JoeSchmuckatelli

Good point - plus this one has nuclear power, making it far less susceptible to the whims of solar power. Presuming they don't get it stuck somewhere - it should provide quite a bit of exploration and hopefully some good science. Side note: anyone know why they went with a rotary wing flying tech demo over some kind of mini-blimp?

That is kind of what I asked.

Looking some more at this: Location Map for Perseverance Rover - NASA Mars If you zoom into the Neretva Vallis, you will see that there are lots of craters, both large and small, all over the terrain surrounding this feature. This kind of cratering is exactly what you would expect to see on a dead, dry world. The Neretva Vallis cuts through this. The smooth bottom carves through this pockmarked terrain, its path clearly cut by flowing liquid, whether water, free flowing or glaciated or both or carbon dioxide ice. The bottom of Neretva Vallis has little to no cratering. This indicates to me that the area was already largely arid (to the point of being without significant atmosphere or surface water) before the event that allowed for the creation of Neretva Vallis. In other words; the conditions on Mars that allow for significant ground cratering existed before the Neretva Vallis flowed, and before Jezero could have filled and been a lake. While lakes are a great place to look for life: if the world was already dead before this crater lake was created... Still - it will be interesting to see what they discover.

Is snow unique to water? Can other vapors in different / extreme environments form the crystal structure of and fall like snow?

The Perseverance site has a map showing the landing site. After reviewing it - I'm left with the impression that the site isn't actually a good 'look for signs of life' location (as I'd originally opined). Reasoning: Jezero crater looks like a 'dry impact site' (don't know if there is a term for this). But it reminds me of the crater in Arizona (Navajo land south east of the Grand Canyon). Certainly there are very clear signs of prolonged flowing 'liquid' along the Neretva Valis. Whether it was water or not remains to be seen - it could be a glacier, and the ice could be carbon dioxide, water or a mix of both. The problem for me is that the source of the flow does not look like where precipitation falls - ie a mountain or highland region that would cause rain /snow in an otherwise arid place - and given the dry impact crater look of everything nearby, it would not be a place like Kentucky that gets lots of rain in general (not enough weathering). So it looks like Jezero crater happened after Mars lost most of it's atmosphere / water but still had enough subsurface ice nearby to create the Neretva Valis and the flow characteristics we see

Sorry - I wrote that in relation to my earlier post. We can certainly build them here - but to build a crater antenna on the Moon? You would need a fleet of big ships.

Snort! Fine.

True that. The seeds are tiny; easy to smuggle aboard before leaving Earth.

I refuse to smoke anything that is nicotine-free. What a horrible thought. You should feel ashamed.

I kinda figured that out, as soon as you asked the question! Still - the idea of building a crater antenna given our current tech is really unlikely; interferometry, perhaps better thought out than I put it, sounds like a more successful plan in the short run

I'm no expert - but given the size, I'd think you could pack something that could spread out from a minimum of 1m to perhaps 3m. From what I understand of interferometry, several small antennae can be digitally 'stitched' together to form a single big antenna.

Honestly - Mars is going to be one of those 'cool to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there' places. Download speed is garbage and upload is worse. Really hard to keep TikTok content up to date, and it plays havoc with FPS titles. There is no sports, and while there are plenty of beaches - the surfing is non existent. Unless you are a heck of a bartender or a whiz at acoustic guitar, you are limited to oiling and cleaning the automated oxygen extraction equipment - and since everyone has a Ph.D., unless you have three you can't get decent coffee.

@DDE - thanks for sharing! I'm quite familiar with the headache you described... And sadly, like my loss of smell the headaches seem to be lingering. My son had the fever and thighbone pain, but no inoculations. I had the first shot of the inoculation on Monday, my son was positive Wednesday and by Friday I tested positive... But I never got a fever, just the fatigue. Weird how everyone seems to have a unique covid experience. Although I have a question: I don't get migraines but I've generally heard that the Covid headache is different from the migraine headache. Did you find them to be similar?

I don't see any dozers for pushing wreckage off the landing pads I also see a lot of buildings - but little in the way of industrial centers. What is the economic output and export profile?

That is kind of what I was thinking - get SpaceX to carpet bomb a field of repurposed Starlinks withw big antennas across the surface and violla! Edit - OK, they might need some kind of landing attachment, but you get the picture

Boston Dynamics might object - presuming they can figure out a power scheme. That doglike one might be ideal

That photo above - the one from the orbiter showing the landing site is very exciting... I've been in a lot of dry lake beds, and this looks like exactly where they landed. However, the craters suggest that the water evaporated so very very long ago that I'd be surprised if they find anything but fossils of bacteria - if even that. But if you were to look for past signs of life/water... I think they chose a great spot

It's frozen state also acts to enhance a complex mixture of lactones, phenolic compounds, aldehides, esters, and other compounds. https://www.compoundchem.com/2015/03/31/whisky/

Wait - is there a video out already? Your link is not yet live

That's kind of the point with the LD50 of water - because it is so required /easy to process and there are limits to consumption through natural methods - you rarely hear about water poisoning. But bypass the stomach and dump 2 gallons into someone both intravenously (which you pointed out is also difficult) and by filling the stomach... Pretty sure you kill that person. Side note: there are easier ways.

I know it's early - but your original 6,500 did not look right. Neither does 15. I used to drink 8-10 1qt canteens of water per day during intense summer training - and the risk was always flushing electrolytes. So we ate a whole bunch, too. But that was also over the course of about 16 hours - with intense training in high heat and humidity; so all that water was being used & processed throughout the day. Take a 100 kg person. It would take 9000g of water to be toxic. There are 29.57 g of water per ounce, and a 1 qt canteen is 32 oz. That's about 946 g - so about 9 canteens. So - since the math works, but conflicts with my experience - the clear difference is in the rate of consumption! If you don't give the body time to process, then you hit toxic conditions... So you basically have to get a person to drink over 2 gallons immediately - and given that the human stomach is about 1/2 of that (2-4 l, max) - that is hard to do. What becomes the risk, then is aspiration (aka drowning) which is why waterboarding (Chinese water torture) is so horrific. Edit - so back to 'experience' stories: when it's cold, people want to eat, but not drink. When it's hot you want to drink, but have a low appetite. Not being mindful about what you eat and drink in extreme conditions can kill you. I've seen Marines go down in summer as 'heat casualties' (heat exhaustion /stroke) despite drinking enough water - all because they were flushing their electrolytes (not eating enough). I've also seen 'cold casualties' in the winter because people were not drinking enough.

90 g / kg Median lethal dose - Wikipedia

Nyeah: Tater got Ninja'd!

Grin! -- whenever he does this, I am reminded that my quibbling with him over stuff like 'is the universe deterministic' relies entirely upon his patience.

I tried to imagine a single-ship solution to this, and could not. Even if you had something large, with 6 rovers that pulled guide wires out from a central lander... with the webbing being deployed by bots that crawled out along the guide wires; with our current lift capacity, I'm not sure we'd get much coverage. Probably better to go for an array-style radio telescope; then you can land a bunch of relatively cheap stuff all over the place.