Terraforming of Mars, how long it could take aside that we invent required technology

[Pawelk198604]

I wonder how long it take to transform Mars, i mean when we have technology to do this of course? 500 years 100 years. 2000 years or maybe more

[xenomorph555]

You cannot just say "the technology" since there could be many technology's to do it in different amounts of time, lets assume it's some kind of super plant that can survive on Mars, spread quickly and thicken the atmosphere with oxygen+raise temp. I would say that would take... maybe 100 years.

[m4v]

Humanity has been burning fossil fuels for like 200 years and the thing achieved in Earth was an increase of CO2 levels from 280ppm to 400ppm (hint, Mars will need much more than that)

Edited August 18, 2014 by m4v

[TheGatesofLogic]

CO2 is a poor greenhouse gas when not in aggregate, water is actually far more effective. Manufactured chloroflourocarbons could be made using a relatively small number of factories for a reasonable atmospheric level in approx. 250 years, and a viable ecosystem in an incredibly short 1000 years. The 100 years estimated above was a gross underestimate of the difficulty of the process.

[crubs]

I think the best mechanism for terraforming would be to redirect comets and icy asteroids to impact mars. We would need something with a lot of delta-V and, preferably, a lot of thrust. With modern technology, the only thing that could pull that off with reasonable timing and cost would be a nuclear pulse rocket.

I'm not sure how long it would take since I'm not sure how much atmosphere Mars needs just to reach the Armstrong limit, nor do I know what icy bodies are capable of delivering the necessary mass.

My intuitive guess says that it would take around a century. Though really, I have no idea.

[lajoswinkler]

Tens of thousands of years, few thousands of years give or take. Even after that, the work would still need to be done because geological processes that act as sinks to various chemical elements are very slow.

And yes, this is the millionth thread on the subject.

[RockoDyne]

Depends what we mean by terraforming. If by terraforming you mean give it a breathable atmosphere (even if it's bleeding off) at around 1 atm, I doubt any modern tech (even mass produced) would get us anywhere even in a millennium. Where resources come from would be the biggest catch. In theory, some forms of terraforming would require millions of years, as we wait for the planet to cool off after we beef it up with meteor bombardments.

The problem with mars is it has a minuscule atmosphere, low gravity, little water, and it doesn't generate it's own magnetic field. Two of those four have fixes that currently only work on a cosmic timescale.

[saabstory88]

Google Dr. Robert Zubrin. Also, for more immediate results

[Tobbzzzz]

The problem with mars is it has a minuscule atmosphere, low gravity, little water, and it doesn't generate it's own magnetic field. Two of those four have fixes that currently only work on a cosmic timescale.

May I ask what those to fixes are?

[RockoDyne]

May I ask what those to fixes are?

I was thinking of the previously mentioned meteor bombardment. We can probably find enough matter to get the gravity to 1g. Whether that will be enough on it's own to turn the core into a dynamo might be iffy.

[lajoswinkler]

I was thinking of the previously mentioned meteor bombardment. We can probably find enough matter to get the gravity to 1g. Whether that will be enough on it's own to turn the core into a dynamo might be iffy.

Just... no.

[Pawelk198604]

I also heard that some scientist believe than even IF we had terraforming technology is morally questionable does we have right to do this?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics_of_terraforming

[RuBisCO]

Zubrin Does a very detailed breakdown on what can be done and how long and how much energy it would take: http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~mfogg/zubrin.htm

We could with existing technology, a few dozen GW of resources on Mars mass producing super-greenhouse gases, we could bring mars up to habitable pressures and temperatures less then 100 years assuming there is enough CO2 in the Martian soil to bring up pressure and temperature. Oxygenating mars's atmosphere though would require much more power, 300 TW over 900 years would be needed, plants alone could do it in 1-2 thousand years. This does not answer the problems of nitrogen and water though, and we really don't know how much water and nitrates are on mars. If we have to import nitrogen and water with comets that going to require a space armada of comet tugs and hundreds of years of tugging assuming realistic near term technologies like nuclear fusion engines.

A magnetosphere is unnecessary, a thick atmosphere stops radiation, solar wind striping is a problem that would require periodic bombardments to top up on more gas ever few million years. The low gravity is we all hope not a problem to human life, honestly we all would like to be 3 times stronger, but perhaps Martian humans will atrophy, good chance Martian humans will require genetic engineering, heck engineer humans with unidirectional bird lungs and they would live fine on half the oxygen partial pressure we live on, cutting time and energy needed to oxygenate the atmosphere. While we are at it lets engineer them with fur so they don't need cloths, hermaphroditism so they don't have gender and all the social problems that come with it, oh and horns, horns would look wicked awesome.

Edited August 18, 2014 by RuBisCO

[peadar1987]

I crunched some number on this in another thread. You would need a lot of water. My suggestion was to use Neptune trojans and some sort of water-powered ion drive. Even so, it would take hundreds of years just to get the impacts set up. We're probably talking over 1000 years to get to a liveable state (but no, we probably don't need a magnetic field)

[RuBisCO]

I crunched some number on this in another thread. You would need a lot of water. My suggestion was to use Neptune trojans and some sort of water-powered ion drive. Even so, it would take hundreds of years just to get the impacts set up. We're probably talking over 1000 years to get to a liveable state (but no, we probably don't need a magnetic field)

Well we don't know how much water is on mars now, there could be a lot of ice and permafrost, so it hard to tell how much water Mars will need if any.

[peadar1987]

Well we don't know how much water is on mars now, there could be a lot of ice and permafrost, so it hard to tell how much water Mars will need if any.

Which would be amazing. Compared to the mass of the planet, the mass of the atmosphere is nothing. Orders of magnitude less. If there is enough permafrost, etc. then we could just go with microorganisms

[RuBisCO]

Which would be amazing. Compared to the mass of the planet, the mass of the atmosphere is nothing. Orders of magnitude less. If there is enough permafrost, etc. then we could just go with microorganisms

Yeah we would need a little more then that... we need to raise the temperature enough to start off a runway greenhouse to melts out all the CO2 and water permafrost.

[peadar1987]

Yeah we would need a little more then that... we need to raise the temperature enough to start off a runway greenhouse to melts out all the CO2 and water permafrost.

Hmm... I wonder would ploughing a few icy asteroids into the ice caps liberate enough CO2 to start that off?

[RuBisCO]

Hmm... I wonder would ploughing a few icy asteroids into the ice caps liberate enough CO2 to start that off?

Maybe, Zubrin calculates that out verse orbital mirrors and super green house gas production, super green house gasses is the easiest solution of the 3 in know how. Zubrin did not calculate for it but I'm a big fan of Sulfur hexafluoride (huffing it is fun too) its very stable, very dense and the most powerful greenhouse gas known to man. All we need is automated mines to mine up Martian sulphur and fluoride salts, and manufacture a couple of gigatons of the stuff.

[crubs]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraformation_of_Mars

"Raising temperature of the poles by four kelvin would be necessary in order to trigger a runaway greenhouse effect."

"Impacting an asteroid, which is often considered a synergistic effect, would require approximately four 10-billion-tonne ammonia-rich asteroids to trigger the runaway greenhouse effect, totaling an eight degree increase in temperature."

10 billion tonnes doesn't seem that bad... Nuclear pulse with hydrogen bombs. Only problem is that the ice would be partially vaporized by the blast(s).

[lajoswinkler]

Only problem is that the ice would be partially vaporized by the blast(s).

So... what?

[KerikBalm]

So you spend a couple millenia terraforming it, and then in 10k years, its uninhabitable again.

Mars is simply too small. Its core has gone cold (relatively speaking, as mars no longer has a molten mantle like Earth's), meaning no recycling of the crust/various other things, which is due to Mar's low mass/not enough radioactive elements in its core.

Its low mass also means that even if you give it an atmosphere thick enough for us, it will lose it again in short order.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_escape

You can have a cold, thick atmosphere, but you can't have a warm one without more mass.

Also note that CO2 is much heavier than H20, Water escapes an atmosphere much more readily than CO2.

In KSP, I like that they note that Duna's atmosphere is enriched in heavier elements.

Mars is not suitable for long term habitability. Once it cooled, it died (if it ever had life).

Our resources would be better spent developing what we need to live in space(asteroid and mining of moons for example) and expand to other stars

[Nikolai]

So you spend a couple millenia terraforming it, and then in 10k years, its uninhabitable again.

Only if you stop and never interfere with it again. Why wouldn't you try to maintain the terraformed planet once you had it?

[Sky_walker]

If you're suppose to constantly "terraform" Mars than it'd most likely be cheaper and better to build domed cities (easier to do on Mars due to lower gravity) than indefinitely pump resources into something that simply cannot achieve stable terraformation.

Anyway - there's a whole article about Mars terraformation on a wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Mars

[KerikBalm]

Only if you stop and never interfere with it again. Why wouldn't you try to maintain the terraformed planet once you had it?

Why would you try to maintain a terraformed planet?

If it was sustainable on its own, its a good "lifeboat" in case something happens on/to Earth - but if Mars is doomed if humanity falters on Earth, what is the point?

All those resources would be better spent making Earth more like the paradise it should be, rather than turning an unihabitable place into a barely habitable place - or securing Humanities hold on space with asteroid colonies, colonies on titan, etc... which could include underground colonies on mars, sure, why not.

But terraforming it to something barely habitable, why?

If we had a time machine and could go back 4 billion years and seed it with plant life, we'd probably get a good billion years out of it, but its too late now.

Too much lost to space, too much trapped in its solidified mantle.

If there is any internal heat left, its far too deep for any nutrient cycling to take place.

While theire may be refugia for very hardy life, for our purposes, that planet is dead.

The water under the ice on Europa and Enceledus would be more easily made habitable.