Can Mars stay terraformed?

Dook · 2004-08-11 13:48:20

Reply is in Free Chat.

Martian Republic · 2004-08-11 16:06:47

But, this line of conversation is wrong way as Atitatev pointed. We are discussing here Mars terraforming and eventually the political power frames conserning this. Keep the ridiculous and wishfull dreams for world domination for you and please, comment without to offence the entire rest of the mankind that they are unable to rule themselves...

But, getting back to terraforming Mars. I Kennedy would not have been assinated, we would already be on Mars now. Beside having a moon mission plan, he also had a Mars Mission plan. He also intended to develop fission and even later on fusion. Kennedy understood that was just the entry point in space research development and technological spin off that would fire up private enterprise and generate all kinds of business actives. Kennedy was also the President that made it fashionable to have nuclear power for peaceful uses like generating electricity. Atoms for peace they called it. He was offering that to the world so the third world could develop themselves. The Peace core was his baby too. Kennedy was going to pick up where FDR left off, but after his assignation. All that ended except the moon mission.

If only American had a President like Kennedy or FDR again and they had a vision to back to the moon and go to Mars, but would setup Brenton Wood type agreement to develop the moon and Mars like we rebuilt Europe after World War II. The Brenton Wood was cheap long term credit of twenty to thirty for the purpose of rebuilding Europe of 2% or 3% interest that the United States loaned out to Europe so they could buy American goods until they could rebuild there country. It was not this high usurious interest crap we have now. That the ticket for developing space and down here is a New Brenton Wood agreement.

Larry,

smurf975 · 2004-08-11 16:14:20

If only American had a President like Kennedy or FDR

I disagree, I think that FDR and Kennedy were just coming in a situation were America had to do something or die.

Later presidents and governments realized that the Sjovet Union was going nowhere, so they could ease up. So for instance let private enterprice engage in space activities more or creating jobs.

However, yes perhaps they were the right person at the right place at the right time. Someone else may have scewed up, who knows. But they were higly motivated due to economic problems and social/political problems, which don't excist anymore in the same way.

EarthWolf · 2004-08-11 16:41:57

Hello,

I agree with atitarev and karov. This thread isn't to discuss the war on terror. Back to my original intent. Once terraformed, wouldn't Mars' weak gravity and non-existent magnetic field fail to keep the new atmosphere and climate from reverting back to pre-terraforming conditions?

One other question is on how to warm up Mars. I read a paper the other day, that said the best way to warm up Mars is to pump CFCs into the atmosphere in order to thicken it. One idea was to set off a million nuclear explosions to release bonded carbon into the atmosphere. ???

Cordially,

EarthWolf

Martian Republic · 2004-08-11 16:53:54

If only American had a President like Kennedy or FDR
I disagree, I think that FDR and Kennedy were just coming in a situation were America had to do something or die.
Later presidents and governments realized that the Sjovet Union was going nowhere, so they could ease up. So for instance let private enterprice engage in space activities more or creating jobs.
However, yes perhaps they were the right person at the right place at the right time. Someone else may have scewed up, who knows. But they were higly motivated due to economic problems and social/political problems, which don't excist anymore in the same way.

I can see that we are going to be in a disagreement on this point.

Just as long as we can disagree without being disagreeable with each other.

I think both men were deeper men than you give them credit for. Now you may have point that they could not have done what they did without those crises, but they also had an American Idea of the U.S. Constitution and a Republican form of government based on the general welfare. Roosevelt was always encouraging the American people to read the U.S. Constitution to see what it says and appealing to the American people for help so he could keep those bankers at bay so that they would not sabotage his recovery plan for the U.S. Economy. Kennedy also had some grandiose plants too that he was going to install before he was assinated.

Here a web site for Kennedy to show what he was about.

http://www.john-f-kennedy.net/thefedera … eserve.htm

http://www.john-f-kennedy.net/]http://w … nnedy.net/

FDR is equally as impressive if not more so, but I don't have a web site for him.

