Terraforming the Moon - Your opinion, please

srmeaney · 2005-03-18 07:55:19

Terraforming the moon leaves you with two options. Dig a deep hole and live at the bottom. all atmosphere pours into the hole creating airpressure similar to high altitude earth existance. The alternative is living in tunnels which are extensions of ongoing mines. These are the cheapest alternatives.

Eventualy you want a self sustaining colony.

MarsDog · 2005-03-19 01:38:30

Dig a deep hole and live at the bottom

One giant open pit mine, with tunnels radiating out. It would be convenient to change the Moon's rotation so the the open pit mine always faced the Sun. The cold side would collect volatiles.

Elwood · 2005-03-19 05:33:57

Salutations...I've been following this topic for some time now, and I think you folks have some good ideas....it's just not how our industrial civilization does things...first off we would use the moon as a launch facility (trashing it and over mining it) until its orbit becomes unstable..we will attempt to fire astroids towards the processing plants on the moon( missing several times before we blast ourselves into oblivian)...sound bad? BTW isn't Harlan Ellison that fellow who thought he say a face on Mars? ???

MarsDog · 2005-03-19 06:51:18

The Moon is very convenient for constructing space ships, O'Neil Cylinders, beaming power to remote parts of the solar system etc.

At 0.012 of the mass of the Earth, lower density, we could dig very deep tunnels. Anyone can guess the deepest open pit mine that we could make on the Moon ?

dicktice · 2005-03-19 09:06:10

MarsDog: My reply to yours re. cloud formation inside a hollow spinning asteroid, has been shifter over to New Mars forums, as a "New Mars articles," for some unknown reason. If you want to respond, since it has some resemblence to your above reply, I'd like to pursue the climat aspects further if you're willing.

karov · 2005-06-27 23:10:51

http://www.astrobio.net/news/article1618.html

From tullip greenhouses to full terraforming?

Ittiz · 2006-08-25 14:18:32

Most people seem to think this probably wouldn't be possible, but I have come up with a scheme that may work. It would probably be more difficult than terraforming Mars but not as hard as terraforming Venus.

Firstly self replicating machines are a must. It's the only way to build the infrastructure for any terraforming project that you don't want to take 10,000 years. If you know anything about microbiology you know that self replicating systems can grow extremely fast. An example would be E-coli: Starting with one cell and dividing with unlimited resources once every half hour the mass of the e-coli bacterial colony would be greater than that of the earth after only two days. The reason why this doesn't occur of course is because the cells run out of resources.

The gas SF6 would be used to set up a stable atmosphere on the moon. SF6 has a molecular weight of about 144 which is even heavier than Xenon gas. Since the gas is inert humans can breath it. Specially engineered microbes would be needed to recycle the F2, SF4, and S2F10 byproducts that would form due to lightning and solar radiation. Or conversely replicating machines could also be used to do that.

Oxygen would also be in the atmosphere of course. To keep it from escaping microbes would be engineered to collect oxygen and store it in a vacuole. Since pure oxygen would be a lifting gas the more oxygen they stored the higher they would float in the atmosphere. Once they got past most of the atmosphere a UV dependant enzymes would start to make water out of the oxygen through lipolyses and the CTA cycle. Once the weight of the water got to be to much the microbes would sink in the atmosphere where they would end their life cycle releasing the water and the remaining oxygen. On the ground the water would be turned back to oxygen using normal photosynthesis. Since SF6 blocks UV light the microbes would only start absorbing the most amount of oxygen and turning it into water once they are in the upper atmosphere due to the UV dependant enzymes. So essentially they would carry oxygen from the upper atmosphere to the ground.

