terrafoming mars

Post Reply New Topic

I saw an interesting doco the other day not sure how much of this science is legit and to be far I don’t think they knew as well but it set up a plan to terraform Mars it goes like this



At the edge of our solar system is a gas cloud of breathable gasses we send unmanned probes to collect it and bring it and dump it on mars raising the air presser and causing global warming


Assuming there is frozen water on mars (imo the weak link in this idea) it would turn to lakes and rivers and stuff


After about 80 years of doing this we send manned missions to drop various primitive life on the planet over the next 150 years we slowly bring more complicated life until at some point mars will look like this


In the low valleys of mars humans can walk unprotected there will be earth life it will be like living at high altitude like Bolivia there will be pine trees and stuff not too much animal life but some.


In the middle areas of mars some earth life can survive but not us with out protection

On the mountains of mars there will be no change you need a space suit to walk around

Finally this will be a massive project they think in this time scale it would be possible if NASA’s budget was what it was during the space race and they had help from one or two other countries

Lets just for a second pretend that this could work more or less as they say and not question the somewhat Dubois assumptions

They ended up raising a few questions


Is it worth it to embark on a project that will not see results for as many as 3 generations ?

Second is it a good idea ?

Would you become one of our first Martian immigrants ?

Do you think it is right to do this to anthor planet?

And will this be good for the earth or bad?

Be interested to see your answers to this and any other thoughts you have


(to the mods if this should be in politics section sorry )

If we do terraform mars, we need to remember to leave all the idiots that ruined the earth on the earth. There are only so many suitable nearby planets, so we don't need our roomate to be an arsonist.

I think that we have taken samples of martian ice with a rover, so that should not be an issue. I'm not entirely sure about the breathable gasses, but if they actually are there and actually are breathable, this might be possible. Of course, it would probably be hard to get anyone, government or private individual, to back a program with no returns in their life time.

Never heard of this "cloud of breathable gas at the edge of our solar system".

Come to think of it: there probably is frozen oxogen locked up in comets and in the moons of the gas giants. Those bodies are basically big snow balls. So you could mine a small jovian moon for oxogen ice and export it to mars- in theory.

But there is one hitch- Mars doesnt have a magnetic field. Supposidly a magnetic field helps keep the atmosphere on a planet.

Guys, guys! There is a good reason why Mars is lifeless. An ineffective magnetic field and a mass too small to hold onto oceans and atmosphere gravitationally

ruveyn

terraforming venus is a better option.

Yes I do agree with you on the magnetic field thing but lets just for a moment take them at there word

From what I understand, Ruveyn is right: Mars can't hold onto a breathable atmosphere for long enough to stay terraformed. We'd need to be continually replenishing it (presumably by sending comets into the Martian atmosphere--any Martian colonists had better hope that there's never a collapse of space-faring civilization).

What might be just barely maybe possibly perhaps possible would be to terraform Mars to a degree (which would probably require continual maintenance) and the genetically engineer the first generation of colonists to be able to survive on Mars. Perhaps you could do this by having the terraformers live in a hollowed out Phobos, whose environoment they slowly make more like the terraformed conditions, allowing them and their genetically altered children to live together in that artificial environment. Once the terraforming is done those with the correct genetic alterations go down to the surface and live happily ever after (so long as they send a comet through the atmosphere every few years). Of course, the problem is that no one could immigrate directly--Mar's would be pretty much cut off from interaction with Earth.

As for the cloud of breathable gas on the outskirts of the Solar System, I'm pretty sure that that's wrong. Perhaps what's being referred to is all of the ices (which, if they don't contain any liquid or solid oxygen, we could certainly make oxygen and hydrogen from) that are frozen up in comets.

mars is dead.
it is not geologically active.
it's core is solid like a rigamortic body.

it was once "alive" due to the instillment of energy in it's creation, but that has long had time to cool off.

the present rarified atmosphere of mars will be blown away by the "solar wind" in the geologically near future.
mars is dead and can not be resurrected because it's mass is insufficient like a premature baby.

all the documentaries i see with that manic mars expert fellow can not keep me awake. he is hyper and i am hypo. he is smart and i am stupid but i know i am right.

There is an exhibit now at the Natural History Museum in New York about the future of Space Travel, sponsored by Lockheed Martin. In the exhibit is section devoted to the Science of terraforming Mars and how long it would take, what resources would be required, and of course the expenses required to make it happen. I decided to go into the city a couple of weeks ago to the Planetarium and saw the exhibit was in the museum...was very good..lots of prototypes of new space suits coming down the line on loan from MIT, lockheed, etc. ALso, replicas of the rovers.

Venus is an even more difficult target for terraforming than Mars. Not only would you have to thin the atmosphere, you have to get around the fact that Venus rotates in retrograde and its day is almost as long as its year. Mars on the other hand has a day that is virtually the same length as Earth's as well as four distinct seasons. Much simpler for plant life to adapt to. The process of terraforming Mars would be incredibly difficult and expensive but it is not impossible. Venus likewise could be terraformed but that is a project far beyond Mars in scope

There have been ideas about sowing the upper atmosphere of Venus with blue algae, which would convert the CO2 to Oxygen and
carbon...but it might take a millennia or few..

if man ever gains the foresight needed for a project of such scale.. he will have invented high temperature superconductors by then.


(btw: back of napkin calculations indicate there's no reason why we haven't wrapped the earth in a hvdc belt yet.)