Just to complete my thought.
On Jul 28, 2009, at 5:02 PM, OrionWorks wrote:
"We should go boldly where man has not gone before – fly by the
comets, visit asteroids, visit the moon of Mars. There’s a monolith
there. A very unusual structure on this little potato shaped object
that goes around Mars once in seven hours. When people find out about
that, they’re going to say "Who put that there?" Well, the universe
put it there. If you choose, God put it there."
Mars has *two* moons, Phobos and Deimos. Strange he would make that
mistake.
Since the larger, Phobos, has an orbital period of 7.66 hours, he
must be talking about that one. It certainly is small, diameter 22.2
km. Not much energy required to adjust the orbit of a very low
flying low speed robotic survey satellite so as to photograph every
centimeter of it in 3D from multiple angles, and then land for close
inspection.
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moons_of_Mars
Phobos has a mass of 1.08 x 10^16 kg, and radius of 11.1 km. At
surface grazing altitude, a robot satellite would have a velocity v
given by:
v = ((G M)/r)^0.5 = 8.06 m/s
That's about 18 miles per hour, bicycling speed. Orbital period P is:
P = (2 Pi r)/v = 8653 seconds
That's about 10 orbits per earth day. Using laser ranging it should
be possible to develop precise surface contours and identify surface
gravitational variations. Then close flybys and photography of any
surface feature can be made in 3D. Using solar power and ion
rockets, orbits can be adjusted for close flyby to any location.
Communications can be handled via link with existing Mars
communications relay facilities. As these kinds of missions go, this
one could be comparatively cheap. The problem is actually knowing
there is something there to make the mission worthwhile.
And what if there *is* a monolith there. How to communicate with
it? A programmable electronic communicator might be good idea. A
programmable signal processor to examine any communications that
might be forthcoming, and a programmable signal generator with which
to ping the monolith and have some kind of chance to adjust to any
required communication protocol.
Dropping off a communicator beside the monolith could be easy. It
would merely take a close pass, combined with unloosing a spring that
decelerates the communicator by 8 m/s. "Coming up on time for retro-
spring." "Retro-spring activated." "Communicator signal stable."
"Houston this is Monolith base here." "This is mobile general purpose
communicator MGPC124." "My god, there are stars inside..."
It's just can't be quite the same experience with robots, can it?
Fantasy base, over and out.
Best regards,
Horace Heffner
http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/