So this is how the moon would be terraformed. Self replicating machines would be seeded in the asteroid belt. There would be several types for the numerous jobs that would be required. They would be programmed to replicate until their numbers were sufficient to begin the terraforming process. Once they reached the sufficient number they would start collecting water, fluorine containing ores and sulfur. They would make hydrogen and oxygen with some of the water for fuel and some of the oxygen would be for atmosphere on the moon. They would purify the fluorine and sulfur and react them together to make SF6. They would also start collecting ammonia and other organic compounds since nitogen would not be part of the lunar atmosphere. The SF6 would be released on the surface of the moon. Once the atmosphere was thick enough the organic compounds would be deposited evenly on the surface. Then the water would be deposited till water covered about 50% of the lunar surface. At this point the moon would have about the same land area as South America. The oxygen along with the engineered microbes would be released onto the moon. After the microbes had established themselves Earth life would be added completing the process.

On a side note here is some of my lunar terraforming art:

Near side:

Farside:

Tom Kalbfus · 2006-09-05 12:54:38

If your going to use nanotech, why not just have a nanotech membrane to hold atmosphere in without resorting to making humans breath liquids? Their is something that has been discussed on nanotech forums called "Utility Fog". Utility fog is little particles in the air about the size of dust motes, but are actually nanotech machines, they float around in the air and they have many arms that can be used to attach themselves to other nanotech machines. These things are invisible to the naked eye unless they link up and form macroscopic objects, one particular object which they can form would be a membrane that can hold in air against the vacuum. Generally you would start with a bubble on the surface of the moon. A solid object such as an astronaut can step through the membrane as the nanotech objects would part upon contact with the astronauts suit, and they would make way as the astronaut moves forward closing up the hole behind the astronaut as he steps completely inside. The bubble would extend downward into the moon dust and rock forming a complete seal to keep in atmosphere. Meanwhile nano assemblers would make more of these "Utility foglets" as they are called, and they would extract oxygen and other gasses from the ground adding to the atmosphere. The bubble would probably have to receive regular shipments of other gasses to add to the atmosphere as it expands. More utility foglets would be made as the surface of the membrane expands to accomodate the enlarging atmosphere. Over time the bubble will grow larger and larger until it completely encompases the Moon.

The atmosphere of this moon would have an abrupt edge to it. A spacecraft landing on its surface would first make contact with the membrane, its rocket engines would quickly vaporize a hole through it and air would rush out, more foglets would be sucked along with the outward rushing air, they would attach to the edges of the membrane and the membrane would close behind the spacecraft, though perhaps not as neatly as it would were an astronaut stepping through in his spacesuit. The internal pressure of the atmosphere would hold the membrane up, which at this point would have no contact with the Moon's surface. the air would be filled with spare foglets, which would be completely inert unless activated, people would be breathing these things into their lungs all the time.

Earthfirst · 2006-09-05 15:18:48

Ittiz, Nice picture of the moon. That is by far the best picture of a terrafromed moon that I have seen. I have only seen one other before but it looks good. You should show us more of your spaace art work.
Good idea to use heavy gas, that sloves the escape problem. It would take a long time to manufacter your gas to provide a Atmospere for the moon. The air pressure on your moon should be higher than the earths pressure to provide radiation protection during solar stroms. Keep water on the moon would not be a problem since it would stay in the troposphere like on earth. A thicker atmosphere would also provide good circulation to help keep the moon from frezzing or boiling due to its slow rotation. In your atmosphere would also need some CO2, N2. Also the weathering of the moon rocks would limit the amount of Oxrgen that could build up. The process of chemical weathering of the moon rock in to soil would take at least 1000 to 10000 years depending on climate. The kinds of plants that could grow would be lickens.
For example on Mars water was active for some time on the surface, weathered rocks had time to turn int secondary minary slicate clays in some places. But the moon has no soil development other than broken rock. Try growing a been seed in a cup of broken unaltered basalt, That is what the maria is. Sure it has lots of minerals but is lock up in crystal forms unusable to plants. The crystal have to broken down by weathering to release the Cations, and their must by clays their to hold them in place. Others wise they will wash away into the sea. Thats why the earth Oceans are salty leached cations Na, Mg, Ca, K, P.
Your magical nanotech cant solve that problem. Ideas about terrafrom never included all the bio- chem-geo process that have to interact to yeild a living cummunity. Soil is one of the most important places for the interactions of the living world. Rock, water, minerals, lives, chemistry all come togather in soil. You cant have a living earth with out soil niether a terraformed object. Rember Biosphere 2 they remebered everything but the soil. In the end the over nuteirent soil encouraged rapid microb reiperation using all the O2 that the trees made meant for thge humans.
Soil is the most important part of any living system!

