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NASA Prototype: Could It Make Mars Breathable?
spiralx writes: "Scientists at NASA have successfully tested a solar-powered machine that takes carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere and produces pure oxygen. It will be tested for real on the next lander to go to Mars, planned for 2003. The article is here at Line One News." Mars will start seeming a little closer as news like this continues.
The main problem with making Mars livable for humans is nothing to do with chemistry but rotational dynamics. Allow me to explain. On Earth the moon reduces wobble during the Earth's rotational cycle. Therefore the rotational axis of the Earth remains perpendicular to the Sun rays. However Mars lacks a sufficiently large moon, this allows axial wobble of up to 90 degrees! Image being in equatral weather conditions when the axis is perpendicalar and in polar weather conditions when the axis is parallel to the Suns output.
Secondly, probably the best way to terraform a planet would be to use a genitically engineered bacteria which would transform the atmosphere using a fermentation like process. Ie. the waste product of the bacteria (the new earth-like atmosphere) would be poisonous to the bacteria so by forming the atmosphere the bacteria kills itself off (therefore we would have no problems getting rid of the bacteria when it had done it's job). The problem here is that the bacteria my mutate (a process which would be accelerate by the high UV radiation levels in the martian atmosphere) and form some nasty bacteria which could be harmful to humans - could a termination after N reproductions gene be manufactured to solve this problem?
Physicists are said to stand on one another's shoulders while programmers stand on one another's toes.
There are already tiny little "machines" that produce oxygen from carbon dioxide; they are called photosynthetic bacteria. Their genetic make-up is fairly well known and easy to re-engineer; they are cheap to produce in large quantities (they happily take care of that themselves). Why not use bacteria instead?
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ZP
We only can learn from our mistakes.
I personally believe life is ubiquitous. Intelligent life is another question. It I believe to be common, but nowhere near as much so as life itself.
I agree with this. Given that the time span over which life arose on Earth is far too short for purely random processes, it does seem like there are organising principles that come into play very early on in a planet's development. This would tend to point to life being relatively common on worlds with the conditions required to support it.
And given some of the places we find life on Earth today - hydrothermal vents, arctic wastes, miles below the Earth's surface and so on - the range of conditions under which life of some description could arise would also seem to be fairly broad, again supporting the theory that life might be fairly common.
OTOH intelligent life is a totally different question. Out of all of Earth's species it only seems to have arisen once - as a surivival adaption it seems that there are a lot better routes which living creatures have followed. After all, look at sharks and crocodiles, animals which have remained essentially unchanged for millions of years. There's no need for intelligence to produce an animal capable of surviving for huge spans of time.
So I think colonising Mars is a good thing. Eggs and baskets, you know :) Sure it's not going to solve the population crisis - if you had a thousand spaceships each taking a thousand people to Mars each year that's still only a million people every year - currently only 1/5000 of the Earth's population.
But it gives us a better foothold in space, and Mars' gravity well is much easier to get out of than Earth's is, allowing it to be used as a base to reach the asteroids and beyond.
Which brings up the thought that a way to start an ozone layer on Mars is via setting up weather patterns. I remember hearing somewhere that lightning is our big ozone producer here on Earth. Of course, us making weather implies atmosphere, water, and some fscking clue on how weather works.
I am a man of const int sorrows
Nor am I saying you're wrong, but if Helium eventually drifts out of the atmosphere into space, how is it that any is left on Earth? It's inert, so it won't be trapped in other compounds (unlike Hydrogen), meaning it must exist in the atmosphere, right? Or do we get all the He for our kids balloons from gas pockets in rocks?
I am a man of const int sorrows
Uh...no. The Earth has a diameter of 12,753 km, a mass of 6.5e21 tons, and a density of 5.5. Mars has a diameter of 6,794 km, a density of 3.9, and its mass is only 7.15e20 tons. Last time I checked, that means the Earth is almost twice as big as Mars :)
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
We still have helium on earth because it is continuously generated by subterranean nuclear decay. There is also a tiny amount in the atmosphere, because like all mixtures of different-density components, it takes a while for the lightest parts to drift to the top. I think most of the helium we get is in fact from holes in (radioactive) rocks, though I don't exactly know the details.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
I don't think you would want to be on Mars unprotected, I know they will use suits or something
:)~
Would some bikinis do?
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Yes there is: fewer billboards.
DNA just wants to be free...
Tropical paradise? Get real. Global warming will melt the polar ice caps and cause widespread flooding, areas of land will turn into desert, and winter will be perpetually overcast skies and rain.
:P
Hot weather sucks anyway. I get uncomfortable if it goes above 25C
I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'm wondering where you get you information/calculation.
If you do a simple ideal gas calculation of the average velocity of an oxygen atom at 300K the velocity is much lower than the escape velocity of Mars (.7km/s compared to ~5km/s).
I know this isn't the best way to calculate this but its not a bad first approximation, so I was wondering what calculation you're using.
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Under the assumption that all affects are limited in scope to Mars, this *might* be true. Maybe they are and maybe they're not. Who's to say us destroying a unique microbe species on Mars won't start a chain of events that cause Jupiter to blow up or something? Contrived and improbable, yes. But all actions have consequences, and we as humans aren't omniscient enough to know them.
To argue that humanity's extinction would be good is just plain silly.
Likewise, to argue that humanity's extinction would be bad is equally silly. Just because we're sentient doesn't make us any more or less important than the hypothetical microbes on Mars.
This all reminds me of the episode of ST:TNG where a planet had a colony of microbes living under the soil. The individual microbes weren't sentient, but the colony as a whole was.
I am a man of const int sorrows
I don't think the idea here is so much terraforming, but as a method for getting O for astronauts/dwellings. The CO2 and O3 produced by our combustion processes would be vented, meaning we wouldn't be eating up the supply.
Interesting you should have qualms about this, considering that making the atmosphere breathable is only the least of the things we would do to it.
Before that, most theories say that you would pump the atmosphere so full of greenhouse gases that the planet would increase in temperature by over 200 degrees Fahrenheit. This would make it possible to cultivate plants which would exchange CO2 for O2. How does that strike you for ecological rape?
This theory would seem to bypass that by using solar-powered machines, but be honest: you're not going to fill the atmosphere of an entire planet with oxygen via machines (except in Total Recall, that is). The only way for this to be even remotely possible is with large-scale agriculture over a sustained period of years, even decades (I don't know).
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I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
"Is it right or wrong? I don't know, but eventually it will happen."
"Let use redefine progress to mean that just because we CAN do a thing, does not mean that we MUST do that thing."
There is no reason why we couldn't just live on mars without trying to turn it into another Earth. At some point I would like to see us accept a planet for what it is and try to live there without bending it to our will. I think it would be nice to know that Mars will always be red and never be green or blue. To think that someday, we might have technology and not feel obligated to use it to destroy something that is pretty beautiful to begin with is a nice dream. Wouldn't that be a more difficult thing to do that teraforming? To NOT mess it up?
Bad Mojo
Bad Mojo
"If you can't win by reason, go for volume." -- Calvin
... will crashing a few of these into Mars make much of a difference? ;-)
(sorry, couldn't resist).
*sound of paradigm collapsing*
--Fesh
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
The Director of NASA was on CNN last week and was asked about Mars. He stated that "There will be a man on Mars in no less than 10 years and no greater than 20 years."
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
"If there is sentient life on Mars and we kill it off trying to terraform/colonize Mars, we'll probably end up feeling as bad as we did four hundred years ago when we killed off indigenous populations with smallpox, influenza and VD."
In other words, not at all?
Anyway . .
I do think this is the next step, though. There is no right and wrong. This is uncharted territory, and unlike selling organs or patenting human chromosome patterns, this one probably has no potential victim.
I think we should get started right away, honestly though. The universe is out there, the whole thing, and it's all there for anyone who wants to go.
It's not like there isn't enough room out there. Now, on Earth . . .
I think slashing and burning once we can leave any given planet should be avoided, of course.
Dan
A plant. We've created an artifical algae substitute. Kinda cool eh?
Blowing up the moon would wreak ecological havoc on this planet, but that doesn't have anything to do with environmentalism. When you change things, there are effects. You can't just change the entire ecology of a several billion-year-old planet and expect there to be absolutely no side-effect. And if your narrow field of view only takes into account environmental possibilities in the sense of happy little squirrels and blooming flowers, you're missing an entire field of potential. As another poster pointed out, with the very imperfect spin of Mars, it would be difficult to successfully terraform, and even if we accomplished some manner of change, there's no telling what the actual result would be. Your small farming and research community in the desert one day could be flooded the next, or swept away in a massive storm.
Maybe you'd like to live there. In fact, I'd like you to live there, too. But I'll happily stay here where I know that Portland is going to be rainy, San Jose is going to be dry and hot, and there's a McDonald's on the corner of every street in both cities.
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icq:2057699
seumas.com
Some sort of genetically engineered plant or algae would be more realistic for planetary alterations
;-)
Scientists recently genetically engineered plants to grow faster. It's all coming to a head -- I love the idea of "singularity", it scares the heck out of people, getting them to donate to Foresight.
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I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
P.S. idea for a slash feature... when writing comments in html, wouldn't it be good to be able to write literally and have it pass through the html scanner unchanged. Since there is no tag allowed in slash-html (or regular html for that matter), a moron (or more accurately, a computer program) can always distinguish whether a HTML tag or a smiley is intended.
:/
:P
/. doing it, but rather the browser getting rid of it.
Or how about showing all 'tags' that aren't part of HTML? Then I wouldn't have to write *grin* or *laugh* anymore
And I'm too lazy to throw around the &'s and lt's and gt's
The only thing is that I don't think it's
-- Dr. Eldarion --
It's not what it is, it's something else.
Haven't seen anyone planting a lot of begonias in a room and waiting for the place to blow up. A lot of greenhouses would have exploded this way. Most likely the device produces enough oxygen to breathe. That's like 20% of the atmosphere and well below any dangerous levels.
If you want to make oxygen just take a tub of water and stick unshielded wires and run a few thousand volts through there. Electrolysis will make oxygen for you. Making oxygen on earth is no problem. The trick is to do it in space (or on other planets) with what you have there.
