Robotic Exploration

The White Mars model predicts some rather different circumstances for Mars than standard models. There should, for example, be much more volatiles in the regolith (below the top few hundred metres that have been baked dry at the equator). CO2 Clathrates should be the dominant water-bearing phase in the regolith, not pure water ice. Water-bearing ice may be available at shallower depths than predicted in the standard model, and may even be emerging in some diapir-like settings.

Searches for fossils in the rocks of Mars are less likely to succeed, but the same explortation equipment (drills, microscopes, mobile laboratories) will reveal important information about the rocks and subsurface ices of Mars, so they are probably worth running anyway.

Some activities, like drilling, may need to take safety precautions against pressure blow-outs from CO2 gas pockets, or exposed ices.

Human Exploration

The basic problems remain, of sustaining human life on a cold planet with a thin unbreathable atmosphere. It is not until colonisation is seriously considered that the White Mars paradigm becomes important. Then, the subtly, or drastically different pattern of ground ice distribution make make base locations and survival strategies rather different. More work is needed on this.

Terraforming

Once all the implications of the White Mars model are understood, then Terraforming Mars looks like a much bigger job than other authors think, and even they view it as an activity that will take the concerted effort of humanity for several thousand years. On the other hand, we probably have a larger volatile pool to play with so when (if) Mars finally gets going, it will have a long life - millions or billions of years, rather than tens of thousands.

Basically, it makes Terraforming a much longer term process.
 

      Created: May 2002
      Last modified: May 2002
      Authorised by:  Head, Earth Sciences

      Maintained by: Nick Hoffman
      Email: nhoffman@unimelb.edu.au