T or E

Re the MRB of June. You have mentioned that the T,E could be strip mining. Perhaps. Controlled nuclear fission plus 1/3 gravity could result in very large machines. However, there is no obvious presence of overburden - unless the miner laid and flattened it in the trench. Perhaps. The overall geometry would be contrary, or at least indifferent, to economics.

I would not reject this idea but would accept it with caution.

Gregg Wilson

At the risk of going off the deep end, this one may be the equivelent of a Martian Mount Rushmore. No Hacker could have that much imagination, could they?

"Sculptured Faces," from E0201962, still mining the Valles Marineris system.



In the key below, arrows point to the faces spotted. Granted you may need a good monitor and good eyes to see them all--and perhaps a good imagination.



Neil

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Gregg</i>
<br />You have mentioned that the T,E could be strip mining. Perhaps. Controlled nuclear fission plus 1/3 gravity could result in very large machines. However, there is no obvious presence of overburden - unless the miner laid and flattened it in the trench. Perhaps. <hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Gregg, this is all speculative, of course, but I don't think the apparent absence of overburden or tailings is a showstopper in and of itself. For three reasons.

1. If you look at this image (the arrows on the right represent unmined veins), one gets a sense that the ore could be right beneath the surface:

{Image deleted temporarily} T%20or%20E/M0303753_CROP4_150pct_c1.JPG

2. As you can see in this histogram adjusted image, the surface topography is fairly granular. What little overburden or tailings there were, could easily be lost in the terrain.

{Image deleted temporarily} T%20or%20E/SP243004_c1_HE50pct75pct.jpg

3. We're talking about millions of years since the mines were productive.

rd

Gregg, this is all speculative, of course, but I don't think the apparent absence of overburden or tailings is a showstopper in and of itself.
rd
[/quote]

Both of you have caused me to completely reverse my thought pattern (this is permitted for start-up engineers). I will reverse my idea that Mars and our Moon would be dessicated. I accept and agree that moons fission off of their mother planets. My particular put on this is that a "planet" passing near one of our planets would block the gravitational flux. Rotational momentum, unchecked by gravity, would throw off crustal material - <b>including water.</b> The entire mess would come together as a moon. Water would be part of the interior of the moon. Since this action does not require EPH, there would not be any great thermal release. The moons, close enough to the Sun, would dessicate on the surface but not in the interior.

Being a moon, vulcanism would not be intrinsic to Mars. I would speculate that the volcanoes are a result of the massive impact on what is now the Southern Hemisphere. The eruption would be based on steam and the "lava" would be water. The surface material on Mars could have little solidness if ice has sublimated into the atmosphere. So a "lava" flow across the surface would carry away soil. When the water finally froze, one would have an "on the surface" ore deposit. A newer "lava" flow could cross an old "lava" flow at right angles because the first flow would have frozen and the second flow would cross it by momentarily melting it.

Economically, water ice would be an extremely valuable ore. One would excavate it along the flow channels.

However,I don't think that the T/E, in particular, is a symbol or strip mining. It could be a catch basin, located to catch water "lava" flows coming down the volcano. The cross hatch pattern guarantees capture of water no matter what direction the flow is going down the mountain.

Hey, I'll change my mind tomorrow.

Gregg Wilson

Richard,

Lately I've been seeing the "one time announcement" message from your image storage site, rather than the image itself, on some (but not all) of your images.

In your post just above the first image was fine but the second image was replaced by the "announcement". I jumped to your profile page then back, and the image of the inverted T replaced the "announcement".

???,
LB

Hey Neil,

Whoah! I definitely see most of the faces in your "Mt. Rushmore" post. That's nuts! Now I'm wavering again in my opinion. It is hard to believe there could be that many faces all naturally occuring. I'm still not convinced, but I eagerly await your keys with the originals attached.

Emanuel