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Higher than Rum Doodle
Apr 25, 2004 19: 00 EST
The satellite, Mars Express, of the European Space Agency, has sent to Earth some spectacular images of the highest mountain in the Solar System (that we know of right now): the Olympus Mons or ‘Martian’ Mount Olympus at 24,000 meters high! Yes, that is almost three times higher than the Everest.
Mount Olympus is an extinct volcano, and its expansive West face is broken by a fault of 7,000 meters in height (Can you hear the Russian big wall team smacking their lips?). The experts at the center of Aeronautics and the Space located in Cologne, Germany, who sent the photographs, indicate that the fault was produced by the instability of the land. In fact, spurs from eons of rock-falls reach out from every side of the mountain.
It is still being debated as to whether the spurs were created at the same time as the fault or are the product of millions of years of erosion. Near the foot of the fault are signs of glacial deposits.
The photographs taken by the Mars Express, which orbits 266 km above the Martian surface, can be the key that allows experts to answer these and other questions. The base of the volcano has a diameter of 600 km. Therefore, the angle of inclination is very moderate; hardly four degrees, although the Northeast and Southwestern flanks are much steeper.
Well, if somebody is really convinced that our planet no longer has any great alpine challenges to offer, here’s a new one for you. At the moment climbing a Martian mountain is still a dream, but space travel projects are farther ahead than most are aware off and trips to the space and, even, to Mars, could become a reality sooner than we think (keep a look out for ExplorersWeb's exploration space website Pythom.com later this year!)
One day mountaineers will set foot on a behemoth that earthly limits don’t apply to, with the help of artificial oxygen, of course.
"The Ascent of Rum Doodle" by W.E. Bowman is the account of the first ascent of The Rum Doodle, at 40,000 1/2 feet, the highest (fictitious) mountain in the world. It was conquered through the courage and bravery of a handful of eccentric English Mountaineers. Rum Doodle stands as a heroic monument to mountaineering, despite the efforts of the expedition's Yogistani cook "Pong". Or so the story goes.
Rum Doodle is also the name of a famous Everest bar in Kathmandu, where all Everest summiteers sign their names and eat for free - for life.
Image of the western fault of the Olympus Mons comes from the German Aeronautical Space Center, in Cologne, and has been colored and processed by the Faculty of geologic Sciences of the Free University of Berlin. Copyright ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum).
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