Peak Oil and Population reduction

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There's loads of water in the form of ice on the northern pole of Mars, however the southern pole of Mars (due to both the 25° tilt and the eccentricity of its orbit) allows it to be cold enough to freeze CO2 there. For initial small scale greenhouse farming, water could be extracted from the regolith or occasionally sorties could be made to the northern pole to retrieve water ice.

Well, in the North polar cap is a vast quantity of water ice mixed with a smaller quantity of dry ice. The southern polar cap is mostly dry ice with a minority of water. This works out well though, because the Northern summer is almost twice as long as the southern summer, and conversely, the southern winter is twice as long as the northern winter. So the Northern hemisphere has a lot of water in the cap and a long season of warmth. Asides that, it is strongly suspected that Mars' has large underground aquifer reserves. The dry riverbeds all over the planet provide evidence for this; they gradually build pressure and are being renewed via outgassing from the planet's interior. When the pressure builds enough, they explode onto the surface, creating temporary rivers and lakes. In the past, this likely happened more frequently, but now it happens less as the planet's interior cools. However, there is probably still a lot of water under the surface, in addition to being mixed in with the regolith. If we were to control the burst of water onto the surface so that we used all of the aquifers (after some raising of the atmospheric pressure and temperature) simultaneously, an ocean/sea would contribute to building a stable atmosphere
You could take water from other bodies in the solar system, though. Ceres, the dwarf planet between Mars and Jupiter, is suspected of having a subterranean ocean, or at least, a vast quantity of frozen water. Coupled with it's low surface gravity, I see Ceres becoming the main source of water for space infrastructure, and if necessary, importations to Mars (though, like I said, it is highly likely that Mars has enough water; I have heard estimates that there could be enough to create a shallow sea that would cover 15-30% of the the Northern hemisphere, which is much lower in elevation).

Transferred how? We can't even haul our sorry arses to Mars.

ruveyn

Last edited by ruveyn on 24 Feb 2011, 6:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.

We could have been going to Mars for the past 30 years if NASA wasn't restrained by party-line politics and corporate favoritism in contracting...

Also, for the last 30 years there has been more focus within politics upon social agendas than upon doing anything novel or interesting. I think that once Obama's out of office and, assuming - hopefully - that the next president actually knows the difference between investing and spending, that the space programs might liven up again.

I'm not going to lie, at this point I expect that in 2015 while we're [space advocates] excited about the New Horizons mission arriving at Pluto or the Dawn mission to Ceres and Vesta, China is going to surprise us all by letting us know their manned Mars mission is already halfway to the destination. That will be one f*****g hell of a sputnik moment for the United States

Heck, that would be awesome. Sputnik was practically the cause of the Space Race between the USA and the USSR, so it wouldn't hurt to have another one between China, the USA and whoever else wants to finally join in to the occupation of space.

Last edited by iamnotaparakeet on 24 Feb 2011, 7:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Can't or won't?

Not if China renames Mars 'New Manchuria' and ships 100 million people there
But I do agree, they need a wake up call, and hopefully it won't be one as devastating as losing Mars or the Moon to the People's Republic

I think a ship capable of sustaining that many people for the duration of the trip from Earth to Mars would have to be built in orbit, which would tend to make such activity noticeable. It might be more possible if they used nuclear pulse propulsion, however I think more likely would be a multi-stage rocket with minimal crew. IDK though. If China developed the technology necessary to launch a colony ship from the surface of the Earth I don't think we'd have time to catch up with them technologically in order to beat them to colonizing any other of the possible sites within the solar system.

Yeah, Obama has been holding us back for 40 years. It's amazing how powerful he is.

Republican or Democrat, neither has space exploration as a priority. They're more interested in catering to their loudest majorities then to their most forward thinking minorities (there are left and right space advocates, obviously)

Hey, as long as people will continue to blame Bush for everything they don't like in the universe, why should I not blame Obama for cutting NASA's budget near to nil?

But he didnt do that. So you shouldnt do it because you'd be a liar. The NASA budget is freely available.

I didnt like Bush but had no problem with his space policy in general. The problem was the he didnt really care about it, never mentioned it again, and didnt fund it properly. But he also didnt slash funding. So things hobbled along.

The real enemy of the space program was Nixon. Nixon was presented many great options for the post-Apollo years and chose the cheapest option. That was the year to have a pro-NASA president. Then his administration made it cheaper still. The result was a low flight rate space shuttle which had no destination for a very long time.

Of course there are advocates for space on both sides of economic and moral politics. Space is a rather neutral subject, except to anyone who would make a doctrine against it. Personally, and yes this would be from the Bible so I hope I don't offend you, I consider the expansion into space to be an extension of the intent of the mandate in Genesis of "Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth". I consider the intent of that command would be to allow people to have breathing room (as in, who really loves cities all that much anyhow?) as well as to allow more resources per person. By spreading out into space, which in and of itself would just plain be awesome, it would also allow for lower population densities overall and for more resources to be utilized.

Wait, didn't Obama cut funding on most of the new projects and left only enough for shipments up to the ISS? That's what I've read anyhow. If you're going to call me a liar, meaning that I'm providing false statements, that is just plain rude as I'm not intentionally providing false statements. I've heard this on the youtube channel spaceflightnow as well as on the Wii's news channel, but I suppose they may not necessarily be the most reliable sources if what you are saying is correct.