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#1 2003-02-18 18:08:54

dickbill
Member
Registered: 2002-09-28
Posts: 749

Re: microwaving Mars

Hi all,

I have another idea for the crazy terraformers:
Mars is full of ice, it should be possible to use the Mars natural satellites as a base for a huge microwave generator cocentrating the radiation to the poles or, alternativelly, It should be possible to create a very dilute plasma surrounding Mars, like a ionosphere. This Plasma should be excited and put into vibration, at the right wavelenght it would reemit a microwave background radiation baking Mars. In this case, if the re-emission is in all directions and not focused in the poles, I am afraid the martians would have to be protected from being cooked.

My engineering background is not good enough to describe a klystron or magnetron, stuff that are needed to produce the electromagnetic vibration and I have no idea how to install such a generator on Phobos or Deimos. But some of you guys have crazy ideas.

The general idea is that a plasma surrounding Mars, a ionosphere, by its own volume, could grab much more solar energy as would do an orbiting mirror, even if the gaz is very dilute, it could be heated or excited by the solar UV at thousands of C. the question is how to concentrate or focuse this energy to warm Mars. I thought about an Infrared/thermic re-emission or a microwave background, any idea ?

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#2 2003-03-18 08:38:04

Scott Bainbridge
Banned
From: Perth, Australia
Registered: 2003-03-18
Posts: 2

Re: microwaving Mars

Heh heh i'm just posting here because this topic looks lonely with that many views, and no replies

I'm sure the scientists will find some wacky way to do what your proposing, afterall, could cavemen imagine telephones?


Mondays are a terrible way to spend one seventh of life

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#3 2003-03-18 09:07:37

dicktice
Member
From: Nova Scotia, Canada
Registered: 2002-11-01
Posts: 1,764

Re: microwaving Mars

I believe Nikola Tesla was attempting something like this back about 1900, in a attempt to distribute broadband "wireless power." But luckily for us, longwave am-radio broadcasting experiments discovered the importance--then--of the ionisphere to propagating communications worldwide...which conceivably is why he was "discouraged" so abruptly, from continuing to develop this single-minded obsession of his. Like most brilliant loners, I believe he was just a bit unbalanced.   Mars, on the other hand, with little or no effective ionisphere, and of course modern satillite communications, may be a candidate for your (and Tesla's?) obsession. Go for it, now, before they catch on to what you're up to...and "discourage" you, too!

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