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Scientist Calls Mars a Terraforming Target
Raver32 writes "Mars will be transformed into a shirt-sleeve, habitable world for humanity before century's end, made livable by thawing out the coldish climes of the red planet and altering its now carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere.
How best to carry out a fast-paced, decade by decade planetary face lift of Mars — a technique called "terraforming" — has been outlined by Lowell Wood, a noted physicist and recent retiree of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and a long-time Visiting Fellow of the Hoover Institution.
Lowell presented his eye-opening Mars manifesto at Flight School, held here June 20-22 at the Aspen Institute, laying out a scientific plan to "experiment on a planet we're not living on.""
altering its now carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere.
So who's going there to plant and water the trees?
This seems highly unlikely.
These guys obviously haven't seen Total Recall.
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Nope, haven't RTFA, but Kim Stanley Robinson laid out what at least one NASA guy has said was more or less a roadmap to terraforming Mars.
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Updated 6/28/2011
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Jeepers, what is this foreign concept called "terraforming" [that's been discussed for at least 50 years] - I'll try looking for information on this new resource called the Inter-Net and report my findings as soon as possible.
Wish me luck.
I always wondered if terraforming could just be done my massive planting of hardy fauna. A ton of trees (like a rainforest), should drastically change even weather patterns...I always thought that it would be an interesting experiment for a lander to plant - and tend - some cacti or something and see what would happen over time.
I do think that the time span is a bit idealistic, and doesn't account for the Law of Unintended Consequences, but the idea is sound.
Mars doesn't have a carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere. Mars doesn't have an anything-rich atmosphere. Yes, what atmosphere Mars has is mostly CO2, but what atmosphere Mars has is actually a pretty decent approximation of vacuum; the thickest parts of it are barely 1% of typical atmospheric pressure on earth.
The whole article doesn't actually include any specifics, it's just handwaving of the "and then a miracle occurs" sort:
Right. We'll get right on that. We only have 93 years to go, according to this article.
This is an interesting question for property rights theorists. Many people adhere to some sort of Lockean view that by modifying this untouched land, the terraforming organization then owns all of Mars. But then some would say it's a sort of "common heritage" that can't be so privatized. It's also extremely difficult to just terraform "one part" of Mars. (Imagine keeping one part at 1 atm and the rest at Mars's regular atmospheric pressure.)
Regardless, anyone who goes through the expense of terraforming Mars, even a government, is going to want some assurance that the rest of humanity won't leech off their work.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
The sand will be colored red with the blood of Earther scum!
Only when the political will to do so is required, say population explosion
is causing massive food/energy shortages will something like this possibly
be considered.
It is a wonderful dream, but currently only a dream.
Unless, of course - private investment decides to leap on the bandwagon.
How about corporate rights to an entire planet?
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines
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VAN LEUWEN: "Sixty, maybe seventy families."
RIPLEY: "Families..."
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an oh mods... that would be Bladerunner.
I understand the urge to better our environment. Technology is my passion, vocation, and hobby. I just have one question... do we need to change everything we set our eyes upon? (Let's not get into some of the more bizarre sides of Quantum Theory here).
Let's face it, some of the more remote — thus, undeveloped — regions of Earth remain the most beautiful. We still can't match nature's own ability to take care of itself — not that Nature doesn't destroy environments, but there's no one species to blame.
I'm not saying it's a bad idea, I might actually enjoy life on Mars... if I live to see it happen. I'm just wondering if we really need to try to make everything we see "better".
If I only had a moose...
First, Mars does not have a magnetosphere. This helps fend off the worst of the cosmic radiation here on Earth. What does he propose to replace it? The article is light on the details. Second, isn't the understanding still that Mars has insufficient gravity to preserve its atmosphere and so the solar wind strips the atoms and molecules right off the top, thus explaining the low pressure we see today? How do you counter that?
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If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
Sure, terraforming isn't going to be that difficult considering the technology we have. Methinks the biggest hurdle will be getting enough Ford Super-Duty's transported to Mars.
The question is why should we mess up Mars, we're just barely starting on the road to fix the damage we've done to our own planet.
As a bonus, we can just use the huge underground alien terraforming equipment that is already installed!!
Whilst terraforming a nearby planet seems interesting, I would like to see more investment of both research and cash into either orbital habitats or preferably mobile space habitats. The idea of living on a large space station seems to me to be more interesting than settling a different planet... Oh whilst Im on the subject,- a FTL drive, I'd like one of those, plus a teleportation device, oh and a replicator, a light saber, a rocket pack, some sort of time machine....
If that's so easy, then I expect they'll be applying the same principles on Earth. No need to worry about global warming at home then?
It is not technology, nor money, he said, the pacing ingredient is marshaled will.
Obviously this "Marshaled will" stuff must be the key ingredient that he's discovered. Just a pinch of that and planets magically become habitable.
I'm already 55, I won't be alive anywhere near the century's end. And my youngest daughter won't likely even be around, as she'll be 113 in the year 2100. =(
In fact, it's doubtful any of us will see Mars terraformed. If you're ten years old now, you'll be 103 in 2100.
That is, unless they find a cure for old age and death, in which case we're really really going to need a few extra planets.
-mcgrew
So we are hesitant to raise the temperature of our own planet, but its the first thing we want to do to the new one!
...we can't seem to do a good job of controlling problems with climate, etc. in our own world - shouldn't we focus on that first?
Quiz: True or False -- On a scale of 1 to 10, what is your middle name?
I think it is obvious that the USA should claim the planet Mars and militarize it. Adding that much real estate to the USA would provide a huge amount of national wealth. Imagine, the first interplanetary empire! :-)
This is my sig.
I hate to be the Luddite in the room, but given our track record on this planet, I'm not really sure I want us to be inflicting our particular brand of 'progress' on another world. At least not until we know a little bit more about what we'd be losing in terms of the current Martian environment (such as it is). Until then, maybe we should just stick to the planet we're already monkeying around with.
Why Mars? Why not Antarctic glaciers, Gobi desert, Kazakh wastelands, Belarus swamps and Alaskan tundra? Hey, the good old Earth has places that model the conditions of pretty much every planet you can imagine [hazardous included], except perhaps gas giants. Now, where do I go to have the illusion of being on the ancient Foth of Avalars...
Why not just shoot a Genesis torpedo at it....Bingo Bango...instant habital planet! Until it explodes from the inside-out!
Excellent priorities!
it is not like we are running into a land shortage over here - heck there will hardly be anyone left in 93 years - thank to short term government policies and that friends sitcom hmmm yeah 'friends' nuked the planet with all that selfish acceptability garbage.
now where are my pecan sandies?
