If you can’t wait, just blow it up…
It always sounds like a good idea to begin with: you have something stuck in the rock, so, rather than spend the money to drill it out carefully, just blow it up. It’s got to be a good idea, right? 
To begin, let’s go back to 1968, when engineers in Rifle, Colorado found some natural gas in the sandstone, and came up with this clever plan to get it out. This news clip explains. Might the engineers have waited for a less destructive plan? In this case, they didn’t. But I’ll come back to Project Rulison in a moment.
Sometimes, it can be a good idea to wait for a less destructive way, even at some expense. I’ll admit, it’s frustrating. I’ve been there. As a rock hound, I’ve come across items which I was unable to retrieve without significant damage. 
(For instance, finding a spectacular gem in the volcanic rock on Sunstone Knoll in Utah, but having to settle for smaller pieces already loosened from the rock. Ever tried to break open basalt? It has about as much give as the Bush administration on stem cell research.) I’ve always felt humble in those moments, but assured that someone more knowledgeable and better equipped would come along, some day, and carefully retrieve the elusive specimen.
I’d imagine archaeologists sometimes encounter the same feeling. Lately, some groups have been using new technology to understand what is beneath the surface of a site without digging. Many artifacts that have been carelessly dug up and put on display are now facing rapid decay. Imagine a beautiful wood carving, laying protected beneath layers of peat moss for thousands of years, undisturbed, until dug up by a modern archaeologist. What endured for so long will soon begin to decay in our oxygen-rich atmosphere. Why not wait for a way to extract and preserve it safely?
So, it seems like healthy logic to me: if you can’t study something without making a mess, then wait for someone who can. Why do it, if you can be fairly certain that someone in the future will look back and cringe at your recklessness? Now, could someone please explain this to NASA?
Here’s the latest plan: If you want to know what is beneath the surface of Mars, shoot it! According to a Nature article, scientists are considering using the technology used in the Deep Impact project to probe the surface of the Red Planet. In other words, they want to hit it with a giant chunk of metal, and see what gets stirred up.
Christensen estimates that the impactor should be about 100 kilograms or so, and hit the planet at more than 15,000 kilometres per hour. It is hoped this would make a crater roughly 50 metres in diameter, and up to 25 metres deep.
Ok, that makes my chipping away at the basalt on Sunstone Knoll look pretty weak. In fact, I’m pretty sure that 50m x 25m would cover most of the Knoll. But these guys are sure that they’re doing the right thing. Not only is blowing a giant hole in Mars easier than sending a robot to carefully drill bores in the rock, it is safer, because this method is ”self-sterilizing”:
Moreover, exploring icy parts of the surface by rover carries the risk that a robot may accidentally seed a site with earthly life. Such a craft could generate enough heat to melt the ice, providing a miniature habitat for microbes.
An explosion of copper is so violent that it neatly avoids that risk, explains Christensen: “It’s completely self-sterilizing.”
Uh-huh. So, if by some off chance, there are microbes living under the surface of Mars, wouldn’t we be sterilizing them, as well?
In case there is any doubt of how blowing things up to get them out can be a bad idea, let’s return to Project Rulison.
It turns out, using a 47-kiloton nuclear device to drill for natural gas was sort of a bad idea. The gas, which subsequently bubbled to the surface in nearby West Divide Creek, was radioactive and completely unusable. The cleanup took about 20 years and cost millions of dollars.
Of course, we’re not planting a nuke in Mars to extract gas, we’re just going to bomb it from above, at high velocities with a giant chunk of metal in the hopes of extracting organic material. Yup.
I’m sure, as the future Martian tourists cringe at the giant man-made crater, they’ll understand that we were just trying to do things the quick and easy way… right?
I found this post via Tangled Bank and hadn’t been aware of this new proposal for studying the composition of what’s beneath the Martian surface, so thanks for pointing it out.
I have no clue of the scientific merits of this approach, but I am puzzled by your objections to it.
One is this: “Why do it, if you can be fairly certain that someone in the future will look back and cringe at your recklessness?”
It is possible that someone in the future will find a rover drilling holes in rocks needlessly destructive. So I don’t think this is an appropriate standard. The question should be is it needlessly reckless by today’s standards, and I don’t think this proposal fails that test. The crater formed would be 50m (150 feet) across, which is miniscule compared to the size of Mars and its major geological features.
Another of your objections: “So, if by some off chance, there are microbes living under the surface of Mars, wouldn’t we be sterilizing them, as well?”
Apparently so, but again, the area affected is so small compared to the rest of the planet, that this mission wouldn’t affect any future searches for such hypothetical microbes.
