When Mars is better than Earth.

Void · 2019-01-06 10:41:56

The moderators can move this if they like.

I am starting here as this is likely to be the least rigid location per "On Topic/Off Topic".

These things will likely relate to parataraforming and terraforming, but the main focus is how humans can benefit by what Mars has that is better than what Earth has. Profit resulting from the utilization of such potential would also provide wealth to terraform Mars anyway.

Done

Last edited by Void (2019-01-06 10:42:25)

Void · 2019-01-06 10:46:00

I am heading to some other things, but will start with the obvious.

Mars has .38 g, and yet a thin atmosphere.

This makes it possible for Starship to operate there without the Super Heavy Lifter. This will greatly reduce the costs of lofting payloads from Mars. Landing will not be that badly impaired, particularly if the ship is descending from a Low Martian Orbit, and not from interplanetary travel. This of course requires some extra efforts to operate in the Martian environment, that part will be a penalty. But in time adaptation to the Martian environment may make Starship support an acceptable burden.

Done.

Void · 2019-01-06 10:49:12

Members here have been speculating on using Martian CO2 snow as a power source. Eventually if terraformed, this potential may diminish or disappear, but for now it exists.

Done.

Void · 2019-01-06 10:53:39

As a Heatsink Mars is better.

BenVA has introduced a notion for that, and there are others.
http://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=8887

See his post #1.

Nuclear Fission
Nuclear Fusion
Solar Thermal
Industrial waste heat.

All of these can be quenched into the crust of Mars (Dry Permafrost, or Icy Permafrost).

And might assist in BenVA's notions of terraforming.

Done.

Last edited by Void (2019-01-06 11:00:01)

Void · 2019-01-06 11:01:24

It may be said that temperature variance on the surface of Mars also provides potential wealth. A heat sink to the universe during nights and winters, and really almost all of the time in the shade, and still solar energy during the day except for Global dust storms.

While Solar methods various provide potential. Solar panels, solar power towers with heliostats, I want to mention something else that could be done.

The above mentioned solar machines are relatively temporary, and will require significant replacement and repair maintenance over shorter periods of time, I think that more enduring machines can be created mostly out of tailings from tunnel boring.

I suggest Pyramids. Warm and Cold.

To make a cold one, just make a pyramid, insulate the sunward side(s), and perhaps put reflectance on those sides as well. It should be quite cold inside and depending on the size, that cold might persist across the seasons, and of course from night into and through day.

To make a warm one, put an ideal angle on a sunward facing facet, color it with a dark pigment, put a glass glaze over that. Ideally if your notion is to capture heat, then attempt to allow U.V. photons through the glass.

An alternative is to pressurize the interior of the glaze, and block U.V. and to farm in that. It would probably need to be "Step Terraced", so that humans would not roll down the slope. It could be low pressure, with highly tailored crops (GM, Selective Breeding).

For both modes of warm pyramid, you would then insulate all the facets which do not collect significant solar energy.

In all cases of pyramid, it should be possible to include pressurized air ducts in the interior, in order to extract heat or cold. Possibly plastic fluid bearing pipe/Heat exchangers could be anchored to the "Pseudo Rock" inside of the ducts. Then heat transferred that way.

The ducts might be habitable, or useful for storage. The cold ducts might make good freezers for emergency food stuff.
The warm ducts might be somewhere close to what humans like so that people could live in them, with just a bit of heating or air conditioning, or neither, if it is room temperature.

And for Mars, we think that quakes are much less, so building such devices, there are less odds of having the work damaged by tremmors.

So, these would be slow sluggish machines, but very likely enduring machines that would be useful for multiple generations of humans on Mars.

Done.

Last edited by Void (2019-01-06 11:13:25)

Void · 2019-01-06 11:25:25

Mars has Phobos and Demos.

I am leaning in the direction that these moons may be captured asteroids. I believe that it might have been a ballistic capture.

I argue that the reasons for a circular orbit could be that in order for them to be captured that way they likely had to be in a similar orbital plane as Mars to begin with. I am also going to argue that the difference between the two hemispheres in altitude, may provide a method for the moons to be nudged to a more equatorial orbit, and that perhaps the shield volcano's may also play a role in making the orbits more circular. Not real sure about that. I would have to check the speeds.

Anyway even if they are the result of a splash of impact of an asteroid onto Mars, the splash going to orbit and creating the moons, it is expected that they should in part be composed of materials of the impactor.

That then means a likeliness of rare earths, and heavy metals.

Of course Iron and Nickle for building stuff in Martian orbit.

Oxygen, possibly worth the trouble to give to Spacecraft in orbit.

Maybe even water from Hydrated Clays, in the case of a captured asteroid.

Carbon and Oxygen, could be a way to add atmosphere to Mars while you were mining for useful materials.

Mars also gives the potential of doing more captures of asteroids to orbit, I think, by manipulated ballistic capture.

Since human habitation will be heavily armored against the hostile Martian environment a mistake will do less harm on Mars to human habitation than it would on Earth. I think.

I believe we have two methods to mine those objects.

Shaft mining, which could be important if the voids inside the objects are large, or maybe shaft mining will just be better.

However, I am also thinking of strip mining. In this case I would have a large electromagnet on the device, and pogo-stick repulsion devices.

My thinking is that the moon should have some ferrous magnetic attractive materials on them. So, then the electromagnet will do two things. It will attract the craft to the moon, and may even levitate magnetic materials onto itself, giving itself a radiation shield. The magnetic field may also serve to protect from radiation.

The pogo-stick repulsion would push the craft off of the moon to allow it to relocate, or even help it escape from the moon when desired.

We then also have at least two other ways to collect materials off the surface of the moon. Electrostatic grabbers, and of course a mechanical bite mouth claw.

For processing, I think it would be very important to have synthetic gravity machines in orbit, so that more often we could use nearly standard terrestrial type methods to process, rather than to have to invent ways of processing in micro-gravity.

In the case where humans cannot procreate properly on the surface of Mars, then it will be necessary to build radiation shielded synthetic gravity habitats in Martian orbit. With the two moons existing I think this should be possible, maybe even preferred.

And to avoid making another post for it I will add that Mars is obviously closer to the main asteroid belt than is Earth, and also closer in the same way to the Trojans of Jupiter, and the Jupiter moons.

Done.

Last edited by Void (2019-01-06 14:59:31)

Void · 2019-01-06 11:43:29

The cold of Mars means that if we do terraform it, we can play some games that have small representation in places like Alaska but generally not elsewhere.

An alternate terraform would have the polar areas covered in ice but with water reservoirs below. This leaves the opportunity to have clear ice, and have some light shine through, or;

You could put an artificial bog on top of the ice in places. Plant matter, maybe even something like Styrofoam beads. Anyway create a floating bog situation. I this case however under the bog would be icy permafrost floating on water.

This then makes all of the surface of Mars sort of "Terra Firma". But you also get the underwater surface area, and the volume of water to work with.

Of course then you may activate the waters by various methods for life. Chemosynthesis, artificial lights, and in places lights shining through clear ice.

So, the intention is that the bog will allow plants to grow on it seasonally (The summer).

And if you want bodies of open water, then convey volumes of water to lower latitudes, and if necessary use orbital mirrors to warm them up more. Say Hellas, maybe the rift valley.

Done.

Last edited by Void (2019-01-06 11:43:44)

Void · 2019-01-06 11:50:54

Finally for today, I speculate that Mars may indeed have a more favorable mineral situation than Earth.

For Earth, we have the real possibility that the Moon was formed by a massive impact. In this case any heavy metals that accumulated in the crust of Earth would have sunk down into the core. Then we think the crust solidified, but then plate tectonics started up, and it is thought that the Earth on average has had it's crust recycled perhaps once. This then suggests to me that there would have been loss to the core of heavy materials again.

For Mars, we think that it did not have such a melting from a massive impact. Some theories even suggest that Mars formed in the Asteroid belt, and then Jupiter caused it to move. We do not think that Mars ever had planet wide plate tectonics.

So, I suggest that it may be possible that asteroid materials impacting Mars, may have not for the most part been sucked into the Martian core, and may exist as small impactor deposits or in the case of larger ones the vapors of impact would still have distributed heavy materials across it's globe.

Running water may have done things to consolidate those materials into minable deposits in the case of vaporization.

But we will have to find out.

Anyway from what I understand Mars had a crust much before the Earth.

Right, wrong? Well we have to check.

But Mars itself may have lots of very good minerals if this is right.

