
Mars Ice Deposit Holds as Much Water as Lake Superior - azazqadir
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6680
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557833
Lake Superior has enough water to flood all of North and South America to
almost one foot.

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giarc
Was intrigued by this comment so I looked it up.

North and South America have a surface area of about 42.55 million sq km or
4.58x10^14 sq ft (1 foot deep water is obviously 4.58x10^14 cubic feet).

Lake Superior has a volume of 12,100 cubic km or 4.2x10^14 cubic feet.

That's unbelievable!

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dekhn
now do the calculations on lake baikal.

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motoboi
What about Guarani Aquifer?

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brownbat
A little over 3 feet.

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=(40,000+cubic+kilometre...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=\(40,000+cubic+kilometres+%2F+42.55+million+sq+km\)+in+feet)

To skip ahead, the Great Artesian Basin, the largest artesian basin in the
world, would be just over 5 feet.

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=(64,900+cubic+kilometre...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=\(64,900+cubic+kilometres+%2F+\(area+of+north+america+%2B+area+of+south+america\)\)+in+feet)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Artesian_Basin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Artesian_Basin)

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droopyEyelids
How much fracking liquid could we pump in there and remain profitable?

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brownbat
You're pumping in what's (loosely) soapy water to extract water. And in places
where there's mostly positive pressure anyway.

None?

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verytrivial
Water behaves very strangely on Mars.
[http://www2.cnrs.fr/en/2753.htm](http://www2.cnrs.fr/en/2753.htm) \-- Note
the videos.

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Practicality
Interesting that this is in the "Utopia Planitia." That is starting to look
like a probable location to set up a colony.

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baron816
Mars is still less habitable than the Earth would be post nuclear war.

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codecamper
If we could just pack up some of this extra CO2 & get it over there, maybe
we'd have a new planet! I wonder how many PPM you'd need?

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pasbesoin
Yeah, but how are we going to reheat and spin up the core?

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personjerry
Why do we need that?

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scardine
Because a magnetic shield will prevent the solar winds from wiping your
atmosphere.

Without a spinning core, Earth would be like Mars.

Of course you can live in caves instead of trying to terraform Mars, but
doesn't sound so fun.

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sosborn
If we had the ability to terraform Mars wouldn't we just terraform Earth?

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blhack
...because we don't need to? Earth is already full of plant life. Mars isn't.

Sorry for the overly blunt answer, because I know this isn't the question
you're asking, but IMHO the question you're asking is based on a ridiculous
premise.

We are polluting the Earth. Yeah, this is really bad for the Earth, and for
us, but it isn't going to kill all life here. The thing that a "backup planet"
is here to protect against is something like being struck by a meteor, or a
plague, or nuclear war. Something where _everybody_ dies very quickly, not
something where life changes radically.

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Ftuuky
Good spot to land the Spacex's ITV.

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Nomentatus
There are places on Mars where water ice is available year-round, and carbon
dioxide ice seasonally, at high latitudes. Therefore, I'd say this discovery,
at low latitudes, has few implications for colonization unless there's a fair
bit of carbon dioxide ice mixed in. So I'm waiting for word on that before
getting too excited.

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mozumder
The entire core of Mars is made out of ice. The reactor melts it, and it makes
air.

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flippyhead
Why this excellent movie reference is down voted, I know not.

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reddytowns
God, I hope one day the act of regurgitating the script from a vaguely
relevant, fictional work is no longer celebrated.

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bache
Total Recall kicks ass

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fatdog
King of Mars. Called it.

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techterrier
Or mud, as this stuff otherwise known.

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peeters
Given the temperature and pressure of Mars' atmosphere, "permafrost" might be
a better comparison.

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stcredzero
There is a sentence that seems to imply that the frozen status implies there
is no life. I'm not so sure we can be sure of that. There are microbes on
Earth that basically live in virtually frozen environments. (All you need are
moments when the water is liquid.)

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Animats
_All you need are moments when the water is liquid._

But you don't get those at such low atmospheric pressure. Mars atmospheric
pressure is around 600pa. Below 611pa, the boiling point of water drops to the
freezing point; you can have ice or steam, but not liquid water.

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stcredzero
_But you don 't get those at such low atmospheric pressure. Mars atmospheric
pressure is around 600pa._

A mental exercise: Any place on Mars with higher than 600pa pressure?

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qbrass
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellas_Planitia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellas_Planitia)

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stcredzero
How about underground? How about the bottom of a glacier? No need to be
"surfacist." ;)

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qbrass
An unsealed hole underground would have to be dug to the same depths as that
crater. If you're pressurizing it, you'll probably target 1 bar to live in it,
instead of 600 KPa.

A glacier that has the pressure to melt ice, would have more than enough
pressure to keep it from sublimating. A rough estimate says that a foot or so
of ice could provide over 600KPa of pressure, but that doesn't account for any
means of keeping the water liquid or the ice solid. However, I wouldn't expect
to actually find that on Mars. You might be able to keep water that way for a
while until it froze again.

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ginko
Which is about a millionth of the total water on Earth.

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mimimimi
This should be enough for a colony though. With a recycling program it would
probably last indefinitely. Much better than bringing the water from Earth.

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jonsen
Just bring the right kind of people and God will flood it.

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mimimimi
You actually made me laugh. I immediately thought of Trump. With global
warming and his disbelief in it I think we are heading unto our own flood.