Tom Kalbfus · 2006-09-06 12:32:09

Have you actually tried breathing this stuff? If you haven't, its a little premature to talk about using these gas mixtures that aren't natural to Earth. Also if the gas is much heavier than oxygen, wouldn't that make oxygen tend to rise to the top like helium does in our atmosphere, and it there isn't much oxygen near the surface, then how do we breath? Terraforming planets is so far in the future, I think its reasonable to talk about nanotech solutions like utility fog membranes to hold in a standard Earth type atmosphere.

Ittiz · 2006-09-20 10:19:24

If you want to see more of my art click on the links in my sig. People seem to think the self replicating machines I'm talking about are nano tech, they arn't. None of them would probably be any smaller than a cat. Some of them would probably be huge. Especially the ones for carrying stuff from the asteroid belt. A large self replicating machine is probably some thing doable with today's technology.
If the surface soil's crystals needed to be broken down that could also be done with machines. If an SF6 atmosphere is established early in the process machines could suck up the lunar soil for processing. The heavy gas would actually make this process easier. I'm not a soil scientist or geologist so I don't know the exact ways the lunar soil would need to be treated to make it livable. But if micro and macro organisms made the soil the way it is today a machine could probably be designed to make that process much faster. Also keep in mind that that surface area of the moon is only 7.4% that of earth so that makes any process requiring mechanical manipulation of the soil and atmosphere a lot faster than you would think at first glance.

About the N2 and CO2. The CO2 wouldn't be a problem but the N2 would just escape into space because no system (to my knowledge) would be able to be designed to keep it in using practical technology. That is why nitrates would have to be brought to the moon. After putting some thought into it I have figured out that a lifting gas that is lighter than oxygen would be required for the microbes to "hold the O2 down". The microbes have to be able to "beat" the oxygen back into the upper atmosphere for it to work. This could be done by microbes splitting H2O into H2 (probably binding the O to some thing else) and then using the H2 to beat the free O2 to the upper atmosphere where it then reacts with the H2 and free O2 to make water and sink back down in the atmosphere. The only problem with this idea if those microbes could be a serious explosion hazard unless some mechinism inside the microbe could be devised to elminate the risk. Any thoughts?

Earthfirst · 2006-10-10 15:59:53

Hello Ittiz,

The moon and other small objects are hard worlds to terrafrom due to their low gravity or high temps.
Titan a large moon has a thick atmosphere due it being very cold. The Moon could have a thick atmosphere if its exosphere was kept cold, the lower troposhere could be warm. Air is a poor conductor of heat, the key is to keep the heat trap near the surface and prevent warming of the outer atmosphere br long wave IR. On earth the outer atmosphere is cold because the greenhouse gases trap the L ir and prevent it from warming it.
The easy way is to build a world house, the entire would is domed with a protective membrane. The worldhouse idea provides a way to keep the gases from escaping the world and you dont need heavey gases niether. The scifi website Orions arm has some good articals on it, but nobody has realey study this concept. Also they have a lot of other spaced based buildings, terraforming, and stories. But it is Scifi just like the ships in star trek or battlestar galitica so don't read to much into their ideas.

SpaceNut · 2006-10-10 18:58:11

I am wondering if a spherical shape dome or cap at x distance from the surface to stop the solar wind and temperatures from rising would fit the bill of course it would need to move but would it allow for the shaded side to be covered with an atmosphere capable of heat retension....

Ittiz · 2006-10-18 12:45:16

Hello Ittiz,
The moon and other small objects are hard worlds to terrafrom due to their low gravity or high temps.
Titan a large moon has a thick atmosphere due it being very cold. The Moon could have a thick atmosphere if its exosphere was kept cold, the lower troposhere could be warm. Air is a poor conductor of heat, the key is to keep the heat trap near the surface and prevent warming of the outer atmosphere br long wave IR. On earth the outer atmosphere is cold because the greenhouse gases trap the L ir and prevent it from warming it.
The easy way is to build a world house, the entire would is domed with a protective membrane. The worldhouse idea provides a way to keep the gases from escaping the world and you dont need heavey gases niether. The scifi website Orions arm has some good articals on it, but nobody has realey study this concept. Also they have a lot of other spaced based buildings, terraforming, and stories. But it is Scifi just like the ships in star trek or battlestar galitica so don't read to much into their ideas.

I am aware of all this. My ideas are not inspired by SciFi. My goal when it comes to developing ideas for terraforming is to come up with schemes that don't require constant human intervention to function.

You wouldn't need to cool the outer atmosphere you would only need to keep it properly mixed, which could be done by a self sustaining biological system. Large scale world houses are out because membranes would get hit by meteorites which would break them. Also it needs to be constantly maintained. My ideas only require a space based industry to get them started, and not more advanced technology than that would already required for the industry to exist.

Tom Kalbfus · 2006-10-20 11:21:10

Keeping it properly mixed would require constant intervention. So much better to have a passive barrier such as a roof. What happens if you mix heavy and light gasses. The light gasses still rise to the top and escape. The best you can do with heavy gasses on the moon is to create a situation where people don't need to wear space suits, but still require gas masks to breath as the oxygen is always going to rise to the top and escape.

karov · 2006-10-22 13:06:44

For low gravity worlds a solid roof may not be quite necessary ( solid roof = possibly, the entire astronomical body engulfed into a geodesic sphere ... ) ... it is enough to provide very steep temperature gradient at the tropopause - "high wall cold trap" ... This will make the upper atmosphere too thin, decreasing the amount of atoms which reach escape velocity...

Imagine zillions of aerostats flying in the low stratosphere. Each of the baloons is: solar powered refrigerator with radiator... The strato-fridges sucks in air at the normal for such earth_like hights temperatures of 200-220 K, and releases it cooled down with 50 to 100 K. The excess heat is by-force ( say Peltier-Zeebek effect used ) radiated as IR either upwards ( day-time ), or downwards ( night-time )... It could be IRaser pointing the beams exactly where necessary for precise weather control with very "high resolution" in time, area and volume.

The strato-fridges - colourchanging for manipulation of the albedo - solar influx.

Cause the temperature of one world is nothing more than function of the heat retention rate of it == the ratio/balance between the infaling / absorbed energy and its emisivity in IR

Very often we visualise under term roof kinda greenhouse nylon or metal or glass carpet, or envision passive structure , but when I say strao-fridge-baloons I mean more kinda spores of kinda plants, which collect hydrogen in a bag and possess different types of organs / organoids to do fridging, pointing of IR, reflecting, COMMUNICATING between eachother AND with the parent plants in order to provide activelly, USING the eventual excess of solar EM radiation, control over the atmosphere retention , insolation, weather and climate of the respected world...

Such systems are nothing more super-natural than the earth`s Gaia system, or more super-natural than the warm-bloodedness of the mammals.

Such life-like systems, either self-replicating or not are the key to put control onto the exponential processes.

It is quite easy to calculate how much kelvins should be the gases in the terraformed-moon`s exobase and tropopause in order it to be kept for as long as the sun shines.

Ittiz · 2006-10-26 23:25:12

Keeping it properly mixed would require constant intervention. So much better to have a passive barrier such as a roof. What happens if you mix heavy and light gasses. The light gasses still rise to the top and escape. The best you can do with heavy gasses on the moon is to create a situation where people don't need to wear space suits, but still require gas masks to breath as the oxygen is always going to rise to the top and escape.

