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Void

Member

Registered: 2011-12-29

Posts: 7,817

Re: Terraforming Race: Mars vs Venus

Any work to terraform will probably be mostly done by settlers.

Whatever that is, ideally will result in a more useful world.

In the case of Venus with no surface suitable to dwell on for now or if ever.  A gravitation of ~.9 g.

In the case of Mars, a surface attainable now, and several ideas about what terraform or parataraform efforts might be worth the trouble.
And a gravitation of .38 g.

Elon Musk says the Earth gravity is almost so much that it would have been impossible to attain space.

I don't think Venus is that much better.  No surface to use, and very little equatorial spin.

So, to get materials off from a planet which already has some qualities of Earth, and may be upgradable to a thicker atmosphere, and at least a habitable hydrosphere, Mars of course offers the best chances of a payoff for the human race.

1) Earth/Moon <> Mars first, then;

2) Mercury <> Venus, then;

3) The rest of the solar system.

The artificial worlds contemplated in the 70's were criticized because it was calculated that within 10,000 years, of growth, all the volatile materials of the solar system would have been lost to space, due to leaks, even under the best sealing methods.

Such hollow worlds with glass windows would leak too much.

But now I think that multi-layer worlds without significant windows, and with magnetic fields to capture leaked gasses would allow a ring of such worlds both around Venus and near the solar orbit of Venus.  A similar ring around Mars, and near the solar orbit of Mars.

So starting with Mars, the building of an enormous amount of "Land".  And with that, perhaps the economic power to cross between the stars eventually, maybe.

Done.

Last edited by Void (2018-04-19 21:32:48)

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knightdepaix

Member

Registered: 2014-07-07

Posts: 239

Re: Terraforming Race: Mars vs Venus

Something that Maven found was Mars’s atmosphere hosts metal layers that shouldn’t exist

The space between planets is full of metallic dust and rocks. As they are drawn into a planet’s atmosphere, they burn up, leaving behind metal particles like iron and magnesium. On Earth, the behaviour of those particles is mostly controlled by the planet’s strong magnetic field. They use magnetic fields as a sort of highway, and stream along the magnetic field lines to form thin layers throughout the atmosphere.

Could some sweeper spaceship use solar energy and helium from nuclear reactor waste as propellant to collect all those metallic dust and rocks among Venus, Earth, the Moon, Mars, Phobos and Deimos. These scrap ores would then be minded on Mars for the terraforming effort?