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." - Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
This sounds very cool, but I'm a bit concerned after NASA's mistakes on two previous missions (the lost polar probe, and the whole metric-english conversion fiasco). This machine could be a fundamental step in the colinization of Mars in the future, but another blunder and NASA might lose too much funding.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
we'll probably end up feeling as bad as we did four hundred years ago when we killed off indigenous populations with smallpox, influenza and VD.
Biological warfare, 15th century style. Put a bunch of dirty smelly pirates on a ship for three months, let simmer, serve on unsuspecting native populations.
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+&x
Mabye we can use something like this on Earth so that we can still keep hurtling around in dead dinosour powered tin cans and wiping our butts with Amazon, Indonesian and Malay rainforest?
I think there is a big question here. While I do see the merits of this on a small scale (ie. for a habitat of astronauts on a mission, etc.), there are serious questions about possibly doing this on a large scale.
Eventually, people are going to want to do this to the entire atmosphere of Mars to make it breathable. What will happen then? Should an undertaking like that be considered? Should we totally alter a foreign planet and bring it away from its natural state? What would the result be?
While today this may seem like science fiction (Aliens, Total Recall, etc.), it won't be all that long before this kind of thing becomes a real possibility.
It is a curious but worrysome proposition.
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
How did you get 20 Hydrogen atoms into one molecule?
So this means NASA went all the way to Mars then? Or did they just set up a really long tube from Mars and syphon the air to Earth?
The concept is nice, but earth only got its atmosphere from plants that occupy every nook and cranny of the globe. An atmosphere is BIG, its not like air conditioning a house, or even a space shuttle. I think the answer needs to be biological. Put some of those biochem companies to work producing a bacteria that will operate in an atmosphere that has a lot of iron and almost no water. Thats what we really need.
The air pressure on Mars is about 1/200th that of earth. So even if we convert the entire atmosphere to O2, it still is very unbreathable.
Then there is the little problem with UV and cosmic rays from the sun which are not screened out as they are on earth e.g., no O3...etc...
Finally, we do not know if there is microscopic life on Mars that is buried or dormant. If there is, we don't know what would happen if we "woke" them up or made the surface more hospitable. Especially if we accidentally brought them back to earth.
Aide: Grant drinks too much to command an army. Lincoln: Find out what he drinks and give it to my other generals!
Isn't Mars just a bit larger that our Earth? What will we do about that? Maybe we can hollow out the planet core so that there will be an equivalent mass as that of Earth -or how about a "gravity simulation machine" like in all the movies that show spaceships in outerspace still with gravity onboard!
I hope I needn't remind optimistic slashdotters that earth's atmosphere is overwhemingly comprised of nitrogen. Then of course, there are atmospheric pressure issues...I don't know about making Mars breathable with this machine, but its certainly a step in the right direction and has some useful applications (most notably for fueling those old solid- and liquid-rocket boosters).
B
"I'm payin' taxes, but what am I buyin'?" -- James Brown
Oxygen only is harmful at extremely high pressures (ie, while scuba diving).
Well...actualy its the Nitrogen that causes the problem while scuba diving (bubbles forming in the blood stream after too quick of a decent or assent)...hence the name Nitrogen Narcosis commenly refered to as the bends.
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"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."
-John Gilmore
You don't seem to get my drift. I don't care about what we've done or not done to Earth. Why do we have to terraform Mars to live there? It's a waste of effort and time and (in my opinion) a perfectly good planet.
"I think terraforming Mars is a GOOD first step in our interplanetary expansions."
If we can't live on Mars without terraforming it, what makes you think we can terraform it? The science and knowledge required to terraform a planet are barely within our grasp. It's a much better concept to make Mars a home before we begin to re-decorate.
It's quite possible teraforming Mars could be the most dangerous thing we can do with Mars. Getting there and living there will do many positive things without us having to re-arrange Mars. We can learn about Mars. We can learn about new technologies that will help us be self sufficient on a new world. Then, and only then, should we start to think about teraforming. Here we are sureying a new entire branch of technology and seeing no drawbacks. Well, we also thought anti-bacterial soap was a good idea. Now we're over-run with bacteria that's resistant. Just because teraforming LOOKS like a sure thing, or APPEARS to be harmless doesn't mean it won't come back to bite us.
Sure, I may sound too much like some raving luddite, but when Mars is sitting in a super dense, poison filled, CO2 atmosphere because we made some mistake, don't say I didn't warn you.
Bad Mojo
Bad Mojo
"If you can't win by reason, go for volume." -- Calvin
My exteremely intelligent professors (one has 3 phds, the other has only one but he worked at Lawrence Livermore back in the 80's) are working on some pie-in-the-sky project like this that was some system to get rid of greenhouse gasses. The way they had it set up was to actually burn fossil fuels to power it. I think they actually got the equations to get rid of more CO2 than it burned. They were still working on getting a real device last time I checked. They were pretty secretive about it even though we (my awesomely intelligent 6-person chem class) were pretty tight with them. :)
Yes... Another unsubstantiated claim from me..
The important point: If global warming really exists (subject of some debate) on Earth, can we use it to eat greenhouse gasses?
BIG problem with terraforming mars. The core of the planet has cooled such that the magnetic fields that keep our atmosphere from being blown away from solar winds doesn't exist on Mars. Unless you could use solar energy to reheat the core (doubtful) any O2 you make will be blown away.
Life for the most part will have to be under geo-domes to protect you from the radiation and keep the O2 you'd be making around. Life was rough for the first colonist to the americas. It will be hellish for the Mars folk. Talk about cabin fever. Living under a dome(s) for the rest of your life. With only short walks out on the dead surface or buggy rides. Better bring lots of reading material.
A lot of people tend to forget the temperature of Mars when talking about colonizing/terraforming it. A balmy day on Mars is equivalent to a cold day in Antartica or therabouts, so Johnny Appleseed isn't going to be planting trees all over Mars anytime soon. Some sort of greenhouse effect will be needed to warm the planet before you plant a rain forest there, not to mention you've got to water all those plants as well!
We're gonna need machinery here, not plants folks.
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When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. --Robert A. Heinlein
Slashdot always seems to remove my irony tags..
Well, it's not completely ironic -- if we as a civilization have the same sense of moral, religious and scientific righteousness for exploration and exploitation of Mars that we had for foreign lands and peoples 400 years ago, it's really kind of naive to expect a different outcome. Once the political, military, media, and corporate "leadership" figure out the value of terraforming Mars, believe me we ALL will feel the moral imperative to do so irrespective of the cost to local non-sentient life forms.
No, according to The Nine Planets mirror:
So, no significant methane, which is a pity. The proposed Mars Direct fuel factories could use an easy source of hydrogen.Also, I don't think that most forms of algae can survive in Mars' current environment, but some strains of lichen (symbiotic fungi and algae) have been tested in "Mars jars" and lived. Maybe with some genetic engineering the lichen could thrive and spread.
But, what happens to that 5 K greenhouse if too much CO2 is turned to O2? Can some other greenhouse gas be released to make up for it? To increase it?
Side thought: If the dirt on Mars contains lots of iron oxides (and some suspected super-oxides) why not make a solar powered refinery module that would turn that into iron and oxygen gas? (Yeah, I know: cost and weight, plus modules don't reproduce. We need to hack some chemosynthetic bacteria so they don't need to live in water....)
--
"You've crossed my Line of Death!" "What? No! Where is it?" "Here in the fine print...."
Yes, yes YES!!!! You rock. The Hyperion books were definitely my favorite of all time. I especially like the parrallels drawn between thier artificial world (I can't remember what they called the computer world in those books) and the Internet. And how humanity was being duped (they were using humans brains when they were in the transporters as computers). If you just see each human brain as a box out there on the internet that some cracker gets into to run his programs on....
I do think this is one of the things we can learn about ourselves from Sci-Fi. Don't always take thier messages litterally. Look for the parallels between the story, and what is going on around you.
As to the real issue being discussed, I don't really know whether we should terraform Mars or not, I think we need to find out more about what Mars is (under the surface) and what we would have to do to accomplish this. Also, what other things would it trigger. Just think it through.
Bite my yammer.
>> carbon byproduct?
>
> Pencils. Lots and lots of pencils.
so we get back to needing trees after all!
Getting back to another topic that people are discussing, I recently read an article about the possibility of using algae directly to produce hydrogen and/or oxygen. Something to do with depriving it of certain nutrients.
Ahh, the story was slash-linked at the time.
For maximum effect, you'd need to combine the algae (the factories) with some sort of lung-like fractal surface area/transport mechanism (maximise growing area, control flow of nutrients and some of the byproducts). Damn, but it sounds like we need a tree (again!).
And on yet another topic, what about the idea of building under the martian surface? Build deep enough (how deep, I don't know) and you don't have to worry so much about the atmosphere boiling off. I remember some sci-fi novel I read as a kid that used this as a premise... the hero was led underground and was able to take off his spacesuit at the end of the trip, despite not (remembering) having gone through any airlocks.
dec
P.S. idea for a slash feature... when writing comments in html, wouldn't it be good to be able to write <G> literally and have it pass through the html scanner unchanged. Since there is no <G> tag allowed in slash-html (or regular html for that matter), a moron (or more accurately, a computer program) can always distinguish whether a HTML tag or a smiley is intended.
As an extension, users might be able to define a translation to use for the glyph for the day. Feeling happy and it translates to a :-) or maybe a graphical form. Feeling sad (G is for Grimace) and you get a :-(. The user info page could show the current setting for all to see. Sort of like a digital mood ring, I guess.
(insanely rambling off here... insert appropriately deranged smiley)
Space suit or canvas tent, whichever you have handy. :)
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+&x
Couldn't this device or something like it be used for other missions, such as the International Space Station, or for under-water missions?
Or even an implant! OK, lets see who can hold there breath the longest...
Maybe a large artificial satellite to re-heat the core via tidal-flexing.
Or maybe just pirate Mars bit by bit as land-fill for our Dyson spheres!
**>>BELCH
Wow, NASA's done it again. Reinvented the wheel.