Done.

Void · 2019-01-06 15:02:20

Per post #7, a continuation of it:

I might argue that the length of the Martian year is an advantage over Earth for open air "Farming?".

There are a vast number of variables that will either validate or repudiate the sentence just above.

First of all to even hope to validate it, I think you must have enough of an Ozone layer, and summer temperatures that get significantly above freezing, and that hard freezes do not happen in the short nights of summer, and an air pressure that the "Crops" are tolerant of.
Also moisture of significance. This could be as little as our arctic tundra gets.

I recall that 1 bar of CO2 will sort of give Mars a average temperature of Earth. However since it is a smaller planet I think you could get by with less since for a significant increase in atmosphere heat will donate to the poles from the equator better than on Earth. A shorter distance to travel.

It seems that some people think that no more than say 15 mb will be possible. This would not be enough I am sure. However I fall into the camp that expects that there will be significant amounts to release from the regolith.

I seem to recall that one of the members indicated that 70 mb might work for normal crops, but they will transpire a lot of water. I presume room temperatures or above.

So, I am thinking that if your "Crops" were based on either acid tundra plants, or cold arctic Steppe grass plants, then you could reduce the needed temperature, and so perhaps even the needed air pressure.

Don't get me wrong I would much prefer 333 mb, but I am planning for minimum possibilities to even hope to farm in the open somewhere on a parataraformed Mars.

Even with 333 mb of pressure I presume of CO2 (Mostly), at low latitudes I would fear nightly frosts. And good chances that 333 mb cannot be achieved, at least not for centuries. So, I am calculating for a lesser atmosphere.

I am counting on the "Midnight Sun" effect, and also that GM will be able to convert tundra and cold Steppe plants into "Crops" that are somewhat tolerant of frost, and that do not require temperatures say above 55 degF / 12.7777778 degC. I choose that because conifers in at high latitudes cannot reproduce unless there is a period in summer where temps get >= 50 degF / >= 10 degC. Granted perhaps GM could alter that as well, but I am just doing guess work here.

I most certainly do not know either if 50 mb will be sufficient for the Martian polar summer to rise to such temperatures. I am just selecting what I think is a possible pressure where a plant that does not experience higher temperatures just might make it. For one thing with an atmosphere so rich in CO2, the stomata can be reduced to reduce water losses, because the plants will be able to get the Carbon they need with much less stomata action.

So, if you do this, will you just get biomass (Hay), or might you get grain, or fruit?

Well I am guessing you might get grain or fruit with the use of GM.

And then there is this little trick apparently: (Which we are discussing elsewhere at this time).
https://phys.org/news/2019-01-scientist … boost.html
Quote:

Scientists engineer shortcut for photosynthetic glitch, boost crop growth by 40 percent

So, that would be very important if we could hope to get anything bountiful from such farmland.

And one reason I want to put soil over the ices of the poles and to farm that soil is albedo. Lets say this Mars we create is arid, but similar to the tundra's even a little snow is enough to water the "Crops" due to the fact that the permafrost a few inches below holds moisture from sinking deeper into the ground, and also the cool summer temperatures reduce evaporation.

So, in this terraform situation where atmospheric gasses are rather limited but are say ~10 times the current, it will be important to not so much sunlight at the poles reflect off into space.

Another case where this "Arid" Mars might succeed would be that even though arid it will be much moister than it is now. To me that means that at lower latitudes there will be night fogs and clouds due to low night temperatures. This will inhibit the leakage of heat into the night sky. If it is balanced well, however, morning warming will sufficient to dissipate the fogs and much of the clouds before the near noon and afternoon suns heat is available. This will serve as a heat diode for the planet for low latitudes.

As for the polar farming areas, of course it will be more seasonal. If we were lucky, then polar fogs and clouds in the night/winter, dissipation of them for the day/summer.

But perhaps later on, maybe much later, a thicker atmosphere and different strategy.

Keep in mind though that the Martian polar summer will be almost twice as long as the Earth's polar summers.

So, if for Earth the growing season was 30 days or 60 days, or even 70-90 days, (Some valleys in Alaska), the solar flux similar for the Martian poles would be somewhat less than 60 days or 120 days, or even 140-180 days. Of course with less sunlight ~43% of Earth?

