Can NASA or SpaceX do ground penetrating radar from orbit? Or will they have to do this on the surface like oil companies trying to find oil deposits? SpaceX will need to find water, and to me, a lot of it to make rocket fuel for return.
A bump for this thread.With a possible liquid water lake, although underground, it would simplify the "mining" problem for obtaining water. Drill a well (piping) to pump the brine for processing. This is actually very low infrastructure and maintenance implementation in order to obtain millions of tons of water. At 14km and 1 meter depth that is 150 million metric tons.https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=46052.0
Unfortunately, the southern highlands are high up and very cold, so not necessarily a good place for human settlement. But perhaps the perfect place to run a fuel station - just deliver the fuels via hyperloop tunnels to Hellas?
Though I am no geologist, I suspect at the right location and depth, drillers on Mars should be able to hit "gushers" of brine. Just have to keep the well casing warm so it does not freeze on the way up.Matthew
I doubt any kind of tunnelled solution would be effective. The tunnels would need a water-tight liner, which would essentially make them a pipe. I would think it would be easier to run a pipe on the surface.And more to the point, the water is at the pole, which is likely thousands of km from where a settlement will be. Tunnelling that far isn't practical. I think a more likely solution would be self-driving tankers running back and forth from a well facility to the settlement.
Quote from: Bynaus on 07/25/2018 05:49 pmUnfortunately, the southern highlands are high up and very cold, so not necessarily a good place for human settlement. But perhaps the perfect place to run a fuel station - just deliver the fuels via hyperloop tunnels to Hellas?Is cold really a problem? Makes cooling much easier, makes electronics much more efficient, helps in cooling cryogens, and really easy to add a little more insulation to habitats etc. You are in near vacuum anyway, the difference between 1000Pa and 100Pa is pretty irrelevant to machinery, spacesuits and life-support and ready access to large quantities of condensed CO2 and Water for all sorts of purposes is extremely useful