Glaciers found on Mars

[Trooper110]

Red (Planet) Alert: Massive Subsurface Glaciers Discovered on Mars: Scientific American

Another steps on the road to sending a manned mission to Mars? Hopefully!

[thedeadlyassassin]

Wow, Earth 2 is here and has been here.

[Skud]

very cool

I bet it's got some hardcore viruses to bring back!

[DougBob]

Yeah, maybe THE virus

[Toryu72]

Oh crap..hmm can you drink it to?

[AmazingRedd]

hmm....interesting.

[Hammy]

Gee- doesnt anyone ever think that this kind of claim is to insure they get funded?

Related Question: anyone know what percentage the gravity of Mars is to the Earth?

I know little Red is smaller than Earth, but I ask this because I look at the thrust and energy it takes to exit the gravitational pull of the Earth and I wonder how this will be possible without something extensive on Mars.

Is it even feasible that 4-6 astronauts would be able to exit the Martian atmosphere?

[Trooper110]

There's very little Martian atmosphere to deal with when you look at exit velocities. Chances are that any mission would involve a ship built in Earth orbit, an actual space-faring ship really shouldn't be constructed in atmosphere, you can get better return for the materials if you build one that won't land, so they should be using a landing module of some kind. Also, I have to assume that they would be doing some kind of refueling on Mars, possible using water from the glaciers there, it would make the trip a lot less expensive in terms of mass and thrust ratios. And although Mars is close to being Earth-size, this does not mean equal gravitational fields, I *think* it's some kind of logarithmic equation to determine that.