Again 50 mb may not do it as far as temperature is. I selected that as a possible pressure where a plant adapted to tundra conditions and modified per amount of stomata might be able to have a tolerable moisture budget during the "Growing Season".

It may very well be that more pressure is required to achieve the temperatures desired.

Done.

Last edited by Void (2019-01-06 15:39:24)

Void · 2019-01-06 18:32:09

And then there is the idea of the use of Heliostats on Mars. Really a robot with not so complex a task. Complex enough though.

There is the ~.38 g which favors a lighter construction, and less load on the motors.

And the thin atmosphere, (At this time), which also favors a lighter construction and less load on the motors.

The focus to be used for various tasks.

Including injecting heat into the undergrounds of Mars. Either carved tunnels and caverns, or ice covered reservoirs.

Also to promote differences in salt saturation in different layers of such a ice covered water reservoir.

And several other things.

Better on Mars than on Earth for that stuff.

Done.

louis · 2019-01-06 18:48:25

Replying to your first post...(haven't read all the others) I would say Mars has the following advantages over Earth:

1. No really bad weather like tornados, floods, hurricanes and tsunamis that tear apart people's lives and create such incalculable grief. The worst you have to fear on Mars is an asteroid strike.

2. Lots of land.

3. No people, as yet.

4. A million undiscovered things waiting to be discovered.

5. Currently no threat of human-made destruction...and long may it remain that way.

Terraformer · 2019-01-07 05:31:37

Void,

We don't have to farm out in the open on a partially terraformed Mars. A 50mb CO2 atmosphere would make polytunnels a lot easier to construct and use, allowing us to retain and reuse water so that high transpiration won't be a problem. Though we'll need a lot of open air bogs, to produce methane (and ammonia?) to keep the planet warm. But for farming, it just becomes a lot easier to do it indoors - and of course underwater.

Terraformer · 2019-01-07 05:32:58

It's my view that a partially terraformed (50-100mb, liquid surface water) Mars will have some of the most hospitable places in the solar system, outdoing even parts of Terra. Unfortunately, we don't have a partially terraformed Mars. Yet.

Void · 2019-01-07 12:18:35

Thanks for the feedback Louis. I mostly agree, but we have to also remember global dust storms.

However, I myself think that it will be possible to make a civilization so robust on Mars that it will just shrug those off.

Thanks for the feedback.

Quote:

Replying to your first post...(haven't read all the others) I would say Mars has the following advantages over Earth:
1. No really bad weather like tornados, floods, hurricanes and tsunamis that tear apart people's lives and create such incalculable grief. The worst you have to fear on Mars is an asteroid strike.
2. Lots of land.
3. No people, as yet.
4. A million undiscovered things waiting to be discovered.
5. Currently no threat of human-made destruction...and long may it remain that way.

Last edited by Void (2019-01-07 12:19:05)

Void · 2019-01-07 12:20:16

Terraformer,

Seems that you have some points.

I guess you made me think about it. There could be several levels of dealing with albedo in the polar areas of Mars.

1) Abiotic staining of the ice.
Beyond that then some degree of U.V. protection required. Ozone I presume, but some microbes may be very robust against U.V.
2) Fertilization and seeding of the ice, where the microbes and the fertilizer and perhaps some dust would travel downwind from a location of insertion, and the microbes would live in the ice.
3) Microbial Matts. Here you would help to start a sort of pseudo bog situation. Seed upwind components such as small Styrofoam beads, fertilizer, spores, maybe some dust. Let the winds carry it across the ice, hope to foster microbial matts.
4) Then as you have suggested tundra type acid bog setups. Dry steppe grass is more productive, but yes agriculture can be handled elsewhere. What we want is to cover the ice with a darker material and to release biological produced greenhouse gasses. That is product enough.
5) As this terraforming process would continue, eventually it may be possible to introduce trees, provided the soil is deep enough, and the U.V. is well enough handled, and the temperatures would be good enough.

The advantage of #5 beyond the others is Taiga forest of the north is a natural solar collector. Even though it snows on the trees, the wind shaking the branches and of course a little sublimation will remove the snow from the trees to a large degree, and the dark foliage will absorb sunlight even on a short winters day.

It would be amusing to have such a forest on top of a layer of ice (Permafrost), floating on a sea.

And from other locations on this site it appears that;
Natural Photosynthesis has about a 1% efficiency of converting sunlight to biomass.