I discussed How the mixing would be done earlier on. here are some excerpts:

After putting some thought into it I have figured out that a lifting gas that is lighter than oxygen would be required for the microbes to “hold the O2 down”. The microbes have to be able to “beat” the oxygen back into the upper atmosphere for it to work. This could be done by microbes splitting H2O into H2 (probably binding the O to some thing else) and then using the H2 to beat the free O2 to the upper atmosphere where it then reacts with the H2 and free O2 to make water and sink back down in the atmosphere.

and:

I was thinking about the system used to hold O2 down. Another thing that could be done besides using Hydrogen to get the microbes into the upper atmosphere is just having them live there naturally using photosynthesis. I figure this way the microbes could also scavenge H2O and CO2 and use them for fuel. The only problem with that is that photosynthesis splits the Oxygen out of water making O2. But if the microbe just reacted the O2 with a sugar or a lipid this would fix the problem. After a certain period of growth the microbe would divide asymmetrically (aka bud) the smaller bud would stay in the upper atmosphere as the parent collected more O2, CO2 and water gaining mass. Eventually it would sink in the atmosphere after budding several times until it reached the ground releasing it’s water and gases.

For low gravity worlds a solid roof may not be quite necessary ( solid roof = possibly, the entire astronomical body engulfed into a geodesic sphere ... ) ... it is enough to provide very steep temperature gradient at the tropopause - "high wall cold trap" ... This will make the upper atmosphere too thin, decreasing the amount of atoms which reach escape velocity...
Imagine zillions of aerostats flying in the low stratosphere. Each of the baloons is: solar powered refrigerator with radiator... The strato-fridges sucks in air at the normal for such earth_like hights temperatures of 200-220 K, and releases it cooled down with 50 to 100 K. The excess heat is by-force ( say Peltier-Zeebek effect used ) radiated as IR either upwards ( day-time ), or downwards ( night-time )... It could be IRaser pointing the beams exactly where necessary for precise weather control with very "high resolution" in time, area and volume.
The strato-fridges - colourchanging for manipulation of the albedo - solar influx.
Cause the temperature of one world is nothing more than function of the heat retention rate of it == the ratio/balance between the infaling / absorbed energy and its emisivity in IR
Very often we visualise under term roof kinda greenhouse nylon or metal or glass carpet, or envision passive structure , but when I say strao-fridge-baloons I mean more kinda spores of kinda plants, which collect hydrogen in a bag and possess different types of organs / organoids to do fridging, pointing of IR, reflecting, COMMUNICATING between eachother AND with the parent plants in order to provide activelly, USING the eventual excess of solar EM radiation, control over the atmosphere retention , insolation, weather and climate of the respected world...
Such systems are nothing more super-natural than the earth`s Gaia system, or more super-natural than the warm-bloodedness of the mammals.
Such life-like systems, either self-replicating or not are the key to put control onto the exponential processes.
It is quite easy to calculate how much kelvins should be the gases in the terraformed-moon`s exobase and tropopause in order it to be kept for as long as the sun shines.

Hmm such a system might be possible and could utilize the SF6 since it's a refrigerant, but how to put a system together isn't conceivable with today's knowledge of biology or for awhile probably. The microbial system I described is conceivable today and microbes are much more resilient in hostile environments like upper atmospheres.

Finally I'll cut and paste a post from my blog about the subject, interesting stuff!