Robert Zubrin already built a prototype that does this, and it uses Gaslight Era technology. It's mentioned in his book The Case for Mars, which should be standard reading for anyone involved in or interested in plans to put people on the Red Planet.
This isn't something you could terraform Mars with -- that takes engineering on much, much larger scales. Read Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy -- Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars -- for lots of good ideas on how to do that.
Great NASA, how much did you spend on building a prototype of something we could have built anytime in the last hundred years?
blog |
"One good spark and your whole habitat is gone" As I recall from science classes, Oxygen supports combustion; however there are three things required for combustion: oxygen, heat (one good spark), and fuel (in an environment w/ pure oxygen there is no fuel...now introduce some methane or wood or something...). But there isn't any fuel...
Elijah Chancey www.elijahsadventure.com nomadic IT consultant, bicycling across america "all that you touch / and all
That's not good. In fact, that works like hydrogen peroxide or the perborate stuff that is added to laundry detergent for "extra bleaching action." 8-) The best guess, given the limited instruments on Viking: Mars' soil contains super-oxides, probably iron super-oxides.
These chemicals are similar to hydrogen peroxide or bleach powder -- they contain extra oxygen in their molecule, and when they touch any organic chemical --Pow!-- they break down and release a very reactive atomic oxygen. (O2 is fairly stable, but a single O will react with just about anything burnable.) Any protein or celluose cell walls would be attacked and probably destroyed.
Life As We Know It(TM) would have a tough enough time living on Mars to start with, let along having to cope with dust and dirt that acts like bleach.
What we really need is a new, improved set of probes with tests for life that could distinguish between weird chemicals and living things....
--
"You've crossed my Line of Death!" "What? No! Where is it?" "Here in the fine print...."
And don't forget the Martins... how do they feel about this? huh? did anyone even ask them? can they breath oxygen?
- "yes but can you hit someone over the head with a rolled up internet?" -Foxtrot
And to think that you all laughed when he said we can breathe on Mars.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I seem to remember hearing that most of the ice on the polar caps is CO2 not H2O. If there is any water ice, it is probably in a layer of frost under the dust.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
I don't know about day lengths but I know a lot of plants won't undergo photosynthesis with non natural light so it's possible that mars being furthur out may not get enough power from natural sunlight to properly sustain plants.
J
I am not a Frog. I am a Free Womble!
That's my understanding, yes. Something like 70% I think.
I read the Red/Green/Blue Mars books by KSR many years ago. They were positively some of the best Science Fiction I have ever read (and I read a lot).
He covers new technologies, political aspects, the whole gamut of what it would mean for humanity to go to Mars.
Read them.
Would you mind explaining what might be wrong about terraforming Mars? It's not like destroying anything other than a dead planet, anyway. Nothing lives there, and spectacular claims to the contrary notwithstanding it doesn't seem like anything ever did live there.
However, I don't think we have the resources to terraform it anyway, so the issue is moot.
Nah, too much effort. Just blow the atmosphere away with a few nukes. A lot easier.
...
In fact, I think the old SimEarth let you do that
http://www.spacedaily.com/spacecast/news/mars-insi tu-99c.html
yummy.
...or maybe not.
Does anyone else think (like myself) that maybe we shouldn't teraform Mars?
Bad Mojo
Bad Mojo
"If you can't win by reason, go for volume." -- Calvin
No its worst than that....its chemical warefare!
Didn't you know? Oxygen is a highly poissonous gas. A little too much, and youll go blind, more and you die.
So no need to wait for a spark...just set it up and kill everyone off with excess oxygen.
Might work well in underground bunkers. However, any place with air exchange to the outside will be pumping in enough co2 and other gasses to make the output of one of these fairly useless.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Well, according to SPACE NEWS vol.11 no.21 May 29, 2000 pg2
...NASA issued a stop work order on the lander May 12 in a move that coincided with an announcement of two new mission concepts as the front runner for the 2003 mission
"An experiment to extract oxygen from the Martian atmosphere is among three payloads left in limbo following NASA's directive to halt work on a Mars lander originally slated to fly in 2001...
IANAL, but I play one on
Just a really far off idea, Mars is right next to "the asteroid belt", would it be too far off to send some asteroids on an impact course with Mars? Not only would it "beefen" up the planet, but it would allow for easy mining, plus I believe plenty of those rocks have water and other materials that would aid in the terraforming of Mars. Though it will probably be much easier to just set up a base on Mars and do the mining on the asteroids, sending the raw materials back to Mars, the idea of building a planet using asteroids appeals to me. lordaaronj
Time is an Illusion, Lunchtime doubly so -Douglas Adams
Read Anthem a few months back. Didn't like it. Fought one extreme by going to another. Main character (I forget his name) was no more balanced at the end than at the beginning. But that's an entirely different topic...
You really think you are no greater than bacteria, or your individual cells?
I do know there are bacteria in our body that we can't live without (in the stomach). Surely they're no less important than we are!
All I'm saying is that our sentience doesn't give a "right" to anything. Do what you will, but there are always consequences. If I'm an idiot for believing everything is connected, then I'm an idiot.
I am a man of const int sorrows
This sounds a lot like part of the story line for Total Recall. Remember, they can give Mars an Oxygen atmosphere. Interesting if it works though.
-- DuckWing
Now if NASA could invent a lander that can take abandoned/wrecked NASA hardware and convert it to living quarters, the first Mars settlers will have it made.
They're actually using heated "zirconia" -> "A wafer-thin, solid-oxide ceramic disk made of zirconia, about the size of a small cookie, is sandwiched between two platinum electrodes and heated to 1,380 degrees Fahrenheit (750 degrees Centigrade). When carbon dioxide is fed to this unit, the zirconia cell "cracks" the carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide and oxygen. Only the oxygen can penetrate through to the other side of the disk; the carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide gases are stopped in their tracks." from SpaceDaily
...or maybe not.
Sorry, you're a bit naïve there.
First of all, as another poster pointed out, it's not the proportion of oxygen that counts but the partial pressure. The oxygen partial pressure in the Earth's atmosphere is around 200hPa (hPa = hectopascal: sorry, I use SI units not p.s.i) and it's that figure which matters. Same for burning (even assuming there's anything to burn on Mars, which is dubious).
As for making water out of oxygen and hydrogen, that is not, I repeat emphatically not the way you want to do it. You don't want to use up all your hard-won oxygen to burn hydrogen: reflect upon the fact that a liter of oxygen at the abovementioned 200hPa pressure will, when used to transform the stoichiometric quantity of hydrogen, produce only (scribble, scribble) 0.16 grams of water. A ratio of over 6000 in volume: imagine how much oxygen you'd need to make an ocean of...
Actually, water is probably abundant enough on Mars, even igoring the ice caps. Extracting it might be much more delicate, however. Of course, there's no question of making an ocean either. There's no way you could have an ocean (again?) on Mars.
Even if water were very abundant, you couldn't use it the other way around, either, to produce oxygen. Electrolysis of large enough quantities to fill a whole atmosphere? Calculate the free enthalpy you'd need, and then forget it.
I coulda sworn G was from grin. Damn, that's some serious potential confustion.
Now that's just not policy, my friend. Hush and eat your air. :)
Environmentalism is not a movement, because it has lost all reason. Instead, it is now a nature-worshipping religion, complete with its own symbology, leaders, and political doctrine.
Global warming is GOOD. Antarctica used to have lush forests all the way to the south pole. The earth and the universe have cooled, and will continue to cool. (Read up on thermodynamics.) Technology and global warming is the best way to give a faltering mother nature a kick in the ass so she doesn't throw us another ice age.
Unless you plan on igloos, get used to technology and hydrocarbons!
That's my rant for the day.
boom. The atmosphere has a lot more in it than just plain O2.
Anybody interested in what NASA thinks a manned flight to Mars would be like should take a look at this (warning-BIG pdf file). Heavy reliance is placed on the use of local resources, ie. the idea put forward by Bob Zubrin in "The Case for Mars". The report is fascinating but remember it's complete vapourwear. Nobody is putting up money for this, now or in the forseeable future.
And, of course, the fact that the air teperature goes from cryogenic at night to blast furnace temperatures at day won't effect it at all!
Algae and photosynthetic bacteria already cope with worse conditions. Plus they have nifty dryable mass-packable spores capable of being air dropped by tiny "pathfinder" style spacecraft.
Secondly, I thought Nitrogen was a large part of the natural Martian atmosophere. If we convert carbon dioxide into oxygen, my guess is that there would be a point where the mix of oxygen, nitrogen and other gasses would be breathable without introducing other gasses manually/explicitly.
Hah! I live in Edmonton. (and I've experienced -50 more than once) Real Canadians (Calgarians, Vancouverites, and Torontonians don't count) know that cold is defined by -30 or lower. Anyone wearing a winter coat at a mere 0 or -5 is weak.
Intolerant people should be shot.
The way I heard it, the main problem was the absence of plate tectonics on Mars. If it certainly had an active core (as shown by the presence of the large volcanoes), this is no longer the case. Plate tectonics is an essential factor in renewing the atmosphere.
This is about having a dense atmosphere. But even then I doubt that Mars ever had a breathable atmosphere. Remember that the primitive Earth's atmosphere was not at all made of oxygen: it was reducing and not oxidizing. It changed from reducing to oxidizing billions of years ago under the action of certain bacteriæ. Unless you positively assume that Mars also had similar bacteriæ, something I find dubious at best, it was probably reducing all along.
As for the part about "keeping it there", please keep the time scale in mind: if all of a sudden Mars had an atmosphere of pure oxygen, 200hPa in pressure, it would take longer than the continued existence of the human species for that atmosphere to disappear (the human species has existed for around 3 million years: this is next to nothing compared to a planet that exists for billions of years).
Finally, the point you make about the balloon is misleading at best: helium rises because it is lighter than dioxygen, and that doesn't depend on the magnitude of the grav pull of the planet.
J
I am not a Frog. I am a Free Womble!
What about the lower gravity? I don't know the math to calculate it, but how thick an atmosphere can you get on a world with only half a Gee of gravity? Won't it still be too thin to breathe?
