You are not logged in.
neptunes trojans would probably be even better http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neptune_trojan they are probably covered in nitrogen Ice (similar to triton) in mid to late 2013 the new horizon probe will aproach one of these bodies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_HM102 and measure it's phase curve hopefully shedding some light on it's composition If it's mostly nitrogen then I would say these objects are golden candidates.
the closest "asteroids" Near Mars are it's own moons phobos and deimos perhaps they could be used to make a giant space mirror that could heat up mars or local portions of it (there are nowhere near the volatiles in it to perhaps it could be used for impactor material hitting certain CO2 deposits could increase the density of the martian atmosphere with at least 80% http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/04/co2-ic … -mars.html placing almost all of the martian surface above the triple point of water (meaning likuid [pure] water is possible). Using to much asteroids is dangerous because in almost all cases the usefull ones are over 50% water ice and mars would seem to be covered for 30% with water if no more water is imported. Still if you mine them and bring them over mostly pure then it should work. But perhaps not from Titan there is a ethnic debate abouth terraforming and taking the nitrogen from Titan would take almost everything and destroy the planet as we know it, other sources are more open
nice thank you for that
Do you think it would be easier to scrape them of the surface I would Imagen that going down towards the liquid layer would be the easiest way, also their probably easier ways to get to water ice like ceres it's closer by it doesn't have the gravity well and it recieves substantially more sunlight so colonist can have a higher degree of freedom of planting crops (also ceres gravity is so low you could probably building a spinning city underground and experience little problems with Ceres own natural gravity).
I imagen we would yust move the free oxygen. And if Europa could provide 5000 atmospheres worth of O2 then perhaps Saturns Encladus will do to witch I believeis nowhere near as deep into a gravity well
How did the oxygen on Europa get there? How are you going to transfer it to Mars?
Otherwise I suppose it's pretty realistic.
http://phys.org/news174918239.html
The oxygen is formed on or near the surface by cosmic rays and migrates inwards (in short completly inorganic sources). I'm not sure how credible the source still it remains a interesting idea.
On how to mine it, the surface of Europa keeps renewing itself so (oxygen rich) ice keeps welling up naturally,you can bring the ice up, or put some hardware in the liquid layer and install some artificial gills that remove the oxygen you could for example make a propellor that locally reduces the pressure making it boil and releasing oxygen bubbles (I hear it's a commen noise problem with submarines).
The current idea is that Jupiters moon Europa has a hidden large underground ocean that's saturated with oxygen http://www.astrobio.net/exclusive/3506/ … xygen-burn
IF (big if) this would be true then mining it could make terraforming Mars a whole lot easier.
But how much oxygen could be harvested? The icy water on Europa is cold only staying liquid because of the pressure and the amound of O2 that can be saturated increases when it gets colder assuming that there is around 14.6mg/L (0.014kg/L) http://water.epa.gov/type/rsl/monitoring/vms52.cfm and there is abouth 4E18m³ (1m³ contains a 1000 liters) I would guess that it would contain at least 4E21kg of oxygen. Whilst you would need around 8.4E17kg of oxygen to generate around 210 millibar of pressure.
(1m³ of oxygen weights 1.429kg/m³ meaning 1m³ of air on earth contains 0.2858kg of O2/ 1m³ of water on Europa would contain 14.6kg of O2 This explains how this little moon has enough O2 for 5000 atmospheres)
I've choosen some really pessimistic figures (the saturation lvl is for 0°C in stead of -160°c) Still is this to optimistic or more or less realistic?
it might cause vibrations inside the moon different parts might move at ever so slightly different speeds hard rock might flex differently then ice (smashing vs splatting) a better gravity map combinend with the know size and volume might also give a better idea on the composition, a thermal camera could measure the thermal conductivity altough I suspect this in combination with a spectroscopic map have allready been done.
It's true that there is little geological context but, they speak to the imagination and can still be useful. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_meteorite
Dating them and analysing trapped gas pockets to study the history of the martian atmosphere could be interesting in terms if mars was ones habitable and if it could be terraformed.
I also think certain meteorites like the allan hills 84001 became relativly famous if not by name then by the supposed worm like fossils found in it. And then their is offcourse the moon itself digging inside it could probably tell us something abouth the early solar system the origin of phobos and deimos and give some how they ended up in their orbits and what you could expect if you would mine a asteroid.
The impactor idea to study the moon would probably work but couldn't the tides (caused by mars) also tell us something abouth the chemical makeup off these moons?
well we need a way to determine their (phobos and deimos) composition hopefully with not to many probes as it would increase the price. I wonder if a impactor mission would do considering it gould get a gravity slingshot from mars before hitting one of the moons.
And on stopping 5000 km before reaching your destination (mars) remember that christopher columbus didn't reach the mainland of america until his third voyage (before that he yust visisted the caraiben islands). You also have to consider what the ultimate goal is getting to mars or settling mars. If you're content with getting there then it's a shame to stop but if the goal is settlement then your probably better of at the moons.
The prospect seems to be that a martian moon mission would be cheaper simpler but more then that the moons have been over the course of their history received many impacts of mars that reached orbit afther a other impact these rocks could be collected (the most a apollo mission returned was yust over a 100 kg it is not unlikely that a 100 kg of mars rocks and dust could be collected from phobos and these rocks would come from all over mars. Then the official teleoperating mission could start following by searching for water ice. And if water ice is found and is easy to extract a next phase could follow that will benefit the settlement of mars more then a actual mars base (I believe).
so NASA would pay for this rather than a Mars landing?
Does NASA have a official position on this?
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telec … -19-11.pdf makes a interesting read but it is completly focussed on how to get there and how you could observe Mars from it.
Not much is known about the make up of these moons but they are either c-type or d-type asteroids (meaning carbon and ice or carbon silicates and [a little] ice). Here are in any cases the building blocks to make fuel for later martian descend and return flights back to earth.
Either way both Phobos and deimos would be interesting candidates to visit but are so similar in comparison to getting there and observing mars that the final candidate should be considerd on easy access to water ice, radiation protection and and interesting geology. This I believe favors phobos over deimos altough a new mission would be required to select a candidate. I hope one where they can detect water ice in it's interior without the need of sending people first
In many ways life on titan would be more interesting then life on Mars, because when their is life on Mars it will be deep underground hard to find and the possibility then it is Earth life that got there on a impact millions of years ago (still interesting tough) Life on Titan would probably have to be ammonia or methane based and definitly alien.
It would therefore help further refine the drake equation:
N=R*.fp.ne.fℓ.fi.fc.L
N = the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which communication might be possible
R* = the average rate of star formation per year in our galaxy
fp = the fraction of those stars that have planets
ne = the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets
These are getting predicted using space telescopes
but the gues would be between 2 and 6 billions
fℓ = the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop life at some point If more then 1 planet is a solar system has life then this will be pretty high If more then 1 type of
biochemestry is found this numbre is really high and ne has to be revised
fi = the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop intelligent life
fc = the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space
L = the length of time for which such civilizations release detectable signals into space
I wonder if there is allready life on Titan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_on_Ti … rface_life
In kim stanley robinson's mars trilogy One of the terraforming techniques that they use is a giant lens that carves (using heat) out a massive cannal between the Northern basin end the hellas basin. Something I always found a bid sketchy nut for fun I've compared the numbres with something from zubrins works:
Zubrin says that by building a 125 km mirror with a mass of 200 000 tons could provide a 5°kelvin temprature rise for anything below 70° this is 20/180's (11%) of the martian surface a total area of 1,59E13m² (greater then the European continent)
But if you can double the temprature by halfening the surface area (a 10° rise for 7.96E12m²) you can actually get a 1280° rise by lowering your focus point to 6.22E10m² (the size of lake huron) or 40 960°K by 1.9E9m² If the reasoning fits then carving a canal wouldn't be all that impossible.
