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Martian Streaks: Flowing Sand, Not Water?


Waspie_Dwarf

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Recurring Martian Streaks: Flowing Sand, Not Water?

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Dark features on Mars previously considered evidence for subsurface flowing of water are interpreted by new research as granular flows, where grains of sand and dust slip downhill to make dark streaks, rather than the ground being darkened by seeping water.

Continuing examination of these still-perplexing seasonal dark streaks with a powerful camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) shows they exist only on slopes steep enough for dry grains to descend the way they do on faces of active dunes.

arrow3.gif  Read More: NASA

 

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Oh well.  IT was too good to be true. But keep looking.

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why not send the rower there to be absolutely sure, i mean if you asked me what it looks like i would have said sand in the first place, but staring at it and making claims without checking how true they are doesn't seem weary scientific...

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25 minutes ago, _KB_ said:

why not send the rower there to be absolutely sure, i mean if you asked me what it looks like i would have said sand in the first place, but staring at it and making claims without checking how true they are doesn't seem weary scientific...

Might be a long, impractical trip for the rovers currently on Mars.

In the future though, for sure!

Edited by pallidin
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2 hours ago, pallidin said:

Might be a long, impractical trip for the rovers currently on Mars.

In the future though, for sure! 

well not necessarily, the rowers could still do what they're thee too do while going in that direction, if it was me than one of the first things i would have done was send them to a place that was related to the possibility of water existing or having existed on mars, if we are to establish a future colony on mars then finding a underground water source would save us a lot of trouble so i'd say it'd be worth it

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3 hours ago, _KB_ said:

why not send the rower there to be absolutely sure, i mean if you asked me what it looks like i would have said sand in the first place, but staring at it and making claims without checking how true they are doesn't seem weary scientific...

My understanding is that scientists want to keep rovers away from any location with water. The reason is that these rovers haven't been well enough sterilised to guarantee they won't contaminate such a wet location with Earth bugs.

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2 hours ago, _KB_ said:

well not necessarily, the rowers could still do what they're thee too do while going in that direction,

Curiosity has a maximum speed of 0.09 mph. It could do an awful lot of science on the way in the many, many decades it would take it to reach these locations.

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On 11/24/2017 at 3:54 PM, Waspie_Dwarf said:

Curiosity has a maximum speed of 0.09 mph. It could do an awful lot of science on the way in the many, many decades it would take it to reach these locations.

Man that's slow, honestly with their budget it's surprising that they couldn't even afford 1mph... or better yet 10

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On 11/24/2017 at 1:51 PM, Peter B said:

My understanding is that scientists want to keep rovers away from any location with water. The reason is that these rovers haven't been well enough sterilised to guarantee they won't contaminate such a wet location with Earth bugs.

Well I say that it can only be a good thing, F it, let's play god and star life on another planet 

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7 minutes ago, _KB_ said:

Man that's slow, honestly with their budget it's surprising that they couldn't even afford 1mph... or better yet 10

It's designed to do science not win the Indy 500. It goes at EXACTLY the speed NASA wants it to.

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The unknown step-by-step topography, both surface and underneath, as well as corrective time-delay, makes a rover by necessity "slow going"

A rover does not operate in "real time" in the same sense of, say, a toy robot car or flying quad drone.

It can't. Too much of a signal delay to Earth and back.

Rather, the potential movement sequence is carefully considered, then uploaded to the rover.

Edited by pallidin
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16 hours ago, Waspie_Dwarf said:

It's designed to do science not win the Indy 500. It goes at EXACTLY the speed NASA wants it to.

So? if it could go faster then it could naturally also go slower, i mean just because i have a fast car doesn't mean that i have to go over the speed limit now does it? It could do what it's doing and then speed over to the nearest point of interest, i mean above 10mph might be dangerous given the transmission lag between earth and mars but 10mph seems pretty safe even taking it in to account, might be wrong though

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29 minutes ago, _KB_ said:

So? if it could go faster then it could naturally also go slower, i mean just because i have a fast car doesn't mean that i have to go over the speed limit now does it?

There is also the question of power. Curiosity have a whopping 120 watts of power, which have to cover propulsion, communication, instrumentation and heating. Not much left over for fast driving.