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
We still have helium on earth because it is continuously generated by subterranean nuclear decay. There is also a tiny amount in the atmosphere, because like all mixtures of different-density components, it takes a while for the lightest parts to drift to the top. I think most of the helium we get is in fact from holes in (radioactive) rocks, though I don't exactly know the details.
Helium is released in the form of alpha particles (two protons and two netrons) during radioactive decay. Helium is mobile through out the mantle and percolates through the crust. Much is released directly into the atmosphere. You can consider this non-recoverable. Some molecules of Helium, like oil and natural gas, are trapped by geologic structures within the crust. When natural gas is mined, it contains a blend of helium and various hydrocarbons. In general, the older the deposit the richer the helium. To extract the helium, you simply liquify natural gas using either high pressure or low temperature. The hydrocarbons liquify first leaving helium gas.
FYI: Helium is considered a 'strategic reserve' by the US military. There are several natural gas mines retained solely for their helium content in time of war.
Given one hour to live, the student replied: "I'd spend it with professor FP who can make an hour seem like a lifetime."
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
All right. Your points are perfectly valid, I didn't see it that way.
There are elements of sulfur, ammonia, and carbon monooxide in way too great of quanities present in the atmosphere. True, all of these elements can be converted to a non-issue, except the sulfur. Not sure how they are going to get rid of that.
Secondly, how are they going to get a breathable atmosphere when the pressure there is nearly negligible. the atmosphere is only half a mile high, we have 14 miles of atmosphere on earth. The reduced biosphere is going to be hard pressed to remove all the cosmic rays.
It takes a lot more than a little oxygen to teraform a planet though.
--
Gonzo Granzeau
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
Because we've done such a poor job with all the other planets we've terraformed? Get over your masochism. Despite the best efforts of handwringers and browknitters to tell us otherwise, we still haven't screwed up Earth, and this is after centuries of concentrated ecological ineptitude. We (as a species) are getting much better at working and playing well with nature while continuing to evolve (as a species).
I think terraforming Mars is a GOOD first step in our interplanetary expansions. I think it's a very GOOD idea to allow our first interplanetary colonists all the possible advantages we can give them. Once we get better at this whole space-travel/new environment setting thing, THEN we can start to think about making a smaller and smaller footprints on the native soils. And since Mars SEEMS to be uninhabited, yet inhabitable, I think it's an excellent candidate for our first cosmic natal experience.
Work is for people who lack the imagination to play.
The weight is currently 1% of earths- almost all CO2. Free water on the surface would quickly
evaporate into space. The Martian geology looks
like it had significant fluid erosion- probably water, so there was a heavier atmosphere to prevent quick dispersal into space. That atmosphere could have been something else- probably CO2.
Raw oxygen is chemically unstable- it wants to combine with rocks and other chemicals relatively quickly on geological time scale. There must be an anti-entropic process (life on earth) to keep free oxygen around.
There is a lot of oxygen in the soil- rust, and
perhaps peroxides measure by Viking. So there may have been more free oxygen in the past.
I wouldn't advise breathing a significant quantity of radon...
Paul
Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate
Interesting that you should pose this question.
On the one hand, I'd say no. Leave it alone. We already have one planet, and we haven't treated it all that well. Let natural selection take its place, killing our species. And hopefully when we're all dead and gone and the silicon-based, methane-breathing beings that build the next civilizations on Earth come to the moral ecological crossroads that we've so gracelessly botched, they'll get it right.
On the other hand, in the larger scale of things, how long does it take for a species to become truly civilized? Maybe we're not so far behind after all. And maybe humanity needs that scale of shock, of seeing the only planet we've ever known fall away in the distance, as we hurtle along towards our new one.
Oh, wait. We're only talking about the terraforming issue.
Well firstly, I don't think we're qualified as a species to do such a thing. We won't do it right, if we do it soon. We won't know enough about the planet, we'll just move in and do our thing, and if it turns out that there's life underground on Mars, or if terraforming causes some planetary-scale chemical imbalance, or what have you, then what? We fire somebody?
Should we totally alter a foreign planet and bring it away from its natural state?
Why the hell not?
It's there. Nobody is using it for anything. It's of little use to us as it is.
Humans are the first living being (we know of) that have managed to transcend evolution. Before us, organisms adapted to their environment - WE have the ability to adapt our environments to ourselves.
There are many benefits, and few disadvantages, to terraforming Mars. The only CON I can think of is some (arguably misguided) philosophical obligation to maintain some sort of natural purity... Bah!
PRO: A new human habitat.
PRO: Opportunity to learn how to unfsck our own planet.
PRO: Another driver for technological advancement.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
How did you get 20 Hydrogen atoms into one molecule?
Ah yes, the patent that is pending on hydrocarbons. Its so innovative, it doesn't require common manufacturing techniques to make this fossil fuel. Using proprietary techniques, it is pressure formed in the deep safety well below the ground. Guaranteed to produce billions of barrels of such fuel for the entire earth.
You can bet when the patent office grants my patent, the world will be my oyster.
Both Venus and Mars are almost all CO2 atmosphere. It is thought Earth was like that the first three billion years until life added free oxygen. Venus is the prototypical Greenhouse planet with 90 times the Earth's atmosphere- almost all CO2. If you evaporated all the limestone on Earth, you'd get this amount of CO2.
The Martian atmosphere on the other hand is a hundreth of earth's weight. However since it is mostly CO2, its overall CO2 amount is similar to Earth's atmosphere which is only 0.04% CO2.
Many people have mentioned the boiloff of atmosphere that comes from the fact that Mars is a pretty tiny planet. I think that this is a valid concern in any terraforming effort. However, if we can build an atmosphere in the first place, then we probably can work out the technological issues involved in maintaining that atmosphere. Keep in mind that the atmosphere leaks off in geologic time spans, not at any rapid rate. Maintaining the atmosphere would probably be trivial next to the difficulty of building it in the first place.
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
"Give dees people air!" -Quaid
I wasn't really thinking about whether there's life on it or not. I'm not going to glorify any extintion of the human race, and I also agree with most of the points you've brought up.
My main gripe is that it's situation where people discover that as soon as they can do something, the macho cavalry ride in armed with stereotypical science fiction novels and TV shows, and simply do it because it seems like the obvious thing to do.
Mars as it is right now is a bit of history that's almost completely untouched by us. (Not just the possibility of life, but everything else.) Yes there are very likely billions and billions of planets out there, but it's unlikely we'll ever see something (in detail) outside the Solar System for an incredibly long time. Before anyone has a chance to learn anything useful from it, some lunetic's going to drive in to Mars with a giant vacuum cleaner and destroy everything that's evolved so they can build expensive apartment blocks.
I don't have any problem with colonising Mars either, but saying now that terraforming the planet is definite progress seems like too much of an assumption before we even know what we're getting into. I just hope that people have properly been there, studied it and know exactly what we get and what we lose before someone makes a popularity and politically motivated short-term gain decision that terraforming is the way to go.
On a side note, I heard somewhere that it's theoretically more efficient to build and pack people into giant space stations than terraform and colonise a new planet. Does anyone know anything about this?
Whether he meant it or not, Mental got the issue just right.
Colonization of space may be inevitable to ensure the species' survival, but "leave things better than you found them" must also be learned -- and sooner!
"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.
ISPP is the single most critical technology to his proposed "Mars Direct" plan. Mars Direct outlines a plan that would allow the US to land a 4-man mission on Mars with existing technologies within 10 years and for a budget conservatively estimated at less than US$55bil (only 1/10 of NASA's current annual budget).
The fact that NASA is investigating this technology with an eye to sending a prototype to Mars should be cause for jubilation, not scoffing. It's a sign that the entrenched "old boys network" in NASA can occasionally see merit in ideas which are not their own.
BTW, the intent of this machine is NOT (let me repeat, NOT) to test processes to terraform Mars. It's simply not practical to send all the breathable oxygen a Mars expeditionary force requires from Earth. Imagine if Lewis and Clark carried all of the water they needed with them! The production of oxygen from the atmosphere of Mars would allow future explorers to live off the land, drastically increasing the size of the scientific payload which can be sent to Mars along with them (because you no longer need to carry all of your oxygen!). Conversely, this technology drastically reduces the required lifting capacity of the launch vehicle, thus drastically reducing the cost of the mission (anyone have any idea how much more a Saturn V class rocket costs than, say, a Titan IV?!?).
Before you walk you've gotta crawl. Stop thinking "Will this machine terraform Mars?" and start thinking "If I were standing on Mars in a spacesuit right now, where would I get the oxygen I need to fill my spacesuit?"
Curiouser and curiouser...
The Evolution of Earth's Atmosphere
- Earth's early atmosphere might have originated from the capture of gases in the solar nebula before dissipation of the latter by the Sun
- the above theory is no longer the accepted one
- rather, we feel that the Earth's early atmosphere was formed from the vapourization of incident comets
- in the accretive atmospheric theory, the early atmosphere would have been rich in hydrogen - H and H2
- in the cometary atmosphere theory, the atmosphere would have been poor in hydrogen
- in either case, the atmosphere would have had water vapour (H2O), methane (CH4), ammonia (NH3), carbon dioxide (CO2) and carbon monoxide (CO)
- these molecules are still found in the gas giants
- the evolution of the atmosphere is a result of these processes:
- gravitational retention
- volcanic outgassing
- solar ultraviolet radiation
- processing by early life
Gravitational retention- molecules in the atmosphere move about using thermal energy
- energy of motion is called kinetic energy
- we define temperature as being the average kinetic energy of the particles (atoms, molecules) of a substance
- the kinetic energy of a molecule with mass "m" and velocity "v" is a familiar result:
- K.E. = 1/2 mv2
- the average amount of thermal energy for a molecule in a gas is:
- K.E. = 3/2 kBT
- here kB is Boltzmann's constant
- these two expressions represent the same quantity, hence:
- 1/2 mv2 = 3/2 kBT
- solve for v: v=(3 kBT/m)1/2 (1)
- equation (1) tells us the average speed of a given particle with a given mass and given temperature
- hotter particles move more quickly
- lighter particles move more quickly
- example: oxygen gas (O2) at room temperature
- mass= 5.3 10-26 kg
- T = 295 kelvin (= 22 celcius)
- kB = 1.38 10-23 J/K
- implies velocity v = 4800 metres per second
- pretty fast!!!
- molecular speeds in the atmosphere can be compared with the escape velocity for the Earth
- the escape velocity is the velocity required by an object to permanently leave a planet and escape into space
- it is
- vescape = (2GM/R)1/2
- M = mass of the planet
- R = radius of the planet
- G = gravitational constant
Planet --- Escape velocityMercury --- 4,300 m/s
Venus --- 10,300 m/s
Earth --- 11,200 m/s
Mars --- 5,000 m/s
Jupiter --- 59,500 m/s
Saturn --- 35,500 m/s
Earth's Moon --- 2,400 m/s
- to a first approximation, if the speed of an atmospheric molecule exceeds the planet's escape velocity, then that gas will not be retained in the atmosphere
- i.e., escape if vparticle > vescape
- in practice, this equation gives a false result, because for a given temperature gas particles have a range of speeds, from very fast to very slow
- the distribution of particle speeds is given by the Boltzmann distribution
- to retain a given gas in an atmosphere, a planet must have
- vescape > 10 vparticle
- therefore, the Earth lost all of its hydrogen and helium gases early in its history, but kept the heavier gases
Outgassing from volcanic activity- the interior of the Earth is heated by the decay of radioactive elements
- 4.5 billion years ago the surface of the Earth was a few thousand degrees kelvin and was more liquid than solid
- volcanic activity released gases such as water vapour, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen (N2), plus more methane and ammonia
- also released were gases from radioactive decay - argon and helium
- once the Earth had cooled down, heavy rains filled the oceans to their present depth
- water quickly dissolved the atmospheric CO2, where it forms bicarbonate (HCO3-)
- bicarbonate can form solids with calcium, notably limestone and chalk
- the atmosphere went from 80% carbon dioxide 4.5 billion years ago to 10% carbon dioxide 3.5 billion years ago (% by mass)
- at this time, H-C compounds (CH4) formed 80% and nitrogen formed 10%
Solar UV radiation- there was no oxygen (O2) or ozone (O3), so UV light easily penetrated the atmosphere and broke up CH4, NH3 and H2O into their constituent atoms
- hydrogen escapes, and oxygen combines with methane to produce carbon dioxide and water
- nitrogen became the dominant gas roughly 2.5 billion years ago
- in the absence of hydrogen, oxygen and ozone could exist in trace amounts thereby stopping most of the UV light from penetrating deeply into the atmosphere
Processing by early lifeYou can't handle the truth.
If you were to try to make mars capable of supporting life from planet earth I think you will need to do more than just release a lot of o2. Mars is a much smaller planet than Earth so I don't think it actually has the gravitational pull to keep the same amount of atmosphere as the earth does. You would have to greatly increase the amount of gases in the atmosphere and then most of those gases would evenutally fly off. Next you would need to set up some sort of green house effect. Not only does Mars not have enough o2, but the pressure of the atmosphere is to small. Next the planet is too cold and the temperature fluxtuated too much. It is amazing how the Earth is perfect for supporting life, and I don't think man understands all of the mechanisms that made that possible. I don't think we have the knowledge or the technology to terra form mars and I don't think we will for a while. Heck, we may be de-terra forming Earth and we do not have the will or the technology to stop it (without giving up the industrial revolution which I don't think anyone is ready to do.)
This is the first link in a long chain of events that will eventually result in Douglas Quaid having to free the slowly suffocating mutants.
Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know.
I believe this is not for terraforming..
The mars reference mission includes sending unmanned craft ahead, including craft that will land and, using solar power & a few stored chemicals, turn carbon dioxide from mars atmosphere and turn it into both oxyjen and some kind of alcohol (rocket fuel). It will store these in large tanks. The idea is that this is much less costly than shipping the required oxygen ahead, as the mass is much lower.
Free hydrogen is a dense rocket energy source for return trips. On earth it is in water and hydrocarbons. Its suspected there is water ice in the Martian polar regions. The transport economics of Earth's Moon is currently poor, because no hydrogen source has been located.
The second issue I see that needs to be resolved before manned Mars mission could occur is how to make food and water. As the article states,
Being able to produce oxygen is only one step of the way. Will the astronauts take over plants and animals to eat? That seems feasible, but how will they make water? I think manned Mars missions are still a ways in the future but this oxygen machine is a step in the right direction!I wonder if we could use a few billion of these to scrub Earth's atmosphere of excess CO2, so that this planet doesn't end up like Mars...
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Are we going to then make it warm enough to live on? At what point will we stop making it look & feel like Earth? And can we even imagine the damage that we could do to Mars, the Milky Way, etc.
Maybe we will alter it enough that we eventually change the trajectory of Haley's comet causing it to collide with Earth.
Is this the same kind of machine described in Robert Zubrin's The Case for mars? I remember that book being kind of interesting and pretty convincing when I read it a couple years ago.
Switch the . and the @ to email me.
Those in the know all say that it would take an awful long time, though.
Hah! Drop a bucket of Kudzu on the surface of mars, waite 3 weeks, instant terraforming!
Everyone knows Kudzu will live anywhere, in anything, and obscenely fast. Of course, it's impossible to get rid of after it finishes terraforming the place.... Hrmm....
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
If there is sentient life on Mars and we kill it off trying to terraform/colonize Mars, we'll probably end up feeling as bad as we did four hundred years ago when we killed off indigenous populations with smallpox, influenza and VD.
On the other hand, if there is no life on Mars *and* we mangle a basically dry, airless rock in space, how bad should we really feel? Assuming we have the space technology to move the people, materials and energy to Mars to *really* trash the planet, we can always move on to other moons or planets and try again. There's a lot of rocks out there.
In other words, put it into the moral context of, say, early nomadic civilizations that practiced slash and burn agriculture -- they're "ruining" the land for their own exploitation, and once they've ruined it they move on, just like we would to some other planet.
The only way I see trashing Mars as a huge problem is if we can't get intra-steller space travel and its a choice between Mars or extinction.
...but don't we need a few other components to make usable air? Doesn't seem as exciting if we still have to haul Nitrogen along.
Intolerant people should be shot.
Science is an continual process of theories and tests.
I would add with the old established order defending their old and sometimes (not always) useless theories to the death tooth and nail despite evidence to the contrary.
Eventually and through much protest these new ideas are accepted and are then enshrined and are fought over tooth and nail with the new ideas ad infinitum
It seems that before we had the INQUISITON now we have CSICOP.............
"The way she used to say Rimmer as if it rhymed with scum" Red Dwarf
Why solar powered? How much power does it actually consume? Just strap a few dry cells on the puppy and viola! Large scale!
http://siokaos.org/
Has anybody suggested using this right here on good ol' Terra? It could be a way to reduce global warming, increase ozone, improving the air quality of industrialized areas, and generally making people more laid-back!
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." -- Ken Olson, 1977
Hey, ya think maybe after we clean up the atmosphere of Mars, we could, I dunno, maybe clean up our OWN damn planet?
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
As far as terraforming is concerned, this isnt that much of an improvement. Sure we could get oxygen on mars, but the CO2 is the wrong thing to use. CO2 would be needed, as a greenhouse effect is needed to warm up the atmosphere. Secondly, this atmosphere would still be too thin, and with less CO2, it would become thinner. The remaining CO2 would condense as Mars got colder, and the atmospere would be even thinner.
If you wanted to setup a sealed colony, it would work quite well, but making the Mars surface livable would take far more than this.
"My head hurts, My feet stink, and I dont love Jesus." -Jimmy Buffett
If we were to successfully terraform Mars, and survive because of that, that would be natural selection. Saying that it wouldn't be is like saying that the fact that sea otters use rocks to open shellfish means that they are dodging natural selection.
---
END OF LINE
This device is not on the scale to change a planetary atmosphere. This is mainly something designed for either exploration missions or bases.
Some sort of genetically engineered plant or algae would be more realistic for planetary alterations, although mass water supplies would be likely required for this type of operation. If machinery was used, it would most likely have to be constructed from local materials and have a vastly larger scale power source than sunlight (which is weaker there.)
Those plans to terraform Mars remind me of those Soviet plans to melt the Northern ice cap with coal dust or space mirrors so that Siberia is a friendlier place.
Fortunately they didn't do it and we have given a break to Antarctica.
__
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Good point, only +-5% of our oceans have been discovered, even though they are supposedly our point of origin. Making the oceans a liveable environment will be good.
Sometimes I wonder why the hell NASA spends so much frigging money, when what we need is social progress (one result of our capitalist world).
Then I remember:
Science is an continual process of theories and tests. This may define science as something grossly inefficient and imperfect, and it is. However, this our only way of finding out why things work, we are only human.
http://siokaos.org/
The terraforming part is well thought out beginning with small windmills to produce heat, introducing algae and lichens to break up CO2 and ultimately bringing in nitrogen from the asteroid belt and Jupiter to make large scale plant growth possible.
A must read :-)
Thomas
I know this isn't the best way to calculate this but its not a bad first approximation, so I was wondering what calculation you're using.
Indeed, this is not the best way to calculate this. There is a significant proportion of molecules which have much higher speeds than average. Check out some good books on classical thermodynamics.
Paul
Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate
--
dinner: it's what's for beer
OK, this one was just too hard to resist. I wonder what ERB would think. If NASA's making atmosphere plants, I wonder how long it'll be before we can ressurect Helium and pick a new Jeddak...
