Warming a Tiny Piece of Mars For Terraforming

dptalia writes "It's been a dream of science fiction writers everywhere that we would eventually terraform Mars. Now an engineering student has proposed a way to terraform only a kilometer of Mars. By building an array of space based mirrors to focus the sun's light, a small area of Mars could be warmed to about 68 degrees Fahrenheit (20 degrees Celsius) which would make it easier for explorers to work and live there. Since Mars' atmosphere is thin, the mirrors would have to be carefully designed to prevent them from reflecting harmful radiation as well as light and warmth."

Comments

Arizona State University is NOT in "Tuscon, US"

[Anonymous Coward]

The article erroneously claims ASU is in Tucson. The University of Arizona is in Tucson.

This and a big hole will get you a cup of coffee

[Control Group]

Combine this with Kim Stanley Robinson's* deep hole, and you might have a comparatively easily maintained environment on Mars: dig a big, deep hole for much of the atmosphere to fall into, thereby increasing atmospheric pressure; use this array of mirrors suggestion to heat it up, and you've "solved" a couple of the more pressing problems with trying to live on Mars. With sufficient "natural" pressure, heat, and light, building structures in which to grow things becomes easier. This doesn't really address the lack of water, of course...

*I call this Robinson's idea only because Red Mars is where I encountered it - I have no idea who actually came up with it.

Re:To prevent harmful radiations

[Red Flayer]

I guess they should just use TiO2 coatings on mirrors that are transparent in visible but very dark in UV (don't know xray region)

What, like glass?

Not making fun, it's just that there's a reason we use quartz or NaCl sample jars for UV spectroscopy... but I don't think regular glass blocks xrays, though.

Re:I thought the problem was the geodynamic thing.

[jonadab]

> I thought the problem with Mars was the geodynamic thing with the molten core that forms
> a magneosphere that would prevent solar winds from blowing away an atmosphere?

There are several problems. Mars does not have enough mass to hold an Earth-like atmosphere, for one thing. The article title is misleading, because it's not really talking about terraforming in the traditional "you can take off your helmet and breathe freely" sense. It's just talking about a measure that would make exploration of the surface, by astronauts in pressure suits, a bit easier.

Re:To prevent harmful radiations

[bobdickgus]

Regular glass only blocks about half of the UV that reaches the earths surface, it will absorb most of the higher energy UV though.

Re:Water?

[PatrickThomson]

There was supposed to be a certain pressure above which people didn't even need that sort of suit, but I think it's higher than the current mars atmosphere. These pressure suits are just jumped-up spandex.