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Warming Up Mars With Greenhouse Gases
fembots writes "Scientists are thinking of using the same toxic stuff (Octafluoropropane) already blamed for global warming here to put some life back on Mars. It would take hundreds of years but eventually ice sheets would melt, grass would grow here, and temperatures would hit 50 degrees along the equator of the planet. Martian organisms might be revived too - if there are any."
I remember the game SimEarth had you do something like this in order to make it livable. Of course, I nuked everything that moved, but that was a different story. Why are we trying to terraform mars?
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
One has to assume you're there, quite the feat; and, let me be the first to say, I welcome our grass growing, and smoking, Martian Overlords.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
"...planet several thousand miles away"
I might agree with spending a little more money on education.
....250 years ago Bwizopp Gnis'uen, a famous martian scientist came up with an idea how to colonize that cold blue planet.
"This great plan will allow us to finally colonize that pesky blue planet and in the meantime allows us to get rid of that ape infestation over there.
It would be hugely expensive to invade, so the brilliance of the plan is to let those apes do it for us. They will never suspect a thing.
All we have to do is to tell them about the huge reserves of so called "oil" in the ground. The timing is crucial, because if we would tell them too late, they would discover a much easier way to generate energy. That would be a disaster, but it won't happen. When they realise what's going on it will be too late already."
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Do we really want to wake up the Martian Organisms?
In all likelyhood, if Mars has microscopic life, the Earth has probably already been infected with it. Calculations show that spores can survive certain meteor impacts and be transported to Earth in the process. Our life may have even originated on Mars. Earth was too valcanic for stable life formation early on, but due to its smaller size Mars may have been mild and wet at that time. Thus, life may have formed on Mars while Earth was still bubbling, but the roles switched later on and Earth did "more" with the stolen life when Mars cooled and dried out.
Table-ized A.I.
Octafluoropropane is not really all that toxic.
f 39cc852569af00702e6f/26e5bede95a1fefb85256ef50045e 0e4?OpenDocument&Highlight=0,76-19-7
According to the MSDS (Material Saftey Data Sheet), the only real toxicity to worry about is asphyxiation, no worse than nitrogen or argon gas.
Greenhouse gases != toxic (at least not implicity).
MSDS link
http://www.scottecatalog.com/msds.nsf/d118573c489
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Offer yourself to the lions. After all, they're natural and wouldn't dream of hurting another living creature would they?
Guess what. It's survival of the fittest.
Deleted
I think you meant -40C... :-)
The idea is to initiate a run-away greenhouse effect on Mars using a super-effective Greenhouse gas that is safe and easy to produce on Mars. 10-20*10^9 Kg of C2F8, a greenhouse gas 12,000 more effective than CO2, would seem to do the trick. Assuming that 10% of all sunlight reaching Mars could be trapped, Mars could be warmed enough to reach the triple point of CO2 within 100 years. This would release the CO2 (and hopefully water) frozen within the Martian Regolith into the atmosphere and possibly add enough atmosphere to allow for human exploration with only an oxygen mask a few yars later. At this point martian life, if it does exist, should flourish. If it does not we can start populating the planet with Earth species without nasty Mars life preservation debates.
This is not an easy process. Our CFCs, in the Martian atmosphere, would last for thousands of years, so VERY careful monitoring would be required in order to prevent us from terraforming a Venus.
Mars does not have a magnetosphere so our terraformed atmosphere would only have a life of about ten million years before evaporating.
I have notes of the ongoing Mars Society Conference here if you want more information on the current state of manned Mars exploration.
if Mars is tectonically dead, then this would be an advantage for building bases INSIDE the planet.
Put large fields of solar panels and wind turbines on the surface for power, and bring everything you need for indoor hydroponics.
It would be feasible (although not cheap) and faster than terraforming.
I bet that if you look around Mount Olympus, you could find large cave systems that can be used as a starting point.
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