Straight to Mars?

Christopher M. Jones wrote:
Henry Spencer wrote:

An impact on the Moon tends to spread the impacting body around quite
widely, rather than leaving it concentrated below the crater.

That said, anyone who firmly says that you can't find resource X in a
concentrated form on the Moon is jumping to conclusions. We have a fair
idea of the *average* geology of the Moon, but we know very little about
its extremes... and useful ore bodies are extremes by definition. An ore
body a hundred meters on a side -- almost certainly too small to be
detected from orbit in any reasonable way -- would still contain millions
of tons of material.


The best case scenario for lunar habitation would be
a large and compact deposit of various "ices",
including not just water but also Carbon and Nitrogen
bearing compounds. Which is actually not too terribly
unlikely, considering that the same processes that
would most likely lead to water ice deposits (cometary
impacts) would also lead to deposits of various CHON
ices. These compounds would reduce much of the critical
deficiencies of the moon in terms of human habitation,
and would somewhat even up the odds with Mars in that
area, at least in the short term. The day/night cycle
would still be problematic though, but not a show
stopper.

The most likely spot for these ices are polar craters.

It's possible there are some polar mountain tops that enjoy constant
sunlight.

These two possibilities give me some optimism for Polar settlements.

--
Hop David
http://clowder.net/hop/index.html

"Jon S. Berndt" jsb.at.hal-pc-dot.org wrote in message
There are four types of information relevant to this discussion,

1) That which we know that we know,
2) That which we know that we don't know,
3) That which we don't know that we know,
4) That which we don't know that we don't know.
You missed the most frustrating one:
5) That which we think we know, but is actually not true.

Henry Spencer wrote:
Antarctica does *not* (last I heard) have continuous satellite
coverage.

I thought Iridium gave the whole world continuous satellite coverage.

It wasn't that long ago that interactive communications were
essentially unavailable there.

Are you forgetting good old-fashioned short-wave radio?
--
Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.

"Keith F. Lynch" wrote:

Henry Spencer wrote:
It wasn't that long ago that interactive communications were
essentially unavailable there. [Antartica.]

Are you forgetting good old-fashioned short-wave radio?

Are you forgetting good old-fashioned ionospheric propagation
problems?

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL