Terraforming Mars
- Thread starter DiSiLLUSiON
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Building very large domes that hold water, atmosphere, earth and plantlife is perhaps easier on Mars. If you have a very large dome with farms and everything, you wont wake up in the morning and think "darn! why dont we terraform this place?!" since you can live your entire life under the dome, (perhaps with cities and farmlands, forests, and everything) without ever having to take your spacesuit on - its a question of space.
If its true that Mars would need three times as much atmosphere then Earth to be able to hold it, then it would perhaps be possible that Venus would become a good place as well if all that atmosphere would be taken from there.
Massive prosject, but perhaps in a thousand years it will be done. If such a project is planned, the people living on Mars might get angry and say they like their planet just like it is - at least if they have big domes, like I think they will.
If its true that Mars would need three times as much atmosphere then Earth to be able to hold it, then it would perhaps be possible that Venus would become a good place as well if all that atmosphere would be taken from there.
Massive prosject, but perhaps in a thousand years it will be done. If such a project is planned, the people living on Mars might get angry and say they like their planet just like it is - at least if they have big domes, like I think they will.
The sealed bio-domes tested on earth haven't been very successful. They typically run out of oxygen and we can't understand why. They're kept going by replenishing the atmosphere with more oxygen. So it's not really a closed system -- it's just a greenhouse.
Other sealed projects have used beds of special algaes which create oxygen, but these are supplied with artificial light to work effectively enough. This light is powered by an external power station. Again, it isn't really a closed system if energy is being pumped in from a source other than normal sunlight levels.
We don't yet understand ecology. We have no chance of developing anything sustainable on Mars until we can master it on earth.
Other sealed projects have used beds of special algaes which create oxygen, but these are supplied with artificial light to work effectively enough. This light is powered by an external power station. Again, it isn't really a closed system if energy is being pumped in from a source other than normal sunlight levels.
We don't yet understand ecology. We have no chance of developing anything sustainable on Mars until we can master it on earth.
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I suppose that's possible. But solar power is the only realistic energy source for a power station on Mars. There's no fossil fuels on Mars for energy production. If it were nuclear powered, the nuclear fuel would have to be mined/shipped on a regular basis until we run out, and then the biosphere would be in trouble. Anything other than solar requires cooling towers, yet there's a distinct lack of atmosphere on Mars to do that.
Ultimately, it isn't sustainable. It's an unstable setup that's very dependent on maintenance.
Earth doesn't have this problem. Over 100 million years and oxygen has been stable. Taking plants out of the biosphere might disturb other systems like CO2 reuptake and the microorganism/insect life, which might accelerate or stop vegetation decomposing. The soil composition changes. The soil is no longer fertile. Plants stop growing. Methane and CO2 rise, and everybody dies.
Ideally, we want to be able to create ecosystems that maintain themselves, but they're very complex to understand.
If we ever do put domes on Mars, keep Pauley Shore far, far away from them.
Hmm....since nuclear reactors work by using the reaction heat to drive a turbine, you could perhaps use the thinner atmosphere to your advantage by powering more turbines per heat unit. I'm not sure on the details, of course, but there ought to be a way to turn a disadvantage into a benefit here.
Okay, maybe not large explosions to later the orbit, but what about:
Some tsunamis have altered the Earth axis ever so slightly. What if some kind of event was caused to make Mars alter it's axis. At a certain point during, wouldn't it be somewhat easier to move the planet? Maybe continued thrusts of propolsion on the surface. Doesn't have to be large, doesn't have to be visably moving -- just enough to cut it loose and slowly -- very closwly -- move it from it's current orbit, to a closer one.
I don't know, just random thoughts.
Some tsunamis have altered the Earth axis ever so slightly. What if some kind of event was caused to make Mars alter it's axis. At a certain point during, wouldn't it be somewhat easier to move the planet? Maybe continued thrusts of propolsion on the surface. Doesn't have to be large, doesn't have to be visably moving -- just enough to cut it loose and slowly -- very closwly -- move it from it's current orbit, to a closer one.
I don't know, just random thoughts.
Actually, with regard to an atmosphere; gravity isn't the issue, the lack of a stronger, planet encompasing magnetic field is. Mars lost the majority of its atmospres due to solar wind 'blowing' it away (for lack of a better term). If the Earth had a similar magnetic field to Mars, the Earth wouyld loose the majority of its atmosphere in about 300 years (just trying to put this in perspective).
Thus (IMO) any successful Terraformation of Mars (in addition to bombarding it with commets of mostly water; and once there is enough water and a fledgling atmosphere, introducing some gebetically altered plant life and moss to start some type of sustainable ecosystem); would have to include some method of regenerating or creating a planetary magnetic field strong enough to protect the new atmosphere from solar wind bleed off.
I assume an interlocked grid of magnets at regular intervals around the surface of the planet wouldn't work?
It'd make a hell of a free-energy device!
Well, isn't the strength of a planets magnetic field related to its spin, like a giant dynamo? If we aimed comets and icy asteroids toward mars at just the right angle we could theoretically increase its spin and therefore magnetic field? this would then solve the retention of atmosphere problem, and I wouldn't be surprised if there weren't some as yet undiscoverd unified field linkage between a planets spin and its gravity (in addition to its mass of course)?
Paraterraforming on certain parts of the planet would be a better way to go, without having to alter the planet.
As for Venus you can just have floating cities that float on the atmosphere 50 miles above the surface since the temperature and atmosphere up there is very much Earthlike.
As for Venus you can just have floating cities that float on the atmosphere 50 miles above the surface since the temperature and atmosphere up there is very much Earthlike.
Actually for terestrial planets (like Earth and Mars); the planetary core needs to be molten and active, and the planet's rotation and metals in te core have a dynao effect that generates the field. Scientists theorize that Mars' core is either cold, or very minimally active; and that is why there is no planetwide magnetic field.
It would be a tad risky to try and alter the core of the planet itself, so I think we'd have to stick with some external way of enhancing the magnetic field or just living in habitable domes. The Domes could be expanded over time and linked together as they developed until they covered a lot of the planet.
I remember some time ago a report about various space probes feeling acceleration towards the sun at a higher rate than they were supposed to be by current understanding. It was hypothesized to be implicated with earth's magnetic field, even though the field itself wasn't strong enough at those distances to account for the phenomenon.
Relativity already supposes that both rotation and electrical charge can distort a gravitational field, but I don't know if that would be significant to explain this extra gravity.
The relevance of this being, that it wouldn't be surprising if the magnetic dipole of a planet does have a mild effect on gravity, just as electronic charge is supposed to.
I've never heard of this concept before, can you elaborate?
It'd make more sense to have mirrors in orbit designed to reflect extra sunlight down to the surface. Wouldn't make things tropical, but it would help.