1. a century? maybe 500-1,000 years, even with a massive economic and political commitment and AFTER the miraculous technological breakthroughs
2. why does venus get such short thrift? i'm thinking along the lines of energy investment and simple entropy: in my mind, to precipitate matter out of an atmosphere, and to dissipate heat, seems to be an easier task than accumulating atmospheric mass and stoking atmospheric heat. yes, even with runaway, geometric catalyst-driven processes, i think it is easier to destroy than it is to create. of course, to do this to venus will be excedingly difficult. but why do you think mars would be easier?
but we should terraform mars and venus as soon as we can, regardless
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Why don't we "terraform" the Sahara desert, the Gobi desert, Antarctica, and the various dust bowls around the world before trying to tackle Mars.
Right now, we can't even keep existing, fertile land from turning into desert right here on earth, with plenty of water and air around.
Mars will NEVER be habitable.
We'd have to find a way to get its dead core molten and spinning again. Otherwise solar radiation will just flay off any atmosphere we try to put there.
Maybe we could live on Mars in domes or sealed caves but I doubt we'll ever be walking about in the open on its surface.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Just be sure not to piss off the local, crystalline, computer-like life-forms inhabiting the crust, you ugly bags of mostly water.
Why bother.
trace the evolution of the hudson bay company into modern canada: i don't see the mass of canadian citizens as serfs of a corporation. the colonizaiton of mars under corporate provenance would probably have a similar uncontroversial and mundane development arc. in fact, any such corporate colonization of mars under government oversight would probably consult a historical study of the hudson bay company directly as a model for potential pitfalls to avoid
i'm sorry, but in reailty, the balance between individual rights and corporate provenance isn't so difficult or immobile. there is no massive conflicts, and the hudson bay company still exists today: what was once the corporate master of much of north america is now simply a department store. but of course, you read most science fiction, or talk to a paranoid schizophrenic, or even consult certain lowest common denominator youth subcultures, and you get the impression that corporations are these unstoppable sociopathic vampires out to turn you into an unthinking slave. hardly. reality is just not that interesting, sorry
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
anaerobic bacteria, the kinds of things that are used to living in very hostile environments.
I'm more curious about where they expect to get the water. Sure, there may be a lot of it around, but the vapor pressure is going to be so low it would be very hard for bacteria to keep their water inside and not just instantly dry up.
Pity that Saturn's rings turned out to be dust instead of ice bergs. I keep thinking about that old Isaac Asimov story...
Clear, Dark Skies
Terraforming Mars is neither necessary nor desirable. Within perhaps 50 years we could easily have human-level AI and advanced robotics. Such robots could be designed for the Martian environment as it exists now. It will prove much easier to adapt our descendants -- our mind children -- to Mars (and many other environments that are hostile to humans) than it would ever be to adapt Mars to us.
In fact, the more optimistic transhumanists would tend to assume that people alive today may see a time when they can upload or upgrade into an advanced robotic form themselves -- so it wouldn't even necessarily be our remote sort-of-descendants who colonize Mars, it could be us, suitably transformed.
Conventional wisdom is that Mars will be explored by robots, then colonized by humans. I turn that idea on it's head. Humans will explore Mars -- today's robotic probes are too crude and limited, so that a single manned expedition could do scientific work that would take decades, maybe centuries, with robots. The other side of that coin is that 50-100 years from now humans will become obsolete for space travel and colonization. The people who actually live on Mars and build a society there will be synthetic people, not homo sapiens.
Shouldn't we worry about fixing our own planet before worrying about another one?
Just send some hardy plants/seeds/spores on a probe.
All you need to do to plant them is to hire the right caliber contractor to handle the landing...
There is plenty of experience in this area already.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
"Scientist Calls Mars a Terrorism Target"
What kind of monkey is too dumb to spell a four letter word correctly? WTF???
It's wear, dumbass. "Where" refers to location.
Mods, this is a flame. That makes the parent flamebait. Pls mod accordingly. Semiliterate dyslexics should not be posting on a site with "news for nerds" in its masthead!
Go back to fark, kid. Come back when you reach puberty.
Unless they have a way to re-create the Martian magnetic field they can forget the terraforming...
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We're not even counting the gravity well penalties of getting back and forth that'll be present, at least within the next 100 years.
Personally, I prefer what Parent is suggesting - let's concentrate (for now) on putting large orbital colonies in nearby space within this century, plus a couple on the moon (where the gravity isn't so much of a hassle).
We can explore Mars in the interim, and once we manage to overcome gravity easily enough later, then we can start parking folks there in large numbers.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Every time I see a story about terraformimg mars, by radically altering the global atmosphere and environment there, I wonder about what might be lost in the process, and who might blow that out of proportion.
Don't get me wrong: I'm all for turning the place into an offworld paradise if it's at all possible. But what about those that will oppose such actions on the basis of loosing billions of years of geologic history in the process*. Better yet, how about those that simply believe in the perservation of things as they are, without human intervention, simply on principle.
If there's one thing that Slashdot has taught me: never underestimate the power of a mob of self-righteous "environmentalists" with entirely too much money and free time on their hands. The idea of an ugly mob of "Protect Mars" activists protesting a rocket launch almost seems like a possible outcome from all this.
(* assuming that changing the atmosphere will alter how erosion and Martian weather works)
Mars will be transformed into a shirt-sleeve, habitable world for humanity before century's end, made livable by thawing out the coldish climes of the red planet and altering its now carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere.
And then we'll go there with our SUVs and crap the whole place up again.
if a killer asteroid or supervolcano or osama bin laden with a bunch of nukes/ viruses/ nasty nanotech threatens to kill civilization on earth, the other inhabitted orb will survive. of course, mars or venus won't survive a cosmic event like the sun going red giant or a neighboring star going supernova, or a wayward blackhole moving through the neighborhood,
but just as it would be easier to colonize the marianas trench than mars as you point out, it also would easier to colonize mars than some far off star system. so it's a good first step to give us a junior level insurance policy before we get the gold star insurance policy by colonizing another the solar system
and furthermore, we probably will terraform our own planet earth... just to counteract global warming. some people like to play blame games about global warming, but a real engineer just wants to get the job done of fixing the problem. such as seeding dead areas of the ocean with iron to cause plankton blooms to sequester CO2 to the deep in the form of dead microorganisms
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
We really need to claim both. The idea, really, is that people are stupid and compete to get anything. If you say, we all get to share the planet, its essentially worthless. However, if the USA says "we're claiming the moon and mars", then, the Europeans, Russians, Chinese and Indians will all start to spend enormous amounts of money on space hardware as well. The USA will then respond by drawing down its own traditional, but gargantuan military, to match the combined spending of all of them. This will fuel an enormous space race, getting the things like nuclear rockets, bigger ships, orbiting construction facilities, that we really need to get people off of earth and onto other planets, with the added benefit that wars would be fought in space, and not on earth, sparing those of us who would prefer to live in peace at home.
