Phoenix Lands on Mars this Sunday!!!

On Tue, 27 May 2008 01:23:56 -0400, "J. Clarke"
wrote:

As for being under snow vs frozen in ice, have you ever shovelled
three month old deep snow?

....Pat lives in the state of North Dakota. He's never had to shovel
that little an amount of snow.

OM
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OM wrote:

...Yes, but ski bums everywhere want to know how firmly packed those
layers are!


In that low of gravity, probably not very packed...I'm very queasy about
that depth finding also - considering how large the north polar cap gets
in winter, I don't think there is enough CO2 in the thin Martian
atmosphere to generate those kind of depths over the whole thing.

Pat

OM wrote:
...Pat lives in the state of North Dakota. He's never had to shovel
that little an amount of snow.


God, but that was the truth some years. We had one where the sidewalks
looked like a WW I trench system the snow was so deep.
This one was memorable:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Im...rd2_-_NOAA.jpg (that may
be the same storm).
That was the one where I had to climb out of a window to get out of the
house, as all of the doors where blocked by snowdrifts.
I remember the other one from a few years back where my car got buried.
I looked out of the window of my apartment and could see part of the
car's roof peering out of a snowbank.

Pat

Pat Flannery writes:

OM wrote:

...Yes, but ski bums everywhere want to know how firmly packed those
layers are!


In that low of gravity, probably not very packed...I'm very queasy about
that depth finding also - considering how large the north polar cap gets
in winter, I don't think there is enough CO2 in the thin Martian
atmosphere to generate those kind of depths over the whole thing.

Well, you could do the numbers easily enough. You're alright, Pat? Don't
get me wrong, but you sound somewhat distracted.


Jochem

--
"A designer knows he has arrived at perfection not when there is no
longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

On Tue, 27 May 2008 20:23:08 +0200, in a place far, far away, Jochem
Huhmann made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

Pat Flannery writes:

OM wrote:

...Yes, but ski bums everywhere want to know how firmly packed those
layers are!


In that low of gravity, probably not very packed...I'm very queasy about
that depth finding also - considering how large the north polar cap gets
in winter, I don't think there is enough CO2 in the thin Martian
atmosphere to generate those kind of depths over the whole thing.

Well, you could do the numbers easily enough. You're alright, Pat? Don't
get me wrong, but you sound somewhat distracted.

You write that as though it's something new.

h (Rand Simberg) writes:

In that low of gravity, probably not very packed...I'm very queasy about
that depth finding also - considering how large the north polar cap gets
in winter, I don't think there is enough CO2 in the thin Martian
atmosphere to generate those kind of depths over the whole thing.

Well, you could do the numbers easily enough. You're alright, Pat? Don't
get me wrong, but you sound somewhat distracted.

You write that as though it's something new.

I value Pat and his inputs to these groups very much. And I know he had
quite hard times both in regard to this health and otherwise. And I
don't know about you except that you prefer to provide mostly negative
input. So please stand back now, please. Thanks.


Jochem

--
"A designer knows he has arrived at perfection not when there is no
longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Pat Flannery wrote:
OM wrote:

...Yes, but ski bums everywhere want to know how firmly packed
those
layers are!


In that low of gravity, probably not very packed...I'm very queasy
about that depth finding also - considering how large the north
polar
cap gets in winter, I don't think there is enough CO2 in the thin
Martian atmosphere to generate those kind of depths over the whole
thing.

Fine, you win, the people who put the thing there have no idea what
they are doing and they're just talking trash.

--
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

On Tue, 27 May 2008 20:54:39 +0200, in a place far, far away, Jochem
Huhmann made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

(Rand Simberg) writes:

In that low of gravity, probably not very packed...I'm very queasy about
that depth finding also - considering how large the north polar cap gets
in winter, I don't think there is enough CO2 in the thin Martian
atmosphere to generate those kind of depths over the whole thing.

Well, you could do the numbers easily enough. You're alright, Pat? Don't
get me wrong, but you sound somewhat distracted.

You write that as though it's something new.

I value Pat and his inputs to these groups very much. And I know he had
quite hard times both in regard to this health and otherwise. And I
don't know about you except that you prefer to provide mostly negative
input.

I disagree.

h (Rand Simberg) writes:

And I don't know about you except that you prefer to provide mostly
negative input.

I disagree.

I already knew that.


Jochem

--
"A designer knows he has arrived at perfection not when there is no
longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Jochem Huhmann wrote:
In that low of gravity, probably not very packed...I'm very queasy about
that depth finding also - considering how large the north polar cap gets
in winter, I don't think there is enough CO2 in the thin Martian
atmosphere to generate those kind of depths over the whole thing.


Well, you could do the numbers easily enough.

Not really... you can figure out the amount of CO2 that gets deposited
out of the atmosphere, but trying to figure out its depth at any given
point is very difficult due to terrain differences and winds. Phoenix is
sitting just inside of the north Martian polar circle, and the polar cap
is very irregular in shape when it grows to full extent in winter with
(I assume) thinner CO2 ice or snow as you head out from the center of
it, on average.
I'm still trying to figure out how this got from Phoenix lasting longer
than its ninety-day mission to surviving the whole Martian winter.

Pat