I found a power point presentation which is on topic to this discussion by Nick Hoekzema (a NASA scientist): atmostalk.pdf
Note to the anally inclined: The following paragraphs are speculation.
First off Hoekzema calculated that for most worlds thermal escape, which is what I assumed caused the greatest amount atmospheric loss, actually might not be that important. Hoekzema calculated that worlds with escape velocities as small as 0.8km/s could possibly hold a CO2 atmosphere for billions of years if thermal escape were the only mechanism working.
Using Hoekzema’s equations I calculated that the Moon could possibly hold at atmosphere of SF6 for longer than the age of the solar system and also possibly SF6/O2 atmosphere for longer than the age of the solar system. Also apparently the weight and thickness of the SF6 atmosphere would help defeat the two major causes of O2 loss: Hydrodynamic outflow (simplistically an updraft), and sputtering (fast moving molecules hitting slower molecules causing a cascade of atoms leaving the planet/moon). Both effects rely on the average velocities of the molecules in a gas so the SF6 “shields” the O2 from the effects. To visualize what’s occurring imagine a pool table with pool balls. Except some balls are light and small and some are big an heavy. Now if you shoot one of the small balls across a table with mostly large balls rather than light balls fewer balls will go in the sockets because when the small ball hits a large ball the small ball will slow down a lot and the large ball will barely speed up at all. This is the effect that reduces sputtering and hydrodynamic outflow. Although it’s hard to doubt that some mechanism would still be required to hold the O2 down, but it may not have to be super aggressive. Even without SF6 an O2 atmosphere could possibly stay on the moon for 100 million years according to Hoekzema’s calculations. Even if his calculations are highly optamistic the moon could still possibly hold an SF6/O2 atmosphere for 100’s of millions of years, even longer with a mechanism to slow the escape of gases in place.

karov · 2006-10-30 04:58:52

Ittiz, thanx for the atmostalk article!
It is obvious that even without SF6 lunar atmospheres would hold. The measures against the outflows are comparativelly simpl. For me the most important thing in the atmostalk article is that small bodies with about 3% the earth`s surface gravity ( indeed, the smallst planetary mass objects ) could have atmosphere for geological and astrophysical eras long!

karov · 2006-11-13 06:33:40

Moon only needs:
1. soil
2.water
3. air
4. atmosphere retention mechanism
===================================================

1. Soil: from the near earth asteroids and meteoroids. more than enough as quantity. There are billions and billions of NEOs with diameters in the 1-10 meter range. The chemical composition of most of them ( >75% C-type, containing from 5to20% water + the over composition such so one can stear them and directly grow plants ) is such that mixed with lunar regolith provides the closest analog of soil, with all thee lemeents necessary for plant life... Such little "soily" NEOs could be just lithobraked into the Moon with low relative velocities ( 2-3 km/s ) , redirected into colision course via sola sails. Objects less than several dozens of meters diameter are absolutelly harmless for the Earth if hit it occassionally, cause they can not reach the surface or to create noticeable air blast

2. water: from the Jupiter trojans

3. air: i.e. O2 & N2 -- from Venus ( + the extra carbon comming from the O2 tankage )

4. Atmosphere retention -- equatorial ring of cable producing as strong magfield as necessary to stop the solar wind sputtering, mesosphere cooling down, tropopause cooling down ...
====================================================

RickSmith · 2007-03-03 17:50:18

Hi all,
I thought I would post my bias on Terraforming:

1) It is easier for things to go down than up. (Moving comets to planets is a lot easier than moving CO2 from Venus to Mars for example.)

2) No magical nano-tech machines to solve tough problems.

3) While a totally self-sustaining ecosystem is nice, I am not troubled by having to put some effort into maintaining the terraformed planet. (Many of our modern CITIES are in unsustainable locations but people don't leave.)

4) I am most interested in Terraforming projects that can be started in the next 200 years with technology not much more advanced to our own. I expect that technological improvements will make things faster and cheaper but lets talk about what we can reasonably extrapolate to.

5) Simply moving planets about or simply making them mass a lot more to increase the surface gravity is not simple.

6) Arguments with references and math impress me a lot more than hand waving.

Having said the above Lunar terraforming is pretty much outside my interest range. However, taking this as a long range project I do have a few points.

- A fun, hard science fiction, web comic called Shlock Mercenary has a terraformed Luna (maintaining it with comets).

http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20000612.html

(The art gets a lot better after the first year.)

- Is anything vital to life short on Luna? Yes, Phosphorus, Sulphur, Chlorine, Carbon & many others.

- The current month long days are a pain in the butt. You don't want the plants in your lifesupport system dying out or shutting down every two weeks. Also, the huge temperatures from the long days exacerbate the atmosphere loss. I think that we will want to have a reasonable day light cycle.

