Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

Re:Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars by pvaldes on Wednesday July 25, 2018 @12:53PM (#17610738)

> Building a rover that can drill more than a few inches deep is presently a huge technical challenge. You need a rover of 8x mass.

1- make a rover of standard weight and size an put it in the desired place, as before. Deploy a light but strong flat platform around.

2-Look around. What do you see? Probably a lot of heavy rocks.

3-Pick some rocks of the appropriate mass, or a bag of sand

4-Load stuff of your choice over rover or put it in the flatform or in a special area designed to be filled until reaching the desired weight. Yes, like a truck.

5- Now that your rover is 8x heavier, start drilling

6- Finished?. Now remove the bags of sand or the rocks one to one.

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Re:Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars by NegativeLatency on Wednesday July 25, 2018 @01:47PM (#17611224)

Sure, but you now have all kinds of extra mass to lift to orbit (not the sand, but a beefier rover). You could launch more payloads and assemble in orbit.

It starts to become complicated...

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Re:Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars by pvaldes on Wednesday July 25, 2018 @03:03PM (#17611877)

I can't see why. After you remove the load again. Rover weight would be the practically the same as before. Maybe a little heavier, but not much.

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