When all the planets are explored in the solar system

In message , John Schilling
writes
In article , Gerry Quinn says...


The Moon has no atmosphere. That's not all bad because you won't have
dust blowing into everything. Equipment may be easier to keep in
repair.

You know, we *have* been to the Moon before. There's no need for any
Aristotlean pontificating as to what things must be like on the Moon,
when we can go ask the people who went and found out what things were
actually like on the Moon.

And one of the things they found out, was that it was really, really,
really, really horribly dusty. The stuff got *everywhere*, anything
you touched, anything you walked on, anything that touched anything
you touched or walked on, ad infinitum. Plus, it was abrasive. If
you're thinking "abrasive" means "like sandpaper", no. It means,
"like military-grade nanobots designed to tear apart machinery from
the inside out". Three days on the Moon, and spacesuits were in
need of a major overhaul.

So the hypothesis that no air = no dust problems, is false. Indeed,
the opposite appears to be the case. It would be nice to get a sample
of Martian dust to be sure, but the stuff appears to be much less of a
nuisance than the Lunar variety.

It doesn't appear to have seriously harmed the rovers as yet, but is
there any other evidence for that? AFAIK, it's still thought that the
dust may be chemically highly reactive, and it's carried by wind, which
can't be good news.

In article , Jonathan Silverlight says...

In message , John Schilling
writes

[Lunar dust]

And one of the things they found out, was that it was really, really,
really, really horribly dusty. The stuff got *everywhere*, anything
you touched, anything you walked on, anything that touched anything
you touched or walked on, ad infinitum. Plus, it was abrasive. If
you're thinking "abrasive" means "like sandpaper", no. It means,
"like military-grade nanobots designed to tear apart machinery from
the inside out". Three days on the Moon, and spacesuits were in
need of a major overhaul.

So the hypothesis that no air = no dust problems, is false. Indeed,
the opposite appears to be the case. It would be nice to get a sample
of Martian dust to be sure, but the stuff appears to be much less of a
nuisance than the Lunar variety.

It doesn't appear to have seriously harmed the rovers as yet, but is
there any other evidence for that? AFAIK, it's still thought that the
dust may be chemically highly reactive, and it's carried by wind, which
can't be good news.

Chemical reactivity we can deal with; we know how to make Teflon. And
wind-borne dust *can* be good news. A dust grain that's being carried
by the wind is a dust grain that is constantly bouncing into other dust
grains. On Earth, at least, that tends to erode things into round-ish
lumps, even if they started as razor-edged nightmare cutting machines.

That the Mars rovers are still workin, is very nearly proof that Mars
dust is an order of magnitude or more less troublesome to machinery
than Lunar dust.


--
*John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, *
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*White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute *
* for success" *
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