Touring the Grand Canal of Mars (Part 2)
Добавлено: 16 апр 2009, 12:06[22 Jan 3072; VOTW] Project Lowell filled much of Mars’ low lying northern hemisphere with cometary water delivered simply by steering and slamming comets into Mars. However, the bulk delivery of water by cometary impact could not be repeated after Project Lowell was declared a success in 2205AD and humans began settling the world. (That settlement was driven by mining companies, because by 2200AD any Terran seeking a planet to colonize would not willingly select muddy, frigid, ugly Mars when much more attractive worlds were available outside the Terran system.)
The inability to simply smash cubic kilometers of water onto Mars became a real problem by the latter half of the twenty-third century: the dry, fractured crust soaked water like a sponge, threatening to dry up rivers, lakes, and even the deep Hellas Basin Sea. The then-prosperous Ryan Ice Cartel, which had conquered a similar challenge to deliver cubic kilometers of water ice to its customers at a time when DropShips might bear a couple thousand tons of payload, offered the solution: a “skyhook” dangling from Mars’ inner moon Phobos would drop the water ice to the planet with only city-shattering force (rather than continent-shattering).
The Phobos Skyhook targeted (mostly successfully) its falling icebergs at the already-flooded Valles Marineris, right where the super-canyon crossed the equator and emptied into the manmade Northern Ocean at Chryse Planitia. However, the southern Hellas Basin Sea was isolated from that new water by the high southern continental plateau and the equatorial orbit of Phobos. The solution was simple and fed on those early dreams of Mars: an artificial canal between the Northern Ocean (specifically, the Isidis Planitia Sea) and Hellas Basin Sea.
Though simple in concept, this would be the largest excavation project undertaken by man. The “Schiaparelli Project” carved a canal 1800 kilometers long and kilometers deep, albeit aided by repeated Lowell cometary impacts that had anticipated the canal. Because the canal – and Hellas Basin Sea – were not necessary to Mars' terraforming, the Martian mining companies did not contribute to it (though they happily accepted contracts to dig the canal.) Instead, the Schiaparelli Project was half funded by the ultra-wealthy of Terra, who were lured by dreams of estates carved to order on a low-gravity canyon paradise.
It is in these estates that Mars’ second wave of colonists settled, and they will be the topic of next week’s third installment of this exploration of Mars.
The inability to simply smash cubic kilometers of water onto Mars became a real problem by the latter half of the twenty-third century: the dry, fractured crust soaked water like a sponge, threatening to dry up rivers, lakes, and even the deep Hellas Basin Sea. The then-prosperous Ryan Ice Cartel, which had conquered a similar challenge to deliver cubic kilometers of water ice to its customers at a time when DropShips might bear a couple thousand tons of payload, offered the solution: a “skyhook” dangling from Mars’ inner moon Phobos would drop the water ice to the planet with only city-shattering force (rather than continent-shattering).
The Phobos Skyhook targeted (mostly successfully) its falling icebergs at the already-flooded Valles Marineris, right where the super-canyon crossed the equator and emptied into the manmade Northern Ocean at Chryse Planitia. However, the southern Hellas Basin Sea was isolated from that new water by the high southern continental plateau and the equatorial orbit of Phobos. The solution was simple and fed on those early dreams of Mars: an artificial canal between the Northern Ocean (specifically, the Isidis Planitia Sea) and Hellas Basin Sea.
Though simple in concept, this would be the largest excavation project undertaken by man. The “Schiaparelli Project” carved a canal 1800 kilometers long and kilometers deep, albeit aided by repeated Lowell cometary impacts that had anticipated the canal. Because the canal – and Hellas Basin Sea – were not necessary to Mars' terraforming, the Martian mining companies did not contribute to it (though they happily accepted contracts to dig the canal.) Instead, the Schiaparelli Project was half funded by the ultra-wealthy of Terra, who were lured by dreams of estates carved to order on a low-gravity canyon paradise.
It is in these estates that Mars’ second wave of colonists settled, and they will be the topic of next week’s third installment of this exploration of Mars.