If you wan't a fast moving rover you need much more power, and much more power means a much larger rover, which means much more expensive to build and launch. Given the financial constraints NASA have, it is as powerfull as they can afford it to be. Contrary to what a lot of people seem to think NASA's budget isn't all that big.

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It could do what it's doing and then speed over to the nearest point of interest, i mean above 10mph might be dangerous given the transmission lag between earth and mars but 10mph seems pretty safe even taking it in to account, might be wrong though

The time delay between Mars and Earth varies from 4 to 24 minutes, this means that in the time from a command is given to the rover, it could have travelled several kilometers before the command is recieved. Thus there would be no way to avoid any unforseen obstacles. This is a sure fire way to lose your rover very quickly indeed. 

Edited by Noteverythingisaconspiracy
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7 hours ago, Noteverythingisaconspiracy said:

There is also the question of power. Curiosity have a whopping 120 watts of power, which have to cover propulsion, communication, instrumentation and heating. Not much left over for fast driving.

If you wan't a fast moving rover you need much more power, and much more power means a much larger rover, which means much more expensive to build and launch. Given the financial constraints NASA have, it is as powerfull as they can afford it to be. Contrary to what a lot of people seem to think NASA's budget isn't all that big.

The time delay between Mars and Earth varies from 4 to 24 minutes, this means that in the time from a command is given to the rover, it could have travelled several kilometers before the command is recieved. Thus there would be no way to avoid any unforseen obstacles. This is a sure fire way to lose your rover very quickly indeed. 

nasa somehow always seemed more high tech than that to me... don't know why... i blame hollywood, but i guess it was the best they could do at the time

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8 hours ago, Noteverythingisaconspiracy said:

There is also the question of power. Curiosity have a whopping 120 watts of power, which have to cover propulsion, communication, instrumentation and heating. Not much left over for fast driving.

If you wan't a fast moving rover you need much more power, and much more power means a much larger rover, which means much more expensive to build and launch. Given the financial constraints NASA have, it is as powerfull as they can afford it to be. Contrary to what a lot of people seem to think NASA's budget isn't all that big.

The time delay between Mars and Earth varies from 4 to 24 minutes, this means that in the time from a command is given to the rover, it could have travelled several kilometers before the command is recieved. Thus there would be no way to avoid any unforseen obstacles. This is a sure fire way to lose your rover very quickly indeed. 

Good points.

- NASA's budget is constrained. Only so much money available.

- Time delays of signal transfer makes "real time REMOTE" driving impossible.

- On board AI on the rovers permit obstacle avoidance, which IS real time, but autonomous rover movement is currently limited.

- A rover path must be mapped-out, uploaded, the rover moves according to that map, stops, and awaits a new set of commands. The cycle repeats.

- It's a brutal process which can take days to go very far at all.

- It would be correct to suggest that if not for the speed-of-light constraint that the rover could be controlled by Earth in real time. But this simply is not the case.

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18 hours ago, pallidin said:

Good points.

- NASA's budget is constrained. Only so much money available.

- Time delays of signal transfer makes "real time REMOTE" driving impossible.

- On board AI on the rovers permit obstacle avoidance, which IS real time, but autonomous rover movement is currently limited.

- A rover path must be mapped-out, uploaded, the rover moves according to that map, stops, and awaits a new set of commands. The cycle repeats.

- It's a brutal process which can take days to go very far at all.

- It would be correct to suggest that if not for the speed-of-light constraint that the rover could be controlled by Earth in real time. But this simply is not the case.

All these are valid points, here are a few more:

  • Any time that a rover is travelling too quickly to do science is wasted time. The rover is constantly taking images as it moves, looking for new targets and producing scientifically interesting images for the planetary scientists and geologists on Earth. A fast moving rover would be able to produce less science when not stationary.
  • If the rover was to move more quickly it would use more of it's computer processing power to navigate leaving less for science.
  • Unlike the self-driving cars currently being produced on Earth the Mars rovers are not on prepared roads, they are effectively off-roading in totally unknown terrain. A fast moving rover is far more likely to drive into deep sand, damage itself on a hidden rock, drive into an unseen crater or any number of scenarios which could bring a premature end to a very expensive mission.