In kim stanley robinson's mars trilogy One of the terraforming techniques that they use is a giant lens that carves out a massive cannal between the Northern basin end the hellas basin. Something I always found a bid sketchy nut for fun I've compared the numbres with something from zubrins works:
Zubrin says that by building a 125 km mirror with a mass of 200 000 tons could provide a 5°kelvin temprature rise for anything below 70° this is 20/180's (11%) of the martian surface a total area of 1,59E13m² (greater then the European continent)
But if you can double the temprature by halfening the surface area (a 10° rise for 7.96E12m²) you can actually get a 1280° rise by lowering your focus point to 6.22E10m² (the size of lake huron) or 40 960°K by 1.9E9m² If the reasoning fits then carving a canal wouldn't be all that impossible.
looking at Impractical ways to cool down Venus we could try transforming the heat energy in a other forms. The link below talks abouth a LED that can work at 230% effeciency because it can also use the thermal energy around it. Effectivly it it cools it's surrounding.
See this link: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/201 … cient-leds
releasing supergreenhouse gasses might work. By increasing the temprature the atmosphere would start to boil off
a short article of genetics who try to modify CO2 breathing bacteria to produce octanes perhaps similar techniques could be used to make bacteria produce more methane or other stronger greenhouse gases
some anaerobic organismes produce methane. Could a genetic manipulated bacterie be created that generates large amounds of potent greenhouse gases?
Here you go dunwich ...
thx noosfractal that's real interesting.
Perhaps a insignificant quistion but Mars today has a 95%CO2 3%N2 atmosphere, Venus has a 96.5%CO2 and 3.5%N2 atmosphere.
With the exeptation of density their pretty much the same. Is there some little rule in this or yust coincidense?
Sorry I'm new here. Do you have a previous post discussing the effects of blood acidosis (CO2 poising).
I've have the ID that anything above 1000 partspermillion of CO2 in the atmosphere mixture will have serious health effects if breathed over a lifetherm
Yeah their our martian duracell bunny's the yust keep going and going
We are already pretty good at converting oxygen to C02 on earth so i doubt we would need anything other than a similar lifestyle on Mars. LOL
I have no ID how but Iaccidently only posted part of a first draft
Most of it went about
Denitrifying bacteria witch are anaerobic (they don't like oxygen)
and stromatolits.
The Denitrifying bacteria extract Nitrogen out of the soil and put it in the atmosphere while Stromatolits would clean the the salt and alkalik lakes/sea on a paraterraformed Mars yust capable to keep some surface water.
Annyway the conclusion was that Denitrifying would work but leave the soil infertile. While Stromatolites would fail in producing oxygen they would clean up the young martian oceans producing large volumes of lime (think in a lime formating periode) (they would fail because the oxygen would react with the large amount of iron in the water and at the bothem)
Annyway it wouldn't be that useful until a second terraform stage, that would allow the most simple lifeforms to exist on it's surface.
Annyway getting nitrogen would be tricky because Mars has verry little and getting that little out of the ground would give you a nitrogen deprived soil witch isn't nesesairly better.
And all that iron is yust waiting to react with any hard procured free oxygen
(PS I know this post is rushed)
I think the basic idea of the 326mb Mars atmosphere might work, but we probably won't be placing natural Earth organisms on it.
If we do they won't stay that way for long anyway.
Would it be wise to put a lot of organisms that convert O2 into CO2 on the surface? Wildlife is necesairy for a lot of the more advanced plant life, but the seem to be a bit counterproductive in general.
Welcome to newmars dunwich.
Thx noosfractal
It's nice to see that high levels of both almost work together, but i still see 30% C02 as a problem even in a 326 mb atmosphere.
We also need to think about the bacteria that fix nitrogen in this atmosphere scenario.
How do they function in that atmosphere, can they tolerate 60% 02 with 30% C02 with 1% N2.?
What abouth anammox bacteria they live in oxygen poor waters.
This gives a whole range of advantages, they can begin releasing Nitrogen at a earlier stage (I recon) and the surface ice protects them from radiation.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 … 104202.htm