Unfortunately what most people don’t understand is, we are dealing with a concept of government that most people don’t know or understand. Unfortunately many of those people that don’t understand this concept of government happen to be Americans too. This concept of government also overlaps the banking system of whether we are going to have a private central banking system as lender of last resort or whether we are going to have a government central banking system as lender of last resort.

Larry,

Dook · 2004-08-12 10:08:12

EarthWolf: Everything is described in great detail in Dr. Robert Zubrin's book titled "The Case for Mars". Getting there cheaply in 7 years with a self refueling earth return vehicle, habitat, mars vehicles, and continually landing more habitats and earth return vehicles in the following years. He also discusses terraformation of the planet. You can get a copy from Amazon.com or do a search for it online.

Mars weak gravity will indeed lose it's atmosphere but it will take thousands of years for that to happen. We just need to create it and maintain it. I think a combination of ideas would be used to warm Mars. We would produce greenhouse gasses (sulfur hexaflouride) as well as use large mirrors in a stationary orbit to warm the surface.

John Creighton · 2004-08-12 10:12:58

Just incase this post was lost in all the discussion about economics and politics.

Hmmm… I would expect that even earth leaks air. There is a statically possibility of an air molecule making it to any altitude. Of course the lower, the pressure, the lower the temperature and the greater the gravity the less likely this is. Moreover on earth if an escaping partial gets ionized before it is beyond earths magnetic field it would be recaptured. I would additionally expect that earth captures some of the solar wind which adds to the atmosphere. Micro comets also help to replenish the atmosphere. I wonder if earth’s atmosphere is in equilibrium, growing or decreasing. On mars what needs to be done is to lay a supper conducting loop around the equator. Or maybe the cable should be closer to the poles to keep the cable cool as the temperature of mars rises. There should be some filed size for which the equilibrium pressure on mars is the same as earth.

SpaceNut · 2004-08-12 13:03:08

Besides gravity, the electromagnetic belts and an extra thick ozone layer that protects us from the lethal radiation of the sun. We can only think of changing the amount of green house gasses to warm up the planet and to make a breathable atmosphere that would be lost over time due to no or low magnetic field and lesser gravity.

Even if we ever do achieve a breathable atmosphere the lethal radiation would still be a problem? Or did I miss something in the green house gas infussion.

karov · 2004-08-12 14:53:40

The thick new atmosphere should protect you from the cosmic rays. The ozone layer is necesarry for the solar UVs. The atmosphere should stay for geological eras long time. If we manipulate the tropopause, the exobase and provide the planet with magnetic field via superconducting cables it should be retained for billions of years. Read the splendid article of Gerald Nordley ( find it here in the Terraformation forum, or google " Gerald Nordley gravity" ). Even the Moon will hold for at least 3000 years earth-composition atmosphere without any retention measure. Mars for millions. There is no danger the atmosphere to dissipate during its introduction.

atitarev · 2004-08-12 17:12:44

Even the Moon will hold for at least 3000 years earth-composition atmosphere without any retention measure. Mars for millions.

With a strong artificial magnetic field the atmosphere retention would much better for Mars, the Moon and other bodies with a lower gravity. That would be the measure required. It would protect the bodies from the solar wind. Even Mercury can support a tenuous atmosphere thanks to the significant magnetic field it has (it power is only 1% of Earth).

EDIT:
Thanks to ERRORIST in his new thread (http://www.newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2554]Earth's Magnetosphere)
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/m … netosphere

I am impressed with the picture of Earth pushing away the solar wind with a shockwave of magnetosphere (5 times Earth's diameter) away from itself.

