Splash! NASA moon strikes found significant water

[Venkman]

I thought you were going with the moon-as-garbage-dump thing. Then I could ask about the physics behind flinging garbage into the sun Superman IV style.

But noooo...

[pxib]

The physics works fine. It's easier and cheaper to throw something into the sun than to land the same thing safely on the moon. It's the biggest target in the solar system, and there's no need to worry about space debris after the fact. The actual economics of tossing garbage into the sun at thousands of dollars per pound make investors less eager. REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE your nuclear waste. Give a hoot, don't pollute.

[Morat20]

The physics works fine. It's easier and cheaper to throw something into the sun than to land the same thing safely on the moon. It's the biggest target in the solar system, and there's no need to worry about space debris after the fact. The actual economics of tossing garbage into the sun at thousands of dollars per pound make investors less eager. REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE your nuclear waste. Give a hoot, don't pollute.

It's only easy because you don't even really have to get CLOSE. Just fling it in the general direction of the sun, and it'll end up there sooner or later.

[Righ]

I disagree, I always thought the obsession with Mars was a waste of time and money.  Mars takes forever to get to and would cost a horrific amount of money just to have somebody walk around for awhile then fly back.

If we don't go to Mars, Adelaide's granddaughter won't go to Proxima Centauri. It's one of those key moments in time that must remain fixed. We have to go.

[NowhereMan]

 

[Sky]

I have an easy solution for nuclear waste: Afghanistan.

Only downside is they'd probably invent some new form of anime or something.

[pxib]

It's easier and cheaper to throw something into the sun than to land the same thing safely on the moon.

Just fling it in the general direction of the sun, and it'll end up there sooner or later.

It's not quite that easy. The sun's almost a million miles across, so you have 32 arcminutes of play even as far away as we are, but you actually want to make sure it's a hit. A near miss will send it into a sharply elliptical orbit and our nuclear waste will keep returning like a tiny, nigh invisible, tail-less comet. We've got more than enough NEOs already.

I've got to agree about Mars, though. Men on the moon were a cute way to flex our Cold War muscle, but other than providing a couple crumbly gray rocks for museums... we might as well have stayed home. Mars is a slightly less cold, dead, and dusty ball. It's got air we can't breathe, so the winds will fill the joints in space-suits with sharp chunks of iron oxide and tear the fabric apart. That Mars is the second-most habital planet we know doesn't actually make it worth visiting.

[Grimwell]

I've got to agree about Mars, though. Men on the moon were a cute way to flex our Cold War muscle, but other than providing a couple crumbly gray rocks for museums... we might as well have stayed home. Mars is a slightly less cold, dead, and dusty ball. It's got air we can't breathe, so the winds will fill the joints in space-suits with sharp chunks of iron oxide and tear the fabric apart. That Mars is the second-most habital planet we know doesn't actually make it worth visiting.

So we should just skip on this whole "Let's figure out how to get to and live on other planets!" thing until we find one that's so totally awesome we just can't believe it?

Sometimes the point of getting there is proving you can.

[Bzalthek]

Hey, we live in a world that sells us we can have it our way whenever we damn well please and anyone who says otherwise is a commie bastard who hates freedom and kills puppies.  If getting to mars isn't an instantaneous process which allows us to go on vacation there tomorrow and provides free blowjobs, then the average jackass thinks it's worthless.  It's the same shit environmentalism has to deal with.  They can't see anything long term because they'll probably be dead anyway.  As St. Carlin put it  "I got mine! fuck you!"

[Sheepherder]

we might as well have stayed home. Mars is a slightly less cold, dead, and dusty ball. It's got air we can't breathe, so the winds will fill the joints in space-suits with sharp chunks of iron oxide and tear the fabric apart. That Mars is the second-most habital planet we know doesn't actually make it worth visiting.

Don't forget: a significant portion of the soil is hydrogen peroxide.

[Mrbloodworth]

Hey, we live in a world that sells us we can have it our way whenever we damn well please and anyone who says otherwise is a commie bastard who hates freedom and kills puppies.  If getting to mars isn't an instantaneous process which allows us to go on vacation there tomorrow and provides free blowjobs, then the average jackass thinks it's worthless.

[Murgos]

Don't forget: a significant portion of the soil is hydrogen peroxide.

The soil is rocket fuel?

fake edit:

Dr Houtkooper said, “The GEx experiment measured unexplained rises in oxygen and carbon dioxide levels when incubating samples. If we assume these gases were produced during the breakdown of organic material together with hydrogen peroxide solution, we can calculate the masses needed to produce the volume of gas measured. From that, we can estimate the total biomass in the sample of Martian soil. It comes out at little more than one part per thousand by weight, comparable to what is found in some permafrost in Antarctica. This might be detectable by instruments on the Phoenix lander, which will arrive at Mars in May next year.”