You helped me make my parts of this better. Thanks!

Getting rid of a natural inefficiency of the process will perhaps bring that to ~1.4% efficiency according to this article:
https://phys.org/news/2019-01-scientist … boost.html

And I believe that for some forms of chemosynthesis (Artificial Photosynthesis), a ~10.6% efficiency seems possible to produce biomass.

I think aquiculture is the most likely way to do that. Of course then your biomass product is a sort of goop. Maybe good for fish food, maybe in some cases filler for some human foods.

……

And Terraformer thanks for supporting the notion of aquiculture on Mars. You are perhaps one of two or three to have ever done that here.

Quotes:

Void,
We don't have to farm out in the open on a partially terraformed Mars. A 50mb CO2 atmosphere would make polytunnels a lot easier to construct and use, allowing us to retain and reuse water so that high transpiration won't be a problem. Though we'll need a lot of open air bogs, to produce methane (and ammonia?) to keep the planet warm. But for farming, it just becomes a lot easier to do it indoors - and of course underwater.

It's my view that a partially terraformed (50-100mb, liquid surface water) Mars will have some of the most hospitable places in the solar system, outdoing even parts of Terra. Unfortunately, we don't have a partially terraformed Mars. Yet.

Last edited by Void (2019-01-07 12:40:31)

louis · 2019-01-07 13:20:13

The impact of dust storms has been overstated I think. The impact varies across the planet. Blackout conditions are never 100%. Maximum is around 20% and that never lasts more than a few sols. Prolonged dust storms see about 40-80% of insolation getting through.

As Mars is terraformed dust storms should become less frequent and less intense with billions or maybe trillions of tonnes of dust being washed down rock crevices and into the regolith.

Void wrote:

Thanks for the feedback Louis. I mostly agree, but we have to also remember global dust storms.
However, I myself think that it will be possible to make a civilization so robust on Mars that it will just shrug those off.
Thanks for the feedback.
Quote:
Replying to your first post...(haven't read all the others) I would say Mars has the following advantages over Earth:
1. No really bad weather like tornados, floods, hurricanes and tsunamis that tear apart people's lives and create such incalculable grief. The worst you have to fear on Mars is an asteroid strike.
2. Lots of land.
3. No people, as yet.
4. A million undiscovered things waiting to be discovered.
5. Currently no threat of human-made destruction...and long may it remain that way.

Void · 2019-01-07 16:58:48

That may be so Louis, in the long run.

I tend to be conservative for the short run, although I am looking for ways to speed the terraform process up. What is the ultimate attainable atmosphere? Well that depends on what is really down below, and future tech which might actually bring stuff from afar.

But for now, I presume that what is in the ice caps will be available. And with tricks parts of what is in the regolith.

Now sort of being estimated as 100 years possibly + 100 years.

That is why I go for liquid pressurization, and other tricks such as boring company tunnels, and boring brick buildings, Heliostats.

The impact of dust storms has been overstated I think. The impact varies across the planet. Blackout conditions are never 100%. Maximum is around 20% and that never lasts more than a few sols. Prolonged dust storms see about 40-80% of insolation getting through.
As Mars is terraformed dust storms should become less frequent and less intense with billions or maybe trillions of tonnes of dust being washed down rock crevices and into the regolith.
Void wrote:
Thanks for the feedback Louis. I mostly agree, but we have to also remember global dust storms.
However, I myself think that it will be possible to make a civilization so robust on Mars that it will just shrug those off.
Thanks for the feedback.
Quote:
Replying to your first post...(haven't read all the others) I would say Mars has the following advantages over Earth:
1. No really bad weather like tornados, floods, hurricanes and tsunamis that tear apart people's lives and create such incalculable grief. The worst you have to fear on Mars is an asteroid strike.
2. Lots of land.
3. No people, as yet.
4. A million undiscovered things waiting to be discovered.
5. Currently no threat of human-made destruction...and long may it remain that way.

Last edited by Void (2019-01-07 17:04:22)

SpaceNut · 2019-01-07 17:01:32

Alot of the wish list of items to do to create earth on mars is sort of in a preplanning scheeme as we need to get boots on its surface ad be under protective cover as we investigate the regolith soil beneath our feet. Its not unil we dig and drill deep that we will know what lays there for hydrology, layers of crust and anything else that is found.