EDIT 2:
Here's the image actually:
h_magnetosphere_diagram_02,1.gif

karov · 2004-08-13 04:19:19

Anatolii,

HOW THE SOLAR WIND GETS PAST THE EARTH'S SHIELD?
http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish … ...ld.html

This is very important. This conserns the natural mag-field of earth or any other magnetically active planet, or the Sun - see "heliopause" - our central star also produces a shock wave in the interstallar medium as it turns with linear velocity of ~200 km/s around the Galactic centre... The natural mag-fields of the planets have the topology of the smaller feromagnetic objects. The field force lines are orientied axially. As described in the posted link article kinda turbulence makes the earth`s magnetic field to trap some of the ions of the solar wind and to slam them in the atmosphere where they produce auroras. The gravity at the distance of >10 times the earth`s gravity is >100 times weaker. Indeed the gravity in this case so close to the boundaries of the earth`s gravitational sphere of influence doesn`t play any signifficant role. There the rarified gas and plasma has spatial and dynamical situations and behavior determined almost entitrely by the magntic, not the gravitational force. Hence in the vicinities, at the atrmosphere tops of the extremely low-gravity worlds (with <3% gee surface gravity, down to the ~1% of the smallest planetary mass objects), which tops practically go out in the intestellar or gas-giant`s gravitational spaces ( i.e. out of the speciffic Hill radius), similar magnetical means of atmosphere retention could be used, without to be necesarry the smallest round moons or planetoides to be roofed over with solid material cover. More - in the "Terraforming smallest..." thread, later.

Imagine if the magnetic field configuration is much more complex -- it could be used as an instrument for atmosphere replenisment and retention. The ions succeed to escape the manipulated to cooler state exobase can be returned by the magnetic field. In lack of enough hard emisions insolation necesarry for ionisation, the ionisation can be artificially done at certain hights...

Such way open atmospheres can be retained without big energy expenditures even around much much smaller bodies. I believe down to the roundness limit of 400-500 km diameter of the solid bodies with planetary mass. In the Cis-Neptunian Solar system realm we have >30 such bodies, bigger than 400 km diameter there are hundreds and even thousands of TNOs - KBOs or OOOs!!!

Generating complexly configurated mag-field around Mars, even if it is many times weaker than the earth`s should be sufficient to positivelly balance the dinamically defined total amount and long term chemical composition of its artificially introduced earth-like atmosphere.

Anatolii, I think that the paper which you intend to make about Venusian-teraforming-without-parasols, could include such magnetesphere instalation and manipulation as most upper level of the atmosphere retention techniques. If you want I could dig around to make this idea more precise and exact, i.e. ready for publishing :-) :-)

atomoid · 2004-09-02 17:29:00

In the latest (July/August) issue of The Planetary Report magazine, there is an interesting response in the Q&A section by Chris McKay that details some surprising (to me at least, as i havent read much of the terraforming threads) projections for terraforming Mars:

- So I thought that lack of a magnetic field was a death-knell in itself to terraforming plans, since anything on the surface would get fried and the naked atmosphere would get blown away. However, since Mars' gravity is much lower than Earth's, it will take much more mass per unit volume to reach 1 Earth atmosphere pressure at the surface (1 kg/cm2 for Earth vs 2.6 kg/cm2 for Mars), therefore the radiation shielding offered by this extra gas mass will easily more than account for the sheilding effects provided by an Earth-like magnetic field, which only deflects the low-energy protons anyway. The radiation is less intense at more distant Mars than it is at Earth. Therefore, Mars, even without any magnetic field at all, would actually be better shielded from radiation than the Earth is (!)

- The atmosphere won't get blown away like some might think, the atmospheric loss on Mars is only equal to about 2 meters of water over 4 billion years, which doesnt seem like very much anyway, apparently a thicker atmosphere wont blow away any faster than the current thin one because the gravity holding the atmosphere to the planet remains essentially the same and since the solar wind doesnt increase (i guess those low-energy protons the magnetic feild deflects dont have much effect on the atmosphere?), it merely displaces the same amount of atmosphere it would in any instance, regardless of how thick it is.

...this is more than enough time and protection to set up shop on Mars. This analysis further suggests to me that Mars really hasnt lost very much of its water at all, it probably had a thick atmosphere in the past, its just that the water froze underground back when the sun was cooler and the atmosphere dwindled when the temperatures were too low to drive a greenhouse effect in those conditions to resupply more gasses in the absence of volcanism. Since it seems there is plenty of ice below ground, if we can budget a technique to create thick enough atmosphere, it could probably be brought past a self-reinforcing temperature feedback tipping point, given the sun's current heat output, bringing us much closer to sunbathing on our own beachfront property on Mars (if we can only live long enough to transplant our brains into clone body replacements).

