[extropy-chat] 10th Planet Discovered

[Eugen Leitl]

On Tue, Mar 16, 2004 at 07:26:51PM +0100, Amara Graps wrote:
> Eugene:
> > The closest one is Luna. And it has volatiles, to boot.
> 
> I'm not sure water is there, but you are aware about the
> following results, I suppose.
> 
> http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/ice/ice_moon.html

Yes, and http://lunar.lanl.gov/pubs/2000/Polar_H_Deposits_on_Moon.pdf

While it is premature to assume MT (if not GT) hydrate deposits in polar
cryotrap regions without sending an exploration mission (and not just a
single-shot penetration vehicle + mass spectrograph), the data do look good.

It's worthwhile to mention why the Moon is so important, and Mars is not,
because these points gets so often omitted.

* lunar polar cryotraps seem to contain enough minable silicate hydrates (or
  even ice, for what we know) to last throughout the human phase of
  exploration

* surface Mars atmospheric pressure is average 6 mbar, while Earth has 1013
  mbar. For all effective purposes this is a dirty vacuum. Enough pressure
  for airborne dust, including contamination of solar panels and wind drag on
  gossamer aluminized polymer film structures, not enough pressure to
  engineer suits and structures for anything but vacuum

* the only use for a CO2 atmosphere is as a carbon source. Silicates do at
  least as well, and there is enough carbon in regolith to be be more than
  sufficient carbon (and ammonia/dihydrogen sulfide) sources

* solar constant Earth orbit is 1400 W/m^2, Mars is 622 W/m^2. Did I mention
  why the Mars rovers are only good for 3 months? It's dust, mostly.

* escape velocity, blahblah, linear motors to launch, did I mention vacuum? I
  guess I did. No can do on Mars.

* 2 sec vs 20 min lightminutes pingpong latency. Nevermind picture setting up
  ~GBps data pipe to Luna vs. Mars. Killer argument. 


-- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a>
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