So, not really a significant portion then.

[Teleku]

I've got to agree about Mars, though. Men on the moon were a cute way to flex our Cold War muscle, but other than providing a couple crumbly gray rocks for museums... we might as well have stayed home. Mars is a slightly less cold, dead, and dusty ball. It's got air we can't breathe, so the winds will fill the joints in space-suits with sharp chunks of iron oxide and tear the fabric apart. That Mars is the second-most habital planet we know doesn't actually make it worth visiting.

So we should just skip on this whole "Let's figure out how to get to and live on other planets!" thing until we find one that's so totally awesome we just can't believe it?

Sometimes the point of getting there is proving you can.

I'm just saying lets learn how to live on the moon first, then work on Mars.  The logistics of getting to Mars makes it so that any mission would just be a glorified photo op, with no actual value.  A shit ton of money to send some guys to walk around and come back.  We can easily supply the moon though, and can much more easily learn how to live there and develop all that technology you mentioned.  Once thats complete, launch off the moon and work at Mars.

[Lantyssa]

So, not really a significant portion then.

That tells us the biomass is insignificant, not how much hydrogen peroxide there is.  If it were the limiting reagent then Mars' biomass could be much higher and he would be getting excited about that.

At a rate found in Antartica though means any biologically significant molecules present were probably brought there by astroid impacts.

[Sheepherder]

The soil is rocket fuel?

So, not really a significant portion then.

Not rocket fuel, an oxidizer.  In rocketry it's used to speed the burn rate by drastically increasing the amount of oxygen available to react with the fuel, like Nitrous Oxide is used to increase the burn efficiency of a given volume of gasoline in a car.  As for why it's bad:

In chemical terms, oxidative stress is a large rise (becoming less negative) in the cellular reduction potential, or a large decrease in the reducing capacity of the cellular redox couples, such as glutathione. The effects of oxidative stress depend upon the size of these changes, with a cell being able to overcome small perturbations and regain its original state. However, more severe oxidative stress can cause cell death and even moderate oxidation can trigger apoptosis, while more intense stresses may cause necrosis.

A particularly destructive aspect of oxidative stress is the production of reactive oxygen species, which include free radicals and peroxides. Some of the less reactive of these species (such as superoxide) can be converted by oxidoreduction reactions with transition metals or other redox cycling compounds (including quinones) into more aggressive radical species that can cause extensive cellular damage. The major portion of long term effects is inflicted by damage on DNA. Most of these oxygen-derived species are produced at a low level by normal aerobic metabolism and the damage they cause to cells is constantly repaired. However, under the severe levels of oxidative stress that cause necrosis, the damage causes ATP depletion, preventing controlled apoptotic death and causing the cell to simply fall apart.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxidative_stress

Then there's the quantity, which Lantyssa explained.  But articles on it snowing peroxide are too good to not link.

[Murgos]

Hydrogen Peroxide has previously, and is currently still occasionally, been used as a monopropellant in rocket engines so I'm not sure why you take exception to that.

Anyway, I'm not sure why you are trying to make it sound like Mars is made out of H2O2.  Great, some of it comes out of the atmosphere in clumps when exposed to high amounts of static electricity in the martian atmosphere.  It still leaves us with Mars being the second most hospitable planet in the near neighborhood.

[pxib]

Sometimes the point of getting there is proving you can.

I'm just saying lets learn how to live on the moon first, then work on Mars.

Well sure... if we can figure out how to live sustainably sealed up on the Moon, we can definitely figure out how to do it on Mars. Even less costly would be figuring out how to live sustainably in the nearby vacuum of low Earth orbit (a little tougher without local water, dust, and gravity). Alternatively we could send robots to the Moon (or Mars! or both!) to better determine its sub-surface resources while we put people in another sealed building in the Arizona desert, provide them with analogous supplies to the ones they'd have available on whichever place we'll pretend we've sent them, and see how well they do.

Doing something to prove you can works when you're the USA or USSR in 1960. Not so much in 2010.

[Tale]

Dark side swimming deserves a quiet night.

[Venkman]

I've got to agree about Mars, though. Men on the moon were a cute way to flex our Cold War muscle, but other than providing a couple crumbly gray rocks for museums... we might as well have stayed home. Mars is a slightly less cold, dead, and dusty ball. It's got air we can't breathe, so the winds will fill the joints in space-suits with sharp chunks of iron oxide and tear the fabric apart. That Mars is the second-most habital planet we know doesn't actually make it worth visiting.

As mentioned, I'm of a mind that the mission itself (manning Mars) is less important than the discoveries we make along the way about human physiology in artificial environments. Without this desire, there's really no reason to have built anything after whatever space shuttle you need to keep the communications satellites working. The decadence of the average person (as mentioned by Bzalthek) should in no way be used as a crutch by the few people capable of greatness. Or at least, greatening humanity in some small way.