from a scientific standpoint what weapons would work best on mars givin th eclimate/gravity?
94214
If nothing else, it is an interesting question.\n\nMost weapons wouldnt behave all that different, however, you may have to use them more carefully on Mars.\n\nMars only has about 1/3 the gravity on Earth and only about 1/100 th of the air pressure [I use the term "air" pressure to mean the atmospheric pressure, not necesarily air].\n\nBullets would be able to go farther due to the reduced gravity and reduced air pressure (less air resistance).  You would be able to shoot an arrow much further for the same reason.\nA sword would feel lighter in your hands, making it easier to wield.\n\n\nEDIT:\n-Rodri-, how so?  Why would the recoil be stronger?\nWhen firing a gun, the recoil is due to Newton's third law and the law of conservation of momentum.  How would less gravity effect the recoil?\nThe only thing I could think of would be that the acceleration of the bullet while in the chamber would be greater as the net force is greater since their is less air pressure for the bullet to be accelerated into.  I think this might be neglible though due to the extreamly short time the bullet in the barrel and the tiny mass the bullet has anyway.\n\n\njojo21,\nthe propellant used in most all guns and ammunition already has the Oxygen chemically added in the powder.  The classic example of this is gun powder, or gun powder-like propellants used today in amminition.  There is an oxidizer in the chemical (such as KNO3) that will supply all the Oxygen needed for the reaction.  Virtually nothing is needed from the surrounding "air".
1008342
First we would need a secure dome to live in, to retain the air we need to breathe, and a way of removing the carbon-dioxide from it - plants are good at this - and we would need to keep the dome heated, as Mars' warmest day is colder than Earths' coldest, I remember reading.  We would have to use hydroponics to grow food, and meat would be a luxury of the past. Expect an awful bland diet for years. Gravity is something like 2/3rds of ours, so our activity in the dome would be pretty easy, but you'd need to learn how to sprint again, if you were into running, and imagine the hundred metres being run in not just under ten seconds, but perhaps six!  Mars would actually be a great place for the elderly to retire to - less fall injuries, less heart stress.  Children born on Mars would grow very tall, perhaps damaging them - tall has its' downsides for humans, particularly back and circulatory troubles.  Nuclear bombs detonated out on the Martian plains would generate enough heat to release the water scientists tend to agree is frozen in there, in the soil and rock, and if large panels of black material were laid out, their albedo would catch and retain heat.  We need a thick, oxygen rich atmosphere.  Mars' is very thin, and with little oxygen.  Such 'Terra-forming' (making Earth-like) would be a huge undertaking.\n  So there you are, stuck in your dome, bored, hurt yourself badly from running at 40mph, vegetarian, with nine-foot tall kids, and Grandpa is 168.  Perhaps death would be preferable...
658807
Check the following links to know more about Mars.\n\nFollow links on these pages to have  a better insight on The Universe!
715462
Mars could, since there is carbon there and it's got its own protective layer the only thing left is water.... there is some evidence that mars has got water in it so we could take that risk\n\nanyway if the time comes then we'll probarbly have some way of sombining the hydrogen to the oxygen- making water!
1069293
Flying a balloon on Mars is not easy. The ground-level atmosphere is (I believe) 1/140 times as dense as ours, and even with 1/3 of the gravity, it may be equivalent to flying a balloon at 25,000 meters on Earth or at 80,000 feet. It can be done, but takes a big balloon. With the fierce storms of Mars, one also wonders how long such a balloon would last. \n    About the lifting power--it equals to the weight of the displaced atmosphere, minus the weight of the gas inside the balloon, required to keep it inflated. Whether that is hydrogen or helium should make little difference, because either gas weighs much less than the air (or on Mars, carbon dioxide) which is displaces. Hydrogen should be available on Mars, if only a little water can be extracted there, which seems likely. Hydrogen was of course used in all the Zeppelins in WW-I and with proper caution is quite usable. \n\n    Oxygen and nitrogen are rather heavy, cutting the lifting power by a factor of about 4: considering how marginal any balloon is on Mars, they are clearly unsuitable.. \n\n    Scientific high-altitude ballooners on Earth prefer helium because of the way its temperature changes as the balloon rises and the gas inside expands, but on Mars a balloon probably won't rise far. Rubber balloons launched to probe the weather are filled with hydrogen, which is much cheaper: they rise quickly and explode at their maximum altitude, but by then all required data have been transmitted by radio.
