Re: Phoenix Lands on Mars this Sunday!!! To Examine Martian Water Ice

On May 20, 4:34 pm, "jonathan" <H...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Phoenix Homehttp://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/main/index.html

News Releasehttp://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/newsroom/pressreleases/20080516a.html

Anyone care to stick their necks out and make predictions on what
they'll find?

1) Spheres?

2) Organic material?

3) Will they find the northern lowlands used to be covered by a sea?

4) habitable?

I'm saying yes on all counts.

Good luck Phoenix!

s

“Martian Soil Sample Clogs Phoenix Probe's Oven”

What a pathetic joke, of having that Phoenix sample screen that’s
allowing merely those1 millimeter bits worth of frozen Mars soil to
enter their oven is purely and utterly stupid and simply further proof
positive as to how technically incompetent or rather mission failsafe
our DARPA/NASA actually is, to think that a dry-ice kind of frozen to
death surface of that Mars reddish soil is not going to be of any
frosty tundra like binder, seems to be asking for a whole lot of
trouble in River City (so to speak).

Seems of the under-surface realm of dry-ice as snowy flakes or
whatever icy crystals in that kind of vacuum are likely larger than 1
mm, especially if stuck to that reddish soil. I’d have elected for as
tight as 4 mm screening, although 6 mm seems sufficient unless that’s
allowing in too much individual item mass for the laser oven to
vaporize. The brief daytime of high noon thawing that upper most
reddish soil out to a toasty –22F, seems capable of representing
something other than frozen CO2 as the particle binder. However,
unless there’s an underground aquifer/reservoir as wick like feeding
that icy soil, it’s unlikely of representing common water, but more
than likely of a mineral saturated ice that’s highly acidic (though
still better than nothing).

Obviously their all-knowing expertise failed to take such a common icy
tundra or permafrost kind of frozen terrain into account, especially
of getting further nailed by those extremely cold nighttimes of –115F
(a whole lot worse yet at the poles).

In my direct experience, the wicking or evaporation of moisture
migrating out of terrestrial soil only further drops the surface
temperatures to forming a layer of frost, with the local above surface
ambient atmosphere as high as +40F (it’s also called black ice). In a
near vacuum environment such as Mars, is where that kind of natural
thermal/refrigeration via evaporation pull-down can become fairly
extreme, enough to keep the Mars tundra as packed extensively with dry-
ice crystals.

That otherwise nifty remote digging arm that’s certainly long enough,
and of its way-over-sized shovel capacity is also further proof
positive as to how dumb and dumber, as well as totally dumbfounded
those supposed R&D wizards actually are. Half of that shovel width
should have been overkill. If this mission wasn’t such another
clownish ruse and yet another waste of valuable time and resources to
begin with (not to mention having once again spent those hundreds of
millions of our hard earned loot), you’d certainly be hard pressed to
tell otherwise.

Unless that frozen to death and godforsaken planet has marsquakes,
lets hope that a whole lot of shaking does the trick, and that fresh
delivered pile of all that surplus Mars soil doesn’t foil or degrade
the use of those other sample testing ovens. Other than waiting
around for another good Mars wind storm, what’s the best plan of
action for clearing their side by side multiple oven deck?

Is there a simple broom attachment or forbid any CO2 blowing nozzle
for that spendy robotic arm? (didn’t think so)

How about a gram worth audio feedback technology? (does our half
billion dollar Phoenix got audio?)

Brad Guth Brad_Guth Brad.Guth BradGuth
.

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