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It is also quite possible Mars still has 'hot spots' as geologically it was very 'recently' volcanically active. Every now and then there's little anomalies tha
by ryanmercer 8y ago
It is also quite possible Mars still has 'hot spots' as geologically it was very 'recently' volcanically active. Every now and then there's little anomalies that possibly hint at subsurface hot spots that might allow for hot springs and similar.
In Robert Zubrin's fictional (but hard-science) book "First Landing" on the first manned Mars mission they actually find a hot spot and drill into it resulting in a geyser (which obviously, the water instantly freezes creating a snow-like effect). All of Zubrin's books are worth reading if you are at all interested in manned missions to Mars. He has some non-fiction looks (that are a bit outdated now due to scientific discoveries, like finding the polar caps are lousy with water ice) but he goes into the math and gets you in the right mindset. The fiction book is similar in nature to The Martian (came out well before The Martian) and he also has a short little fiction book meant to be sold to future colonists called 'How to Live on Mars: A Trusty Guidebook to Surviving and Thriving on the Red Planet' which also takes a hard-science fiction approach to the subject.
- yellowapple 8y ago"that are a bit outdated now due to scientific discoveries, like finding the polar caps are lousy with water ice" They are? The north cap has more than 800,000 cubic kilometers of water in it. Not much compared to Earth, but in space terms that seems pretty abundant to me.
- Quinner 8y agoLousy is used in this sense to mean "full of".
- asavadatti 8y agoNever seen it used like that but it's (somewhat) correct usage lousy 1. very poor or bad; disgusting. "the service is usually lousy" 2. infested with lice; teeming with (something regarded as bad or undesirable). "the town is lousy with tourists"
- ryanmercer 8y agoWhat Quinner said lousy like 'lousy with lice' (infested with lice). From memory the Northern cap alone would cover Mars with something like 14 inches (it's close to 15 I think) of water :)