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Subject: don't waste the water
Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2000 22:44:11 -0000 (GMT)
From: Terry Kok |
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The article below is interesting. Water on Mars makes
the possibility of sustaining human life much easier.
Yet, this wondeful substance (H2O) should not simply
be "consumed" or we will end up with a pollution
problem and much more. Hydrogen is extremely rare on
Mars. It is aslo very light and escapes to space quite
easily unless chemically bound to something else (like
H2O). When water is split into hydrogen and oxygen, by
electrolysis, it can be recombined in a fuel cell to
make electricity, heat, and distilled water. Before we
run to Mars we need to think strongly about 100%
recycling or we may waste the water there is. - TK
Mars Water Could
Sustain Human
Colonies
By Paul
Hoversten
Washington
Bureau Chief
posted: 07:00 am
ET
22 June 2000
WASHINGTON -- Finding water on Mars
could burst open the
floodgates to a new era of
exploration on the planet, fueling the
drive for eventual human colonies.
Futurists and far-thinkers say that
if water is found to exist in
sizable quantities, it someday could
lead to everything from fuel
farms and filling stations for
rockets to shower stalls for
astronauts.
View SPACE.com's photo gallery
Seeing Red: A
Tour of Mars
"It opens up enormous potential,"
said Pat Dasch, executive
director of the National Space
Society, a nonprofit advocacy
group in Washington, D.C.
"Going to Mars is like a camping
trip, so
it's the difference between having
to pack
everything in with you or finding
gas
tanks and showers when you get
there. It
could make establishing a human
presence on Mars a lot easier," she
said.
Water -- the source of life
Water is about the most valuable
resource Mars has because it can
sustain life.
"Gold is not going to do you much
good
on Mars. You can't live off that,"
said Wes Huntress, director of
the Geophysical Laboratory, Carnegie
Institution of
Washington. "But you can live off
water and you can use it to
grow food. It makes the planet
habitable."
A classic vision of the Red
Planet: "The Exploration of Mars"
[copyright Chesley Bonestell
Estate/courtesy Novagraphics Space Art]
Living off the land is crucial
because it would allow humans to
stay for long periods on Mars.
"Once you can live off the land you
can explore the planet like
we did in the [American] West 150 or
200 years ago," Huntress
said.
Scientists believe trace amounts of
water already exist on Mars
beneath patches of permafrost at the
planet's poles. But if Mars
once had lakes or rivers on its
surface, as research suggests,
the water retreated long ago.
Until now, it seems.
Human missions to the Red Planet
Researchers at last appear to have a
good fix on where some of
Mars' water is working its way back
to the surface. And that
has far-reaching implications for
both robotic and human
missions to the Red Planet.
Because of its chemical components
hydrogen and oxygen,
water is "a significant resource for
exploration at the planet,"
said John Niehoff, a
planetary-program planner at SAIC
(Science Applications International
Corp.) in Schaumburg,
Illinois.
Mars already has plenty of oxygen in
its carbon-dioxide-rich
atmosphere. But hydrogen is
exceedingly rare.
"Hydrogen is a key resource in the
development of fuels for all
kinds of purposes. You could run
surface [power] systems or
fuel launch vehicles or create
fuel-cell storage devices to
manage your electricity," Niehoff
said.
"We've always been assuming we'd
have to bring the hydrogen
with us. But with it there, in the
form of water, we can go with
the equipment and have a power
supply. That is a tremendous
leverage."
A job for roughnecks
Of course, for the water to be of
any major use in surface
operations, it would have to be in
abundance and available. A
trickle wouldn't be much help unless
it came from a reservoir
that could be tapped.
"We're talking for any individual
mission about quantities
measured in hundreds of pounds,
hundreds of gallons," Niehoff
said. "If you find it in reservoirs
beneath the surface it would be
like mining for oil."
That sort of mining almost certainly
would be a job for
roughnecks.
"You're not just going to take your
pail out and get the water.
You've got to mine it out, then
you've got to set up a well and
have a processing system for it,"
Niehoff said. "But you're
building an oasis because you have
the critical indigenous
material to do it."
But after all that work, could
astronauts slake their thirst with a
cool drink of Martian water?
Filter it first
Not until it's filtered first,
scientists say. It probably isn't even
fresh water.
"I would guess it's salty because
it's been in the ground a long
time and it's had a chance to absorb
stuff," said Steve Maran,
spokesman for the American
Astronomical Society and author
of Astronomy for Dummies. "There's
no reason to think it's the
sort of sweet water that you get
from limestone-filtered rocks on
Earth."
However it tastes, it's certain to
be one priceless drink.
"Since you're getting 11 bucks a
liter for water in some fancy
New York restaurants, you could make
a fortune with it back
here," said Maran.
_
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- ---------------------------------------------
Mars Society Life Support Task Force
Email - life-support@chapters.marssociety.org
http://home.marssociety.org/tech/life-support/
Arctic Base - http://arctic.marssociety.org/ |
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