Venus and Mars terraforming

[LABHOUSE]

Well mars has a thin atmosphere with little greenhouse effects and Venus has a dense atmosphere with plenty of greenhouse effects... see where I'm going? Atmospheres could be combined to be earth-like and ice could be taken from mars to be put on Venus and therefore each planet would have sufficient oceans.

[Rakaydos]

The big question is, How.

How do you get atmosphere away from Venus's gravity well in enough bulk to "inflate" Mars?

[jwenting]

oh, just draw a very long hose between them and the law of communicating vessels will do the rest...

nah, ain't gonna work. You'd need to first spin up Mars or find some other way to increase its gravitational pull, then ship the atmosphere of Venus to Mars using space ships, a lot of trips by very large space ships.

See where this is going?

[Red Iron Crown]

You'd need to first spin up Mars or find some other way to increase its gravitational pull, then ship the atmosphere of Venus to Mars using space ships, a lot of trips by very large space ships.

What do you mean by "spin up Mars"?

[theend3r]

What do you mean by "spin up Mars"?

Higher energy = higher mass = larger gravitation. On the other hand it also means larger centrifugal forces so who knows what would happen. Imagine a planet with a surface spinning at orbital speed (actually impossible, but...) - nothing could remain on the surface.

[DaveofDefeat]

Higher energy = higher mass = larger gravitation. On the other hand it also means larger centrifugal forces so who knows what would happen. Imagine a planet with a surface spinning at orbital speed (actually impossible, but...) - nothing could remain on the surface.

I would think you would be hard pressed to spin a planet up to fractions of the speed of light.

[NASAFanboy]

You aren't actually suggesting that we construct a massive interplanetary vacumn cleaner to clean the atmosphere of Venus then release it on Mars?

Or are you seriously going to a large fleet of spaceships then spend the next ten thousand years slowly trucking the atmosphere of Venus to Mars while the rest of humanity tries their best not to laugh at you from their seaside resort on some random tropical extrasolar planet. Even if you opened a portal on the surface of the two planets, it would take alot of time to make your terraforming sastificatory even with all the air flowing in freely. That, and we have no such technology capable of such feats.

How are we going to teleport the Venusian Atmosphere to Mars?

Or the Martian Atmosphere to Venus?

[LABHOUSE]

Asteroids could be used for materials and then a huge mother ship could be made over the course of mining asteroids for 20 years and then the atmosphere could be sucked up into it and pressurized to 10 atmospheres and after 20 trips the north pole of Venus would be the equator of earth or semi tropics and the middle between the pole and equator on mars would be earth's winter of new york.

[How2FoldSoup]

Asteroids could be used for materials and then a huge mother ship could be made over the course of mining asteroids for 20 years and then the atmosphere could be sucked up into it and pressurized to 10 atmospheres and after 20 trips the north pole of Venus would be the equator of earth or semi tropics and the middle between the pole and equator on mars would be earth's winter of new york.

Source?

I have a hunch you're just saying this could be possible without any real evidence backing it up. Have you thought about the mass or number of asteroids you would need to impact either to have a significant effect on their atmospheres? Where do you get 20 years, 10 atmospheres, and 20 trips? Neither of those 3 numbers is very big and anywhere close to the magnitude that you would need it to be. I'm not attempting to be aggressive but at least put some research into your ideas so instead of being ridiculed for an impossible idea(because what you propose isimpossible) it can be discussed rationally.

A vacuum cleaner could work though..

[jwenting]

You aren't actually suggesting that we construct a massive interplanetary vacumn cleaner to clean the atmosphere of Venus then release it on Mars?

Or are you seriously going to a large fleet of spaceships then spend the next ten thousand years slowly trucking the atmosphere of Venus to Mars while the rest of humanity tries their best not to laugh at you from their seaside resort on some random tropical extrasolar planet.

That's exactly what he was suggesting

Though maybe my idea of placing a long plastic hose between the two might work, maybe with some compressor stations in between

Would be quite something, and have to be careful not to get it wrapped up around other things, like the earth and the sun.

[sojourner]

Higher energy = higher mass = larger gravitation.

No. Not at all.

[Dispatcher]

The idea of moving vast resources from one planet to another is just not doable with current technology and time scales.

[Jas1126]

You aren't actually suggesting that we construct a massive interplanetary vacumn cleaner

Anyone else think "Spaceballs"? lol

Megamaid

Edit: Ah, I see someone did. =D

[peadar1987]

The masses and delta-vs required are just too big.

It's more practical (although still incredible difficult, impossible without huge advances in technology) to use Neptune Trojans, if you nudge them using gravity assists. Blow off Venus' atmosphere and add mass to Mars by planning your impacts.

[Vonar]

Lol, yeah... Not gonna happen before the middle of next century.

The cost of terraforming Mars has been estimated in the trillions, and like all major government projects this would be well over budget and behind schedule. Plus it is easier to use asteroids in the main belt and generate as well as maintain your own atmosphere on Mars through industry, and giant atmosphere scrubbers then it would be to bring the atmosphere with you from another planet.

[Dodgey]

It would make more sense to just crash asteroids into Mars.

[LABHOUSE]

Source?

I have a hunch you're just saying this could be possible without any real evidence backing it up. Have you thought about the mass or number of asteroids you would need to impact either to have a significant effect on their atmospheres? Where do you get 20 years, 10 atmospheres, and 20 trips? Neither of those 3 numbers is very big and anywhere close to the magnitude that you would need it to be. I'm not attempting to be aggressive but at least put some research into your ideas so instead of being ridiculed for an impossible idea(because what you propose isimpossible) it can be discussed rationally.

