A hiking paradise on Mars!
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, sharpened, and annotated to post here, was taken on May 21, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows one of Mars’ more impressive mountains with the Sun somewhat low in the western sky, resulting in the long dark shadows on the eastern slopes.
The line is my quick attempt to mark the obvious route that would be taken along that ridge line to get from the bottom to the top. This could be a hiking trail, or a road. In either case, the elevation gain from the bottom of the ridge to the plateau on top would be about 3,900 feet in about a mile and a half, very steep for Earth — at approximately a 26 degree grade — but probably quite doable in the one-third Martian gravity.
The lower end of my proposed route however is hardly the bottom of the mountain. The slope, now alluvial fill made up of dust and debris from above, continues downhill for another 5,400 feet. All told, from top to bottom the elevation gain is about 9,300 feet over 8.5 miles.
The white dot on the overview map and in the inset marks the location of this mountain, inside the Martian chaos terrain dubbed Noctis Labyrinthus. What makes this particular location intriguing is that this mountain mesa is an interior and isolated mesa within Noctis, which means if you go by road or trail you need to climb it to access it. The oblique mosaic below, created from images taken by MRO’s context camera, shows the entire mesa, with my proposed route indicated by the white line.
What a place to put a hotel! Build a vacation resort on this 10-by-20-mile-wide mesa and your visitors will have endless sightseeing options. Put a road along its rim and they can drive to numerous lookouts that would make the views from the south rim of the Grand Canyon seem puny, with numerous other trails heading down numerous other ridge lines.
I am describing the far future, but it is a future I have a firm faith in. Humans will someday travel and live here, and enjoy its magnificence.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, sharpened, and annotated to post here, was taken on May 21, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows one of Mars’ more impressive mountains with the Sun somewhat low in the western sky, resulting in the long dark shadows on the eastern slopes.
The line is my quick attempt to mark the obvious route that would be taken along that ridge line to get from the bottom to the top. This could be a hiking trail, or a road. In either case, the elevation gain from the bottom of the ridge to the plateau on top would be about 3,900 feet in about a mile and a half, very steep for Earth — at approximately a 26 degree grade — but probably quite doable in the one-third Martian gravity.
The lower end of my proposed route however is hardly the bottom of the mountain. The slope, now alluvial fill made up of dust and debris from above, continues downhill for another 5,400 feet. All told, from top to bottom the elevation gain is about 9,300 feet over 8.5 miles.
The white dot on the overview map and in the inset marks the location of this mountain, inside the Martian chaos terrain dubbed Noctis Labyrinthus. What makes this particular location intriguing is that this mountain mesa is an interior and isolated mesa within Noctis, which means if you go by road or trail you need to climb it to access it. The oblique mosaic below, created from images taken by MRO’s context camera, shows the entire mesa, with my proposed route indicated by the white line.
What a place to put a hotel! Build a vacation resort on this 10-by-20-mile-wide mesa and your visitors will have endless sightseeing options. Put a road along its rim and they can drive to numerous lookouts that would make the views from the south rim of the Grand Canyon seem puny, with numerous other trails heading down numerous other ridge lines.
I am describing the far future, but it is a future I have a firm faith in. Humans will someday travel and live here, and enjoy its magnificence.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
” approximately a 26 degree grade — but probably quite doable in the one-third Martian gravity”
If you’re hiking it, you’d better allow for the weight of your life-support gear.
Well, I don’t know. There’s no air, magnetosphere, or even gas station. Not to mention how long it would take to get there and back.
John and Call me Ishmael: Read the last paragraph of my post again.
Somebody tell Ramblers Scotland