Mars 'impossible" to terraform

[Green Baron]

44 minutes ago, tater said:

On topic, the actual paper is paywalled, and the OP news story it utter tripe, so it's not the basis of conversation, frankly. Nothing has been "proved" regarding the amount of sequestered CO₂ on Mars. I don't think anyone serious could claim to know that value with any certainty given how few measurements we actually have.

I say that as someone who is not a fan of Mars colonization in general, and terraforming it in particular.

I have access, and i strongly recommend to support science and spend the 100 bucks or so for a Nature Astronomy subscription. It is fun to read, though one needs a little knowledge base to actually understand all of it. I freely admit i don't in every case :-)

The paper actually sets reasonable and thoughtful estimations against mere guessing and wishful thinking. And it is not about sequestered CO2 alone, but about all CO2 being available or not for "terraforming", here: getting the atmosphere to do the greenhouse. Btw,. talking about sequestration, another work that estimated the amount of water having been drawn into the marsian crust in an early phase instead of or additionally to that having been lost into space, part of which could be available as pore water between 0 and 80km depth. That fits right in the latest interpretation of a reflective below the south polar ice, that could be interpreted as a surface of a watery brine.

Edited August 9, 2018 by Green Baron

[tater]

1 minute ago, HebaruSan said:

Are you suggesting that "BFG" does not stand for "Bick F*&^ing Rocket" ??

LOL.

Nah, headline says "impossible," text then says "probably impossible." I'd argue we don't know enough.

The article also leads that Bezos and NASA want to terraform Mars as well, which is patent nonsense. NASA doesn't talk about it, and honestly their planetary protection people would have puppies at the thought. Bezos is all about orbital colonies, not Mars.

[YNM]

18 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

Earth only has enough arable land to produce crops to feed something like 3 billion people at average per capita consumption in developed nations.

... of which there's only 2 billion of it.

It's possible to stay afloat if we would mind to presevere and to utilize unutilized sources.

Of which 5 billion already do, somewhat.

There's that option - a tradeoff is always possible.

______

As for "terra-forming" Mars itself... well, let's say it's difficult, and you could well kill yourself during it.

[Green Baron]

13 minutes ago, tater said:

Nah, headline says "impossible," text then says "probably impossible." I'd argue we don't know enough.

The article also leads that Bezos and NASA want to terraform Mars as well, which is patent nonsense. NASA doesn't talk about it, and honestly their planetary protection people would have puppies at the thought. Bezos is all about orbital colonies, not Mars.

Yeah, that's the usual stuff you'd expect from tabloid.

I can assure you, the cited paper is not tripe nor made up and totally based on current knowledge.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-018-0529-6

 

Edited August 9, 2018 by Green Baron

[tater]

Just now, Green Baron said:

I can assure you, the cited paper is not tripe nor made up.

I never said it was, I said the tabloid article was.

I'm curious, what's the target for terraforming they are aiming at? I'd assume that the goal would never be walk outside in a tee shirt, but walk out side with gear less cumbersome than a full EVA suit.

I'm not a Mars fan (other than as a cool place to visit/study), I have no dog in the fight, as it were.

[Green Baron]

19 minutes ago, tater said:

... what's the target for terraforming they are aiming at? I'd assume that the goal would never be walk outside in a tee shirt, but walk out side with gear less cumbersome than a full EVA suit.

Yep, build up enough pressure and greenhouse warming to be able to walk outside without a pressure suit. But still an oxygen mask of course. They cancel out the availability CH4 and H2 as these are too volatile, and water itself could no provide significant warming. Anyway one needed some warming before one could puff smoke rings release H2O as a greenhouse gas into an atmosphere.

So it boils down to where has the CO2 from the ancient atmosphere gone, could it be mobilized from the reservoirs it is in, would it provide enough warming ?

They estimate the amount of CO2 needed to get to 1bar by building different scenarios for the sinks it may be in (polar ice, mineral carbon, ... etc. blabla) and losses, e.g. to space (O2 is lost to space, as measured by Mars Express).

In the end and after having chewed through the case, naming piles of uncertainties and future explorations, the conclude:

There is not enough CO2 and anyway, with current and imaginable future tech, it can't be released. There is enough mobilizable CO2 from ice caps etc. for 0.02 bar (20mbar), which would lead to 10K warming, but ~60K is needed. Anyway, the dream of hiking about the place without a pressure suit is just that.

 

That's in a small nutshell. Peanut.

 

Edited August 9, 2018 by Green Baron

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

1 hour ago, tater said:

No, it's on track to flatten because of decreasing birth rates.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_median_age

Birth rate means little. Median age means much more.
Those who are <20 will definitely have at least one more person per woman in next years.