John Creighton · 2004-09-02 22:09:22

Interesting post atomoid. Anyway along the same lines of though since Mars is further away from the sun then earth the solar wind should blow away less atmosphere per year then if mars was at one angstrom.

MarsDog · 2004-09-03 01:36:03

Zurbuchen]http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/07/09/solar.storm.proof/]"Zurbuchen said similar solar events over the course of 3.5 billion years might have contributed to the loss of Mars' atmosphere and water, a mystery researchers have been working on for decades since pictures revealed that Mars likely had large amounts of flowing water in the distant past"

The Sun is stable, but may have had more flare activity in the past.

SpaceNut · 2004-09-03 10:33:38

Any solar storm has two components that cause and effect the atmospheres of all planets a like, three if you count distance from the sun. Directional alignment or intercept point for the planet and finally blast strength in that direction are the first two. There is a fourth piece in that also the blast shape may be another factor in whether or not a solar storm could do damage to a planets atmosphere.

Shaun Barrett · 2004-09-15 02:50:54

The article about solar flares certainly gives us food for thought about the way in which Mars may have lost its atmosphere but no numbers are given to back the idea.
There are many factors involved in the possible effects of solar flares over long periods of time. First of all, we don't know for sure whether current rates of flare production on the Sun are typical; in the past, they may have been more or less common than they are today. When the Sun was young, producing only 70% as much heat and light, was it much 'quieter' and 'better behaved'? Secondly, there is the question of how strong these flares are. Who knows whether those that have occurred in this present era of astronomical observation and measurement are unusually powerful? Thirdly, there is the question of directionality. What proportion of solar flares happen to direct the brunt of their force toward Mars?
No doubt, there are other factors I haven't touched on.

If we examine the article by Dr. McKay in The Planetary Report for July/August, we read that present rates of upper atmospheric 'sputtering' could only have removed about 2 metres of a global ocean from Mars over the last 4 billion years. There is, according to Dr McKay, no reason to believe the rate of water loss was any greater in the past, even if Mars had a thicker atmosphere then. And this assumes Mars has never had a significant global magnetic field, i.e. things have always been as they are now in that regard. Presumably, if one factors in a global field, at least for the first billion years or so of martian history, and if one assumes sputtering by solar charged particles was less intense when the Sun was younger and fainter, then Mars may actually have lost even less than 2 metres of water since its birth. In other words, the martian volatiles may well have been more 'durable' than we tend to think.
Taking all this, together with a more conservative view of how often large powerful solar flares have impacted Mars directly over the eons, I think it becomes more difficult to say, with any degree of certainty, that flares may have been instrumental in helping to remove Mars' atmosphere over the eons.
To my mind, it's still quite possible that a substantial proportion of the original CO2 atmosphere has been adsorbed onto the martian regolith or otherwise sequestered, rather than lost to space, and may be available for future terraforming efforts.

karov · 2004-09-19 00:54:50

I agree. The mechanisms of atmosphere dissipation shouldn`t be taken in "direct ratio". The effects which occur under the constant solar radiation and wind + eventually the solar flare blasts , leading to atmosphere gases loss, espacially water loss via photodissociation of water ( or amonia, or methan) ARE effectivelly countermeasured by other natural mechanism - tropospherical 'cold traps', crustal/regolith capture, orbital confinement as in the case of Titan. The lack or presence of magnetic field is not so key feature for atmosphere retention.

THat means - we have lots of potential technologies rellying on these protective natural atmosphere retention effects by simply amplifying them or implementing them - for Mars or even smaller bodies.

SpaceNut · 2004-09-24 08:37:54

While the verdict was out earlier this year that the amount of damage to the Mars atmosphere from a solar storm was down played as minimal. It now appears that may not have always been the case in the early history of Mars.

