Talk:Water

The article claims that water is a scarce resource on Mars, but I though that it was relativly abundant (relative to the moon, mercury, etc.)? Also, an early autonomous colony won't use much water, in the grand scheme of things, and most water will be recycled. Other then that, martian water has a higher amount of deutarium, which is unsuitable for life. How will the excess deutarium be filtered out. T.Neo 07:13, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Hi T.Neo, compared to the moon, mercury, etc. water is abundant indeed. I think the article only compares with Earth, and only the liquid phase. Nonetheless, you should add a comparission with other cosmic bodies.

I did not know about the high deuterium portion. You may add a paragraph "Open issues" to pose the problem of filtering. I introduced such paragraphs in many other articles. Hopefully, somebody else can answer these questions, or somebody can do the research to find the answers. -- Rfc 07:07, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

I dont know how deutarium would be filtered out. I dont really know much about filtering isotopes, but deutarium-containing water is heavier then ordinary water (hence the name "heavy water"), I suppose it could be seperated with a centrifuge. (Maybe, I dunno.)T.Neo 12:14, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

I inserted the "Open issues" section. -- Rfc 12:47, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

vandalism

this page should be protected, there is constant vandalism. Nawi 19:37, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Where is the ice?

The article indicates that photos show ice "far away from the poles." How far is far in degrees latitude?--Farred 02:38, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

The referenced NASA web page indicates just "The finds indicate water-ice occurs beneath Mars’ surface halfway between the north pole and the equator, a lower latitude than expected in the Martian climate.", which is not very precise. I will try to find exact data. You are perfectly right about a lack of precision. -- Rfc 05:53, 1 October 2009 (UTC)