martian seismometers?

"thanatos" wrote in message
...
thanks for the replies!

geo suveys are done by big vibrators, and phased arrays of geophones

perhaps could use "flags" on poles tuned to vibrate in martian winds


As far as proposals go; to whom do I propose?


No one yet has commented on the idea of nuking Mars for siesmic responses.
Face it, the whole planet has been nuked by space rocks over
eternity...whats one more??

Mike wrote:

No one yet has commented on the idea of nuking Mars for siesmic responses.
Face it, the whole planet has been nuked by space rocks over
eternity...whats one more??



With little atmosphere the surface of Mars gets hit plenty for seismic work.

Mike wrote:
"thanatos" wrote in message
...

thanks for the replies!

geo suveys are done by big vibrators, and phased arrays of geophones

perhaps could use "flags" on poles tuned to vibrate in martian winds

As far as proposals go; to whom do I propose?

No one yet has commented on the idea of nuking Mars for siesmic responses.
Face it, the whole planet has been nuked by space rocks over
eternity...whats one more??

To get decent coupling you would need to make it a ground burst and that
entails a lot of radioactive fallout. To say nothing of how the tree
huggers and neighbours of the launch site would object to frivolous use
of nukes.

The US hawks once wanted to nuke the moon at the height of the cold war
to scare the godless commies. Fortunately wiser heads prevailed.

In practice landing something on Mars at orbital speed with the
deceleration computed in foot/pounds but delivered in Newtons should be
more than good enough to set it ringing. NASA subcontractors have an
unfortunate track record in that regard. Current guestimates seem to
reckon it is a couple of orders of magnitude more geologically active
than the moon so there should be plenty for a decent sensitive
siesmograph to see without using to artificial excitation.

ISTR Apollo on leaving the moon at least one of the LEMs was droppped on
a collision course to provide an impulse for the seismic sensors.

Regards,
Martin Brown

Originally Posted by thanatos

thanks for the replies!

geo suveys are done by big vibrators, and phased arrays of geophones

perhaps could use "flags" on poles tuned to vibrate in martian winds


As far as proposals go; to whom do I propose?

Depends on where you are. If you're a professional scientist or engineer at a university or corporation, you should talk to your management about proposing to NASA's Planetary Instrument Definition and Development Program (PIDDP), or whatever it's current incarnation is called.

My bad, it WAS Viking Lander 1's seismometer that failed to work (because it failed to deploy).

-Tim.