Showing posts with label water. Show all posts
Showing posts with label water. Show all posts

Sunday, November 22, 2015

Mars and natural satellites

Mars is the fourth planet from the sun, and the second smallest planet after Mercury.  It's believed that in its past it could have harbored life, and may still, which seems more likely since the discovery of flowing water on Mars.

The house would probably fall victim to wild temperature swings (20 Celsius to -153 Celsius) or just be covered by dust.
 
Normal airplanes can't fly on Mars, because that it's atmospheric density is 100 times less than Earth's, and because that there isn't enough oxygen in the air to support combustion.  However, specially designed planes could fly on Mars.
 
There isn't enough liquid on Mars for a boat to float in.
 
The human is more interesting.  The atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide, and extremely thin, and that, combined with the temperature changes, would make some kind of space suit necessary.  Food could possibly be farmed in a green house, or just carried along.  Water could be mined from the ground in places in the form of ice.  Rocket fuel could be refined in-situ.  A trip to Mars is much farther than a trip to the Moon, so it has to be much longer because of transfer windows, which only happens approximately every two years.  Plus, travel time:
 
This image shows why a faster trajectory is less efficient and requires more efficient engines:
You can read more about interplanetary trajectories here: http://www.braeunig.us/space/interpl.htm 
And here's a handy spreadsheet: http://clowder.net/hop/railroad/sched.html
Of course, all that time in zero-g causes muscle atrophy and osteoporosis, so many Mars mission proposals involve some kind of centrifuge, to create artificial gravity.

Finally, I want to add this: List of rocks on Mars.
 
Moons:
Phobos and Deimos are the two moons of Mars.  It is believed that they are captured asteroids.  In most respects, they are like the Moon, except for gravity.  Deimos' escape velocity is 5.6 m/s, and Phobos' is 11.4 m/s, so it probably wouldn't be quite possible to reach escape velocity by running on Phobos, but maybe on Deimos.  With a bicycle, though, it probably would be possible.
 

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Earth and natural satellites

Today's planet is Earth.  Earth is the third planet from the sun, and at just the right distance to stay warm enough to have liquid water, but not so close to the sun to not have liquid water.  In other words, it has liquid water, which seems to be very important for life, which is why Mars is looking so interesting recently.  But I digress. 
The human, boat, plane and house would be fine on most of the Earth, since they were built for Earth.  But, let's say you wanted to make the Earth uninhabitable.  Or, better yet, non-existent.  Luckily for you, someone has made a list of plausible ways to destroy the Earth. 

On to the Moon!  The Moon is unusual among solar system moons in its relative size to it's primary.  The most widely accepted explanation for the Moon's unusual size is that, approximately 4.5 billion years ago, a Mars-sized planet called Theia collided with Earth in a clanking blow, creating a field of debris from both Theia and Earth in orbit of Earth, which later coalesced into the Moon. 
The color of the Moon is surprisingly deceptive, it looks like a light grey, but it's actually an asphalt color:


The gravity on the Moon is about one sixth of Earth's gravity.  The plane wouldn't be able to fly, because of the lack of atmosphere.  The boat wouldn't be very interesting, because the lunar "seas" or "mares" are made out of hardened basalt flows.
The human would need a spacesuit, because of the lack of oxygen, and the temperature, ranging from 242 degrees F (100 K) during the day to -280 degrees F (100 K) during the night.  We know this is possible, because of the Apollo Moon landing program.  The house shouldn't have too much trouble, but probably cycles of hot and cold and solar radiation would eventually wear it down.
The Moon is habitable enough that food and water could be a problem.  Food would have to be brought with you, or farmed in a pressurized greenhouse.  Water is a problem, because at the equator, water wouldn't last very long, not near the surface, anyway.  However, at the lunar south pole, there are craters where sunlight never reaches the bottom.  This is a likely location for water ice, because that strong evidence for water ice has been found there.  Also, because sunlight never hits the bottom of the craters, a lunar base would have to deal with less temperature extremes. 

That's it for the Earth and Moon, see you on Mars!