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
I've never said this before, but please consider modding this up so it make it to 'hot links'. This thread is getting 'old', and few will see this information otherwise
I wish I'd seen this article before, because it seems that *everyone has forgotten the truth about the Viking I and II findings regarding the life on Mars experiments:
In short strokes: Most of the tests were positive as NASA fully admits (but sometimes buries) several researchers associated with the experiments have reported the horror at NASA when the results came in -- "We can't publish this! We'll look like fools." Please remember this was a billion dollar mission planned at a time (70's) when a billion dollars was a lot mpore money than it is today, andthat these experiments were widely peer-reviewed around the world, and considered solid until they yielded positive results
I wish I could provide you with links to why the individual results were disqualified, but the NASA website containing most of my old links is gone or merged. (It shouldn't take more than 10-15 of poking around to find new ones, but if I don't post this comment fast, it will die unseen.) However, here's what Jame s E. Tillman , who was
on the Viking Meteorology Science Team and was Director of the Viking Computer
Facility (at the University of Washington in Seattle) said at a national Prime
Computer Users Group meeting in Orlando FL, 1984:
"The soils will liberate oxygen"? What is the justification for this assumption. None, except for post-facto guesswork. In fact, you'll find the specific chemistry cited to 'dismiss' the experiments is inconsitent with more moderns estimates of Martian soil composition and surface dynamics. Further each of the three positive experiments (deliberately designed to complement one another and prevent error) is dismissed for a very different reason.
Finally, I think that the 'atypical' kinetics that was used to discredit one experiment (positive results as a little water was added, but later tailing off) is *exactly* what we should have expected. Water may be a limiting factor for life on mars (or it may not) but after tens of millions of years, we should expect that microscopic life in a dry part of the surface would find water toxic in excess anounts. Hence - early rapid positive results, followed by a die off.
It is also possible that there are other limiting factors to growth, so the microbes reponded positively until they hit 'the wall' on another substance... like stored short term high energy compound (e.g. ATP in earth life) or even food (quick energy foods like sugars)
I urge you to go to NASA's websites and read for yourself. This is no great 'cover-up' the info is all there for you to consider. The 'embarrassing parts' are harder to find (broken links, disappearing archives, etc,) but they are not conscientiously buried.
If you can go to bed, knowing you did a valuable thing today, you're very lucky. If you can't... it's not bedtime
A plant. We've created an artifical algae substitute. Kinda cool eh?
I want you to bring me...
a shrubbery!
Great. Carbon Monoxide. Even worse than CO2. (I didn't believe the methane equation, anyway - it takes too much energy to create methane from its combustion products.)
For terraforming purposes, it does matter what is done with the carbon. Here on Earth, the carbon goes into making more CO2 respirators: plants. If this device releases even half as much CO as it does O2 (as the balanced equation 2 CO2 - O2 + 2 CO suggests) then it can't be used to terraform Mars. What you need is something that either creates bricks of pure carbon (a la KSR's gigantic mass spectrometer sieves... or was that Greg Bear?) or binds the carbon into a mineral like limestone (a la marine diatoms).
CO is highly poisonous to animals, even in low concentrations, and plants don't handle it well, either. This device is OK for creating an isolated pocket of O2, like a pressurized Martian habitat, but you can't Terraform the planet with it... not for human habitation anyway. And I doubt this was ever proposed, except by underinformed laymen. (Sorry Greenpeace. Find another contrived issue to protest.)
I can see the fnords!
Maybe they will invent a machine to convert carbon monoxide to pure oxygen too, with carbon as the only byproduct. Then the astronauts will have even pencils.
---
Dammit, my mom is not a Karma whore!
Well, people tend to forget a lot of things -- esp. considering most people know next to nothing about "rocket science".
:-) This kind of device is a heavenly gift to the planetary shipping industry. In effect, manned missions to Mars wouldn't require advanced air filtration and recycling technology (large heavy machines) and they certainly wouldn't have to carry a large supply of oxygen with them (read: more room for M&M's and Dr. Pepper.) This also has applications here on Earth in reducing the amount of CO2 we constantly throw into the atmosphere from fossil fuels.
Allow me to summarize: Mars is not Earth.
Mars is much further away from the sun than we are here on Earth. Mars is smaller and less massive than Earth. The surface conditions are vastly different from Earth -- lower atmospheric pressure, much lower average temperature, very little water, an atmosphere composed of mostly carbon dioxide, oh and vast sand storms than can last years...
Granted, I'm no physicist, but you don't need a PhD to know O2 is lighter than CO2. Translation: Mars doesn't have the gravity to keep an oxygen atmosphere. One must also observe the laws of thermodynamics. Thus, unless this device is based in alchemy, all you'll end up with is an equally thin oxygen atmosphere (which will slowly get thinner and bleed into space) + a huge pile of carbon. As a side effect of removing the CO2, the average surface temperature will decrease as less solar radiation is trapped by the now gone CO2.
SO... let us assume we instantly convert all the CO2 on Mars into O2. You still wouldn't be able to stand out under the stars and breathe easy -- you'd suffocate and "explode".
Now, let's be reasonable; no one is suggesting terraforming Mars
(Hmm, how long before DeBeers outlaws diamond production on Mars?)
One of the best fictional books regarding the terra forming of is the trilogy Red Mars, Green Mars & Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson. In this, aside form the difficulties of the terra forming itself, she addresses the cultural shocks adn development of inhabiting a new planet. Do you basically make it a carbon copy or try and develop a new society...is that even possible...do we export all our hatreds and prejudices as well?
Limey "Without deviation, there is no innovation" - Frank Zappa
The article shows that it would make breathable air for a few people out of the thin CO2 atmosphere. It would I think have to be compressed after conversion however. I believe that mars has a very thin atmosphere, and even if you were breathing pure O2 at that density, I think you would still pass out and die.
Some people are posting regarding terraforming and clearly this device is not it. Even if it could convert the entire atmosphere to O2 there would still be a lack of atmospheric pressure. I think that large volumes of surface matter would have to be converted to gas to provide enough pressure to make the surface livable outside of a biodome.
Heh, never mind the lack of water: Mars --> Arrakis --> Dune, desert planet. Not one drop of rain on Arrakis...
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
But it isn't like Mars is too small to retain an O2 atmosphere, in fact, mars has a fair amount of N2 and CH4 in its atomosphere, both far lighter. So the problem with the machine is not one of keeping the o2 on mars, it is more an issue of the logistics of getting enough of these machines there to transform the atomosphere. Hence the earlier remark on acorns. Either that, or once the planet is warmed up, then there would concievably be open water on mars, just take up a few trillion algae and let them do the same thing that they did to the earth.
Anyway, just an idea....
What chemical analyses? Viking's instruments were aimed at the detection of life, not oddball inorganic chemicals. Check the Viking 1 Lander Experiment List:
The Gas Chromatograph/Mass Spectrometer measured the volatile substances given off when surface dirt was roasted, but superoxides aren't volatile.
The biology experiments (GEX/LR/PR) were the ones that gave the weird results, but were designed to detect organic compounds (PR) or microbes (LR, GEX).
The X-Ray Fluorescence Spectrometer (XRFS) could only detect elements, not their molecular composition.
The other instruments like RPA or NMS only worked during the landing, not on the surface.
b) as the original poster said, such chemicals are not consistent with our current understanding of Martian surface and atmospheric chemistry. They would have given up their oxygen (or reacted with other substances) millions of years ago. they are highly reactive, and Mars, with its thin atmosphere, gets more UV than the earth's surface
On the contrary, you're near the proposed solution. Yes, the super-oxides break down easily, but they are likely produced by the UV light, eventually reaching an equilibrium point. Bingo! Super-oxides in the dirt.
Reference: Viking Project Information
--
"You've crossed my Line of Death!" "What? No! Where is it?" "Here in the fine print...."
Robert Zubrin has been pushing for the use of this and related technologies for YEARS. His plan for exploring Mars, called Mars Direct, consists of launching a series of unmanned, robotic lander stations. Each station would carry a powerplant, an earth-return vehicle with empty tanks, and a supply of hydrogen. Using a Sabatier reactor (which is presumably what they were talking about in the NASA article), the lander station uses the hydrogren to produce methane (propellant for the Marsrover and the earth-return vehicle) and water (and of course oxygen).
The idea is, you let this unit run for a year or so, then you send people, and you have a fully fueled, supplied earth return vehicle and base station waiting for you when you arrive. The crew cruises around, explores, and gets to live in a nice, comfy habitat with all the water and air they can use. When they are ready, they launch the earth-return portion and go home, leaving the powerplant and a portion of the lifesystem behind for the next wave.
If you send each crew to Mars in another lander station, then you can repeat this cycle endlessly. The ultimate goal would be to build up a network of these stations, each within Marsrover distance of the other, allowing for relatively safe exploration of large portions of the martian surface.
You can read more about this here. The discussion of in-situ resource production can be had here.
"Research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing." -- Wernher von Braun
How much does the planet's magnetic field come into play here? I remember hearing once that the Earth's magnetic field plays a significant role in maintaining atmosphere as it deflects a portion of the solar radiation that can slowly strip an atmosphere from a planet. Is there anything to this?
And in other news, a young second-grader in Arkansas has learned that trees are able to produce oxygen from taking in carbon dioxide as well! A ground-breaking coincidence? The jury is still out for all of the facts :)
Mike Roberto (roberto@soul.apk.net) -GAIM: MicroBerto
Berto
After some fairly large failures with recent missions (lost probes, intermitant links etc) and the much commented on funding cuts I certainly wouldn't want to go on a mission to mars, not this decade anyway
The schedules this, and other, reports mention don't make sense to me. If one person dies then the space program will die too. I think they need to do heaps more testing of the new "budget" approach to deep space before we send ourselves.
0daymeme.com: Great stuff.
Maybe I should sell my parcel in Silicon Valley and invest in Mars real-estate before it goes up like in SV.
Anyone knows how much it costs per acre over there?
Breathable mars?
I've kind of become accustomed to breathing air and like it.
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
I usually prefer corn on the cob or maybe some grain to make bread. Biologics are the most efficient way to do something like this. They've perfected their strategies over a billion years
..........FULL STOP.
I vote for biologics - they've been doing this sort of stuff for a billion years and are pretty good at it.
We need some sort of gas spewing microbe that can either use sunlight(not such a good source on Mars) or chemical (bacteria/algae are pretty good at finding things to eat Sulphur eating volcanic/ocean microbes, the ones in my dark refridgerator!) fuel. The bacteria/alga can be genengineered to produce a certain ratio of O2/CO2 (we need those greenhouse gases to heat the place up!)