You also point out: “[U]sing a 47-kiloton nuclear device to drill for natural gas was sort of a bad idea. The gas, which subsequently bubbled to the surface in nearby West Divide Creek, was radioactive and completely unusable. The cleanup took about 20 years and cost millions of dollars.”
This doesn’t have any relevance to the Mars proposal, since that doesn’t involve radioactive materials or polluting natural resources in any way. There won’t be any cleanup necessary, even at some future date when astronauts may live on Mars.
Comment by P.M.Bryant — 2/1/2006 @ 9:34 am
P.M.–
Thanks for the feedback. I should point out that I usually adore NASA, but I do question the sense behind this proposal. (I may well be alone with my doubts, as well.) To me, it seems more like an excuse to use the latest trends in technology, just to make a “bang.”
I realize that the impact on Mars would be minuscule in comparison to other features there, and probably wouldn’t impact any sort of hibernating ecosystem that may reside under the ice caps.
On the other hand, if they expect to find organic materials, it seems to me that they shouldn’t use a process that turns such things to soup.
To me, it lacks the same sense of purpose as other missions, and perhaps lacks common sense as well. That’s why I compare it to Rulison… They could have found other ways to extract that gas, but were looking for an excuse to use new technology in new ways, and make a “bang” while they did it. It turned out that they probably should have left it alone… and I won’t be surprised if we will say the same of this idea, somewhere down the road.
Comment by karmen — 2/1/2006 @ 10:12 am
I found the link to the Nature story and read some more about this. I may not share your objections, but I will sympathize that this is a rather inelegant and crude way to do an experiment.
But don’t blame NASA yet. It sounds like this is still only a proposal, competing with other scientists’ ideas, and hasn’t been approved.
Comment by P.M.Bryant — 2/1/2006 @ 2:39 pm
I just realized that I forgot to link the article. The link is there, now. Thanks for reminding me. :)
Thank goodness it is still an idea. Hopefully, they will look at this one more closely before going ahead.
I can’t say, with the “oil crisis”, that they’ll be as sensible about the Rulison site. They want to drill nearby; the objections of local residents over the safety hazards may well be outweighed by the need for oil… (here)
Comment by karmen — 2/1/2006 @ 3:01 pm
Exploring and investigating things by cutting them up, breaking them up, blowing them up…
Maybe it’s just me, but I’m sensing some kind of general theme here…
Comment by kim boone — 2/1/2006 @ 9:59 pm
Sure, Kim, and the idea of cutting up cadavers to further the medical study of pathology is just so… icky. And the cyclotron, in which physicists smash atoms together to see what flies off, is just so… scary. Right?
“A physical experiment which makes a bang is always worth more than a quiet one. Therefore a man cannot strongly enough ask of Heaven: if it wants to let him discover something, may it be something that makes a bang. It will resound into eternity.”
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg 1742-1799
Comment by speedwell — 2/3/2006 @ 11:16 am
Speedwell,
I just said (explicitly), that I was sensing a general theme in this way of gaining insight.
You are right that I also (implicitly) meant that breaking things down to know how they look like sometimes feels bad to me.
However, I did not mean to say that it is always wrong. On the contrary, as you rightly pointed out, there are merits to this kind of research, and if we did not do this, we would understand much less of the world than we do now. And we would have much less practical knowledge to solve problems (be they physical, chemical, biological, medical,…)
Btw, you talk of dissection, but I also agree with some live-animal testing, as long that it’s not for cosmetics or other (in my eyes ;) useless stuff.
What I did mean was that I agreed with one of the points in the blog, that we sometimes use a lot of force to find knowledge, and in the process we destroy a lot of the details, which could also learn us alot.
And, I commented in a kind of anthropological way to a difference between eastern and western insight-seeking, which was not meant judgmental, but more as an observation.
Both traditions do have merit, but it is a general theme in the western tradition to cut things up, blow things up, break things up,… to see what’s inside, no?
Kim.
Comment by kim boone — 2/8/2006 @ 5:54 pm
And dissecting cadavres has never been icky to me, mor has atom-smashing ever been scary.
They are both fascinating.
To be honest, I was the only one in my highschool biology class to volunteer to blow air into a pig’s lung to see how it inflates. I was even fascinated by the still fresh drops of blood coming out because of the pressure.
So, probably because of my one-sided comment, you got the wrong idea about my views on this topic.
Kim
Comment by kim boone — 2/8/2006 @ 6:49 pm
ITS STUPID
Comment by JACOB — 8/6/2006 @ 9:10 am
You are liying im a profesional and this picture is not the one from Mars, its made up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Comment by Hillary Colle — 11/3/2006 @ 5:36 am
Hillary, if you’d like to consider yourself a “professional”, at least learn how to spell it.
Comment by Karmen — 11/3/2006 @ 8:27 am