736544
I have some experience with designing lightweight missiles (Nerf type guns specifically) and I can tell you that there are 3 main items of importance when it comes to getting the maximum range possible:\n\n(1) Have a set of 3 or 4 fins that poke out to just about the same diameter as the body of the rocket if the rocket tapers in at the back, or about 25% to 50% greater diameter than the body of the rocket if it does not taper.\n\n(2) make sure you have no "shelves" in the design.  "Shelves" are rear-facing step-like features that create suction as the rocket is flying through the air.  Imagine a bullet flying through the air, the bullet is basically cylinder-shaped but it is pointed at the forward end.  The rear end is flat.  This flat creates a shelf, and a region of suction forms there which slows the bullet down.  When you are dealing with something low-density like a soda bottle rocket, this suction has a much more noticeable effect than it does for higher-density projectiles like bullets.  But even with bullets, they use a shape called a "boat tail" to overcome this -- see the "Rifle Bullets" section of this website for a picture of what I mean:\nhttp://matrix.dumpshock.com/raygun/basics/bullets.html\n\n\nFor a what-not-to-do, take a look at these missiles:\n\nhttp://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/B0002FYR0M/ref=dp_otherviews_2/002-1250901-3240058?ie=UTF8&s=sporting-goods&img=2\nNotice how the back end is flat?  That is where all the suction happens.  If they had a way to make those missiles taper together at the tail, they would go a lot farther.  Since a soda bottle tapers at the mouth (which is the rear when launched as a rocket), you want to maximixe this effect.\n\nhttp://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/e7/fc/a232d250fca071ddd6b17010.L.jpg\nNotice how this one not only is flat at the rear, but it also has a "shelf" feature that goes all the way around it, at the back side of the yellow warhead section.  That will create a lot of suction too.  If that were tapered into the body like the rightmost missile in this picture, it would go a lot further:\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Titan_Missile_Family.png\n\n(3) Nosecone -- ideally for a low-velocity low-density missile like a soda bottle rocket, this should be rounded.  Like the ones at the top of this webpage about soda bottle rockets:\nhttp://waterrocket.uh-lab.de/backglide.htm\n\nYou can probably get some really good nosecones for relatively little money at a local hobby shop, in the model rocketry department.  Failing that, look for a thin hard-plastic ball that you can cut in half.  Some soda bottles already have rounded ends, but these are becoming very rare now since they were more expensive to make than the ones with flat ends.  If you can't find any good round nosecones, you can make a cone-shaped one by cutting a big circle out of construction paper and then cutting a "pie slice" out of that circle.  Now you can easily roll up the remaining circle section into a pointed cone.  Play around with it until you have reduced it to the least amount of paper needed to achieve the desired cone, because any extra paper is just weight that must be moved and yet won't help it fly any better.\n\nHere are some great web pages for this fun sport -- including one from NASA!
426189
see for yourself.\n\nhttp://marsrovers.nasa.gov/home/index.html
896989
You can make a ball bearing launcher:\nhttp://my.execpc.com/~rhoadley/maglnch.htm\n\nYou can make your own levitating MagLev train:\nhttp://my.execpc.com/~rhoadley/magtrain.htm\n\nOther info is available here:\nhttp://www.kn.sbc.com/wired/fil/pages/listmagnetsan1.html
262822
No, they'd be extremely too cold.  Unless Mars had a microwave...
1074897
absolutely, the military is working on one right now for there new electric battleship (in 2011). However, a railgun doesn't use heat to accelerate a projectile and the heat is just a sideeffect. a rail gun uses two electricaly charged superconductive rails, hence the name, to creat a super strong magnetic field around the armerture to fire the slug. The slug is made from DU(depleted uranium) or tungragen so it woudn't turn into a beam. Real railguns have the distructive energy as a small nuke without the radiation and complex dilivery system. a cheap 40 kilogram (about 75 pounds) can vaporize a target 600 miles away in a few minutes. the barral volocity is many times that of a regular gun and can be as high as Mach 9
426704
It depends on a variety of things: the angle of entry into the atmosphere, the size of the comet, the composition of the comet, etc.\n\nAn interesting note: one of the proposals for terraforming Mars is to use ice-coments to raise the amount of water vapor, create a greenhouse effect, and both warm the planet and add to the water on Mars.
11147
You could use a catalyst to turn CO2 into a oxygenate.\n\nPlants would be the most efficient and cheapest way possible as far as I know. But plants won't just grow on mars, you would need to make the conditions suitable for plant life to survive. I think they were talking about man-made global warming to increase the atmosphere and warm it up for possible teraforming. \n\nAlso, there is water on mars already and why would you want it to rain carbon?
117346
Well i remember I did a research on hidroelectric plants. And the good thing is you can make aworking model using some water and a bicycle generator hooked to a small light bulb (holiday decoration ones or others like that) also any kind of research that involves things the evaluator can actually see working and moving is always a plus. Just stay away from volcanoes, while they ARE very interesting, its been done quite a few times. Hot air ballons are cool, some china paper glued to make the ballon and a aluminum plate with a candle to keep the air warm (you inflate it with a hair dryer) and you have yourself a working model, plus you have all the data refering how hot air is less dense than cold air etc...there are a lot of cool things you can do out ther and believe me Internet IS going to be VERY useful
134869
If you mean one that  puts out fires, that is going to be quite a challenge. You must start with a robot that can move around and then locate heat.
634907
We have definately seen Water and Carbon Dioxide ices on both the Northern and Southern poles of Mars, some ice may form in shadowed craters, particularly in the heavily cratered southern hemisphere of the planet.  Conditions may be right in some places to have an icy frost just in the subsurface, but more investigation is needed.
527252
P90 here i'm thinking of getting M4 carbine and probably a gas  blowback barreta or glock. On the Rocket launcher good luck I heard there were plans for an CO2 powered RL somewhere on the net but i haven't really looked.
148940
I think it would only be possible if there was also lots of water on the planet as well as good solar radiation being close to a star and carbon dioxide. Also it would be helpful if there was nitrogen in the soil since plants absorb nutrients from the soil. There would also need to be rainfall on the planet, but if there wasn't irrigation and watering by caretakers could be sufficient.\n\nAnd what about terraforming? Mars has an atmosphere and I beieve carbon dioxide. Could plants grow on Mars? We'd have to transport millions of gallons of water in our ships and keep the water from sinking deep into the planet. Why would we want to do that? It could cost a trillion dollars. The moon has no atmosphere I'm not sure it could be terraformed. Just a thought.