How would you terraform mars?

Rxke · 2004-07-12 08:05:05

Lead-time is a 'problem,' to be sure.
But (still optimistic, heehee) look (again) at ESA's approach of re-using existing 'buses,' ie. different probes but sharing a significant amount of common hardware, just change some scientific payload etc, leave the rest the same. Result: seriously decreased R&D costs and a lot faster to build. Not that commercial sat-operators, using 'families' of sats, do in essence the same...

MarsExpress is one of those 'recycled' designs, wich made it fairly cheap, and fast to build/test/etc.

What I was thinking was that inner solar system objects have had too many close encounters with the Sun and have lost most of their volatiles due to evaporation/sublimation

Hmm.. Dunno. Look at the rings of Saturn, and its moon Sedna,they seem to be high in H2O content... Of course, both of these 'sources' are in a deep gravity-well and fairly far from the sun. But IIRC, judging from some pics of asteroid-belt objects (forgot wich) at least some of them seem to exist of very dirty ice (cratering indicates that, not albedo...)

And again, I'm not in favour of crashing *anything* on the surface, surely not Deimos, too valuable as satellite/low-g manned outpost etc.
Rather gentle aerobraking, 'athmosphere-grazing,' instead of steep impact trajectory, so it breaks up in many small chunks, wich will not reach the ground, but 'only' enrich the atmosphere.
Impacting big stuff might very well cause some serious global duststorms, lowering insolation significantly, no?

Grypd · 2004-07-12 15:52:04

Why not instead of dropping Deimos redirect a couple of Carbaceous Carbonate asteroids instead?

Certainly plenty of heat and the rocks vapourisation would provide gases. If we could add a couple of snowballs it would be even better.

chat · 2004-07-12 17:32:50

Grypd,

Deimos is already there at Mars, why going looking for asteroids when Mars has 2 so well placed to use.

We could probably de-orbit it in about a 2 year plan, 1 year to build the launch vehicle, 6 months to arrive at Mars, and 6 months of slowly pushing Deimos around.
Since the space craft would be doing a rudimentary job, it could also be a low cost vehicle.

If we wanted to, probably around the fall of 2006 we would be seeing the north pole melt from the impact of Deimos.
Only a few days later a planet with a new temperature point and a new thicker atmosphere.

But carbonaceous asteroids wouldn't hurt things if Deimos wasn't a big enough impact on the atmosphere of Mars.

Could we move asteroids with todays technology?
Probably, but at a very high expense and time scale.

I also like the idea of Marsform as a planet change name, it's unlikly it will ever be earth2 anyway, so why confuse people with the word teraform.

Grypd · 2004-07-13 03:50:03

Deimos has more uses as a space port and observation platform than as a temporary way to change the atmosphere.

Deimos can also be used as a center for teleOperated robots on mars, This would allow mars to have a better industrial base a lot sooner, and improve mars as a colonisation site. And it would allow mars to be terraformed easier in the future if this industrial capacity is in place.

We wont be going to mars to terraform it immediately not till we have done a real exploration of mars. Even then as we get better experience we will find it easier to move asteroids about. Then we can use them as a means to terraform.

chat · 2004-07-13 05:24:29

Grypd,

Use phobos as the space center.
We wont need 2 space centers.

IMHO i don't believe Mars needs to be teraformed.
Mars is all set for colonization now.
With the greatest of efforts of technology all we are likely to produce at mars is a slightly thicker atmosphere and a slightly warmer place.
But does Mars need any alteration?

The results of 75 years of attempting to change earths atmosphere show how little we really can alter a planet.

If we dropped a deimos sized object on earth at the north pole, you can bet the atmospheric changes would be more than temporary.
Even with the life as a buffer it would take millions of years to return to a semi normal state.
On Mars i would expect a deimos impact to alter mars for as long or longer.

What would the result of such an impact be?
A dustier colder place for the first 2 years,then a warmer, wetter, thicker atmosphere at mars.
Even after the initial impact disaster settles down, it will still be colder at the equator on mars than it is on the poles on earth.
The atmosphere will still be just as nasty as it is now, just thicker.