 

19 hours ago, _KB_ said:

nasa somehow always seemed more high tech than that to me... don't know why... i blame hollywood, but i guess it was the best they could do at the time

I'll repeat my earlier comment, it goes exactly as fast as NASA wants it to.

Edited by Waspie_Dwarf
typo.
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6 hours ago, Waspie_Dwarf said:

All these are valid points, here are a few more:

  • Any time that a rover is travelling too quickly to do science is wasted time. The rover is constantly taking images as it moves, looking for new targets and producing scientifically interesting images for the planetary scientists and geologists on Earth. A fast moving rover would be able to produce less science when not stationary.
  • If the rover was to move more quickly it would use more of it's computer processing power to navigate leaving less for science.
  • Unlike the self-driving cars currently being produced on Earth the Mars rovers are not on prepared roads, they are effectively off-roading in totally unknown terrain. A fast moving rover is far more likely to drive into deep sand, damage itself on a hidden rock, drive into an unseen crater or any number of scenarios which could bring a premature end to a very expensive mission.

 

I'll repeat my earlier comment, it goes exactly as fast as NASA wants it to.

why is this even an argument, you do know that i was blabbering right, don't take it too seriously, i was just doing an experiment for a paper that i'm writing, though those rovers are poorly designed if you ask me 

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23 minutes ago, _KB_ said:

why is this even an argument, you do know that i was blabbering right,

So are you saying that you were arguing for the sake of arguing? That's not a good idea, it could be considered trolling.

 

27 minutes ago, _KB_ said:

though those rovers are poorly designed if you ask me 

No one did and no one is going to.

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6 hours ago, Waspie_Dwarf said:

So are you saying that you were arguing for the sake of arguing? That's not a good idea, it could be considered trolling.

 

No one did and no one is going to.

no i was doing it for a research paper so for the sake of science, but those rovers really are cr@p, nasa is the greatest embezzlement scheme ever made

 

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7 hours ago, _KB_ said:

no i was doing it for a research paper so for the sake of science, but those rovers really are cr@p, nasa is the greatest embezzlement scheme ever made

 

I assume that in your next post you are going to present proof of that accusation ?

If its something you made up it would be dishonest....... and you wouldn't do something like that, would you ?

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3 hours ago, Noteverythingisaconspiracy said:

I assume that in your next post you are going to present proof of that accusation ?

If its something you made up it would be dishonest....... and you wouldn't do something like that, would you ?

the proof is in how long they take to make simple stuff or stuff that already exists and how much they pay for it

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10 hours ago, _KB_ said:

no i was doing it for a research paper so for the sake of science, but those rovers really are cr@p, nasa is the greatest embezzlement scheme ever made

You comment/s frequently fulfill the common space agency basher scheme:

- General critique on anything space flight related but without exactly pointing out the point for criticism

- General critique on certain projects but without having any knowledge about the project/s itself

- General lack of understanding space flight related technology/contents/aims

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1 hour ago, toast said:

You comment/s frequently fulfill the common space agency basher scheme:

- General critique on anything space flight related but without exactly pointing out the point for criticism

- General critique on certain projects but without having any knowledge about the project/s itself

- General lack of understanding space flight related technology/contents/aims

wait if it's a scheme then how do i make money off it? (really how)

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One thing puzzles me though, why is the sand below the surface a different color?

I've been to the desert and seen these effects for myself in micro scale. I've seen conditions where moisture is present on the sand after condensing out of the air overnight.

The surface will dry as the Sun warms it up but disturb the surface before it gets too hot/dry and the moisture still present below will become visible as darkened sand.

You don't even need the desert to see this effect. Go outside on any morning the conditions are right, find and turn over a rock to see the darker bottom because of condensate.

Look at THIS image. Note sand build up from slides, affirming the new explanation. Now note some appear dried and some appear to still be wet! 

HERE we see a collection of slide streaks in varying degrees of drying.

So I can agree sand slides may be at least partially responsible for these effects, but to rule out liquid as a cause of the dark areas seems disingenuous at worst, trolling the haters, at best.

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17 hours ago, _KB_ said:

no i was doing it for a research paper so for the sake of science, but those rovers really are cr@p, nasa is the greatest embezzlement scheme ever made

 

You were blabbering, right? Just like your earlier posts?

Or are you serious? In which case, as NEIAC suggested, you'll have the proof?

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