This is my sig.
I thought one of the reasons Mars' atmosphere is so thin is thought to be due to it having a much weaker magnetosphere than Earth? (People who know better than me, please chime in.) The idea being that a gaseous atmosphere can be somewhat "blown away" by the solar wind without the protection of a planetary magnetic field.
And isn't it also thought that in the past it may have had a stronger magnetosphere that could attribute for it having once had a thicker, more moist atmosphere in the past more like Earth's?
I watch Nova when I'm half asleep, so I may have dreamt all of this...
But assuming anything I just said is right to some degree, how does terraforming take it into account? Would it be all for naught if the solar wind comes and blows it all into space?
My local science debate club recently had a discussion of the terrifying results of terraforming gone wrong. There's a video of the debate there.
... by Lowell Wood, a noted physicist and recent retiree of the
This is the point at which I stopped reading TFA.
A physicist talking about chemistry and biology, and a retiree talking about how easy/cheap/fast/simple it would be for you young people to do, if you only had the kind of vision we had back in the day.
Sorry, I've known too many physicists. (and too many retirees...)
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For the weaponization of space and MORE pollution.
Sounds good to me.
Insincerely,
Geroge W. Bush
Only when the political will to do so is required, say population explosion
is causing massive food/energy shortages will something like this possibly
be considered.
Nope; sorry. That's when the "We need to solve our problems here first" crowd really gets into full throat. Funny thing, though; there's always one more problem that needs to be solved "first."
"I dunno about this 'climbing down out of the trees' thing, man. Seems to me we need to solve our problems here, first...."
Regards;
Wouldn't the lack of a strong planetary magnetic field fry all unshielded life?
I'm all for eventually terraforming Mars once we've determined that there's no existing life there, but to do so before then would be a scientific loss on an unimaginable scale.
Given that we're still discovering new species (microscopic ones by the gazillion, and still finding occasional large ones too) on earth, despite a huge exploratory effort that's been underway for hundreds of years, I think it's a bit early (massive understament) to think we've determined that mars is lacking any life at all
What's that old line? Something like "why are we all into terraforming other worlds while we're busy venusforming earth?"
I love the idea of massive engineering projects making useful changes, but also understand that there is going to be a HUGE heap of the law of unintended consequences because these systems are so difficult to model accurately.
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why does venus get such short thrift?
in addition to your points, i'm thinking along the lines of energy investment and simple entropy: in my mind, to precipitate matter out of an atmosphere, and to dissipate heat, seems to be an easier task than accumulating atmospheric mass and stoking atmospheric heat
yes, even with runaway, geometric catalyst-driven processes, i think it is easier to destroy than it is to create. of course, to do this to venus will be excedingly difficult. but why does anyone think mars would be easier, and then taking your points into account, even worth it in the long run as compared to venus?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Have these scientists forgot that Mars has almost no magnetic field and atmosphere?
The magnetic field of a planet protects the atmosphere and surface from radiation sent off by the sun. Without this, tremendous amounts of radiation reach the planet's atmosphere and surface. If we were to rebuild the atmosphere, we would find that we just wasted our time, because there is no magnetic field to deflect any incoming radiation. The effects of the sun would essentially knock the new atmosphere off the planet and into space.
http://www.allometry.com
The trouble will be getting through the void.
...and that's the way the cookie crumbles.
The magnetosphere is the magnetic field generated by the planet. It essentially creates a shield around the planet that protects it from various kinds of solar radiation and the ill effects caused by said radiation.
Mars is, on a planetary scale,.... dead. There is no longer a mechanism within the planet itself to generate the magnetic field needed to protect the atmosphere (even if we could create one).
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I hope they have it ready by the time we have to live in spacesuits on this planet. After we trash Mars maybe we can go after Titan.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
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(n/t)
Anyone else hear "terraforming target" and think "assassination target"? Amounts to the same thing to me.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
I thought a big part of the reason Mars didn't have much of an atmosphere left was that it didn't have a significant magnetic field. From what I understood, (which may have been incorrect, obviously) without a magnetic field, any atmosphere we generate would just be stripped away by solar wind, and it wouldn't provide enough protection for life anyways.
In terms of who pays? Simply get rid of the outer space treaty and allow land ownership. The rest of the terraforming will follow automatically.
Deleted
i think we ought to put our best minds and resources to work on keeping this planet habitable, before we squander such efforts on other worlds.
Birth is the leading cause of death.
This kind of grand-scale project may seem all fine and dandy now - but then 70-odd years down the line, our horde of genetically-engineered humans, specially suited to Mars, starts declaring independence... Then later they bait our space fleet out to the outer planets with some scapegoat diversion, while their space fleet invades and conquers Earth and Venus...
The aftermath? Mars destroyed, our military in shambles, and a bunch of uncivilized space pirates offered an entire planet as compensation for their help in the conflict... No, I do not think terraforming Mars is a decision we can take lightly.
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
Howdy, Stranger! This is Hauser. If things have gone wrong, I'm talking to myself, and *you've* got a wet towel wrapped around your head
Terraforming is so outdated. Just use the Genesis Device on Mars.
We can't even terraform *Earth*!
Bill Hicks said it best, humanity is like a virus with shoes. These guys wrote the screenplay.
You drank my drink, you drunk!
While certain varieties of FLORA may be able to survive in a CO2 atmosphere at near vacuum, the FAUNA would find it a tad more difficult.
Could we make that a priority after we work out how to protect the planet we've got? It's fucked, thanks to us, and it looks like we don't know how to reduce our destructive impact - or don't have the will to.
you had me at #!
If you like this topic, you really should read the Mars trilogy, or at least the first one (the second half of the third feels a bit rushed). I'd go. New society without any existing people being murdered. Maybe we can get it right this time, or at least less wrong. ;-)
Be easier because only the flexible versions of religions would come over.
Actually, this was come up with long before that. My neighbor's cousin, who lives in Dayton Ohio, once knew a guy whose step mother was an astrologer (she was really weird), but her first husband was actually this physicist guy named Noah (ironically enough!!!) and he came up with a plan to colonize planets (including Mars) by flying big ships with every species of plant and animal and then just letting evolution do its thing and those that were fit would survive. And this was, like during the War. He wasn't a NASA guy, but yeah, this has been around for a while.
