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NASA Plans Mission To Study Martian Atmosphere
An anonymous reader writes "Since the atmospheric blanket of Mars is fast disappearing, NASA is planning a mission to Mars in 2013 to study the Red Planet further. The $400-million plus project named the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission (MAVEN) will investigate how Mars lost most of its atmosphere. This will be critical in understanding whether there has been life there or not."
It's for these sort of reasons that I'm very sceptical about making large scale use of geothermal energy. If we eventually start solidifying magma as a result of the heat extraction and the earth loses its magnetic field as a result, say goodbye to the nice atmosphere and radiation protection we have now.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
I remember reading a paper a few years back on what it would take to create an artificial magnetic field on earth to replace our own if it were ever to become necessary.
Basically a dozen superconducting rings around the planet spaced evenly between latitudes would be all that would be needed.
Each ring requires about 1GW -- the output of a nuclear reactor to power (mostly cooling to keep below transistion temperature). On earth it's obviously a lot of work from an engineering perspective but not impossible to implement if it ever became necessary... God help us if an an entire ring ever decided to quench.
Doing the same for mars would be a massive logistical undertaking with current technology but perhaps not beyond the realm of possibility as a very long term project. Assuming a breakthru in room temperature superconductivity it would make things much much easier.
The first country to terraform mars doesn't own it. The country with the biggest guns owns it.
As to the reason why we haven't tried.
1) land on earth is still relatively cheap. Maybe when the population on earth is 30 billion, and we are suffering the aftermath of a limited nuclear exchange, all fish is vat cloned because oceans are too polluted then maybe the economics is different.
2) Until we get a space elevator it is prohibitively expensive to put things into even geo transfer orbit much less shooting them all the way to mars, and then landing them. Cost to GTO is about $50K per kg. Cost to mars is hard to quantify but say somewhere in the ballpark of $500K per kg of payload (including cost of lander). 2 tons to bars is about one billion in transit cost. To terraform mars anytime in next 100K years would require thousands of tons of equipment at costs running into the trillions.
3) Uncertainty and time.
Even if enough financial resources were devoted it would take thousands more like tens of thousands of years to terraform Mars. Most countries & companies don't last that long. Say the US spends $20 trillion to terraform mars. By the time it is done the US no longer even exists and the people who didn't spend resources on terraforming benefit.
4) Might makes right. There is no guarantee the country who terraforms mars will claim it. Imagine two countries. One spends $20T on terraforming Mars. The other spends $20T on warfare and just takes Mars (and space elevator, and orbital construction yards) etc.
Simply put there is no risk vs reward. Someday in 100 years or 1000 years when we are closer to a global govt (maybe somethings like the EU but globally) you could see a situation where global resources are put towards this global goal.