- Why would people move to Luna if it was like Earth? Why do people move to places like Tuscon or Edmonton? With out technology these places would be pretty much uninhabitable. People like to have a place to call their own, and if there is livable real estate near by people will fill it up.

- Won't rotating the Moon mess up Earth? No, I doubt it. We will still get tides. Depending on if Luna is rotating retrograde or prograde we will be able to slow or reverse the way Luna is slowly moving away from Earth.

- Will rotating Luna start up volcanos? Rotating Luna will start the rocks stretching and generate heat but Luna is so small I doubt it will restart any vulcanism; Luna is too small and has been too cold for too long.

- Why get deuterium from Mars? Deuterium on Mars is 5 times more common which makes it cheaper to concentrate. However the shipping cost to Earth (magnetic sails maybe) has to get pretty low to compete with Terran deuterium.

- As for Shaun Barrett's calcuations that Luna would lose an Earth style atmosphere in 300 years, that is pretty much a deal breaker. I found it strange so many people seemed to ignore his post.

Warm regards, Rick

Tom Kalbfus · 2007-03-07 11:02:56

That means you start with a 1 Bar atmosphere in the Moon and 100 years later its a 2/3rds Bar atmosphere. Every 100 years you'd have to replace 1/3 of the atmosphere. I wonder how much atmospheric mass that would be? A steady supply would have to be arriving at the Moon like clockwork to maintain a 1 Bar atmosphere. Probably the Moon would have a slight tail like a comet of breathable gases leaking out into space and every so often Earth would pass through that tale. A terraformed Moon would look pretty though, it would light up Earth's skies alot more than it does now, especially its reflective oceans.

I can see now why you don't like to move Venus around, its very unlikely we will be able to do so in the next 100 years.

How do you feel about Teraforming Titan though? The 300 year figure ought to work for Titan as well, and Titian already has an atmosphere, we'd mostly have to add heat and oxygen. the illumination levels wouldn't have to be the same as on Earth though. Titan's atmosphere would have a substantial greenhouse effect, its crust would melt into a global ocean surrounding a rocky core. Probably Earthlike or even Venus like levels of illumination would do for now, as it would take some time to melt that icy crust. Water vapor would saturate the atmosphere and add to the greenhouse effect, but the ice would absort alot of that excess heat and the temperature would probably hover around zero degrees centigrade nerar the surface, Water ice floats after all. As ice melted on the surface, it would probably seem into the cracks and contribute to the global ocean underneath.

So what do you think, could Titan be terraformed in 200 years?

nickname · 2007-03-07 18:15:39

Tom Kalbfus,

With a manmade magnetic field i think the moon would loose very little atmosphere.
All depends on what we make the atmosphere on the moon, does it need to be nitrogen and oxygen like earth?

Titan, hmmm not much solar energy to work with at Titan.
Another problem at Titan is when you start warming the place up, all the gasses expand the atmosphere.
That would expose it to possible atmospheric escape.
Not sure you could add 02 to titan anyway, you get methyl oxide or kaboom, or both.

Tom Kalbfus · 2007-03-08 13:55:49

Tom Kalbfus,
With a manmade magnetic field i think the moon would loose very little atmosphere.
All depends on what we make the atmosphere on the moon, does it need to be nitrogen and oxygen like earth?
Titan, hmmm not much solar energy to work with at Titan.
Another problem at Titan is when you start warming the place up, all the gasses expand the atmosphere.
That would expose it to possible atmospheric escape.
Not sure you could add 02 to titan anyway, you get methyl oxide or kaboom, or both.

That's one way to heat up Titan, just dump oxygen on it until all the combustible gases are combusted. This ought to melt alot of ice I think.

nickname · 2007-03-08 18:49:23

Tom Kalbfus,

Lots of heat for sure.

I wonder what would happen to the atmosphere of titan with wide scale files from introduced o2?

Might be a good thing that the water ice stays in frozen state on Titan.