Let's hope our terraformers aren't as curious as the ones on LV-246 or we might have to send the colonial marines to rescue them.
"Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen..."
How about we create the biospere III on the equator, no A.C., increase the CO2 inside to what is expected and let you and a number of other nuts live in there?
Actually, in light of what is expected, I almost wonder if we should not just use biosphere II and do just that. It would be interesting to see how 8 ppl would do. We just keep the CO2 at the elevated levels and see how humans and plants do.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Soylent Green.
Solve two problems at once.
I always thought that if you smashed Mars and Venus together you'd probably have a pretty decent place. That'd be a planet with a mass just shy of Earth's mass.
Don't know if spreading Venus's atmosphere over both would make unhostile enough, though.
As noted by others, there are a number of major problems to overcome in terraforming Mars and Venus may be a more viable alternative. There is a good article discussing both here. The problem with terraforming is that there is no solution that would take less than a few hundred years. The moon is one possibility but it still has a gravity well to overcome. A colony in the asteroids might be easier especially if there is frozen water available. Eventually we could look at the use of near-Venus space for the orbital capture and development of comets and asteroids. Although Venus currently has no moons, in the near future it may be practical to nudge smaller bodies into orbit around the inner planets. Venus is especially good for this because aerobraking in its thick atmosphere can be used to slow these bodies down. If you accept Stephen Hawkings premise that colonization of space would be the best way to ensure the survival of humans as a species, then we should determine the best place to start and get working on it RFN.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
clearly the solution here is to increase the mass of mars... Hm... How about we return Pluto to planetary status by simply ramming any planetoids larger than it into Mars? That way it'll be the 9th largest known non-solar, non-moon mass in the solar system again...
Now how do we arrange the strikes?
I don't read AC A human right
First, the dry ice comments are out past saturn. But if you are going out there, then skip the CO2. Instead, go to ammonia. It is FAR better of a greenhouse gas. In addition, it breaks down to N2; simple nitrogen gas which is our buffer gas. In addition, is is through that the majority of ammonia asteroids contain a fair amount of water. The last thing Mars needs is more CO2.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
So, I tried finding some biographical info and previous writing from "Lowell Wood." There's nothing on wikipedia. (Q: does that mean he's not a "noted physicist?") I did come across this on google:
...Scary to think that guys like this give testimony and hold sway over congress-people.
THE REALLY BIG THREATS
This guy is a whacko. He may be smart, he may have worked on many Defence projects over the years, and he may have worked his worked his way into difference policy institutes -- but he comes off as one of those "clash of civilization" necon types.
And the idea of terraforming and colonizing Mars before 2100? Why not colonize Antarctica or the ocean floor, first? (or at least have self-sufficient mineral resource extraction, there, first?) Ya'now, the Mariana Trench is a lot closer.
Without a magnetic field. Mars does not have a rotating molten core like earth, it has a solid one. Therefore, no magnetic field, therefore it is constantly attacked by cosmic radiation and solar winds, which not only strip away the atmosphere, but also would kill us in months. Add onto that the low mass and the negative effects that has on bone density and Mars is definitely not a habitable planet for long term.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
it takes effort to remain free. being free doesn't just happen without any threats. and those most hypersensitive to threats to freedom, no matter how hypothetical, are the first to scream and the loudest to scream, no matter how invalid or valid their concerns. so they do have value
however, mankind has always favored personal freedom. there is nowhere on this planet, now or ever, where people preferred to be slaves. so i depend upon that basic impulse to keep up the good fight
any prison designed by a man can, and will, be defeated by a man. there will be those always trying to oppress, and there will always be the fight against them. now and forever, everywhere
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"Mars will be transformed into a shirt-sleeve, habitable world for humanity before century's end, made livable by thawing out the coldish climes of the red planet and altering its now carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere."
The most "coldish climes" are the poles. The polar ice of Mars is primarily carbon dioxide. Thawing them would result in more CO2.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Maybe he means "out there", as in 'even more nuts than what I've already said'...
"ASPEN, Colorado will be transformed into a shirt-sleeve, habitable world for humanity before century's end"
Whoa!
Srsly I don't give a damn about possible latent microbes on Mars, I say we do this because we're humanity and we don't give a damn about the repercussions of our actions.
Its perfect.
Every belch from a power plant or a factory will actually be doing some good.
No pollution controls required.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Earth: 78% nitrogen
Mars: 3% nitrogen
Whether or not you can change the CO2 for oxygen is irrelevant if you can't magic up a lot of nitrogen. And remember you're talking about replacing most of a planet's atmosphere with a different element altogether. Its not feasible on a century scale.
So what do you do with it? 95% CO2 on mars, you could put some plants there (they don't seem to need the nitrogen, at least for photosynthesis). But that will only get you the O2 and create a sink for water (which is scarce as is). You might be able to mine the nitrogen there and blow it into the atmosphere, but is there enough? I'm very skeptical, you'd need millions of millions of tons.
Honestly the best plan for using mars for living is to plant some crap outside (but trap the O2 it makes) and live in contained environments. Short of either a)mining nitrogen or b)using fission to make it, it is likely that there's not going to be enough to make "air." We need to establish a presence and figure out if the ingredients are there to do the job, not brag that "it can be done soon!" without even having been there.
1. Terraform Mars.
2. Profit.
I believe that environmental law on Earth will eventually become so restrictive because of the damage we're currently doing to it, that eventually, it'll become financially advantageous for large manufacturers to build factories on other non-regulated planet and ship the product back to Earth. Thats when we'll start setting up large settlements on other planets.
without context
the proper context is that preserving martian life delays of creating an insurance policy for the survival of civilization/ mankind. of course, one takes efforts to preserve any martian life for the sake of scientific knowledge but also for the bare simple fact that we should respect life. this is assuming we have the time to give martian life some respect
but at the same time, if there was a time crunch and civilization on earth was being threatened, by say a supervolcano or an asteroid, then i'm sorry, screw martian life
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Mars' gravity is about one-third (37.7%) that of Earth's. The bigger difference, IIRC, is that it has very little magnetic field. Without that magnetic field to protect it, the Sun just strips away the atmosphere like [insert joke here].