Void · 2019-01-07 17:08:50

Agreed SpaceNut, in reply to post #18, and also in continuation of post #17.

While I am conservative, I will optimistically suppose that as a base line Mars can be terraformed to Arctic and Antarctic conditions. Later on, who knows.

https://www.google.com/mars/
http://www.planetary.org/multimedia/spa … tures.html

Working with the above, although I plan for Arctic and Antarctic terraforming with greenhouse gasses, I also hope to cheat that deal quite a bit with manipulating Albedo of exposed ice, and also using solar energy to inject heat into potential reservoirs. Not exclusively a Heliostat method, but Heliostats have my attention.

…..

In my dream, (And yours is just as valid), I suppose that the Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemispheres will be handled differently.

The North is a lower basin, the South a higher altitude.

The North in my mind just might in time be able to support a bog or perhaps only microbial matts. (Dependent on an Ozone layer).

I prefer one giant sea, covered by ice since I consider that at least at first the climate will be Arctic or perhaps even more brutal per cold.

I do intend Heliostats to generate brine and fresh water. I prefer that the ice cover be complete, over the whole body of water.

But later on if resources are found, perhaps the Martians will defy me (But I will be dead and won't care), and perhaps they can have a tropical Mars and play Tarzan.

For the Southern ice body, I intend heliostats again, but expect fresh water, and intend that it be diverted to Hellas as it melts. Yes there can be a fresh water sea(s) perhaps at and around the South Pole (Ice covered), but using canals and Boring company tunnels I would intend to melt the South Polar cap, and divert it to Hellas, and generate Hydroelectric power while doing that.

Then the bottom of Hellas would be your best bet for open water. And to further facilitate that, then orbital mirrors to warm up Hellas. Yes the water would tend to evaporate and return to the poles, but that is OK with me. Just melt it again if it goes to the South Pole, and if it goes to the North Pole, then you get a bigger salty sea (I hope). I would expect that Aquiculture would be big in Hellas. Both fresh, salty and briny. (The water will have no way out except evaporation ultimately).

In doing this we could hope that the Tharsis Rise would collect snows also because of altitude, and that the snows would melt during equatorial noontime, creating streams and rivers of ice water. Then if this were so, and we were to channel those streams into Valles Marineris, then also mirrors in orbit, maybe reasonably temperate farmland with the mirrors to ward off night frosts.

But that is just me, my current speculative notion of what to try for after making human presence real on Mars.

Done.

Last edited by Void (2019-01-07 17:24:43)

elderflower · 2019-01-08 04:49:21

Your frozen Northern ocean may allow us to use ice yachts!

Terraformer · 2019-01-08 06:11:32

My vision for Mars is a thin 50-100mb CO2 atmosphere, with vast forests of genetically engineered taiga, a large northern ocean, and probably bogs in the higher latitudes.

louis · 2019-01-08 09:26:20

I do still support terraformation, I think but this thread is good for challenging your assumptions!

How far do we want to go in creating Earth like conditions?

Is it possible to get a breathable atmosphere but avoid hurricanes, deluges and tornadoes? I guess with a Northern Ocean we could avoid hurricanes since on Earth they are confined to tropical and sub-tropical regions.

We've already seen twisters on Mars, so I guess we have to accept the possiblity of quite powerful tornadoes developing over the land mass.

I am guessing there would be less moisture in the atmosphere on Mars even after full terraformation, once again given the ocean would be in the North. But would that mean no or fewer deluges?

Interesting questions.

Void · 2019-01-08 13:22:26

Elderflower said:

Your frozen Northern ocean may allow us to use ice yachts!

You got it! An iceberg choked partially open water sea would be an obstruction to travel. If it is ships then you have icebergs. If it is land vehicles, how do you cross the open water. It is the worst of all worlds.

Continuous ice allows you to have roads all the way across from land to land.
Also you can have submarine traffic below the ice, and even vehicles that drive over the sea floor if you have a reason.

Further, open water and ice slabs will make it very hard to utilize the solar energy that impinges on the surface of the sea.
Solid ice allows all kinds of solar advantages.

Terraformer said:

My vision for Mars is a thin 50-100mb CO2 atmosphere, with vast forests of genetically engineered taiga, a large northern ocean, and probably bogs in the higher latitudes.