 

Edited August 9, 2018 by kerbiloid

[sevenperforce]

Terraforming:

Level 0: We can live in habitats that are open on the bottom.
Level 1: Any measurable increase in global air pressure.
Level 2: Global air pressure and temperature increase enough to allow SOME sort of Earth life (however modified) to grow outside of constant pressurization.
Level 3: It becomes possible for people to move from one enclosure to another with no more hazard than, say, Alaskan snorkeling or Mt. Everest picnicking. Oxygen mask may be required.
Level 4: Large-scale food crop growth is possible using only irrigation and perhaps a greenhouse.
Level 5: An unprotected human can survive outside, albeit briefly.
Level 6: Relax on the green slopes of Olympus Mons, sipping Martian-grown wine under a tall tree and watching the Solset with your partner, your Martian-born children, and your pet cat Fluffy.
 

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

Level 7. How could they live on that Oearth?!

 

[ARS]

Could we increase the atmospheric pressure by dropping nuclear bombs on Mars? I reckon someone said that kind of idea before (not me, I'm the 2nd)

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, ARS said:

Could we increase the atmospheric pressure by dropping nuclear bombs on Mars? I reckon someone said that kind of idea before (not me, I'm the 2nd)

Musk proposed to make two nuka-Suns above the poles

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/elon-musk-plans-to-drop-nuclear-bombs-above-mars-to-give-it-two-new-suns-so-it-can-keep-warm-a6679736.html

P.S.
This makes to think that except of flamethrowers and boring they are developing something else.

Spoiler

Falcon 9. The first reusable ICBM in the world. Save your money, use it twice.

 

Edited August 10, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Superfluous J]

1 hour ago, ARS said:

Could we increase the atmospheric pressure by dropping nuclear bombs on Mars? I reckon someone said that kind of idea before (not me, I'm the 2nd)

Oh jeez don't get Hollywood any more ideas of ways to fix everything with nukes.

[Xd the great]

1 hour ago, 5thHorseman said:

Oh jeez don't get Hollywood any more ideas of ways to fix everything with nukes.

No, scientists have created models where this will work. Heat, melt ice caps, release CO2, global warming...

[ARS]

1 hour ago, 5thHorseman said:

Oh jeez don't get Hollywood any more ideas of ways to fix everything with nukes.

No I mean, use nukes to melt martian polar ice caps rapidly to release massive amount of CO2 (which the Mars atmosphere is made of) so the concentration of CO2 gas rises and creates global warming effect, which traps heat, and makes the planet warmer. Nukes are currently what we had with the capability to instantly vaporize massive amount of CO2 on the martian polar ice caps

Edited August 10, 2018 by ARS

[magnemoe]

17 hours ago, YNM said:

... of which there's only 2 billion of it.

It's possible to stay afloat if we would mind to presevere and to utilize unutilized sources.

Of which 5 billion already do, somewhat.

There's that option - a tradeoff is always possible.

______

As for "terra-forming" Mars itself... well, let's say it's difficult, and you could well kill yourself during it.

Or you gear up it worked so far, famine and extreme poverty is way rarer now than 50 years ago, famines is pretty restricted to civil war zones. 150 years ago the last famine in western Europe. We live in an world there most adults has an mobile phone. 
Earth is not overpopulated now, it has been many times in the past, plague and famine is natures way to dealing with overpopulation. 
Remember you can move the goal posts, 10K years ago the carrying capillarity for humans was less than 10 millions, then we started farming   

5 minutes ago, ARS said:

No I mean, use nukes to melt martian polar ice caps rapidly to release massive amount of CO2 (which the Mars atmosphere is made of) so the concentration of CO2 gas rises and creates global warming effect, which traps heat, and makes the planet warmer. Nukes are currently what we had with the capability to instantly vaporize massive amount of CO2 on the martian polar ice caps

yes, you can use gigant mirrors or comets instead first give long term heating second add more water. 
The problem is that even with the co2 the atmosphere is far to thin for us so you need to add lots of air. Hint Venus has too much. Moving it is an challenge however. 

[Superfluous J]

Long long ago (long enough that it's probably been discounted as not viable) I recall reading that if they could find or make an algae that could survive the Martian temperatures, they could dump some on the ice caps and nature would do the rest. It would breathe the co2, drink the water, spread naturally over the entire pole, and fill the atmosphere with good old fashioned oxygen.

[Green Baron]

We have just demonstrated that whatever tech one uses, melting the icecaps and adding additional reservoirs, even if we had the tech (which we don't) will not be sufficient. It would rise the pressure by 20mbar and the temp by ~10K.

I am as sorry as possible.

[kerbiloid]

So I'm afraid that teleportals are the only realistic option, even if not available right now.

Having teleportals we can
connect all significant solid bodies in Solar System into one system of connected vessels;
equalize atmosphere conditions like composition, pressure, temperature, humidity, etc, getting normal Earth values everywhere, using Venus and Mercury as natural heaters, and Mars and icy bodies as coolers;
connect their surfaces into one shared surface available without space flights within a several hours long travel, a RAID array of planets;
not care much about low gravity as at any moment you can get to Earth or Venus to recreate; also almost all total surface of this RAID planet array will be Earth and Venus surface;
inhabit almost all solid bodies in Solar System.

