Terraforming Mars

[RuBisCO]

Even with a breathable atmosphere, Mars would remain cold and dim.

Not really it all depends on how effective its atmosphere is at retaining heat and how much solar flux we have on it. With titanic orbital mirrors doubling if not more Mars's solar flux and/or massively enhanced greenhouse effect it would be possible to have t-shirt summer time temperatures at the equator at the very least. Its just a matter of how much flux and heat retention is induced.

not exactly a nice place to have a stroll in a tank top. Considering the difficulty of making a breathable atmosphere, and the difference between wearing heavy winter gear with UV protection or the same with a breathing apparatus, I don't think it would be worth it.

I honestly don't think a coat is as inconvenient as a breathing apparatus.

How fluoride would you need?

10^15 kg tops. This is based on the assumption that Mars would need ~2 atm of CO2 to have an earth like climate, divided by 22,000, the partial pressure of SF6 would be ~0.1 mbars. For Methane though the partial pressure would need to be 67 mbars, out of a 500 mbar atmosphere puts it at 13.4% and its explosive limit is between 4.4-17% so that atmosphere would be burst into flames at the smallest spark.

There is methane in Earth atmosphere, and it doesn't explode.

That is because its only in parts per million. On Mars we would be talking about several percent methane, because its greenhouse gas effectiveness is only 20-40 times CO2 and it halflife (on earth) is only 10 years. Sulfur hexafloride on the other had is the most powerful greenhouse gas known with over 22,000 times the greenhouse gas effectiveness of CO2 and a half-life of over 1000 years. We would need

Edited March 1, 2014 by RuBisCO

[RuBisCO]

Found this: www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2013/eposter/2648.pdf

Basically present theories suggest mars lost most of its nitrogen and that at best it has 3 m depth worth of nitrates across the planet, that ~17 m less than needed to give mars ~200 mbar of nitrogen (that only enough for ~30 mbars). So to make the atmosphere breathable to present day humans will require importing alot of nitrogen to mars.

Of course the alternative is to engineer organisms to live in CO2 primed atmosphere, heck we still don't know if human's can adapt to such an atmosphere physicologically without genetic enhancement: http://newmars.wikispaces.com/Minimally+Terraformed+Martian+Atmosphere

Edited March 4, 2014 by RuBisCO

[R4inator]

I don't know crap about fancy equations, but here's what I came up with.

Before we start, I'm going to go over the biggest problem: magnetizing Mars. As many of you know, mars has no magnetic field and thus has a very thin and toxic atmosphere because of constant solar wind. If we ever hope to inhabit Mars, we HAVE TO magnetize it. I don't know if anyone else has come up with what I'm about to propose, but I didn't steal this idea. Mars has an iron core, so, in theory, you could magnetize the core of mars like a bar magnet. How I think you could do this is by drilling to the core of the planet on both poles. Then you construct colossal electromagnets and expose the core to a powerful magnetic fields, then, you zap the iron core with thousand's of kilowatts of electricity. Doing this, as far as I'm concerned, would magnetize the core of the planet with out heating it up. The resulting magnetic field would also be much stronger than a normal planets field since high temperature isn't involved.

You could smash a bunch of comets and asteroids into Mars, not only adding more mass to it, therefore adding more gravity to it, therefore allowing it to have a larger atmosphere, but also possibly making enough heat energy to melt some of the ice on Mars if you hit it in the ice caps, therefore adding more atmosphere. You could also import CO2 from Venus, therefore making the terraforming of Venus actually possible, and eventually trapping enough heat to melt the ice caps fully and having liquid water. Then, you'd need to get some algae, go to Mars, and start going to town with it.

After waiting a few years, there should be enough oxygen produced by the algae that you could then send over some bigger plants and so on. This should produce enough oxygen to make Mars just as habitable as Earth is (after a few decades, of course). Then, send some colony ships there, and go to town. That's my theory on how to colonize Mars!

[Holo]

Just do whatever Venus does to not lose its atmosphere.

[Rakaydos]

Just do whatever Venus does to not lose its atmosphere.

"be bigger" is not something mars easilly duplicates.

[*Aqua*]

There is a website of the German Space Society which analyses different methods to terraform our neighbor planets: http://www.drg-gss.org/typo3/html/index.php?id=74 (Click here for bad google translation)

The methods discussed:

1. Greenhouse effect by reducing albedo of the polar caps
   Reducing of the albedo (currently 80%) to 6% (as dark as cole) can be done by covering the poles with dust. The dust can come from the greats deserts or just by letting Phobos crash on the poles.
   
   Result: The poles would absorb 13 times more solar energy, in numbers: 10 TW. This is nothing compared to what the Mars already absorbs: 30 000 TW.
   
2. Using bacterias to change the composition of the atmosphere
   It is proposed to bring genetically engineered bacterias to mars (a few hundred tons - that's feasible) which will convert the atmosphere to biomass.
   Result: There is not enough water. The grow of the biomass will stop at some point. Unfortunately this point is faraway from the point of really changing the atmopshere.
   