That is probably not too far from one of the possible results that I would contemplate. However open water is very unlikely at 50-100 mb.
And that is just fine with me, as you might note from what I said to Elderflower.

The scheme I have also allows for the possibility that the sceptics are right. Mars will never have an atmosphere with a pressure above 16.5 mb average. That would be OK. My a version of my scheme would work even then. But you would have to give up on bogs and taiga.

Louis said:

I do still support terraformation, I think but this thread is good for challenging your assumptions!
How far do we want to go in creating Earth like conditions?
Is it possible to get a breathable atmosphere but avoid hurricanes, deluges and tornadoes? I guess with a Northern Ocean we could avoid hurricanes since on Earth they are confined to tropical and sub-tropical regions.
We've already seen twisters on Mars, so I guess we have to accept the possiblity of quite powerful tornadoes developing over the land mass.
I am guessing there would be less moisture in the atmosphere on Mars even after full terraformation, once again given the ocean would be in the North. But would that mean no or fewer deluges?
Interesting questions.

A good analysis I think Louis.

Yes lets avoid bad weather. I think a cold arid Mars is best. But warmer and moister than what is now.

I do intend that the Northern sea being covered in ice, will still have bottom waters of a nominal ~23 degC. And that there will be water stratification by variations in salinity of water layers. Brines at the bottom, lighter less salty layers above that.

The South ideally feeding water to locations of opportunity at lower latitudes, such as Hellas.

And sufficient moisture in the air that Mars will get alpine snows at higher altitudes at lower latitudes. But in general we don't want so much snow activity that blizzard type snow falls are common.

As for the alpine snow packs, they may melt to ice water and feed nicer places like the rift valley, or we might have to encourage melting with heliostats.

So, some of the best real estate being the northern plains, Hellas, and Valles Marineris. These being the lowest elevations, and likely to have the best air pressures. We want solid surfaces to walk on, but also want large quantities of water for them. This I feel can be achieved.

For some of these locations we might consider orbital mirrors to bring temperatures up a bit. Particularly the rift valley and Hellas I think.

Done.

Last edited by Void (2019-01-08 13:36:29)

Void · 2019-01-08 17:05:25

I can currently think of a number of Heliostat applications.
-Shine extra light on solar panels.
-Boil salt water to produce hot brine and hot water vapors. Inject the brine into the bottom of the northern sea. Quench the hot steam into the top layer of water. Generate electricity with a turbine while you are doing this.
-For the south polar ice cap similar, but most likely you would be boiling fresh water. Your hot steam would be quenched into the lowest layer of the fresh water reservoir, while driving a turbine. The residual water would also be dumped into the lower layer of the reservoir.
The upper layer of water would be near freezing. The lowest layer would be a few degrees above freezing.
-Alternate method: Heat up compressed air. Run that air across the input fluid salt water or relatively fresh. Evaporate water into the heated air. Quench the heated air/water vapor mix into the upper layer in the case of the northern sea, quench it into the lower layer in the case of the southern sea. Dump the residual into the lower layer in either case.

Korolev Crater is an example of where this process could be started, or if there is something better, then that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korolev_(Martian_crater)

Eventually it might be hoped to have a planetary power grid. It is a smaller planet, and there may not be that much open water.

So, especially if superconductors can be summoned to the task, then it is not unreasonable to speculate that the north and south and the rift valley area could swap power over the year. Also while I do focus on the low spots, north plains, rift valley, and Hellas. I should think that for many of the parts of the northern plains that are not water covered, and for much of the uplands suitable that their could be solar power harvested, and donated to the wet places. (Northern Plains, rift valley, Hellas, maybe others).

This could be transmitted as electricity, or perhaps as Methane, Oxygen, and just maybe some Hydrogen. Maybe Carbon Monoxide as well.

Chemicals to dump into the aquiculture zones.

Since Martian seasons are almost twice as long, I anticipate population migrations seasonally as well.

But that's just me. May be close to right maybe I will be show up. That would be good actually. Better is for the best isn't it?

Done.

Last edited by Void (2019-01-08 17:13:42)

louis · 2019-01-08 18:32:35

Nice little map and some realisations at this site:

http://www.worlddreambank.org/M/MRZ.HTM

Chryse Gulf looks interesting.

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