Evereybody needs H2O - this will be a problem because some sort of reducing agent will be needed i.e. H2S (which the green sulphur bact can use to make WATER)... There should be plenty of water on the polar ice caps, but I'm not too sure about the equator.
Anybody else have any ideas?
..........FULL STOP.
You don't want to breathe pure oxygen though. One good spark and your whole habitat is gone. Producing the necessary gases to mix with Oxygen (i.e. Nitrogen, some other noble gases) will be much more difficult than the production of oxygen. It may be possible to get nitrogen by mining the regolith (loose sandy topsoil on Mars).
This strikes me more as a way of producing fuel and water than as a production of breathable air, which could be better done by plants, which would also serve as food source.
One more thing... what use can be made of the carbon byproduct?
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
Mass is one measure, but density is more important in looking at a gravitational field effect on an atmosphere -- most physics classes greatly simplify things by using a center of mass in the calculations, but on a planetary scale and an atmosphere... well, break out the cray.
I played SimEarth too, and I remember that the ice comets didn't release oxygen....
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
This would appear to depend upon getting water from Mars's surface (unless they've come up with some otehr way of doing it). IIRC, this means they have to land near the North pole.
Of course, if you want to terraform mars you need a huge amount of water - for producing the atmosphere and supporting life. If you have the water, some kind of GM algae would probably be easier than using a massive machine.
The sad things is that with NASA's budget cuts and other problems I am beginning to doubt I will see a manned mission to mars in my lifetime.
The sea is already poluted. We have not yet properly poluted Mars yet. Sure we have dropped scrap metal on it from space, but to polute an environment properly you must make radical changes in it's chemical composition. The polution of the oceans is progressing adequately. We must progress and polute new frontiers such as Mars and Europa.
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
You are not me, therefore you are not important
Before we get a lot of half-thought out replies, everybody should go out and read the series of books Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson. The series deals, as accurately as possible, with the colonization and terraforming of Mars. Mr. Robinson is a stickler for detail; in fact, it gets a little boring at times (I never thought I would read so much about the geology of Mars). On the other hand, he's a stickler for scientific detail, and addresses some key points, such as:
"Can we develop a reasonable atmosphere?" It's tricky--Mars's crust and elemental makeup is different, it has a low gravity, and has greater elevation variation than Earth. A good atmosphere at sea level may mean the majority of the world has an atmosphere similar to the top of Everest.
We've done some nasty stuff to Earth. Is it right to ruin the natural state of ANOTHER planet, too?
Water. Is there water on mars, anyway, and if there's not, what can we do?
Surviving in low gravity.
Lots more. In any case, I'm sure many questions will be raised by people commenting on this story. I'm just as sure that the majority of them are at least mentioned in the RGB Mars books. Go do yourself a favor if you're interested in this story, and check these books out.
Why don't we develop a version here, to reverse the global warming caused by CO2 buildup in the atmosphere? Of course, the solar panels may not be as effective here, what with our clouds and all.
I wonder what happens to the carbon tho? I'm assuming of course that they are supplying energy to separate CO2 into oxygen + carbon.
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Let's not get all excited about going out and colonizing Mars now. Even if we could produce enough oxygen to breathe, it wouldn't do anyone any good. The minute you got out in the open the radiation that makes it through Mars's atmosphere would do a number on you.
Now, if NASA could put something together that would generate a thicker atmosphere for Mars...
It doesn't matter if humanity's extinction is good or bad. It IS inevitable. What is the point if we survive another 1000 years to be extinguished by a meteor collision with earth, or solar flares, supervirus, nuclear war, invasion by aliens?
In one billion years, will it make a difference?
In twelve billion years, will it make a difference? How about 100 billion years? There will be nothing left of the entire universe at that time but a few widely dispersed black holes boiling away hawking radiation. What's the point? We could all perish tomorrow, and it wouldn't make much of a difference.
Or, it could just be my 33rd Birthday today. (3 is more than halfway to 5, which means I'm almost 35, which is halfway to 40 in my 30's, which means I'm fucking old.)
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
One trip to mars and back and I will have enough frequent flier miles for the rest of my life.
Long ago, before humans roamed the earth, and certainly before they had big telescopes and long-range rocket-powered probes, mars had a breathable atmosphere. Unfortunately, it all got baked away. The critical issue for a planet holding an atmosphere is whether or not it has strong enough gravity to hold particles moving at the speed that gas particles travel in their kinetic vibrations. Earth, for example, cannot hold hydrogen or helium gases. If you pop a helium balloon, the helium will eventually drift out of the atmosphere and into outer space.
Fortunately, since O2 molecules are much more massive than He atoms or H2 molecules, the earth can also hold an O2 atmosphere. Mars is also massive enough for this, but there's a problem. Mars is not massive enough to hold oxygen atoms or ions. This is critical because of the UV radiation that the sun emits, which breaks up O2 molecules. On earth, those oxygen ions come together with O2 to form O3 (ozone) which also helps shield the rest of the atmosphere from UV radiation.
Since Mars isn't massive enough to hold oxygen ions, it can't hold them up in the part of the atmosphere where an ozone layer would likely form. Thus, its atmosphere cannot be protected from more radiation, which further ionizes the O2 molecules. This is precisely what happened to the atmosphere on mars, as well as the surface water, and it is what will eventually happen to Mars's polar ice caps. I don't know exactly what the time scale would be for creating a breathable atmosphere, and I don't know how long it would take for it to dissipate, but I think you'd have to be continually working to keep it there, assuming you had the resources to get a planet-wide breathable atmosphere in the first place.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
HalloFlippy wrote:
I think it's time for you to read some Ayn Rand and get some self-esteem. You really think you are no greater than bacteria, or your individual cells? I really hope you don't believe that, as if you do, your whole life must be one great apology for having been born as a human.
-- no sig for you.
This device is not intended to produce oxygen for the entire planet. I like reading about wild-ass speculation for long term stuff as much as the next guy, but don't call this a pointless device just because it's doesn't do something it's not intended to do!
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Dammit, my mom is not a Karma whore!
Likewise, to argue that humanity's extinction would be bad is equally silly.
:)
I don't know about you, but it would be bad for me!
They're infringing on my patent. I have a working example in my back yard of a much more efficient machine, it is also solar powered, using multiple redundant flexible green solar panels to absorb solar energy, a self-maintainence system that will repair our adapt to compensate for medium scale damage, a robust, flexible physical structure capable of withstanding considerable force by dissipating the energy throughout the structure and bending, and utilises as fuel a small set of chemicals and H20.
It has further advantages over the solar machine exhibited, its components are easily recycled into a number of useful objects, various parts are edible and it aids in topsoil stability. It is also capable of self-reproduction given a requisite amount of available fuel.
It also comes in numerous makes and models suitable for every task, from extremely large to the inconspicuously small.
I call it The Plant, and I would demand royalties on this inferior implementation except that..well..its obviously so inferior no-one would ever buy it.
You can't win a fight.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I remember when I was kid playing the old game SimEarth on my Mac (not the Mac SE or the Mac Classic, but the Mac .. The Mac). Despite the game being very primitive and only in black and white, they had a couple of scenarios that were really interesting. One was to take Mars and make it livable and the other was to take Venus and make it livable. The easiest way to do both was to put in these devices that converted the carbon dioxide to oxygen (the hard way was to crash ice comets into the planet, both cooling it off and releasing oxygen .. don't ask me).
.. these sorts of transformations don't happen overnight).
I wouldn't say it's so worrisome. Making other planets livable for humans is going to become a fact of life if we ever decide to permanently leave this world. Mars is another system, but it's a dead system, and adapting it for human needs is not going to make species extinct or ruin our understanding of Martian phenomena (and even if it were alive, we'd have plenty of time to find out
But that's beyond the logistical nightmares of actually getting such a thing to work. Look at how long its taken our planet to register the effects of 150 years of industrial revolution, and the environmental change is a blip, an abnormality barely noticeable on the geological scale that scientists are still debating whether or not we are the cause. You can rest assured that by the time human beings are ready to purposefully alter the state of another planet's environment, they'll have the necessary expertise (and computer/robotics/cybernetic systems) to do it much more exactingly than you or I can imagine.
By the way, in the SimEarth game, the irony of it all is that once you terraform the planet (Mars was easier, Venus was much more difficult), sentient life can rise, become industrialized, and then ruin your environmental masterpiece. Maybe that should be the bigger fear, not what havoc we wreck when we purposefully change the environment, but what terrors we cause when we neglect it.
This machine, as described, does the same exact thing as Dr. Robert Zubrin's oxygen extracting machine, designed nearly a decade ago while he was working at the Martin Marianetta labs (sp?). The idea here isn't terraforming the planet, but providing the Martian explorers with breathable air, as well as propellant for the return to Earth.
All of this is described in his book, The Case for Mars, in great detail. If you're interested in the details of the chemistry involved (ie byproducts, etc, it's explained in the aforementioned book).
Terraforming the planet, by comparison, is much, much grander. As well as a very long way off. First let's concentrate on getting another probe there in one piece, eh?
Uhh, that looks OK. We haven't seen that number yet.
That way ...
*ducks back into the trenches having stirred up a hornets nest of stereotypes* :)
.. is could it make *Earth* breathable?
-- Living-in-a-not-so-big-but-too-dense-town-bert.
Titan has the largest atmosphere of any rocky planet in the Solar System - in fact despite the fact that Titan is around a fortieth the mass of Earth, its atmospheric pressure at the surface is 1.5 bars - that is, 1.5 times Earth's atmospheric pressure at sea level.
Since Titan is about a quarter of the mass of Mars, it is well within the realms of possibility for Mars to have an atmosphere with equivalent pressure to Earth, it just has to be a much larger atmosphere than Earth's.
I have said this before on Slashdot and I will say it again. YOU CANNOT KNOW WHAT MIRACLES SCIENCE WILL BRING. Sorry for the shouting, but I seem to say this for every "science" article I post in.
