Re: Mars peroxide

Tell me if I'm wrong here, but if the Martian soil is
anything like Mojave dirt, then wouldn't it stand to
reason that the Martian soil would be catalytic to
H202 and reduce the peroxide in the soil to about nil?
 Wouldn't all that rust act as a catalyst?  

--- william jaeger <[email protected]> wrote:

> The availability of hydrogen peroxide in Martian
> soil won't be high 
> enough to mine it. If the hypothetical production is
> dependent on water 
> vapor, it will be extremely scarce. The amount that
> accumulates will 
> level off at some minute contamination percent as
> (wind driven) motion 
> of upper dust layers exposes the peroxide to solar
> UV and it breaks 
> down. If the accumulation is large enough to produce
> the results seen in 
> Viking experiments, we can set a lower limit to
> peroxide percent. 1% was 
> mentioned. At that level how much soil would we have
> to turn over to 
> accumulate a USABLE  quantity say 10 tonnes?  Too
> much I would guess. 
> the man to ask would be Prof. John S lewis at U of A
> Tucson.
> Regards
> Bill Jaeger
> 
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