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
tin foil hats will be mandatory on mars because of the lack of magnetosphere
but of course, this will confront the paranoid schizophrenics amongst us with a horrible and terrifying paradox: what do you do when the government mandates the wearing of tin foil hats?
this will lead to an unexpected bonus for martian colonists: no crackpots will go there, thereby doubling interest in becoming a colonist
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I've read many unbelievable scientific and technical things here that need to be done to accomplish humans living on Mars. However, I feel this is instead a moral issue. Is the plan to trash Earth to the point where human existence is no longer possible and then just pick up and move to Mars? Should we go on pumping pollution into the air and water at overwhelming rates without even trying to fix that? If as a species we can't solve problems such as using solar energy instead of oil as a primary energy resource, then NONE of the things necessary to live on Mars are possible. I think this is another ruse from "paid" scientists to deflect the interests of the populate from cleaning up where we are vs. moving on to other planets.
Minus our intrusions, the Earth is a paradise; we should treat it that way.
Believe in things of which no person has ever learned
Who'da thunk it? Now, back to your flaming! ;)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
The magnetic fields around Earth exist partly due to the Moon, but Mars has no natural satellite of sufficient size to make a difference; Phobos and Deimos are just tiny pebbles in comparison. I don't know whether the internal composition of Mars would be able to generate a magnetic field, but if so, I think either Jupiter or Saturn may have a satellite to spare.
How to get it to Mars? I'm thinking along the lines of a carefully engineered cascading gravity assist, hurling asteroids in various directions until a few of them diverts the designated object from its current orbit into one that intersects with that of Mars, and then another bunch arriving just in time to slow it down.
Then we'll wait a few million years while the Martian core and mantle stabilize again after the tidal chock and the crust cools down enough for bacteria to survive. Who's in a hurry?
Transport most of Venus atmosphere to Mars. bingo, two terraformed planets!
-- Technology for the sake of technology is as pathetic as eschewing technology because it's technology.
Outer Space Treaty
It does explicitly forbid any government from claiming a celestial resource such as the Moon or a planet since they are common heritage of humanity. Art. II of the Treaty states, in fact, that "outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means."
Can Soviet Russia claim it?
Will start it a new space race again?
Mars does not have enough mass to hold an Earth-like atmosphere (Nitrogen and Oxygen mostly) that has enough energy (warm enough) with enough pressure to sustain Earth-like life.
If we took the atmosphere as it is on this planet and actually brought it to Mars, it would have been gone from that planet in the matter of weeks, most of free N and O2 at the molecule speeds that we see on Earth would just jump out of the Mars gravitaty well, and it would happen extremely fast.
You can't handle the truth.
With the current fear of doing anything that might have a consequence it is quite clear that the pioneering spirit is more or less dead in the water. Given the current conserns about doing anything at all, it is quite clear to me that if our society were transported 500 years into the past and located in Europe than no-one would dare to colonise North America. People would be running around proclaiming all sorts of fears.
Terraform Mars? Ha! We might find life there one day. We better not take the chance eh?
Mind you _if_ we can cheaply get into space then its probably likely that we will develop the asteroid belt. Its not in a gravity well and there are HUGE mineral resources available. Not to mention... there is a lot of space to build things in.
There is one additional thing.
I don't think government is going to find a way to park its big fat ass on real estate in the asteroid belt.
Just as Britain was unsuccessful extracting taxes from its colonies in North America I suspect terrestrial governments will be unsuccessful controlling development and extracting taxes from the asteroid belt... once we can get there that is. But... it will have to wait until private industry can provide the transportation systems into space.
Once we start to move into space mind you we will see exponetial growth of the population and the economy. There are vast energy resources in space and vast mineral wealth. A space based economy will develop very quickly and experience phenominal growth.
Things we will be able to do in space which we cannot do on earth:
-- Vast resources of very cheap energy including nuclear. We could have a nuclear economy now! We've been lied to.
-- Vast mineral resources and all the energy we need to process them.
-- Unlimited space to build things in.
-- Absence of government regulations which tie projects up in red tape sometimes for decades and longer.
Of all these issues... I think the latter is probably the most important.
There is another issue as well. As I see it - more than 50% and possibly more than 75% of the time people spend at work is channeled into non-productive directions. Its work that simply does not need to be done.
Currently the tax free day is past June 30 in most 1st world countries. I think most agree that more than 1/2 of what government does is non-productive. In the far flung reagions of the asteroid belt I do not think uselesses will be quite as viable as a career option.
Venus is closer, more Earth-like in just about every way we can imagine. We just need to get rid of the exessive atmosphere (far easier than bringing an atmosphere somewhere) - just sweep it under the carpet (store liquified in inderground vault or something), and apply a lot of sunscreen.
mars has more short term potential, and venus has more long term potential
mars has an upper limit on what you can do with it because of no magnetosphere and a gravitationally dissipating atmosphere. but you can go to mars now in a "lite" astronaut suit. venus has a (weaker than earth's) magnetosphere and plenty of atmosphere, but you need to suit up as if you are walking into a volcano. so with venus, the terraforming should be done with nanotech/ robots, and then WAY down the line venus will realize a potential greater than how we view mars now
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
trek? wrath of khan?
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
Another planet where we can completely screw up it's environment.
I am all for terraforming Mars, after we've studied it in a relatively pristine state for a while. The idea of moving many people there, however, is silly, until we've actually settled the marginal areas down here first. The oceans are full of opportunity and cover most of the planet, we hardly know them, yet we're planning a move to an airless dessicated ball millions of miles away. WTF? The frontier is still here.
Damn those pesky terrorists
... getting high speed internet there. Damn, those packets are sure taking a long time.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
If we don't get green house gases under control we may be able to use what we learn about terraforming mars here on Earth!
I wonder how much this guy gets paid to come up with ideas that are really just a slight improvement on some other guys ideas that were inspired by some other guy who read a book that said there were canals on Mars.
Mars is a dry, cold, ugly gravity well. We live on a wet, warm, beautiful gravity well. I think it is a waste of resources, energy and time to escape our gravity well for a less hospitable gravity well. We are better off learning to live in space, which is probably going to be necessary for any Mars terraforming. We should also start cataloging what is already in space, another thing that might be usefull for the greening of Mars. The next step is to turn those resources not at the bottom of a gravity well into self-supporting machinery.
Once we can do those three things, we will probably realize that we don't need a gravity well to be happy. Then, it's wagon train to the stars time, which we can all agree is a good thing.
Posting AC, because this is offtopic.
You seem relatively knowledgeable regarding issues associated with space travel and, more specifically, colonization, so I'd like to ask for your assistance with something...
I'm building a community that will write a new science-fiction universe, under a Creative Commons Attribution license. The idea is to produce a reasonable and self-consistent literary universe that amateur writers (e.g. fanfic authors) will eventually be able to use as a setting for their own stories.
