hoped for. There is water on the surface, in the soil. at about 2%, which is good for colonial prospects. It probably had liquid water in the past, but that is thought to have been billions of years ago. A lot of evidence points to ancient Mars and current Mars being very different.
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So, what about a more human problem that interests the libertarian-minded?
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The problem is that over time, human organizations succumb to decay, bad incentives, and get weighed down by their own internal politics, increasing layers of bureaucracy, and regulations. They can end-up no longer boldly and creatively solving the problems they were designed to solve, becoming risk-averse and losing their spirit of innovation and flexibility to free-up the top talent. You can put more and more money in, but get less and less in return. In fact, I’d argue along with many others that we’re in a period of American life where many other bureaucracies and government agencies may have also reached that point. Such is my road-map.
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After the terrible Challenger explosion in 1986, Richard Feynman was included on an independent panel to find out what went wrong. He discovered a profound difference between engineers’ and managements’ probability estimates for number of flights without failure. One potential (and very important) reason that a system-ending failure can go unnoticed is the tendency of managers to believe top-down explanations.
It’s vintage Feynman, inconoclastic, penetrating and brilliant:
“for whatever purpose, be it for internal or external consumption, the management of NASA exaggerates the reliability of its product, to the point of fantasy.”
“For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.“
Watch Robert Zubrin and other Mars Undergrounders pursue their quest despite NASA at times, but ultimately benefitting from collaboration with NASA engineers’ experience and insight, giving a boost to this deepest of human dreams: the next frontier. A colony on Mars.
We can do this, and it will be both like and unlike anything we’ve ever done before.
They’re still heading to Mt. Sharp, driving the rover 400 meters toward Glenelg:
‘Sol 38 (Sept. 13, 2012) was destined to be a driving day for NASA’s latest edition to the Martian landscape. Curiosity perambulated over 105 feet (32 meters) of unpaved Gale Crater during yesterday’s drive. The rover’s odometer now clocks in at 466 feet (142 meters) covered since the landing on Aug. 5.’
Mt. Sharp sits in Gale Crater, where Curiosity is headed.
“Mount Sharp is the only place we can currently access on Mars where we can investigate this transition in one stratigraphic sequence,” said Caltech’s John Grotzinger, chief scientist for the Mars Science Laboratory. “The hope of this mission is to find evidence of a habitable environment; the promise is to get the story of an important environmental breakpoint in the deep history of the planet. This transition likely occurred billions of years ago — maybe even predating the oldest well-preserved rocks on Earth.’
The water find is less probable. Expected landing date is August 6th, 2012. Let’s hope it goes well.