3. Putting Greenhouse gases into the atmosphere
   The basic idea is to build factories on Mars which produce CFC (FCKW in German) which is released into the atmosphere.
   Result: At least 400 mio tons of CFC are needed. 1990 the factories on Earth produced 2 mio tons. It is still unknown if the gases really contributes to the Greenhouse effect in the scale we think of.
   
4. Evaporating the south pole with a giant mirror in orbit
   The evaporation of this pole will add about 100 millibars to the atmosphere which makes a great difference. Why the south pole? There is water ice!
   
   We need a giant (250 km diameter) mirror made of aluminum to pull this of. The aluminum can be prospected from the Moon an brought to Mars.
   Result: It will take a lot of time (>100 000 years) and 200 000 tons of aluminum but it is possible! We can expect an about 5 degrees warmer Mars. A greater mirror will heat the Mars even faster and more.
   
5. Nuclear mining (who tough of that name?)
   Detonating nuclear bombs underground will heat up the ground which itself releases CO2. Unfortunately we will need 2.8 mio megatons or 500 mio fusion bombs. I doubt there is enough uranium or plutonium in the vicinity to ignite that many fusion bombs. And how long do we need to dig 4 mio holes with a depth of 1000 meters?
   
6. Impacts
   You can use comets, asteroids or small moons (like Hyperion or Enceladus) and let them strike the Mars. This will heat the planet a lot.
   The problems are the composition of these objects (they can consist toxic substances), needed amount (up to 300 000 asteroids) and their propulsion. It is also unknown what other effects can occur and in what magnitude, e.g. a large object can blast half of the atmosphere away.
   

In my opinion we shouldn't try to teraform Mars. Instead we should dig far into (hundreds of kilometers) the deep and build a colony there. In this deep there will be a gravitation acceleration of 1 g, a breathable atmosphere can be created and people are shielded from dangerous interstellar radiation. I don't think people will ever walk on the surface for an extended time let alone live on it.

Edited March 10, 2014 by *Aqua*

[Rickenbacker]

or just by letting Phobos crash on the poles.

I love how that's just casually thrown in there. Can't imagine crashing a moon on one of the poles would take any effort to speak of .

[*Aqua*]

No matter what you do to terraform Mars it will always need tremendous amounts of work and effort.

The website mentions this at the beginning. It says whatever you do you'll need the ability to send thousands of people to Mars each year and transportation systems like Sänger or HOTOL for them. There must be a space station with living rooms for these thousands of astronauts which also can act as a fuel station, storage and construction yard for whatever is needed.

You didn't visit the site, did you?

[Winter Man]

we HAVE TO magnetize it

No you don't. The process of solar wind stripping an atmosphere away takes thousands if not tens of thousands of years. If you can build an entire atmosphere in human timescales, you can certainly keep it topped up on entirety-of-civilisation timescales.

In this deep there will be a gravitation acceleration of 1 g

Not how gravity inside a planet works. The deeper you go, the more mass there is above you pulling you back up (assuming uniform density, otherwise there's a sweet spot a couple hundred km below the surface which is marginally higher).

Edited March 10, 2014 by Winter Man

[peadar1987]

I don't know crap about fancy equations, but here's what I came up with.

Before we start, I'm going to go over the biggest problem: magnetizing Mars. As many of you know, mars has no magnetic field and thus has a very thin and toxic atmosphere because of constant solar wind. If we ever hope to inhabit Mars, we HAVE TO magnetize it. I don't know if anyone else has come up with what I'm about to propose, but I didn't steal this idea. Mars has an iron core, so, in theory, you could magnetize the core of mars like a bar magnet. How I think you could do this is by drilling to the core of the planet on both poles. Then you construct colossal electromagnets and expose the core to a powerful magnetic fields, then, you zap the iron core with thousand's of kilowatts of electricity. Doing this, as far as I'm concerned, would magnetize the core of the planet with out heating it up. The resulting magnetic field would also be much stronger than a normal planets field since high temperature isn't involved.

You could smash a bunch of comets and asteroids into Mars, not only adding more mass to it, therefore adding more gravity to it, therefore allowing it to have a larger atmosphere, but also possibly making enough heat energy to melt some of the ice on Mars if you hit it in the ice caps, therefore adding more atmosphere. You could also import CO2 from Venus, therefore making the terraforming of Venus actually possible, and eventually trapping enough heat to melt the ice caps fully and having liquid water. Then, you'd need to get some algae, go to Mars, and start going to town with it.

After waiting a few years, there should be enough oxygen produced by the algae that you could then send over some bigger plants and so on. This should produce enough oxygen to make Mars just as habitable as Earth is (after a few decades, of course). Then, send some colony ships there, and go to town. That's my theory on how to colonize Mars!

Just crunched the numbers on generating a magnetic field by passing an electric current through the core.