The primary reason we should go to mars is for knowlege. The secondary reason is that when you need to explore a new area (and the sea is one of these areas) of science you must construct new ways of studying these things. A HUGE amount of R&D would be involved. Many new inventions would come about, as well as new materials etc.
Remember when Faraday (discoverer of electricity) showed his discovery to the Queen of England she said to him:
"This electricity is amusing, but of what use is it?"
To which Faraday replied:
"Madam, of what use is a baby?"
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
They need to take that gizmo to Venus after it can self-replicate. Venus has loads of CO2 (an atmosphere so thick it would crush you like a grape), if a way could be found to stop its greenhouse effect, we'd have a nice, warm earth-sized planet to play around with.
Convert C02 to 02, react the 02 with whatever else is there (C0, CH4, any CNHO compounds, et cetera). This makes a big BOOM BOOM. And water. Start creating limestone carbon sinks. New vacation spot.
The best power supply I can think of is Nuclear.
Everyone would freak out at this, but then again the waste would be on MARS and not Earth. For Space and Weight / Power ratio's Nuclear is it.
Lest of course someone perfects fusion any time soon.
Nuclear power is not as bad as it is made out to be, it is unfortunatly abused in many areas by many people. I think that it certaly has a place in space exploration. To quote Carl Sagan: [Using] Atomic devices in space is the best use of nuclear power I can think of.
Unfortunatly there is a treaty which prevents weapon grade materials from being placed in orbit or higher. This is good from a security perspective (as in not getting nuked!) but bad from a scientific one.
*Sigh*
If not for that treaty the proposed NASA ship the Orion could be built, which using Nuclear propusion could reach 1/10 the speed of light with current technology.
Politics and science do not mix well I guess.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
If it makes 'em breathable, or livable, then you *know* we're going to Mars sooner than we thought.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
The Apollo era (and yes, earlier) scrubbers were filled with Lithium Hydroxide. This wasn't actually so much converting CO2 to O2, it was simply removing the CO2 from the air (that's why they had to be replaced - once they got saturated, they could no longer function), which is why they had to take enough O2 along for the entire mission.
Think --> Think Different --> Think OSS
Does anyone remember those inflatable domes that NASA and the RSA were kicking out a few years back? Rather than terraforming Mars, it might be more economical to put a massive semi-spherical balloon over a land mass, and then just build inside of it.
B.C. Place in Vancouver, B.C. is sort of like this. The roof is inflatable, yet strong enough to walk on. Plus the air pressure inside is greater than outside. (You can actually feel the wind coming out of the doors, it's hard to open them because they have to be so heavy).
I'm all for the dome thing, except radiation is another huge factor. Perhaps silver up one side?
Does the fact that NASA was able to build a small device capable of so much like this mean that sometime in the next 50 years we will have the ability to terraform Mars into a viable place for life to exist?
;)
What about terraforming something even closer such as the moon? Will this ever be feasible?
Seems they have the air part down, but now we need to figure the water part out. Perhaps we can harvest comets and melt their ice
--Jon
Well, the way I see it, terraforming is probably at LEAST 50 years from even being a provable concept. Then you have another 50 years before it becomes practical.
One thing alot of people overlook is that by adding water and oxygen to a planet like Mars, you are going to be messing with the weather. Mars doesn't rotate on a perfect axis like the Earth either. Our moon keeps Earth in an almost perfect rotation. This is a big part of the reason that life is able to exist on this planet. If we didn't have the moon, the Earth would wobble. Climates would be so volatile that plants and animals would have to have evolved to handle extremes.
Well, just my $.02
--Jon
There are lots of people in this discussion who have started talking about maybe terraforming Mars. Most of it seems to be based on whether or not we can, but I think it's at least as important to think about whether or not we should.
Mars might actually be okay the way it is. Humans have a history of marching to new places, filling them with people and destroying the existing environment without a second thought. This time we're not just talking about chopping down trees, though. It's indiscriminately turning the environment of an entire planet on it's head.
The most obvious metaphor for this that I can think of is when the commercial world finally got hold of the Internet. Suddenly ignorant government officials and others are trying to control it and change it from what they don't understand to what they want. Why? Because it's there, and they don't have direct control of it. By walking in and terraforming Mars we'd be doing exactly the same thing. It's nothing more than a destructive power statement.
For the metaphor, it would make much more sense for governments and populations to adapt themselves train themselves about the internet. It would make much more sense for us to adapt ourselves to Mars, instead of trying to force it to change.
People can live there easier, but people can live anywhere given enough determination. Mars as a piece of history would be destroyed. Ironically, all this destruction would be to make it look as much as possible like something we already have.
Population-wise, there's no evidence to suggest that shunting a few people away from Earth would do anything to help overpopulation. It would only provide more space to expand, and a few years later we have exactly the same problem all over again.
So anyway, enjoy the view of Mars while it still looks as red as it has for hundreds of millions of years. Take photographs while you still can, because like flipping an irreversable light switch, it could easily be a different colour a couple of centuries from now. Colonists will be looking back at what they've managed to mess up for their own benefit, not as if that's anything unusual for the human race.
Oh well. :)
It seems to me that altering an entire ecosystem (even a likely dead one like Mars) could have dire consequences that we may not be foresee. Maybe there would be no detrimental effect of doing such a thing, but plopping some people on a big planet and turning it from a poisonous atmosphere into Yellowstone Park is just too great an alteration to pass without somehow negatively affecting things.
Anyway, if anyone has ideas on how that could be, I'd be interested in reading them. Sure, it's a planet out in space and changing it shouldn't have any effect because, well, it's sort of in a bubble, but I'm still curious...
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icq:2057699
seumas.com
Scientists at NASA have successfully tested a solar-powered machine that takes carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere and produces pure oxygen.
;p
NASA invents (drumroll please): TREES!!!
YippeeYahoo!!!
Somethimg out of a post-apocolyptic novel? Or is it just me reading too much sci-fi lately??
Take a couple of vintage gasoline-powered vehicles and run them non-stop for instant ozone layer!
Well the score was 2, to make things even weirder...
Am I the only one who see's this? Breathing pure O2 in itself isn't a problem. The astronauts did it (don't bother replying that it was a 60/40 mix of O2 + N2, because that was just on the ground. once they got into space, the pressure was only 5 psi, and they had to use pure O2. So a spark won't be a problem in itself, as long as the pressure is low enough. At high pressure, however, you have a different problem. If you breathe in too much O2 at a high enough pressure, it can destroy tissues. Oh, and one more thing.... Nitrogen is NOT a noble gas. The noble gases consist of Helium, Neon, Argon, Krypton, Xenon, and Radon.
Think --> Think Different --> Think OSS
At the risk of sounding pessimistic, I just gotta ask: what about Nitrogen??? It's my understanding that pure Oxygen is pretty nasty stuff, and we need Nitrogen (and possibly others?) too. This is still a great accomplishment, nonetheless. But, I don't think they're done as far as breathable air is concerned.
It was downgraded to Flamebait, but obviously other moderators have a sense of humour and don't take their Open Source to *fanatical* levels. Cool- nice to see the moderation system works :) (to my favour anyway :)
I always thought the Bradbury idea of planting trees was pretty cool.
satire, n: 1) witty language used to convey insults or scorn; 2) a form of humor lost on most slashdot moderators.
Maybe this machine could be used to terraform the atmosphere around Los Angeles, thereby rendering its atmosphere breathable?
Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know.
It's really hard for plants to grow on asphalt or concrete. not impossible, but hard. I.E., we have a lot less plants and a lot more people nowadays. You could easily fit some of these on some houses, it's not like the roofs don't have the free surface area to support some solar panels....heck, I could fit one of those things in the trunk of my car if I wanted.
If I'm not mistaken, the old co2 scrubbers merely filtered out the co2 and stored it in the filter, letting the o2 through. The filters would get full from time to time, and they'd have to be replaced and discarded. Not elegant, but it worked. Throw in a spare o2 tank to keep the air pressure up, and everybody's happy.
Where was it I've seen that before? Oh, yeah.
Has any of the bright sparks at NASA ever thought of using plants?
In a sense, we already "terraform" our environment on Earth via altering the effects the effects of natural phenomena, such as the weather, when we heat or a/c our homes, buildings and vehicles. I think that there is an interesting debate forming here when we talk about the difficulties of terraforming Mars or Venus. It all depends, I believe, on what happens with nanotech, biotech, and AI in the next, let's say, 20-30 years. If we can get Von Neumann machines small enough, understand the genomes of humans and other organisms and how to manipulate their genetic makeup, and control the process with reliable AI, then we can do a James Hoganesque thing and send robots to places like Mars and Venus and terraform those places at a relatively low cost ;) as long as we are willing to be patient. If genetics also greatly expands human life span, we also may develop the cultural patience as a species to commit to long-term projects that may not come to fruition for centuries (if not millenia). However, even if we somehow can live 200 or more years with the body of a 25 year old supermodel, I don't think its human nature to be patient. It will be interesting to see if we can get over our current cultural fears about nuclear fission and build the fast rockets we would need for a more "brute" force approach to colonization of places like Mars, the Asteroid Belt, and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Then again, guys like Robert Forward have stated that at the current pace of tech advance, we should be able to build antimatter powered relativistic starships sometime towards the middle of this century. I think its more likely that once we find earthlike planets orbiting nearby stars - and this assumes that the Terrestrial Planet Finder flies on schedule after 2010 - that we'll be more interested in Going There than Staying Home. Yeah, its tough to build starships. But its probably a lot tougher to terraform a planetary environment considering that we barely understand our own! :)
Scott A. Carson
My title when I submitted it was a lot less sensational - "NASA machine extracts oxygen on Mars". Theirs was definitely more of an eye-grabber though. And as for the issue of terraforming, algae or bacteria would probably do the trick as long as you set them up to feed off of native material.
They require oxygen to die? Or do you mean 'respire' :-) IANABOAA (I am not a biologist or an astronomer), but would earth-native plants have any difficulty adjusting to different daylight settings?
I seem to remember something from first year bio about a red-flash type of thing where flowers wouldn't blossom etc. if the light of the day weren't a certain length (to accomodate for seasonal changes)..
Anyone know?