Spoiler

(And later establish a pathway to closest star systems).

Edited August 10, 2018 by kerbiloid

[sevenperforce]

Bad news: Mars cannot support life in the long-term; its gravity is too weak and it has no magnetic field and so it will steadily lose atmosphere.

Good news: Mars has an atmosphere-loss rate on the scale of millions of years.

Good news: We can change the climate of Mars on a timescale a thousand times faster than it naturally loses atmosphere.

Bad news: A million years divided by a thousand is still a thousand years.

Edited August 10, 2018 by sevenperforce

[ARS]

If you have a capability to terraform a whole damn planet, then surely building an orbital colony is a piece of cake. Have terraformed martian surface dotted with farms and industrial/ mining complex, populated by worker drones. People live on orbital colonies as supervisors... And you got a whole planet focused on production, allowing it to be a vital addition for sustaining future earth with goods export

[kerbiloid]

9 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

t has no magnetic field and so it will steadily lose atmosphere

Exactly because

9 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

its gravity is too weak

its atmosphere scale height will be ~2.5 greater than on Earth, so once you make normal air conditions on Mars surface, you also get additional ~12 km of uniform air above head for free.
This would reduce radiation a little more.

And btw having T-ports you can keep pumping gas to the shared RAID planet atmosphere with gases from uninhabited bodies (melted ice moons or an ice giant atmosphere), having it stable almost eternally (i.e. until Sun burns the inner planets).

Edited August 10, 2018 by kerbiloid

[YNM]

2 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Or you gear up...

I wouldn't give good reviews on that. Sure, it's possible to grow crops year-round, but that has been around since the first farming in certain areas*; In other respect "gearing up" means more tertiary demand, which means more less-essential crops and/or non-local produce, which means more lands than otherwise.

But I'll say that gearing down isn't a bad one. Many manages to survive on such measures.

* : Farming here. This article says it all. Excerpts :

Spoiler

... But that begs the question, why is forward planning so, uuuh, thinly developed a cultural trait among Indonesians?

On the plus side, it may well be because the land is so consistently generous that forward planning is not all that necessary. For most of human history, volcanic ash and a tropical climate have combined to shower these islands with fertility. Add human ingenuity (terracing and irrigation) and industry (planting and harvesting), and you’ve got two and often three rice crops a year in many islands. Set those islands in seas teeming with protein, bless them with warm weather, and it becomes easy enough for many people to get by without having to worry too much about what happens when the food runs out or the cold sets in. It’s an unfashionable idea, but I’ve yet to meet a rural Indonesian who dismisses the bounty of the land as an underlying reason for contentedly hand-to-mouth habits.

...

 

[magnemoe]

9 minutes ago, YNM said:

I wouldn't give good reviews on that. Sure, it's possible to grow crops year-round, but that has been around since the first farming in certain areas*; In other respect "gearing up" means more tertiary demand, which means more less-essential crops and/or non-local produce, which means more lands than otherwise.

But I'll say that gearing down isn't a bad one. Many manages to survive on such measures.

* : Farming here. This article says it all. Excerpts :

  Hide contents

... But that begs the question, why is forward planning so, uuuh, thinly developed a cultural trait among Indonesians?

On the plus side, it may well be because the land is so consistently generous that forward planning is not all that necessary. For most of human history, volcanic ash and a tropical climate have combined to shower these islands with fertility. Add human ingenuity (terracing and irrigation) and industry (planting and harvesting), and you’ve got two and often three rice crops a year in many islands. Set those islands in seas teeming with protein, bless them with warm weather, and it becomes easy enough for many people to get by without having to worry too much about what happens when the food runs out or the cold sets in. It’s an unfashionable idea, but I’ve yet to meet a rural Indonesian who dismisses the bounty of the land as an underlying reason for contentedly hand-to-mouth habits.

 ...

 

Dont see the relevance, its just a few places you can grow multiple crops a year. USA is the largest food exporter and only do one. 
This is how you do it.

Again, its less hunger than ever before on an dropping trend. In fact you might say food is too cheap as lot of areas who is more marginal is not used and its a lack of improve in others. 
Some above talked about vat grown meat, should probably work at least for ground meat and sausage and mixed with the oter stuff they make sausage of. 
However this is already pretty cheap so main marked is meat for vegetarians  

[ARS]

If martian gravity is weaker than earth, it is bad for human health. But does that also makes crops grow bigger? Since they had to fight less against gravity to grow?

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

4 minutes ago, ARS said:

But does that also makes crops grow bigger?

Twice bigger. With a sma-a-all corncob on the very top of 4 m high stem.

Nobody knows exactly.

On ISS they have zero-G, but the plants didn't occupy all the station. They had usual size.

Probably, terrestrial plants will suffer from unnormal gravity and unlikely this will increase their productivity.