Earth's magnetic field is about 0.5Gauss at the surface. Let's assume we need the same for Mars. Sticking numbers into this handy calculator here: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/magnetic/magcur.html

you get a current of 10^10 amps for a field this strong at the Martian surface.

Apparently Mars is predicted to a have an iron core 1800km in radius. For simplicity, I've modelled this as a cylinder, which will give a lower resistance (and thus reduce the power demand). Assuming it is made of pure iron, it has a resistance of 0.55555 Ohms (far lower than I was expecting, actually). Power is given by the square of the current multiplied by the resistance, so you'd need 5.8*10^25 watts to produce this field. That's 58,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 watts. Currently, humanity produces about 15TW of energy, which is 10^12 watts.

To magnetise Mars' core in this way, you'd need to pump 5.8*10^13 times more energy through it than humanity currently uses. Or put another way, to keep Mars' field at this strength for one second, you'd need to gather up all the energy our species produces for 1.8 million years and release it all at once.

Incidentally, this amount of energy is also enough to actually boil a good 55% of the Martian core.

So, sorry pal, it's a good idea, but the numbers don't really pan out. And I have a newfound amazement for the earth and its magnetic field!

[RuBisCO]

I would put a guess that it would require a fraction of that energy to jut build a superconducting ring around mars and charge it up... heck why are we doing this?, a magnetic field is superfluous.

[KASASpace]

I'm no expert, but:

1.) deploy vehicles to create water from the CO2 in atmosphere and H2 stored onboard

2.) crash a bunch of stuff on Mars, it needs more mass to have a thin atmosphere

3.)send a setup crew to setup the first bases

4.) create farmhouses, with classical music playing for some plants (it could actually increase growth and Oxygen production)

5.) use beamed power from orbit to power the most power-demanding facilities (like if you "magnetized" it)

6.) slowly convert the amount of CO2 and Nitrogen, however this might need nuclear reactions (hence the beam-power)

Of course, I am not an expert, anything I got wrong or missed just clarify.

[peadar1987]

I would put a guess that it would require a fraction of that energy to jut build a superconducting ring around mars and charge it up... heck why are we doing this?, a magnetic field is superfluous.

Probably, yeah, magnetic fields decrease with the cube of the distance, so by passing a current through the core, you're wasting a lot of energy creating strong magnetic fields inside the planet that protect nothing at all.

[RuBisCO]

Probably, yeah, magnetic fields decrease with the cube of the distance, so by passing a current through the core, you're wasting a lot of energy creating strong magnetic fields inside the planet that protect nothing at all.

That an the superconductor has virtually no resistance, all you need to do is energy-wise is keep it cool.

Also I would like to point out I disagree about the time it would take the build orbital mirrors. First of we can build them off the asteroids and sail them to mars, they are just solar sails that hold their position in psudo-L2 halo-orbits via mars and sun gravity and light pressure, so they could be built just about anywhere and sailed to mars. Second lets assume a technologically reasonable 3 g/m^2 and a total surface area equal to a circle as wide as mars, that would be ~10^8 tons (~100 million tons), for comparison that would be equal to about 3 years our present world wide aluminum production. So a reasonably size asteroid mining industry could make that in a few centuries, and mind you that is for enough orbital mirrors to double Mars's solar flux and increase its surface temperature several dozens of degrees (at the sacrifice of a "night" replaced with a "day" of many many tiny "suns", which would truly be an alien sight to behold)

Also again I disagree with CFCs, they aren't as stable or as powerful as a greenhouse gas as SF6. SF6 is so dam perfect for mars I can't stop talking about it, it density and mass, its stability to UV (thus the ozone depleting Florine levels are lower), it's relative ease of production, for CFCs we are going to need Florine, we are going to need to mine salts for Florine, sulfates will be a by-product, might as well make SF6 from it. If we use *Aqua* 400 million tons of CFCs need, and SF6 has at least double the greenhouse gas potential of the best CFC (in the 100 year span, at the 1000 year span it 6 times better then any CFC!), then we would need ~200 mt of SF6.

Edited March 11, 2014 by RuBisCO

[dudefinal]

http://www.futuretimeline.net/the-far-future.htm#mars-terraformed

[NuclearNut]

Horribly wasteful.

The amount of energy needed would be huge, massive, beyond massive. You are talking about transporting gigatons of water to another planet, heating it, and then adding an atmosphere. Beyond the fact that we need absurd amounts of energy to do so, you need to solve all of the massive engineering problems that come with moving absurd amounts of material efficiently.

None of these are small problems, none of these are easy to solve, and for the short term it is far easier to merely live underground in shielded habitats, and in the long term it may be far more expedient to forgo terraforming for living in said underground shielded habitats.

[Frozen_Heart]

Edit: Just looked at the post after I posted without looking at dates.

Nice necro.

[PB666]

http://futurism.com/images/terraforming-mars-practical-guide/

because an old revived thread is better than a new revived thread. It reminds us to check the archives before we create new threads