A vacuum cleaner could work though..

http://cdn.okcimg.com/php/load_okc_image.php/images/0x0/0x0/0/8970760672385983046.jpeg___1_500_1_500_cb94de6a_.png

I meant use asteroids harvested after 20 years to get enough fuel and metal and rock to make a huge mother ship and well twenty years of asteroid mining means a HUGE mother ship and well ten years of trips should be a lot and ten atmospheres pressure and I mean ten Venus atmospheres so that is like 100 years of trips between the planets via solar sail to get from venus to Mars and fuel to get back to Venus I know refuelling would be required but still.

[Vonar]

I meant use asteroids harvested after 20 years to get enough fuel and metal and rock to make a huge mother ship and well twenty years of asteroid mining means a HUGE mother ship and well ten years of trips should be a lot and ten atmospheres pressure and I mean ten Venus atmospheres so that is like 100 years of trips between the planets via solar sail to get from venus to Mars and fuel to get back to Venus I know refuelling would be required but still.

Not to be a party crasher or anything but has there ever been a government that has ever committed to a century long project?

The longest project(s) that I am aware of that have been accomplished or are being worked on internationally are the ISS, ITER, and the SLS/ Manned asteroid to Mars program and the three of them are in the 20 to 30 year lifespan time frame.

[SargeRho]

Not recently, but in the past plenty of projects took very long. It took several centuries to finally complete the Cathedral of Cologne, and that's not counting the pauses. It took I think half a millenium to build the great wall of china.

[Red Fang]

For one thing Mars has no excess watter. More to the point, if you were to melt every single pound ofb ice on Mars, and somehow contain it on the surface, you might get to fill most of northern hemisphere to the depth of about 55m, on average, or Hellas to several hundred at most. So, essentially, Mars is bone dry, and it has no water for export on such scale.

The only reasonable way to get enough watter to Mars is, as most folks allready sugested, to slowly bombard it with icey asteroids from the main belt. I'd have to crunch some numbers to figure out if the main belt and Saturn's rings contain enough watter to make a northern ocenan with significant depth on Mars. If you have read/seen Dune, try thinking of Mars as Arrakis without sandworms, Fremen and significant atmosphere... and even leess watter.

Venus is a different can of worms, but IIRC the impaact that would bow off most of its atmosphere would also globaly melt the crust of the plane and send enough debris to endanger life on Earth.

So terraforming of any planet other than Mars is out of the question, and even terraforming Mars would be a vandalistic act to the rest of the "lanscape" of the solar system. We wil not have tecnology te go barbaric on that scale for several centuries, even if we put all of our efforts to into it right now.

Edited May 12, 2014 by Red Fang

[regex]

Correct me if I'm wrong but, as I understand it, one of the hurdles with terraforming either planet is that their magnetic fields are negligible, which means you have to constantly replenish the atmosphere. On Venus there seems to be some sort of natural carbon dioxide reservior, on Mars, well, I don't know but it's probably just gravity holding on to its thin atmosphere, there's likely some yearly loss. Distance from the Sun probably plays a big part in that as well.

[Horn Brain]

Higher energy = higher mass = larger gravitation. On the other hand it also means larger centrifugal forces so who knows what would happen. Imagine a planet with a surface spinning at orbital speed (actually impossible, but...) - nothing could remain on the surface.

Who knows what would happen? Anyone with about two seconds to spare thinking about this problem. Mars would explode from centrifugal force looooooooong before you ever even noticed the added gravitational effect of the extra energy. Mars doesn't need more gravity, just a magnetic field. And that's only for the long-term (hundreds of thousand or millions of years). If we warmed up Mars right now and added some extra atmosphere to get it up to safe levels, you could have oceans and atmosphere for longer than our civilization has existed so far.

[YNM]

Mars doesn't need more gravity, just a magnetic field. And that's only for the long-term (hundreds of thousand or millions of years). If we warmed up Mars right now and added some extra atmosphere to get it up to safe levels, you could have oceans and atmosphere for longer than our civilization has existed so far.

It'd be a hard thing, both to add heat and magnetic field...

1. Sun's flux on Mars is smaller, only 43% of Earth.

2. Mars is smaller, so a hard thing to keep the (added) atmospheres that'd be required to keep the heat (not sure of any other viable way).

3. Generating a magnetic field means you need dynamo effect on Mars's core. Not sure how one could do it, and the fact that Mars is smaller means that it's inner heat would be radiated away faster. I'm not aware of other way to generate a magnetic field, through !

Higher energy = higher mass = larger gravitation.

No, because F = (G.m1.m2)/r^2 . Those centrifugal ship people doing are creating "gravity" by means of inertia and neutral force.

Best option ? Keep up our good ol' Earth, wait until Sun evolve into red giant, and move to one of Jupiter's moon. Only if humanity can survive that long...

[Vonar]

tbh it would be worth it to terraform Mars if only to learn how to properly manage a atmosphere so we can maintain our own here on Earth. I wonder if over the long term that Oort cloud comets could be more favorable for delivering water to Mars even though there would be a much longer delivery period for each comet then asteroids from the main belt. Of course getting out there would be difficult for our current space faring technologies, but one would assume that the delta-v requirements for changing a comet's orbit to impact Mars would be less dramatic then moving a asteroid from the main belt.

[theend3r]

Who knows what would happen? Anyone with about two seconds to spare thinking about this problem. Mars would explode from centrifugal force looooooooong before you ever even noticed the added gravitational effect of the extra energy. Mars doesn't need more gravity, just a magnetic field. And that's only for the long-term (hundreds of thousand or millions of years). If we warmed up Mars right now and added some extra atmosphere to get it up to safe levels, you could have oceans and atmosphere for longer than our civilization has existed so far.

I was just explaining a previous post plus I wrote it was impossible...