Titan is an awesome place for a colony, with frozen water split as 02 and hydrogen, methane rain as inexhaustible fuel source and a thick atmosphere for radiation protection.
I would expect Titan to be a city like enclosed colony that is self sufficient almost immediately as its established.

Tom Kalbfus · 2007-03-09 09:10:26

Tom Kalbfus,
Lots of heat for sure.
I wonder what would happen to the atmosphere of titan with wide scale files from introduced o2?
Might be a good thing that the water ice stays in frozen state on Titan.
Titan is an awesome place for a colony, with frozen water split as 02 and hydrogen, methane rain as inexhaustible fuel source and a thick atmosphere for radiation protection.
I would expect Titan to be a city like enclosed colony that is self sufficient almost immediately as its established.

Well any of the frozen satellites will have an atmosphere if heated, Europa, Callisto, Ganymede, and Titan. The first three would have atmospheres that consisted of water vapor. Some of that water vapor would leak into space only to be replaced by water vapor further evaporated from the liquid ocean below.

First thing that would happen over the airless icy Gallileans is that the icy surface would sublimate away, but the Moon's gravity would retain some of that water vapor for a time, the pressure would build up to the point where the icy surface can then melt rather than sublime. You'd have a moon with a liquid ocean under a water vapor atmosphere, probably surrounded by a perpetual layer of water clouds that are constantly raining toward the surface while water constantly evaporates from the ocean below.

In Titan's case, it has a largely nitrogen atmosphere. The nitrogen would escape to be gradually replace by water vapor and other gasses that were previously locked in the ice. What you'd have eventually is a "boiling moon". These moons can boil for quite some time, if they boil too much, the the atmosphere of water vapor would buld up and cease the ocean's boiling, if it rains too much or water escapes into space, the the pressure would drop and the oceans would begin boiling again.

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Re: Terraforming the Moon - Your opinion, please

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Re: Terraforming the Moon - Your opinion, please

#103 2005-03-19 05:33:57

Re: Terraforming the Moon - Your opinion, please

#104 2005-03-19 06:51:18

Re: Terraforming the Moon - Your opinion, please

#105 2005-03-19 09:06:10

Re: Terraforming the Moon - Your opinion, please

#106 2005-06-27 23:10:51

Re: Terraforming the Moon - Your opinion, please

#107 2006-08-25 14:18:32

Re: Terraforming the Moon - Your opinion, please

#108 2006-09-05 12:54:38

Re: Terraforming the Moon - Your opinion, please

#109 2006-09-05 15:18:48

Re: Terraforming the Moon - Your opinion, please

#110 2006-09-06 12:32:09

Re: Terraforming the Moon - Your opinion, please

#111 2006-09-20 10:19:24

Re: Terraforming the Moon - Your opinion, please

#112 2006-10-10 15:59:53

Re: Terraforming the Moon - Your opinion, please

#113 2006-10-10 18:58:11

Re: Terraforming the Moon - Your opinion, please

#114 2006-10-18 12:45:16

Re: Terraforming the Moon - Your opinion, please

#115 2006-10-20 11:21:10

Re: Terraforming the Moon - Your opinion, please

#116 2006-10-22 13:06:44

Re: Terraforming the Moon - Your opinion, please

#117 2006-10-26 23:25:12

Re: Terraforming the Moon - Your opinion, please

#118 2006-10-30 04:58:52

Re: Terraforming the Moon - Your opinion, please

#119 2006-11-13 06:33:40

Re: Terraforming the Moon - Your opinion, please

#120 2007-03-03 17:50:18

Re: Terraforming the Moon - Your opinion, please

#121 2007-03-07 11:02:56

Re: Terraforming the Moon - Your opinion, please

#122 2007-03-07 18:15:39

Re: Terraforming the Moon - Your opinion, please

#123 2007-03-08 13:55:49

Re: Terraforming the Moon - Your opinion, please

#124 2007-03-08 18:49:23

Re: Terraforming the Moon - Your opinion, please

#125 2007-03-09 09:10:26

Re: Terraforming the Moon - Your opinion, please

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