Monday, September 30, 2013

Mars Is Useless

And now the bad news.

Mars has 2% atmosphere. It has 4/10ths of a Gee. It has 1% magnetic field, which is the biggest problem and cause of the lack of atmosphere. The surface of Mars is bathed in micro, x, and gamma rays from the Sun. If the sun is up, you get fried into bacon about as fast as being inside an industrial lumber microwave. That's VERY BAD. The atmosphere which used to be on Mars 4.2 billion years ago was BLOWN AWAY by solar wind, ionized hydrogen molecules flung out from the surface of the sun in solar flares. Solar wind is what gives comets tails. Solar wind is diverted by Earths magnetic field. Venus has one too, nearly as strong as the Earth. Jupiter has the strongest magnetic field of the planets, but all the gas giants have magnetic fields of their own. Mars? Something bad happened to mars. Its magnetic field died shortly after cooling. Its mass is too low to have an inner and outer iron core so instead of getting the dynamo effect of earth and Venus, both of which have active volcanoes, from active magmatic activity in our liquid nougat/rock centers, Mars turned solid. It cooled. And the magnetic field is barely there. That lack of dynamism to deal with incoming radiation, powering the magnetic field to steer all that solar radiation away? That stripped off the air, molecule by molecule. That evaporated the water along with the atmosphere. This is why mars is dead. This is why Mars is useless. Any astronaut who left the confines of a strong ships magnetic field to defend against the powerful solar radiation? Cooked like a luau pig. They would walk out the hatch, step onto the surface and you'd hear them scream and boil and hiss. Eventually the steam pressure inside the suit might even burst it open. A terrible end to take a dozen steps on another planet.

This is why we send robots to explore space. Because we are too fragile to go ourselves. Enjoy the video, but remember its not all milk and cookies out there. Space is unforgiving, and very very expensive.

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