The article on Mars in Today's MT VOID was inadvertently 
truncated.  Normally I would just send a correction the following 
week, but this is fairly big news for people with an interest in 
science and it has not seemed to make it to most news sources.  
So here is the complete article.

[Written Memorial Day, 2002]  Ah, what a difference a day makes.

One of the big questions about Mars is whether there is water 
there.  This is one of the major questions as to whether there is 
even any point in colonizing Mars.  You obviously cannot survive 
on a planet without water.  You would have to bring all the water 
you need with you.  One way of doing that is to find an ice 
asteroid in space and drop it on Mars.  But, this is a pretty big 
engineering feat.

We went into Memorial Day weekend with this mystery of what is 
the history of water on Mars being almost a mania.  Was there 
ever water?  How long ago was there water?  How much water?  
Where was the water?  Where did it go?  There were signs that 
some places on this desert planet there were little grooves that 
could have been carved by water.  Gee, maybe there was water.  Is 
there any now?  Were the grooves carves by water or some other 
fluid?  It is clear there is nothing so rare and precious as 
water.  That was yesterday.  Today suddenly Mars is a planet with 
water.  A LOT of water.

Mars Odyssey has been searching for signs that there might be 
water and instead has found the planet is covered with what might 
even be frozen oceans of water.  Yes, all we have found so far is 
dirt and red rocks.  Go down just a short distance and it is a 
very different story.  You have on the surface some dirt on top 
of water ice.  I guess it may be that in warmer weather that it 
may not safe to put down a rocket because it will sink into the 
swamp.  The newest reports seem to say that Mars has more water 
than we will know what to do with.  NASA supposedly will make the 
announcement this week, but in Europe the news of water has 
"leaked."

Suddenly there is a lot more reason to go to Mars.  There is more 
that is there.  You can see the report at:

.

And the BBC's report is at:

.

Why am I making such a big thing?  I think the world needs a Mars 
program.  Right now it is a luxury to move into space, but I 
expect in the next few centuries it will become vastly important 
to have already moved into space.  And we have to take the first 
steps.  It looked like we were doing that with the moon, but we 
let that whole capability die.  We have to use Mars a little 
better than that.  It may be the last remaining place in the 
solar system that we can get people excited enough to want to 
reach.  [-mrl]




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