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Terraformer

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From: The Fortunate Isles

Registered: 2007-08-27

Posts: 3,906

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Ecopoiesis

If the goal is ecopoiesis -- creating a place that can sustain life, even if not human life -- the requirements will be far lower than for full terraforming. What sort of atmosphere will we need for this?

At 40mb, water boils at 30c. Is this a high enough temperature that pools of water could be stable/soil remain damp? Of course, if we're using polytunnels this will be less of a problem, since the water will be recycled back through the system.

One possibility would be a very thin atmosphere of a few millibars (areoforming) that protects against micrometeorites and provides some UV protection. Then underneath this, an expanding low pressure worldhouse for ecopoiesis. Finally, within the worldhouse, human settlements with breathable air.

The benefit to humans of ecopoiesis terraforming is that it creates a vast life support system that we can tap into. If the air outside contains oxygen, pressurising it will be far easier than maintaining tanks or electrolysing water to make up any shortfall. Likewise for dumping CO2. If we can grow grass outside, then we don't need to construct vast areas of pasture for animals; we just need enough for their basic roaming needs and harvest their feed from the fields. Aquaculture too, as we've talked about before. Life support becomes open loop. I think far more worlds are amenable to ecopoiesis than full terraforming; Mars can probably be done without needing a worldhouse or volatile imports, and maybe some of the Jovians too.

Mars may not have the easily volatilised gases needed for a thick atmosphere. However, it does seem to have enough for a thin one that's sufficient for liquid water. We'd have to meet it halfway with genetic engineering of course. Before this happens, I'd expect it to be done with polytunnel like agriculture (as we've discussed re. aquaculture). What's the strength needed to contain a 40-60mb atmosphere?

Small planets like Ceres would probably still need this atmosphere to be physically contained. But given the far lower requirements for strength, and the reduced pressure giving more time to repair leaks, perhaps we could move relatively rapidly to transform the entire world.

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Use what is abundant and build to last

tahanson43206

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Registered: 2018-04-27

Posts: 19,405

Re: Ecopoiesis

For Terraformer...

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Best wishes for success with this interesting new topic!

(th)