My personal interest is to have a place where I can debate, discuss and develop the technology, politics, etc. that would exist in a fictional universe whose time-line began Today.
(Who I am)
Here's a "kids" page, that addresses the magnetic field of Mars (and Venus). As Venus also has very little magnetic field, perhaps I'm wrong about that whole stripping thing. This site seems to be saying that it's a combination of Mars' low gravity and weak magnetic field. Keep in mind that Titan (with its weak gravity) also has an atmosphere. OTOH, Mercury with a very strong magnetic field does not have an atmosphere. Just some rambling thoughts.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
If anything, Mars needs some more of that lovely thing called mass
Go direct a couple 100 asteriods into it, that will give it mass AND temperature, then throw in a handful of bacteria from primordial Earth and wayHAY, early Earth...on MARS!
Only way it will work in any decent way to be perfectly honest..unless like, you pop another CERN on there and direct some blackholes to the core >_>
I honestly don't see any major breakthroughs in humans understanding of energy and mass conversion in the next 100 years, all i see is "rar rar whine whine" *nukes... silence...*
Um, what? Is he seriously saying that the historical "terraforming" of Earth, all of which has been either on a comparatively minuscule scale and disorganized, or just completely accidental, is the same thing as terraforming Mars, which will take global cooperation and "marshaled will" sustained for at least a generation? That's like saying, "It's inevitable that ants will make a trans-Atlantic tunnel. Look how much dirt they've been moving all this time!" Sorry, terraforming Mars is not something humans will do on an "impulse". You can't wish away the long political and ethical debates that will indubitably precede such a project by citing what amounts to human destiny.
if you don't, well, that says a lot
but if you do, then don't be so bleak about mankind, you do it a disservice to have so little faith in it
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
We've spent, what 20 years building the internation space station? maybe it was only 15. It doesn't really DO anything except float there, but it took all this time to build.
Now, you're going to somehow convince me we can get something to terraform Mars in a century?
Nope. I need more convincing. You want to say we can get stuff that in a century, that will start terraforming it? Sure, sounds plausible.
It's hard to get something out of earth orbit, and so we won't be sending billions of tons worth of industrial astmosphere converters (Sorry, even if they did make a cool setting for the movie Aliens).
With a terribly thin atmosphere, lower gravity, not much magnetic field, and weaker sunlight, conditions on Mars are a good bit harder than on Earth. Still, I can believe that some kinds of baterica and whatever could survive there, and maybe start some momentum to make things more earthlike. Maybe, you could even convince me that some kind of kudzu-dandelion-crabgrass crossbreed could start growing there, if we can figure out how to keep it from dying from frost.
But anything we could realistically send there, would be making small changes at best, and those changes would need a lot of time to really help.
apt-get terraform mars
because of a lack of gravity?
Unless we start crashing asteroids and comets into the surface of the planet on a regular basis, I don't see Mars' mass increasing anytime soon.
+++ATH0
Others in this thread have pointed out problems due to Mars' lack of a magnetosphere, low gravity which won't hold down an atmosphere, etc.
We don't have to go that far. All we need to do is get Mars somewhat habitable....then we can toss out some bacteria, funguses, extremophiles and expect them to live. Then over (a long) time, those organisms will evolve into other lifeforms which can tolerate the the conditions that most life on earth can not.
Who knows, life on Earth may have started that way.
What are you talking about? Saturn's rings are a mix of dust and ice.
Yes, of course. Most of the rings are ice dust. What they aren't is made of moonlets containing cubic miles of that you can strap engines to and drop on Mars.
Clear, Dark Skies
Yes, of course. Most of the rings are ice dust. What they aren't is made of moonlets containing cubic miles of ice that you can strap engines to and drop on Mars.
Clear, Dark Skies
At first, I was interested in the article because claiming Mars can be terraformed in only a century is amazing and I was curious about how. But the whole article can be summarized as follows:
Overall, Wood said that a workable plan can be scripted to raise the average temperature of Mars, rid the world of excess carbon dioxide, as well as generate soil to support agriculture.
What an ass!! It's easy to say this. The hard thing is to outline how this workable plan would be. Mars is huge and change its atmosphere using only a century is not a trivial thing. The devil is in the details.
He could have said:
Wood said that a workable plan can be scripted to raise the average temperature of Jupiter, rid the world of excess hydrogen, as well as generate soil to support agriculture. So, therefore, Jupiter can be terraformed in a century
Nothing interesting to see here. Move on.
Ok. You want to move venus from .7 AU to 1 AU. Well, lets take a look at the the energy requirements to pull off such a feat.
Step1-Change the orbit: The safest method would be simply to increase the orbital velocity of the planet. Venus is moving at 35,000 m/s. Increasing that by 1% would require 0.3X10^30 J of energy. E=1/2mv^2.
Step 2- we would need to stabilized the orbit when reaches Venus 1AU. We would have to slow the planet to 30,000 m/s (v=sqrt(G*M(sun)/r) or Earths orbital velocity). That would require 60X10^30 J.
To accelerate the space shuttle to Gliese 581 at 0.5c, we would only need 3X1^22 J (KE=mc^2/sqrt(1- (v/c)^2) -mc^2; m= 2X10^6 kg). For all the energy we would expend moving Venus to a suitable orbit, we could send 20X10^8 Space shuttles to Gliese 581. At 6 person per shuttle, we can transport 12 billion people to Gliese in 40 years. Since there is only 6 billion of us, I vote for interstellar travel and let Venus continue roasting.
I didn't factor in energy waste and assume 100% efficiency in the process.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
We're talking millenia here, not decades. Just because some random retired physics professor read a few science fiction novels doesn't make him an expert, and TFA has no evidence that he has a clue what he's talking about.
No, Russia cannot claim it. Or yes if i yes! Or no if i no! Or no if i yes! Or yes if i no!
The Soviet Venezuela has plans to plant many trees in Mars and to realize a peaceful invasion forever!
"Wellcome to Venezuela Mars"
so if i think your b-grade hollywood plot fantasies are crackpot frooty loops, then i must be a supporter of corporations? hardly. corporations are what they are. they exert significant malicious effect on the world. they also do the world a lot of good. they do both. imagine that, a moderate, balanced view
so how about this: if i say to you that i think your viewpoint is low iq and paranoid, then what would your retort have to be? that i'm dick cheney's closeted homosexual lover?
i guess there's not much room for moderation in the extremes of political views is there
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Let's just toss Oprah Winfrey, and Martha Stewart on a one-way ship, and let them terraform the planet. Sure, me may not actually want to live on a planet designed by two self-righteous, kazillionairres. But the only thing we risk to lose are a couple of crappy TV shows.