Then maybe with an all out attempt to alter the atmosphere by humans and machines and life we might have a chance to change mars further.

Shaun Barrett · 2004-07-13 05:30:06

Weeellll ... you may be right! But I doubt it.
Time will tell.

[Incidentally, Rik, I don't think you mean Sedna is a moon of Saturn. I guess you mean Phoebe?]

Grypd · 2004-07-13 16:49:50

We will start to terraform mars for two reasons.

1) If we are to make it a home for mankind we must reduce the radiation that a colonist recieves. Who wants to live in a bunker there whole life not martian colonists. People will want to wander and explore they will want to make mars there own. If the background radiation remains as it is this will be severely limited.

2) Because we can.

As to deorbiting deimos im pretty sure by the time we are ready to start public opinion and that is Martian public opinion will be against destroying what is one of mars great sites the twin moons.

REB · 2004-07-14 08:01:52

I choose other.

If I could do it any way I wanted to, I would ship about 1 bar worth of Venus Nitrogen. I would probably take some of Venus CO2 while I was at it.

With a thicker atmosphere, plants would thrive.

Shipping large chunks of Venus’ atmosphere is fairly advance, thou. For a lower tech solution, I say go for the CO2 factories. I would be happing with a partly terraformed Mars, where plants can grow and water flows on the surface.

chat · 2004-07-15 17:27:45

REB,

Phobos or Deimos de-orbited would do the trick to partially marsaform Mars.

Then to keep it that way the chemical factories.

I also agree, once water can flow and plants can live on the surface no real need to go further exists.

It will still be a radioactive beast even with a thicker atmosphere though, so another need at mars is a man made magnetic field for the planet.

Shipping the atmosphere from Venus is the ultimate plan, but as you point out probably a ways beyond our current technology.

atitarev · 2004-07-15 22:07:18

REB,
Phobos or Deimos de-orbited would do the trick to partially marsaform Mars.
Then to keep it that way the chemical factories.
I also agree, once water can flow and plants can live on the surface no real need to go further exists.
It will still be a radioactive beast even with a thicker atmosphere though, so another need at mars is a man made magnetic field for the planet.
Shipping the atmosphere from Venus is the ultimate plan, but as you point out probably a ways beyond our current technology.

Some comets consist of oxygen and water. Just redirecting and breaking them in a thicker Martian atmosphere will do the trick of adding more O2 and H2O. The methods of doing this were already discussed many times in this forum. It may save hundreds of years of terraforming. Just ice asteroids could be used to extract oxygen form water.

Genetic engineers will need to work harder on getting the most productive bacteria and algae that convert CO2 into O2.

As for shipping volatiles from other bodies, creating large shuttles is not beyond the current technology and the more shuttles, the larger their capacity is the sooner we get an atmosphere breathable by humans. Even if it takes a hundred years - it may be faster than just relying on photosynthesis.

Also factories extracting oxygen from the regolyth could be built.

In some optimistic estimations, the combination of different methods may make terraformation of Mars achievable within 1 or 2 lifetimes. If peothing people want something badly, they'll find ways.

REB · 2004-07-16 08:12:05

Building huge empty tankers shouldn’t be too much of a challenge. They will just be mainly shells. The tricky part about mining atmospheres of Venus, Saturn, or any other world is getting the gasses into orbit and separating them.

Could it be as simple as lowering very strong tubes from orbit and sucking out the atmosphere? Then run it through a processor separating the elements?

In the case of Venus, the Nitrogen could be separated from the CO2. The CO2 could be processed into Oxygen and Carbon. The Carbon could be used to build the tankers (Carbon nano-tube fibers?) The Oxygen could be used for fuel, to make water (Hydrogen from Saturn) and/or breathable air.

Let robots do most of the work using space based resources and the cost to the Earth should be minimal.

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Re: How would you terraform mars?

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