Mars attacked by solar wind
http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/8/9/14/1

Shaun Barrett · 2004-09-24 19:21:20

Even if Mars has lost a global equivalent depth of 34 metres of water over its history, it seems likely to me that enormous reservoirs of water still remain.
Topographical evidence strongly suggests that Mars must have started with a global equivalent ocean of water some hundreds of metres deep. Unless we can show that that much water must have escaped, we can only assume most of it is still there.

John Creighton · 2004-09-24 20:02:21

Unless we can show that that much water must have escaped, we can only assume most of it is still there.

Mysterious and intriguing

atomoid · 2004-09-24 20:07:20

Yep, doesnt look very good for keeping an atmosphere around without any method to resupply it. but 35 meters, although huge, still amounts to just a drop in the proverbial bucket, -er shotglass you might say. I tend to asume that Mars had similar amounts of water as the Earth when it formed.

Thats pretty much the clincher, Mars doesnt seem to have any way to resupply the gasses to the atmosphere by itself: no plate tectonics, little volcanism, its too cold to get much water vapor build-up. And no (prolific at least) life processes to alter chemicals into gasses en masse . So it just cools off and dries up like leftovers in the freezer, but theres still plenty of ice there, slowly being liberated from under the surface as it is eroded over the eons.

If we mechanically and biogenetically provide the means, I'd assume that theres plenty of raw materials and water abundant enough to keep the atmosphere as thick as necessary for the forseeable future.

John Creighton · 2004-09-24 20:16:04

If it all went under ground we need a volcano to spit it back out? There is no big moon we could easily add to mars to bend the crust and get the lava flowing again is there? Or maybe we could microwave mars. Well not exactly microwaves but a really big magnetic field that penetrates the crust and introduces eddy currents.

John Creighton · 2004-09-24 20:27:35

This brings me to an interesting question. Does mars have a warm core. I was just thinking that the ice and lack of volcanoes might help insulate the earth bellow the crust. Maybe if the temperature of mars is rising due to radio active decay one day mars will have volcanoes again.

atomoid · 2004-09-24 20:29:58

No big moons except for Jupiter's. its just too expensive to go that route. moving it and then braking it into a stable orbit around MArs would take enormous energy. more easily you could just steer a big asteroid or comet into Mars, the shock and heat would release a heck of a lot of water that should bolster the atmosphere with enough water vapor to hold onto some daytime heat and even transport heat around MArs. But you might need dozens or more comets to do anything signifficant. any gearheads out there with the calcs?

If MArs turns out to have lots of uranium, then we could set up robot nuke factories and core drilling operations to plant thousands of nuclear bombs under the crust and blow the subsurface open, that shoudl also release a heck of a lot of water, and, er um, Radioactive Hell as well...

Yes, mars does have http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/newsroo … 06a.html]a molten core, MArs radioactive decay shoudl be slowing down much like Earth's since there is no resupply of these elements...

John Creighton · 2004-09-24 20:40:37

No big moons except for Jupiter's. its just too expensive to go that route. moving it and then braking it into a stable orbit around MArs would take enormous energy.

Well if the energy could be produced on the stolen moon maybe it wouldn't be as bad (Kindof like how commets change orbit). I do like the idea of digging a real big hole. Alot of the heat would probably get transferred through the curst by earth quakes. Exciting. I wonder if some kind of plate tectonics could be started if there was a big enough explosion deep enough in the crust.

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#51 2004-08-11 13:48:20

Re: Can Mars stay terraformed?

#52 2004-08-11 16:06:47

Re: Can Mars stay terraformed?

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#54 2004-08-11 16:41:57

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#55 2004-08-11 16:53:54

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#56 2004-08-12 10:08:12

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#57 2004-08-12 10:12:58

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#58 2004-08-12 13:03:08

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#59 2004-08-12 14:53:40

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#60 2004-08-12 17:12:44

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#61 2004-08-13 04:19:19

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