If they want to send Rosie O'Donnell, and Donald Trump, then we actually are starting to make a positive shift in Earth's environment.
Now, if we could only ship off those ladies from 'the View'...
I am open source, and Linux baby!
Shhhhhhhhhhhheesssssshhhhhhhhhh!!!!
Terraforming = Planting.
US alone (with UK & partners) want to terraform in the HOLES of Mars!!!
The HOLES are from they because they claimed that they had discovered the HOLES and named its!!!
"...laying out a scientific plan to "experiment on a planet we're not living on."
Why don't these assholes FINISH the insane "experiments" on our planet first!!!.
Stupid tossers!
What all these pro-terraformers are ignoring is the insane energy expenditure and cost. It's much cheaper to transform humans to fit Mars and introduce life that is suited to the environment, creating some thing of a hybrid environment. Not to mention a permanent solution. Terraforming Mars quite likely doesn't create a system that would remain stable and Earth-like. I think it's likely to revert slowly back closer to it's original form (losing moisture and atmosphere) to which it's orbital position has formed it.
Life itself is competing by adapting. Human species' strenght lies in it's ability to adapt. Yes, we can shape the environment, but it is insane to only limit yourself to shaping the environment when you can enhance your own abilities as a species.
When No Treaty because US failed then we can nuking experimental supernuclear weapons in the planets and moons!!!
We need to explode 80,000 TeraTons in an unhabitable place!!!
These places are the planets and the moons.
80,000 TeraTons are 1,600,000,000 Tsar bombas 50Mt.
We need these experiments to defence Soviet Russia against future alienigenation's invasion!!!
"Don't forget volcanos can crate more mass..."
Uh, no. They don't create more mass. They redistribute existing mass. See, the lava and gas that comes out of a volcano was already inside the planet, and already contributed to the gravitational field of the planet.
I guess it has to be about the human craving for balance: we are currently "deterraforming" this planet, so let's "terraform" some other!
I have only skimmed over TFA but I seem to recall there being a problem with the specific gravity of the planet not being high enough to keep an atmosphere that we would find breathable. Oh yeah, and the fact that it is far away enough from the sun that if we were to make it earth like it would be parka weather. Pretending that global warming gases, which is what the atmosphere is made of now more or less, would suddenly be able to heat up the planet now is lunacy.
I don't say we won't colonize Mars but terraforming it might wait until we can raise it's gravity by some means so that it can hold onto an atmosphere.
... how about "terraforming" Earth, since we're rapidly turning it from a living planet to a sterile one?
My understanding is that it was the lack of a magnetic field that allowed solar radiation to slowly remove the martian atmosphere.
I've noticed a few things keep being posted and they get modded up every time, so here they are all collected in one post for your up-modding pleasure! (or modding up pleasure, should you so prefer)
- All we have to do is drop enough plants and Mars will become lush and habitable!
- Mars has no magnetosphere, so any atmosphere we create there would be stripped away!
- Look at the horrible, horrible things we've done to our world! How can we do that to the poor, innocent Martian microbes who may or may not exist?
- Venus is a much better candidate for terraforming. It has an atmosphere and everything!
This sounds far too complicated and it's just another opportunity for disagreement on sldot.
I think we should focus our attention on building a huge FO ring around the Sun occupying the entire plane of the Earth's orbit.
All we need is a dude with three legs.
Posts, MyBio or Sig, may contain satire, sarcasm, bolded nouns be sardonic or even witty & be Church of SD
Even if we terraform Mars, where's the water that we will need for everything (water is essential for much more than drinking, of course)? I know the Polar Caps have a nice chunk, but it's still only a tiny part of the planet. But compare it to Earth: Our planet is almost entirely covered in water, and we have a thick atmosphere with a relatively large moisture (water) content. Imagine Mars with melted ice caps. Relative to Earth, it would be like the entire planet was barren desert and had 2 lakes the size of antarctica and the artic ocean. Is that enough water for every human there, plus being the source of the water needed to vaporize and form a moist atmosphere as well?
Still, it's nice to see this. I love far-thinking goals - I think JFK's moon speech was the greatest speech in American History, or at least top 3. I really feel like it is the embodiment of the American Potential and what America is (not always with 100% success, I admit). That and the Gettys' Address.
I think we should definitely start terraforming Mars ASAP. I think that daily thermonuclear detonations of several-hundred-megatons each in the icecaps could be used to melt the frozen CO2 and water ice sooner rather than later. Fortunately fusion produces little in the way of radioactive byproducts (which is why Man is trying to harness it for eco-friendly energy production), so it's a logical choice.
And what about martian geothermal energy? Cmon, the planet has some of the biggest volcanoes in the solar system. Set up human habitations near the volcanic vents and you won't have to worry about freezing your ass off.
Also, human habitats should be built in the Martian canals and other deep zones, some of which could be sealed overhead to trap heat and moisture. These could be turned into giant greenhouses, where we could grow genetically modified plants specially designed to withstand the hostile conditions on mars.
Even if the surface temperatures and the atmospheric composition was changed to be close to what we know to support life there are still to very large problems. One is that the atmosphere is too thin for human life. If you could thicken the atmosphere (with Nitrogen presumably) the lack of a magnetic field would allow the atmosphere to be ripped apart and away from the planet.
Figure out a way to get the Mars core moving again and you'll have a planet.
(Let us all make really bad references to the movie "The Core" now)
That's just dumb - squeezing out mass from the inside on the planet doesn't increase the overall mas of the planet. No wonder you posted AC..
Is this a rhetorical question?
My plan to terraform Mars...
1. Development of carbon sequestration methods through use of carbon nanaotube based building materials (new types of buildings, bridges etc)
2. Development and Deployment of a Space Elevator, deployment of more space elevators
3. Mining of brown and black coal, transported and hoisted into space.
4. Coal "nuggets" several thousand metric tons thrown at Mars by our space elevators and guided towards mars so it can burn up in the atmosphere.
5. Nugget size/construction adjusted as Mars atmosphere thickens and heats up.
6. Mars atmosphere heats and thickens the water/ice melts which also should release more oxygen.
7.Profit!!! (well if I don't add it someone will)
The biggest benefit I can see over the Niven plan is it would not subject Mars to gravitational stresses that crashing Europa (or other celestial bodies) into it would. In addition, since we have known data regarding our own activities wrt burning carbon for fuel, we can make estimations to the volumes of this and other gasses we could use to warm and heat Mars.
