[X] My Assistant

[alan]

Just peaking over the slope of husband hill. Looks like home plate to me
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/spirit/na...IHP0655R0M1.JPG

[Guest_Edward Schmitz_*]

On the issue of glaciation... This is an aweful small hill to have a glacier. Even on Earth, I'm not sure that you would get much ice flow going. Also, Mars is unlikely to have wet based glaciers. These are glaciers that melt at the base. Cold based glacier don't flow the same way. The base ice is rooted to the ground and the surface ice is what flows. Thus cold based glaciers don't affect the surface much.

As for things not happening the same on Mars... Physics is physics and chemistry is chemistry. It happens the same everywhere. It all looks very familiar to me. Remember all the things that led to the conclusion of water at maridiani. The vugs, the 'smiles' in the cross bedding, the blue berrys, the fine-scale laminations. These were all familiar phenomena to earth based geologists. Most mars settings have analogies on earth. I think the most difficult part of understanding mars is sorting out the changing environment that the setting has been exposed to. It's the same problem on earth, only here we have so many ways to answer that that we don't have on mars.

[Bob Shaw]

As for things not happening the same on Mars...  Physics is physics and chemistry is chemistry.  It happens the same everywhere.  It all looks very familiar to me.  Remember all the things that led to the conclusion of water at maridiani.  The vugs, the 'smiles' in the cross bedding, the blue berrys, the fine-scale laminations.  These were all familiar phenomena to earth based geologists.  Most mars settings have analogies on earth.  I think the most difficult part of understanding mars is sorting out the changing environment that the setting has been exposed to.  It's the same problem on earth, only here we have so many ways to answer that that we don't have on mars.

Edward:

Of course, you're right. My view, however, is that we must always try to avoid being seduced by similarity. Just because Mars looks so much like Earth at times, we must always be cautious. In particular, the timescales for landscape formation are so dissimilar to our own that quite different processes may come to dominate yet they may lead to landscapes which superficially look like those we know.

In short, Mars may well be like Earth - but we must take nothing for granted!

Bob Shaw

[tedstryk]

Edward:

Of course, you're right. My view, however, is that we must always try to avoid being seduced by similarity. Just because Mars looks so much like Earth at times, we must always be cautious. In particular, the timescales for landscape formation are so dissimilar to our own that quite different processes may come to dominate yet they may lead to landscapes which superficially look like those we know.

In short, Mars may well be like Earth - but we must take nothing for granted!

Bob Shaw

It is also easy to forget that Husband Hill is no mountain, despite the fact that it has taken us more than a year and half to get there. It has gone about three miles. Oppy has gone 3 and a half miles. I live near the Smoky Mountains and high peaks of the Appalachians (which are dwarfed by Western mountains) on one side, and the canyonlands of the Cumberland plateau on the other. And just about any day hike I can think of is about 3 to 6 miles. Given all the image data and rock analysis, a few days max to do everything either of the rovers have done, minus the meteorology. As someone earlier said, Pathfinder's work could have been done in half an hour, and the Vikings as well, minus the life related experiment and again meteorology (since the human presence would have ruined it). Apollo 17 traverses covered over 100 km!