Mining is used to making long term investments in infrastructure anyway that take a long time to generate returns, and whilst I don't know if manufacturing carbon nanotubes from the exhaust if coal power plants is even viable it could provide enough incentive for them to get involved. Well thats my idea I thought I'd put out there for the slashdot audience to kick around.
Hey, it might even work!!!!
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
All the technologies gained in the process of effectively destroying what a foreign world once was would certainly be applicable in modifying (or fixing, if you are of that school of thought) the environment on this planet as well. I mean, we got Tang from the moon landing.
Even if we terraform Mars, where's the water that we will need for everything?
I'm no chemist, but I'm assuming we'll get water on Mars the same way I tend to suspect we originally got it here; via jump starting a hydrogen-oxygen-carbon closed circuit reaction...creating a scenario where presence and combustion of either of these three elements ends up producing amounts of the other two. I was reading some stuff about how the Russians were studying that up on Mir a bit back...they of course needed to know about it to give their astronauts breathable air and fresh water.
Thinking about that, it makes sense that there is a link between increasing global desertification and the massive amounts of carbon dioxide now in the atmosphere...the degree of carbon is excessive, and is throwing the above loop out of whack to the point where it is in danger of no longer being self-perpetuating.
We Martians terraformed Earth billions of years ago! We planted our seeds so that future generations of the Great Martian Alliance could spawn and prosper! It turned out that you humans, our great, great, great^1572639532999 ancestors turned out as freaks, with only 2 legs instead of our 4! Don't you see it was a huge failure??? And now you talk of coming back! Oh the irony!
How about we wait until we've set up a permanent presence on the moon before we start making grandiose and probably impractical claims about what we'll do a century from now? There's nothing wrong with having goals and vision, but talking about terraforming Mars as an absolute certainty at this point in our development as a species is like announcing you're going to be the first person to climb Everest when you've only just learned to crawl. We're not even sure that terraforming Mars is possible, let alone practical.
...of a planet and melt ice caps, it's us!
...first, and if we can make this planet a better place to live, I'd say we're qualified to go on to another one. Other than the fantasy/fun value of this idea, it's pretty worthless to dream about screwing up another planet just the same way we screwed up this one.
If we screw up terraforming on Mars or Venus and they end up unhabitable (which is what they're now), we'll just go back to the drawing board, refine out methods, find a different target or try a different approach at space colonization.
If we screw up terraforming on Earth
I am afraid the next creationist dark age will come before we terraform Mars, and then science will be prohibited and scientists will be jailed as enemies of the people.
We cannot even look after earth's environment...
has always seemed like a better terraforming candidate to me. The mechanics are a bit more difficult, and would probably involve high altitude balloons, but it has potential to be far more earthlike than mars ever could be.
The issue with mars isn't so much getting plants to live their (although that's a big hurdle), but it's pressure. The planet is smaller, and has significantly less gravity, and can trap far less air. Even if we were able to increase the amount of air available somehow, it would probably just bleed off into space. Venus on the other hand has excess pressure, which is a much easier problem to deal with.
Every time I read about the transhumanist fantasy about uploading him or her self into a computer, I see someone without a sex life who does little or no sport and hasn't been for long walks in a forest or swum in a sea.
I keep hearing people talk about terraforming and creating an atmosphere on Mars. A glaring issue to me though is the reason that Mars doesn't currently have an atmosphere, or negligable one at that, and why the planet is dead.
Didn't Mars lose the ability(strong magnetic fields, generated by a molten liquid core) to protect its atmosphere from the solar wind, uv, gamma, all that good stuff?
If we start sending gas generators and hurling comets to Mars to make an atmosphere, how fast will the artificial atmosphere burn off? Can we keep up? That is a massive volume of gas to create; especially once the burn off and radiation into space are considered.
Entropy just isn't what it used to be.
Venus, like Mars, also has a very weak magnetic field. It's a combination of factors (including gravity), of which the magnetic field is an important component. Also, the magnetic field protects from long-term stripping of the atmosphere (i.e., over hundreds of millions of years), so as long as we could continue to replenish the atmosphere (at a very low rate), it could work. I'm no planetary specialist, though, so take that with a grain of salt.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
In the Red Mars, Blue Mars, Green Mars trilogy, it's basically one big series about terraforming. I would suggest a read or quick skim through for anyone interested. There are lichens and such that grow on rocks (some ferrous) and break down the rock for nutrients and live in very harsh conditions. Lichens are most times cold resistant and don't need large quantities of light. In the books they situated the lichens around their windmill/powerplants and let the excess heat warm the plants and help them survive until they had pumped out enough oxygen to warm the environment thus letting the lichen creep out a little more and so on and so forth. The real question comes up when we have to decide if terraforming planets is the way to go. Should we adapt the planet to us or us to the planet? Should we be looking into terraforming or possibly messing with our genome to make us more Mars-resistant (see Metaplanetary)?
I think it would be easier (relatively speaking) to find comets that provided the appropriate concentrations of CO2/H20/etc. to replenish the "leaking" atmosphere than to try to provide enough additional mass and/or magnetic field to retain the atmosphere indefinitely. (OTOH, increasing the gravity serves two purposes of course.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
"all someone needs to do is come up with a solution (or multitude of solutions) for turning the bulk CO2 of the Venusian atmosphere into something else (perhaps hydrocarbons, carbon nanotubes, hell it could be graphite or diamonds for whatever reason)."
h esis
I have had the same thought in regards to dealing with the excess CO2 here. It seems that carbon is a excellent building material and the value of free or hydrogen bound oxygen is pretty obvious. I suspect the problems lie in the energy required to break the molecular bonds of CO2. It would be nice if we could figure out a way to do this that we could afford. I seem to remember that plants have using solar energy. Heck with sequestering carbon in the bowels of the earth. Lets "fix" it and use it for the next generation of homes, vehicles, etc. The full replication of the process using water as well would provide free hydrogen as a fuel, and the remaining products for food/feedstock or pharma. I knew this was to elegant for no one else to have hit on it....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_Photosynt
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
ANd just how does Dr. Lowell plan to MOVE MARS CLOSER TO THE SUN in order to make his "shirt-sleeve' temperatures sustainable? And finally, even if we could terraform Mars -- WHAT WOULD BE THE POINT? Aside from the spectacular views, Mars is like the Moon -- there isn't any THERE there. There are little to no useful mineral resources, making the soil fertile for even simple agriculture would be a monumental feat, and no sane human being would put up with the six-month journey each way to get there. Plus, he says it will take a century -- about five times as long as it will take technological civilization of Earth to go completely down the tubes. If we're going to kill our own planet, we should at least have the decency to die with it!